You can't even teach a young dog new tricks.

It seems like my whole life I've been trying to "learn how to breathe". It still hasn't stuck yet. Slow down. Think through it. Rationally. And breathe. I don't think I've made much progress in this area.

2010 has been a pretty stressful year. I was pondering this today. And really, it hasn't been stressful for me, it's been stressful for P. It seems like nearly every month something happens with him or his family that causes chaos and upheaval in our house. And most of it so far has been completely out of his control. (And really, all of it is out of his control. I think it's the need to control that creates the stress, now that I think about it.) But I take all of it on. Because I love him, because I hate to see him in tough situations, and because it affects the level of happiness and joy in my home. That's why I take it all on.

But I've got to learn how to not do that. Having two of us stressed out all the time isn't helping anything. And he reminds me of that constantly. I know he starts to feel bad about me being upset about things that happen in his life that really don't have too much to do with me. And I've got to learn to let go of those things.

We have so much good going on and some major life changes that are happening. So naturally anxiety is going to be a little higher than normal. But I've got to learn how to breathe and make it through. He's got it down. He does much better than me at that. It just seems that no matter how many times I remind myself to do it, it never actually happens. I love him so much and my natural reaction is to jump right into the middle of the mud with him. But that's not helping anybody.

I guess I'll just keep working at it. :)