Virtually Nurul – { Research | Fitness | Designs } by Nurul

Tag: emotional

  • Reminder of What I’ve Got to Do Whenever I’m Stuck in A Funk

    Feeling so bad earlier today. I know it’s partly of my back soreness too. I didn’t cry like crazy today, instead I tried these things and I felt a lot better and able to get up and do some cleaning and cooking. Oh my God, my body and mind is so messed up. I guess I did the work on rewiring my mind, the other thing I need to work on is adjusting my body. So I did these three things just now:

    • Meditation – a different one that focuses on breathing to release anxiety, stress, ptsd and panic.
    • Vagus nerve stretching exercise – very simple one but really reoriented my day as well
    • Fascia rolling – I’ve been doing this for awhile, but this time, the focus is on releasing trapped emotions where my body feels tight. My back and glutes really loved this one.

    Then I managed to cook, did laundry and clean my toilet. A little bit more to clean, but at least I’m not stuck anymore.

  • Is this life?

    So low energy and my anxiety and overwhelm level just shoot up. I am generally upset and feeling so disappointed with life. Like, it is really hard to help myself. I am just frustrated and feeling overwhelmed at the moment. Don’t know what else to do to make myself feel good again. My power is just out of me. Internally, I feel shit. But other people look at me with awe on all the amazing things that I did and potentially had helped them. Part of the things that contribute to it is triggered by people:

    • family stuff – attending meetings on things I don’t care about
    • other people’s indecision
    • having to reach out to someone and not knowing what to request
    • i feel like my soul is out of my body – is this fatigue or what? but still I need to function and communicate with people
    • feeling down and helpless because I can’t have nice meals
    • anger and sadness from break up despite of knowing I did the right thing for myself
    • guilt on pending stuffs – painting work, and one at shell station – conference paper to publish
    • overwhelming shame to settle what I need to do

    Today’s negativity might be caused by my fear of letting other people down and/or making other people feel uncomfortable. When will I be comfortable in putting myself first, I don’t know. Why life is so busy and complicated? I just want to live in peace and I don’t care if I become someone important or not. I am so tired of doing and working. Today’s world is so stupid, reliance on money for sustainability, stupid family system and stupid men unfit to become a reliable committed partner. Today, I feel so helpless, like there’s no point of trying anymore. I just don’t have the energy. I just want to sit down and cry. Despite of all the good and courageous things I did, why am I unable to appreciate and be happy with myself? What is the meaning of my existence? What am I good for? I am just gonna bawl my eyes out crying and get ready to work later. So tired and I’m just angry at everything and myself.

  • I am 41!

    It is my birthday today! A different celebration from when I was 40. Because I don’t have Facebook anymore that notifies everyone of my birthday, not many wished me one (not even my man!). Only my family members and some close friends who happen to interact with me often. I taught BodyPump as usual as it’s Thursday, and got announced by my instructor mate who team teached with me today to the whole class that it’s my birthday today. It was a nice feeling being appreciated like that. Afterwards, we had cake and some meal downstairs at Secret Recipe and I headed towards my parents’ to meet and celebrate with my family.

    Did the usual drills, small celebration with them. Had cake, kids singing birthday and fought to blow the candles, them gifts giving and them asked me to unwrap the presents. We ate a bit, and chit chatted with my sisters and mom. Dad, as usual, I don’t know what to talk about with him. He just went to bed early.

    I got some presents like freebies from expos – functional stuffs, mom gave me telekung and dad gave me a watch. It was so modest I was actually was not that excited. Then when I unwrapped the gift from my dad, I was half disappointed cause he gave me a men’s watch. In my mind, I was like, “Are you kidding me, don’t you realise how stylish I am, and you want me to wear this?”. Well, of course I didn’t voice out my disappointment and thanked him anyway with glee. I also asked my mom where I can have the strap adjusted, cause its too large on my wrist. She just answered me but like unsure of it. If they bought it together, she would have known. I packed some food and drove back to my house after everyone settled to their bedrooms.

    As I drove home, I became suspicious. Like, how could he do that to me, then I thought, he must have bought it for himself but didn’t want it and gave it to me instead – like, everything hand-me-downs, they’ll give it to me. As I arrived, showered and settled at home, I charged the smartwatch my dad gave me, changed the straps – the black leather straps look a lot better on my wrist than the steel one and checked what’s inside the box.

    I found the manual and some sort of warranty documents, then I saw the date of purchase. It was in 2020! And then I remembered my brother gave a Fossil watch to my dad for his birthday. Could this be the same watch? The settings of the phone, too, were configured for an iPhone and with my dad’s email address.

    I was heartbroken, like not angry heartbroken. It’s a sad feeling. My dad is not as he was years back. He’s in a fragile and vulnerable position right now. Maybe he is feeling powerless to help me, that’s why he’s like avoiding, even talking with me. Despite of that, he still wants to give his best to me. That’s my dad’s love to me. He has given me everything he could, even when in times he could not afford to. I feel that he’s really in big crisis right now and really need our help. On the bright side, I kind of glad that he didn’t spend so much money for a gift that I don’t really in favour of (like the almost 3 grands Tumi backpack they gave me last year).

    It is a huge awakening for me. I, too, am feeling so vulnerable and don’t know how I could turn my life around. But so far, things are kind of on track. I want to help my family and not be too financially dependent on them. I am not messing around anymore. Inside, I know I can do this. Just still figuring out what works. Allah will guide me, as long as I do it for the right reason with all my heart.

    May Allah protect my parents from their worries and insecurities; and teach them to be at peace and surrender to Him; and bless my parents with good health and meaningful life. I love my parents, and thank you Allah for blessing me with wonderful mom and dad who love me unconditionally with all their hearts.

  • October updates!

    Life has been moving so fast these past 4 weeks. It’s mid-October already. I’m trying to get back to slower pace of life. Recently bagged myself new clients and new job, connected with new people. Coping with the ‘new’-ness of my man’s behaviour. It’s all too much for me without processing and without much support. There were good things and maybe not bad but these things trigger my insecurity a lot especially in the financial aspects of which I am seriously building on. I am also feeling so ill today, my body is giving way and there’s no one here to comfort me (well I can always go home to my parents, but it’s my recharge day!).

    Feeling so vulnerable and the fact that I can’t spend time and share it with my man makes me feel hopeless. Also, makes me question the whole ‘us’ thing. I wonder if he’s thinking about me as often as I do of him. This guy really makes me crazy sometimes, but yeah I just need to be myself and tell him how I feel eventhough it might drive him away. I don’t know if his act of keep coming back to me is because he genuinely loves me or just caused by something superficial. I am just generally anxious because I don’t know how to address it.

    Anyways, today I planned to go see my painting to resume and have a look at them. But my body is just so exhausted, thank God I don’t feel sore a lot because I went to train. I’m just feeling inflamed and undernourished. I don’t know what else to do other than eat, lying in bed and watch movie. I watched the movie ‘Eternal Sunshine of A Spotless Mind’ in the afternoon. It was a great movie and so moving. I think most men in my life have mother issue. It’s also funny that inside, I feel so dark, and yet people see me as a ‘lively’ and ‘bubbly’ character. I related the relationships in that movie with mine, it’s like everyone has conflicts – it’s how they resolve and communicate their differences. I don’t know what to make of mine. It’s just a floating thing, sometimes okay, sometimes not. I don’t want to mother my partner, maybe deep down I just want someone else who can be a better father for me. I also learn that with wounded and introverted men, they don’t have space in their head to think about other people. It’s just their survival, sometimes, I catch myself behaving like that with things that don’t matter to me. I don’t understand this, maybe just live and do my best to make it meaningful.

    Yesterday was so ‘dark’ for me, I was listening to “Kingdom of Rust” again and it’s just so beautiful about someone who’s unable to feel. When it sang “I long to feel the beauty in my heart..” I just cried. I just let it go, I wasn’t sad for any reason. Maybe its a repressed feeling. When I feel good, it’s 100% great. When I’m not it’s 100% too. Maybe living is like that. Feel it and ask myself why do I feel that way and move on. I mean, when I’m already feeling tired and ill and the weather is just crazy, it’s just hard to feel good these days. I just don’t have the strength to deal with everything right now. I’m turning 41 years old in a few days, would I stay like this till I die? I am yet to find my breakthrough. It’s hard. Small progress with finance but not stable yet, relationship-wise also small progress. I just want routine, stability and peace. Nothing else matters much to me. I thought also beforehand that I am not normal, turns out when I get to know more people, the more I see that we are all in the same boat. I am ahead if I have more awareness and initiatives than other people. So, I really am not broken. I can make things happen for me. I just need to keep trying and make mistakes until I find it.

    Gosh it’s really hot in here. I have so many things to fix like my nutrition and energy level, my studies, my pending work, the things I promised my parents. How do people do it? My car is making me crazy too with all the loud noise. I am just could not see right now how I could make all these things right for me. I already put a timeline for the things I needed to do but still it’s not moving at all. I am still as sick and hungry and tired as before. Is it my work that’s making me crazy? Or is it that I am not feeling much support from the man I love? Oh Allah, please teach me how this works. I am clueless as ever. I don’t know what I can do right anymore.

    I know what my mind and body is trying to tell me, it thinks that I am in danger. Only in danger of what I am not sure. Sometimes I can stay calm and just surrender to Allah, because Allah knows best, and he always helps me and be there for me. Yeah, no point feeling threatened by someone who is not capable of loving and protecting the way I want to because of his wounds himself. There’s so much frustration in me right now. Here are some of the things that made me crazy these past few days:

    • Loud noise from car and recent sound system problem made my ear rang several times. I’m scared that I might turn deaf because of that.
    • Got a new job teaching for a new centre, but I am not feeling myself with this job – plus it just doesn’t feel right sometimes cause I am at different wavelength with my participants and the place – I don’t know what make them feel excited in exercising – to them it is still torture, and not challenges – so maybe this one makes me stress out a bit. I am worried this gig does not last as long as I’d like it to. But lets not worry about it now.
    • And the place that I currently work at is so mean, like not caring of us who work for them.
    • My group exercise clients are a pain at the moment. OMG why people are so disrespectful like this. I am not gonna sugarcoat anything with them, just gonna be myself and act professional.
    • I am just tired of dealing with people right now be it my clients, my employees, my family and my own partner.
    • I am tired of people hitting on me when I let loose and be myself, can you all just chill and act normal.
    • Stress and anxiety from pending jobs. I just feel like, if I don’t feel good about myself, if I don’t get my affairs sorted, I can’t do things for other people.
    • I sensed some changes with my man, I don’t know if its good or not. He’s less defensive with me which is good. I also feel uncomfortable that he changed his style which I’m not a fan of. I like my man clean not scruffy. I don’t know yet what he is going through, only some details and it sounded like he is exhausted himself, but really nothing I can do if he would not let me.
    • I hate that I still depend on my parents, like how can I let go of this dependence already. I can do this, just a little bit more.
    • My research is stalling for a bit now, but this one is the least of my concern cause I know how to handle this, and I have my support.
    • Classes keep cancelling, people are not showing up. I mean people have things to do, right. I am worried that my schedule got changed or reduced because of no show. This will affect my income and my ability to pay for bills.

    Above all, I also don’t want to factor out that all these crazy feelings also were intensified by PMS. I dealt with so many things in a short time. I was in full on hustle and fight mode. That’s why I am so exhausted emotionally now. Many good things happened too, such as:

    • I found a mechanic who could solve my car problems for now. And my mom is ok to help me with fixing costs – maybe I feel stressed because it’s as if I need to do a big favour for her if she helps me
    • My income exceed RM1,000 per month now, which means I have enough bullet to add my values in teaching in fitness or even indulge a bit on nice things.
    • Again, my man is less defensive so it’s really a nice progress.
    • My sister, niece and nephew paid a visit to my house. It was short and so special because I get to show them my safe sanctuary.
    • I get to train again. It feels so good!!! I want to get paid to train. I am going to do that for a year, and maybe sign up to become a CrossFit coach.
    • I got new ear-piercings on my left ear together with my niece. It was so special and my niece was so cute with her new piercing. I just realise how big is my love for her. Made me wonder, maybe that was how my aunties were with me. I am so sorry if I appear disimissive or cold towards them. Also to my mom and my grandma who love me so much. I think my dad too, but he just could not put his guard down (like my man!).
    • My dad keeps a couple of selfies I took in my younger years wearing makeup – that was so corny and sweet at the same time!
    • Relaunch at the gym was nice, and some of the members like finally accepting of myself as a person, not like a perfect celebrity coach.
    • I got myself checked for breast cancer and I was cleared and good. Funny experience doing mammogram and ultrasound. Kind a like, one milestone achieved as a healthy woman.
    • I can sense now the validation that I am working in fitness and that I am knowledgeable about it.

    I am just burnt out and not managing myself well. Things happened and just focus on what I can control. Everything I listed out is a lot for a 4 weeks occasion. At least I am alive to experience this all. I am safe, I am OK and I am taken care of. Don’t worry.

  • Offbeat

    I am feeling horrible these past few weeks, despite of new positive changes I am making. I don’t know how to make the sense out of it. Emotional regulation is hard, moreover when I have to do it alone. I love myself, but there seem to be a lot of insecurities felt. What happened the last few weeks and this week?

    • I made a decision to discontinue powerlifting training – it’s just now working for me for the time being. So maybe I am feeling negative because I am letting people down, and there may be potential for me to be good at this and the recognition and validation that may come out of this. I love how the training gave me strength and focus. But the time it takes to recover and potential injuries just don’t work with me right now. I am already suffocating from balancing my body with current schedule of teaching, working and training.
    • I teach more classes – 2 HIIT class and 1 intermediate intensity class. So this might trigger something in my body because I have to do more preparation work and part of my resting hours is used for further exercise. I might say I feel that I only add extra 30% load on my body with this new schedule.
    • I am not OK that I am ‘gaining weight’. This is really unnecessary, but can’t help feeling that cause I like to look lean and proper. It is gonna be ok. I will easily shed them off when I start training again.
    • Hard to me to sleep well at night due to weather and not wanting to skyrocket the electricity bills up. Without proper sleep and rest of course, one can go crazy.
    • I need better nutrition planning and preparation. So tired to cook these days. Good thing that my body works well with oatmeals and coffee, just basic things to function well. What I need to plan further is for big meals like lunch and dinner. Meat might work for me and its cheaper options for protein intake – maybe I need to include more fiber based protein. And eat more fruits and greens.
    • Family relationship, I think we all are getting along better now. But still I must not give up my identity to fulfill especially what my mother wants. If she’s confused of her roles, that’s on her. Only relate when necessary and don’t overextend myself. Now she wants me to help on the little shop. It’s not hard work for me, but it’s not what I want to do and if I run it successfully, it’s likely that I will not be so much prouder of myself than what I have built now for myself.
    • Closure of old stuffs from MYJN and Navy painting work. OMG still a lot to handle. Yes, I totally forgot about them.
    • Maybe I need to detox from social media – just triggers my anxiety. But I need to do promotional work also. What could work is to limit my access to them.
    • Love relationship is not doing well again. I am just so done to make things right for now. What is it with men. I am so confident that I don’t rely on them to make me happy. I just want to relate with the person I love so bad, maybe like I do relate with myself? Might be our depth of awareness is different? I don’t know what is happening and he is not willing to clarify himself either. Sod it. Suck it up.
    • Financially insecure but I already took actions for this. It’s the unforeseen things that makes me stressed out. Like car maintenance, food cravings, also I need to upgrade my wardrobe and the things at the house.
    • Technically the weather and consistent water supply disruption also bound to make me feel unsettled.

    Most important thing is, what I listed are all external. I gotta respond and manage myself to them accordingly. Above all, I truly believe God is looking after me. Nothing will go wrong. I am safe. Take the plunge.

  • Lessons from Dr Jonice Webb’s 10 Days Awareness Challenge

    I subscribed to Dr Jonice Webb’s work in Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) which I came across in the early stages of my realisation that there was something wrong with me, sometime in 2018. I related to it instantly and bought 2 of her books. The emails she sent weekly at first triggered my past hurt. But over time I don’t know when, I stopped taking it personally and started to read them with an open heart and mind.

    So, recently, she created this 10 Days Awareness Challenge for free. I immediately signed up without hesitation, and followed through along with my own time. If any of you are interested to find out what it is all about, you can enroll yourself by going to this link here.

    My main learning out of this are the 10 affirmations that I could use to reparent myself (these are my favourites) and three steps that I can do to begin my CEN healing. The video of the affirmations is available on YouTube, here on this link. Such an important link. I would like to write to her one day on how much burden she had lifted from me, from all the feeling of unworthiness and consistent gloom and doom feeling.

    Back to the affirmations, the 10 main affirmations to reparent myself that I could use are:

    • No feelings are bad, it’s what I do with them
    • It’s only a feeling, I can handle this
    • Pay attention to this feeling, it matters
    • My parents can’t give me what they don’t have
    • I can do this
    • Stop with the self-doubt – it is not helpful
    • I’ve proven myself before, and Icould definitely prove myself again
    • It’s just a skill, and I could learn it
    • Asking for help is a sign of strength
    • I am not responsible for the things I cannot control – I’m not in charge of the whole world, let it go!

    The good thing is, it affirms me that I have already started healing because I use some the affirmations myself consistently. I wish I could cut and paste these affirmations somewhere in my brain for quick access whenever I am feeling inadequate.

    Another thing that I learnt from this awareness challenge is to practice these three things to heal my CEN. Those are (as in my notes):

    • Learn everything I can about CEN
    • Change my relationship with my emotions and feelings – it is valuable, tells me something about myself, holding good or bad memory about something, warning, information, message of something that I need – be curious about my feelings
    • Start paying attentions to my feelings – do this drill 3 times a day. Close my eyes – turn inwards, ask myself what am I feeling right now? – feel the feelings in my belly, chest, throat or in my head.

    It feels so good that I can now see another move forward in healing my childhood trauma. Please have a go at the challenge, who knows it might change your view about yourself and ultimately your life.

  • Backdate – Emotional Housekeeping

    Where do I start? A lot has happened last week. Mixed emotions and experiences that almost triggered me into that survival mode again. Five major adjustments from my usual routines:

    1. Coordinating expo and working with my mother
    2. School friends came over for a visit and wanted to hang out
    3. A session of strength training that sent my body feeling weird
    4. Defending my stand and negotiate to undergo my DRP with my supervisors
    5. Going through my already full routines in addition to above event – I had exam, class and teaching group exercises as usual

    Discussing on event 1, it was okay at first. The folks who are supposed to be working with my plan just decided to do their own thing. And I felt that my time is not respected. It might seem that I can come up with a plan as quick as a snap of fingers, but actually all the scenarios have been thought up for days or even weeks in my head. And I know my mom was tired and she sacrificed a lot, but I am also upset that she did not stand up to her needs – and took it on us when she was overwhelmed. To some degree, I did that too when things are out of my control. It is our dynamics that concern me a lot. How do we address differences. How to communicate all these things. My brother did not seem to want to help or cooperate until my mother stepped in, and maybe manipulated him to help. So really, after all this, I really need to reconsider how I would want to be involved with my family again especially in helping them with business. A lot of reframing and boundary setting need to be outlined, so as to not exhaust myself. I am tired of putting on the self that I automatically project whenever I am with my family members. They are puppets of their insecurities without feelings, not human. If I choose to follow their flow, I will succumb to their insecurities, and be like them too. So, I need to be careful.

    Internally, I feel that I should not feel guilty, because I already communicated my availability and the stuffs I needed to deal during the event. I am not a superhuman, and I already did my best. What I am disappointed about is, all these chaos distracted me from concentrating for my exam. Partly it is also my fault, because I want to control everyone’s time to fit in mine. And turns out it was not for the best too. I also feel that I spent my time meeting my friends more than I can afford to spend. My rationale is that they are here for a short time, and I should take the opportunity to meet and catch up. Maybe situations like this triggered my critical perfectionism or I call it Rebecca that guided me to make this judgement. It really weren’t my friends’ fault. It is mine for not drawing the line.

    I am also so stressed out because of conflicts with my supervisors, it was an intense session meeting them last week. But it turned out so well after we all communicated our concerns, and we left as a team again. My supervisors really are my people. I love them so much for helping me. I pray that we could all work together well to finish my studies. That really was something positive or progress I made, because I dare to stand up for myself and voice out my needs. My DBA circles are the best people I have been with, except a few – I so can detect now who have dysfunctional tendencies and who are healthy, and who are in between.

    Other than that, I am just already physically exhausted from training. But I know this is good for my future longevity in fitness career. I am only started here, there are lots of adjustments I need to make for optimum growth for my work and my training in fitness. I got to restructure my time and recovery to fit in group fitness instructing, powerlifting training and CrossFit. Fitting in exercise, training, proper nutrition prep and recovery are really hard and takes a lot of discipline. So far, the best things and moments that are rewarding and positive to me are from fitness and my DBA studies. These are the things that I would like to keep for a long time.

    Seriously, it is the family dynamics that bother me the most. Because I am still depending on them financially. I am looking forward to severe ties with them professionally. I still can spend time with them, but I no longer can participate in all their insecurities about money and power; especially money. This is where I learn from them, that I could not live off like how I want to with financial stability. I have long unsubscribed to their definition of life and success. I will do a life audit to structure my life better.

    All for a better emotional and physical fitness. I got this!

  • Heaviness

    Today I’m feeling the heaviness and grief again. Woke up feeling really sluggish, even the meditation did not calm me down.

    I’m feeling overwhelm thinking of what’s gonna happen in a few days during event, and how I’m gonna need a week to recover my body so that I can be my best with my body in teaching.

    Then again, this might not be true. I tend to have this catastrophic thinking. I’ll do well out of this. There’s so much fear with events, the tiredness, the unproductivity, the crowd and people. Maybe I should just focus on what I needed to do and have faith that the other people will do their jobs.

    I worry on meeting my supervisors, I’m so tired dealing with them and with the load I needed to do for this study. I kind of sense their character flaws. Not that I’m better than them, but I feel that they are putting inconsiderately and unnecessary perfectionistic expectations on something that is less important than the whole process of research itself. I can negotiate with them and tell them how I feel tomorrow.

    I’m thinking how much I do miss him and the absurdity of my brain still looking for good justification why he did what he did. Then I stopped myself, to not think about it, but just feel my emotions fleeting. We did have good times, so my body is craving for it. Just observe, the intensity will fade. He still is the asshole that he is, for treating me with disrespect; remember that.

    My whole body is aching too. I didn’t know I have a weak back and upper body until I did CrossFit and powerlifting. Maybe I’ll feel better after stretching, shower and have a good breakfast.

    Everything I need to deal today, it’s gonna be fine and okay.