Month: October 2011

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Find Hope When You Otherwise Must Die – Depression

Jane Eyre

Image by madelinetosh via Flickr

Briggs was crying again.  His wife, who came with him to our first appointment, looked like a peeled fruit beside him.  She was undefended, giving her last layer of self without knowing what would be left.  Briggs was one case of serious depression, but his wife; she was heartbreaking.  Both of them in their own ways would not last long.

It is not unusual in a specialty clinic to work with people such as Briggs who have been around the treatment shops.  Then, finally, in Jane Eyre-style, they appear at my door in the company of death.  They have been through therapies, practitioners and churches, but disease resists treatment.  Everywhere they walk, it is as if Hades (or Neptune) were visiting.  Hope-blossoms wilt as they pass by and those of us who share space, feel like the ground is going to open up and suck us under.  It is not uncommon in specialty-care, to be told, “…I have no strength to go further.”  Like Jane Eyre, they plead, “I must die if….”  (By the way, Charlotte Bronte is the bomb.)

As the person on the other side of this exchange, I have worn down the rainbow of “specialty” options available to offer.  And what are they?

I’m going to write more about those options next, but my questions for you today are:

What has worked for you or your loved one?  Is there any treatment you think is too extreme to consider to get brain health?  Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Find your specialty care.

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Get Your Hunting On – Insight is Empowering

But

Because of

He makes me

Finding insight can often feel like going on a bear hunt. There’s a children’s classic that tells this story about our journey towards self-discovery well with this title. You Tube even has a catalog of animations for it. One of my favorites is by Michael Rosen. This guy has a face made for story-telling.

– We’re Going On A Bear Hunt – http://bit.ly/uItL6P YouTube

Sometimes when we venture out on our personal journey, a bit of the spirit of Columbus, a musketeer or a little boy with a stick in his hand. We have courage.

The screenplayer

Image by Darkroom Daze via Flickr

We are made beautiful by the courager; wind in our hair, weapon girded and travel pack filled with trail mix. And then mid-stride, mid-journey or in-process of anything our hand starts to shake. We remember more of our flaws rather than our merits. We remember abuse and encounter more of it. The tall grass becomes tangled around our ankles. We stumble often and start talking about why we cannot. We fear what we find or may find on the great hunt of accountability for our lives.

Words can be part of the tripping power over us. Words that point to all the power outside of us; over us. Words that erase our memories of what we have inside.

I am depressed because I have so much stress at work.

I hit him because he was being so rude.

I’m sorry but I wouldn’t cry all the time if you cared.

All the “reasons why” hover around us like angry weather, darkness or spooky caves.

I’m not forgetting the obvious. Hunting bears is dangerous. It is just a metaphor. Hunting for ourselves is less dangerous and more rewarding. We find that when we find our “bear,” and stay in the space of that fear for long enough over and over, it loses its power over us and our fears dissipate. We are safe and see that we have power.

Self-Care Tip: Get you some bear. You have the power and are not a victim.

Question: What keeps you from insight? How do you get past all the in-between that keeps you from seeing yourself and taking accountability for who you are? Please tell us your story.

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A Bit Dull – Update.

Winter the Dolphin

Image by dbr Atl via Flickr

A few more dollars in the Family Money Jar.

My daughter asked me if I’d ever seen moldy boogers.  (We had just “learned” that often cheese she eats is “moldy” or “aged.”  Somehow that brought her round to boogers.)

Spent over $200 on groceries today.

Ate my weight in theater popcorn watching, Dolphin Tale with a crowd of children.  I was all weepy, popcorn imbedded in my sweater and the kids kept asking, “Why did they cut off the dolphin’s tale?”  During the movie I texted my cousin, a specialist in orthotics and prosthetics at Shriners Hospital for Children, and it turns out he provided the first prosthetic for one of the actors in the movie.  He is one of my heroes.  Somehow, I suddenly felt even more intimately connected with that darn dolphin.  (Follow that if you can.)

Some so-so reviews from work-related stuff.

Off to go ride the bike.

Thankful for you.

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Adequate – Step Away From The Ledge

Repost.

How does one fight feelings of inadequacy?

With Truth I barricade against my lies that I am not enough.  Of course I am adequate; and I fight to know that in more dimensions than just cognitively.  After all, facts change if you don’t believe them.

Take parenting for example.  Wow!  Sometimes I think that strangers would do better.  That the very parts of my soul those children hold would be better off with more distance from their home in my heart.  Am I inadequate to be a mother?  No, but some days I have to beg not to believe the lie.

In these moments of calamitous thinking, I am reminded of the term “all-or-none” thinking.  I am reminded that feelings of inadequacy drink from them like fat mosquitoes.  Catastrophizing is an egotistical view and nothing could ever be that bad or that good.  Not Me.  Not anyone.

Fighting feelings of inadequacy means being a friend enough to yourself to say, step away from the ledge.  To say,

you aren’t so special that you could be that terrible.

To fight right, you have to slide away from all bad into some of the gray area, and stop before getting to all good.  Because believing you are all of anything is just arrogant.

There are temperaments that do better in gray zones than others, those who feel comfortable grazing between thoughts and situations of life.  There are others, however, also.  People who almost seem wired to self destruct; whose own genetics thrash them towards polarity.  Those people are tortured, familiar with the often lonely fight I speak of.

To fight feelings of inadequacy, perhaps you fight your own design.  Hopeless?  Well no.  That is an extreme word and not to be trusted.  Remember at some level, that the truth is in the gray.

Self Care Tip #4:  Move away from the edge.  Be a friend to yourself.

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You Are Allied, Chosen and Of High Value to Our Efforts In Self-Care

Squirrel

Image by nsavch via Flickr

I remember starting with my research team about eight years ago. Some of the terrain between then and now returns like a welcoming committee every time I consider a team venture.

My research team and I have learned a rhythm and trust in each other’s talents that constitutes much of the travel pleasure experienced. However, knowing that their excellence is “behind” me, in front, and surrounding has been much of my medium for improvement. It has taken a lot for me to get this far, not absconding what we still hope for. What obstruction a colleague is when they lose their interest in growth. I am thankful they allow me multidimensional space to change, know my flaws and relax to know theirs. The ability to gift this to someone takes a lot of bank.

One of the beauties of having had received this type of gift once, is that it improves our vision to know where we might find it again. You readers have chosen me to work with but I have also chosen you and this is why. You have bank. Thank you for being persons of such high value.

When someone wonders about our talents, they are simultaneously wondering about our flaws. Standing under such scrutiny takes courage, I admit, but courage is improved by a sense of safety. Thank you for being safe. That takes bank.

I am a teacher. I am very good at teaching about emotional quotient, emotional and behavioral insight and interpersonal exchange. I am very good at teaching efficiency and perspective to achieve that. I am a Jedi in intuiting emotional milieu and harnessing that information into the goal at hand. I can do this for others, as well, with empathy and speed. I am talented.

Now. Surely when put this course way, and with your growing familiarity with me over the past one and a half years, you have some knowledge about my flaws. I am inspired that you believe more in my brilliance than in my Achilles. I am inspired that you ally yourself with me to make sure that my flaws do not kill me off and thereby kill the self-care work we endeavor together. That takes a lot of bank.

Your bank is more than you were given in your gene-purse. Your inheritance does not account for your long hard work on the continuum of growth. That is from intersecting personal dimensions that include things like in-process God-deposits, choice and more choice.

It is said that wealth begets wealth of which you are a rich example. Your riches are blessed, just as the men who did not bury their gold. I am happy to be with you, who are getting more bank. I am smart enough to know that after the shower, I will find something in my benefit. Ruth knew that of Boaz. Pond fish know that about the rain. I know that about you.

We are at a turning of seasons now, when creation takes stalk. Like so many squirrels, brown bears, tree frogs and you, I am glad when my pantry and borough reflects that I have a team, (allies to my desire and labor to be a friend to myself,) who are safe and rich and want Me. Wow. That is what they call, “Bank.”

Questions: How does it feel to know that you are known as, “Money-Bags?”

How do you choose allies to your self-care venture?

How has your sense of safety affected your ability to invest in yourself?

Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip – Remember that you are chosen and of high value.

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Secure Connections Allow Us to Feel Safe When Proximate or When Distant From our Other

Your romantic partner just left on a distant work related job.  Inside, two days later, you feel a growing chill.

You are not alone in this type of response. Physical separation can challenge intimacy. (Save the snarky comments on the positive influence physical distance can also have Carl. 🙂 )20111013-114942.jpg

We want safe connections. What and how do we get those?

Secure interpersonal connections allow us when together or apart, in any place we find ourselves, we find that we are still connected.

In contrast, when you and I, he and she, her and she are doubting our own self and/or each other, in crisis and unpaired spirits, when together or apart, in any place we find ourselves, we find that we are not. We are not connected. Connection isn’t only about proximity of person to person.

This can be one of the healing forces in victims of abuse. In the discussion of our last post, Col said:

I have been trying to figure out how to connect back to a part of me kind of lost behind….

…Time to build some trust bonds.

Likewise, Antonia reminded me of this.  Although she came in with “her eyes rolling in her head” – her words weren’t always entirely connected, Antonia’s courage in life was undiminished.  I learned a lot from this survivor who spoke with a Sevillian accent, (including the theta sounds.)

I am so pleathed to meet you, Doctora!

Her teeth were stained and overlapped each other and the right side of her face and right arm I saw were in a ruin of tumbled scars. Story unfolded that she was molested as a child by her brother for years. Her mother had died young and her father had helped her understand that that was what girls were for. Escaping from Spain to France, she married in hopes to be given a “start-over.” Her husband was violent though and finally when he lit her on fire, she was hospitalized long enough to grow some scars; inside and out. She threw herself into another “start-over,” this time including God and three years later, landed in Temecula.

Throughout the progress of her story I was sounding dismay at her suffering. However, I couldn’t for very long at any time before she’d offer me comfort to me!

No no! That was all before….

…I am thankful for my life!

I hab so much! God is really good to me. He sabed me!…  Her scars were tight around her soft smile and eyes.

I know in my boots that Antonia is not all that she is today because of her medications, psychotherapy and life-saving skin grafts.  She is connected.  She is connected to her Me and to her Other.  She has security that is bigger to her than her insecurities.  (Remember yesterday when Suzicate described the friendliness of that?  Thank you Suzicate.)

This ties us in to one of our premises of what it takes to be our own friend – accountability to Me.  Although we are all victimized, being the victim is our choice and we have the power.

Questions: What has grown your sense of safety in your connections? How does your perception of abuse, victimization and maltreatment relate to this? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  You have the power to have safe connections to self and others.

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Personalizing Gossip; It Starts And Ends With Me

“Crying,” by Galway Kinnell

Crying
Crying only a little bit
is no use. You must cry
until your pillow is soaked!
Then you can get up and laugh.
Then you can jump in the shower
and splash-splash-splash!
Then you can throw open your window
and, “Ha ha! ha ha!”
And if people say, “Hey
what’s going on up there?”
“Ha ha!” sing back, “Happiness
was hiding in the last tear!
I wept it! Ha ha!”

I remembered this poem after visiting my friend Paul’s church when Paul told me that at least three of the people there asked him, in one way or another, if I had a disability. Poor Paul.

I’m pretty sure Paul was embarrassed but aside from that and my own begrudging unfortunate shame response, I have to say it made me laugh a lot. (I work with many labeled “disabled” and respect them. This community comment doesn’t come with the knowing of who is behind a simple word like “disabled.”)

Awesome!

I smiled at Paul’s daughter and she smiled back. What fun laughing with her. Apparently it was just that. My laugh.

Loud and disinhibited. (Laughing more.)

In high school a particular peer thought the same. In movie theaters when something hits that note, I have seen the looks. I have had sufficient opportunities to decide what to do with my laugh.

When weighing the risks and benefits of a “loud and disinhibited laugh,” the laugh has won out for Me. I get so much from it. Such pleasure of claiming that moment, that smile, that air passing through me and the intimacy.

Come join me! – “Ha ha!” sing back

One of the funniest kids I've met while travel...

Image via Wikipedia

It doesn’t mean happiness. For me, it is part of presence. Happy or not happy, and that brings me pleasure.

My sweet friend Paul is a sensitive guy in ways that I am not wired to be. He is so beautiful. I know how he cares about the people around him. I know he respects them and considers their thoughts. It is not so much that he would ever be ashamed of me, abled or disabled. Rather he cares and said these things because in his consideration, perhaps if I was more aware then I would make a different choice about the risks and benefits of my laugh. He doesn’t know that I am informed. I have decided with knowledge.

There is no way he would know this about me. No one could. It was, as always, a statement those church folk made that was mostly about them and not me. That is universal. We all say things that are more about Me than anyone or anything else. It’s friendly to remember this, to Me and them.

“Happiness was hiding in the last tear! I wept it! Ha ha!”

Self-Care Tip: To not personalize what isn’t personal, start and end with Me.

Question: What helps you remember that what people say is about them more than about you? Even when those people think they are talking about you? How do you

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Pay a dollar

Repost from July 29, 2010.

We all have a number of our own eddies, currents that spiral behaviors. Assuming that when those are friendly behaviors, then like “casting your bread upon the water” you’re bound to see something nice coming back your way. Some people say these patterns come from neurological loops, grooves in your brain like indian trails. When you go back down over your same footsteps 100 more times, you now have an open path without resistance, easy to travel. That is how the connections – neurological, electrical, chemical, are all biased in our brains.  Adaptability to stress, in part, means that your pattern of coping is on a path that serves you well when you need it to.

Come on, though! Who spends even five minutes talking about good behavior? What we do ruminate over, is why we keep doing what we don’t want to do. …Such as screaming at the kids when what we really want to do is to grow up and practice the good skills we’ve read about in all those parenting books!

Why is it so hard to stop?  Why are we “triggered” so easily?  Grooves, my friend.  Grooves.  Any day we can list off several seemingly unrelated events – but our reaction is all too familiar.  It feels like getting sucked into a tornado with a word spout, as if today turns you round and round the same way you did the day before.  Inevitable self loathing follows, which can set off more self-destructive behavior.  The cycle goes on.

When you feel trapped by your own self, get friendly by remembering this.  You’re mistaken.  You’re talking about a groove, not a vampire.  It’s not hopeless.  Not much more, not much less than what it is.  A groove can be abandoned.  New paths can be made and when the stressor hits next time, you will have a longer moment to decide on which behavior to play.  You will have a choice and you will realize more often that you are not trapped by what you thought; you are not hopeless and ugly.

For example, now when I yell at my kids, regardless, I pay a dollar to the family money jar.  Anyone can call me on it.  That’s my effort to steer clear of the “yelling-groove.”  The innumerable reasons for righteous anger, took me on miserable trips.  Round and round.  Yelling equaled me jamming myself all over again.  That’s right.  Who did it to me?  Me.  Now that’s not too friendly.  So something’s got to change.

It may be something different for you, but if you end up hating yourself in the end, it couldn’t have been good.

Self Care tip #5: You are not trapped. Pay a dollar. Be a friend to yourself.

Questions:  What has helped you abandon old grooves and make new ones?  When you don’t feel hopeful, how do you recognize that even though you feel that way about yourself, there is hope and the feeling is deceiving?  Please tell us your story.

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Steve Jobs Died and I Had Dinner With Lisa Fields – Just some news from me.

Steve Jobs shows off iPhone 4 at the 2010 Worl...

Image via Wikipedia

Sad Steve Jobs died.  We were blessed by his life and will continue to be.

Met with girlfriend Lisa Fields who is an expert at connecting ideas in a way that no one else has thought of.  Lisa, in essence, connects people to the product or market they are looking for.  If you remember when we spoke about grazers and barn people, Lisa is a wonder-grazer in the best way intended.  Any topic, any interest, any picture, product, person or punch-line, Lisa can make it bigger, more connected and better.  She turns it in more angles of view than eyes on a spider.  Thank you Lisa for tonight.

Anyhow, with Lisa tonight, turning and connecting ideas together, we caught the news.  Steve Jobs died.

Mourning his loss with you my friends.  Keep on.

Lisa Fields

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Get You Some Attention

Illustration from The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Image via Wikipedia

Frances was five years old and her dad was long gone.  Mom was not parenting much in those days, meaning when Frances laughed in timing, parked her bike in the rack and watered the dog, she felt transparent.  When Frances kicked and screamed, Mom gave her a bunch of attention to redirect her.  When Frances sat at the table quietly, no one spoke.  However, Frances did need attention so she spoke with her mouth full of food and said bad words.  Her motives were not bad.

Frances being young, she was still primitive.  She didn’t see the dimensions of life.  Her thoughts were concrete and told her to scream.  She didn’t know her motives were parenting her.  And while she grew up, her brain was myelinating those behaviors right into her own Indian trails of learned responses.  And not only did Frances have these neuronal grooves of negative attention, she had poverty of paths toward positive attention.

Years later, after much brain-city planning and hard work, Frances had herself some hard-earned different neuronal traffic.  She consciously named her basic emotional needs that motivated her behaviors, such as attention, love, trust and safety.  She deliberately responded more often than automatically to things.  We were even able to joke about it.

Frances said that she should be the Pied Piper for negative drama.

Everyone with negative emotions and theatrical behaviors, follow my car!  And then I’d drive them into the ocean.

We all have legitimate reasons to seek emotional succor.  Me.  We may find ourselves moving from crisis to crisis to get attention, but we don’t have to.  We don’t need crisis to deserve good things.  When doing well emotionally and behaviorally, we are equally deserving of asking for attention, love, trust and safety from ourselves and others.

The motive is rarely the problem.  It’s the timing.  That’s what automatic behavior means.  It is in the positive times that we need to drum up more positive drama; get that feedback that we so crave.

Engaging in a dangerous performance that gets Me hurt is not friendly.  Being friendly to myself might mean learning to re-time when we get dramatic.

Some people cut and burn themselves on purpose materially.  Some people do it emotionally.  A key to our insight here is owning that we have the power.  That everything starts and ends with Me.  When the knives and fire are ablaze on stage is not when we want to get involved.

What’s your timing?

Questions:  How do you see timing play into when you think that you are loveable? Do you think that when you are hurting is when you deserve to be loved?  Does the suffering make you more deserving of connection with others than being in a “good” place emotionally and behaviorally?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – Time your efforts to receive love, attention, trust and safety.

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Why, Is Just Not So Friendly To “Me” – Sabotaging Self-Care

I like it,

she says, as if that makes all the sense that she needs.

Does reason justify the action?  When action isn’t friendly to Me, do we really want to know the why?

Sometimes in clinic, I feel like a beast.  The other day, I did in fact.  Beautiful Harmony came in and she disclosed that she was drinking a couple of beers a night.  I thought she had stopped her alcohol.  She had told me that some time ago and I had forgotten to ask her about it in many months.

I asked her why, which was my mistake.  What ever her reason was, I already knew I wouldn’t think it made any sense.  I already knew I’d harangue her with teaching, coaching and cheerleading efforts to stop.  I knew when the words were coming out of her mouth that I was going to say things that she didn’t want to hear.  But, who wants a polite doctor?  What a watered down excuse for medical care.  The kind that says,

Oh Harmony, you are drinking.  You understand the risks and benefits and the benefits outweigh the risks for you.  Ok.  I’ll continue to treat you for all the disease processes that are secondary to alcohol, exacerbated by alcohol and I’ll continue to prescribe medications that won’t work while you’re still drinking.

I am not so polite.  Unlucky Harmony.

Harmony, the reasons that you drink alcohol do not do for you what you think they do.  The reasons are not your friend.

We all have a little “Harmony” in us, using reasons for our own sabotage.  As if we needed them.  As if they made sense.

I could die driving to work today.  Let me smoke.

I live with him because I’m lonely.  I know he…

We all battle for and against ourselves.  We are all hoping to do friendly things.  We all hope the unfriendly things will go away or get friendlier.  We have good intentions.  However, when we hear ourselves talking about them, we can get friendlier simply but not worrying about all the reasons that make doing what we want to do feel ok and just go straight to the point.

I like it…

Uh… Stop before getting started on the “why.”

Cathy, who writes The Reinvented Lass, described this so well.  She’s a funny writer and see’s the world with hope.  Check her out.

Questions:  Do you really want to know why?  Is your reason friendly to you?    How do you get past your reasons why?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – Don’t be so polite with yourself.

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