One day at a time

[wannabefreeParticipant]

Hi everyone, remember one day at a time, and keep the thoughts positive. I think that is what was meant in the Peter Pan stories by J.M.Barrie… Hold a happy thought, and you will fly. Negative thoughts serve to bring us down, and make the task unsurmountable, whereas positive thinking makes things a lot easier to approach.  My problems with food began in care work. We attended food hygiene lectures, where we had to use the correct colour chopping board for the appropriate food, likewise coloured handled knives. I think there were seven different colours. Everything had to be surgically clean, plates, cups, knives, forks, spoons, everything. We had temperature probes to check food was cooked thoroughly. The deep freeze was always too warm, as was the fridge. We weren’t at the point of actually writing down the temperatures, although that would probably have come after I left. We were under threat of being sued for the slightest thing, because the relatives had more power than our managers, let alone care staff. This developed a need to be perfect, which of course, was unattainable. The clients were healthier than the staff, but the worry of anyone having the odd tummy upset, and getting blamed and hauled over the coals so to speak, created fear in the workforce. As I’d already had a nervous breakdown many, many years ago, in a different industry, I knew where my limit was… I got out. I wasn’t the first, and I guess, not the last. It got so bad that the relatives wanted to interview the staff applying to work there. Everything I did was wrong, even the good stuff… In the time I was there they got through three managers… I believe now that they had litigation solicitors ready to pounce at the slightest thing.  So perfection was on the mind all of the time. Perfectly clean, perfect… In the end it was totally unworkable. From this, I had an inflated view of how I ‘contaminated’ the world…  The thing is today, that the world has always been ‘contaminated’ in some way… But we survive… The world doesn’t need to be surgically clean, we don’t live in an intensive care unit. Covid needs to be respected, and we need to keep to the rules, regarding Covid. Not everything else. I used to worry about the slightest spec of dust on anything… Cos we were being judged by bitter people, who sought to worry us. In the end, they will have lost all their staff I guess… The staff turnover was horrendous.    Today, I try to use CBT techniques to challenge and accept food, supermarkets, restaurants, toilet facilities… As listed on my forum posts. I will probably update the Pizza one in a couple of days… Today it was bread rolls with sliced ham in. The bread rolls come in a polythene bag, and are from a well known company, their name written on the bag. The thing is, Even if I wanted to clean the pack, what could I use? The manufacturer obviously isn’t worried. (My old employment would have been). The pack will have been handled by lots of people, especially the till operator, and then me when getting the rolls out to butter them. Was the butter knife perfectly clean? I don’t know. It has been in air since being washed, probably yesterday… This computer hasn’t been sanitised, in all the time I’ve had it. And so far… Nobody has got ill, and that is evidence. On holiday, we’d go and stay in luxury caravans… Holiday camps… New tenants every week… But they didn’t get shut down. One I went to, served 2000 guests in four onsite restaurants. Maybe a couple of people had tummy upsets, but the food was self service, so they can’t very well blame anyone else…  At the moment, I only use the sanitiser on the way in to a supermarket… Not between every item… Not before going through the checkout… And not before loading the car. This has been fine so far. A question… If I adjust my face covering in the shop, do I need to sanitise my hands each time? I don’t know… I don’t think anyone does… And when a parcel arrives, Should I antibac the box and sealing tape? I never have…  And so far, all is okay… Hopefully the vaccines will get us through this pandemic. Some CBT can be quite extreme, but as long as we know it is safe, we don’t have to be so extreme, but know that evidence suggests that, apart fron Covid, we’re a lot safer than we think we are. Our homes do not have to be perfect. Good germs need bad germs to fight and strengthen on, that is how our immune systems work. So a few bad germs around us in our homes can actually be a good thing. God bless you for reading.

Wannabe

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