Goal-Directed Persistence: My Goals and Values
When I was in the hospital, Dr X encouraged me to work toward goal-directed persistence. I never really realized how serious an issue this was for me until the past couple of weeks. I was working on my book and I was super gung-ho about working on my book but then I got distracted by organizing my room to look like The Home Edit and this whole time I thought my overarching goal was to work toward a career in childcare but I always get derailed by side projects. So I decided to sit down and write out a list of my goals and what it would take to achieve them. Dr X actually drew this for me way back when so I pulled it out for reference:
So I’m trying, and I sure wish I could say it was going a lot better than it actually is. This is what I have so far:
The stars are supposed to be my actual values, and then each indentation is things that I need to do in order to achieve the thing above it. I did have to take out a lot of duplicates because a lot of my goals have the same sub-goals, so for example losing weight, earning more money, and improving my executive function could all be sub-goals of literally most of my goals. Also, some of my goals are kind of in opposition to each other. For example, losing weight may require gastric bypass surgery but that would make it impossible to be vegan, which as you may have inferred is extremely important to me. But the main problem is that I have a lot of life goals and I don’t know how to prioritize which ones to work toward first, so on a practical level I have no idea how to spend my time. And sometimes I just want to watch meaningless YouTube videos to recharge, which is not on there anywhere but does indirectly help me to achieve my goals.
So I would be at a loss but thankfully I see my lovely therapist today so hopefully she can help me out with this!
Neurobiofeedback
In other news, I’m still actively trying to figure out how to get neurobiofeedback. I don’t know where or how to sign up, how to make it work with my work schedule, or whether insurance will even cover it. I wrote to my med prescriber and also a woman who helps people like me with insurance, so hopefully one of them will be able to point me in the right direction. But it is just the thing that will solve all my problems according to these sources:
Big Think. (2021, October 21). How to rewire your brain after trauma | Bessel van der Kolk | Explain It Like Iām Smart [YouTube video]. Retrieved December 5, 2022 from https://youtu.be/tDTpQh8l7IE
Schwartz, A. (2017). The complex PTSD workbook: A mind-body approach to regaining emotional control and becoming whole. Althea Press. (ISBN 9781623158248)
