This isn't rubbish

(Anyone who knows me well will know that "rubbish" wouldn't be my first choice of word)

I started reading a book about mindfulness last night. I read a bit more this morning. Someone I follow on Instagram had posted a picture of it a couple of weeks ago and I knew I had to get it.

It's called Mindful Living With Asperger's Syndrome by Chris Mitchell, and it's very careful to reassure the reader that there's no necessary religious or spiritual connections, that it's only something to be done if a person is keen and ready and that we are all different so it's not for everyone. The man who wrote it has Asperger's himself and understands how our high expectations of ourselves can actually impinge on our efforts to embrace mindfulness - even though, ironically, it's those very high expectations we might be trying to quash - or at least ignore for a time through mindfulness.

What I read this morning was like a great big hug. I recently said to a fellow new Aspie, who I met online, that all the books I've been reading since my diagnosis have been like a hug and counselling all rolled into one. Every time I read something I relate to I feel enormously grateful to the author for helping me to feel a little bit more okay about myself.

Chris Mitchell writes that aspie stress and anxiety stems from our own thoughts about what we want ourselves to be and that we have frustrations from not measuring up to our unrealistically high standards or expectations that we set ourselves. Our anxiety "can arise from frustration over not being what we would ideally like to be." And - very importantly, he writes that "thoughts about what we may aspire to be tend to arise from what we may perceive to be acceptable or successful, which can stand in the way of us being happy within ourselves in the present, and being able to accept who we are as we are in the present."

It was nothing new because I know that is how I am, but it was something I needed to read: words written by someone else to remind me.
I have unrealistic expectations of myself. I guess I always will have. but if I can keep reminding myself of that I can forgive myself when I "fail" to be unrealistic.

I walk around RHS gardens, cared for daily by an army of paid professional gardeners. I tell myself my garden back home is shit, unkempt, lacking colour, needing hard graft. I tell myself I should give up, I've taken on too much, I'm under achieving, under-performing, that's it's all shit. I think about what I haven't done, what I should have done, what I should do in the future. And then on a cold, wet day like today I remind myself of my ridiculous demands on myself and I stop and I look at the colour and the natural chaos of one corner that looks okayish and know that the rest can wait and I haven't failed.

And I remind myself to notice when I'm being unrealistic.