Month: August 2013

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Bank and Book-Keeping

Lathe operator machining parts for transport p...

Lathe operator machining parts for transport planes at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant, Fort Worth, USA (1942). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are like the national bank of our own nation.  If we do not invest and do book-keeping, we get the great depression.  But what does that mean?  What is investing in Me?  What is book-keeping?  “I am not an accountant and I am not good with numbers,” we say.

We are talking about putting it in and seeing into when it is running low.  Putting it in, well, it might be fun, intuitive, the best part of what makes life worth living, or it might feel like working nine to five.

How do we get money in our bank?  We work.  We work jobs we like, and ones we do not.  This is not meant to be a discussion on the employment crisis we are in, but rather our basic needs.   Basic needs, like energy, self-esteem, a desire to live, freedom, the ability to feel pleasure, think about those.

Have we considered them as our entitlement for being human?  Are they a choice?  Investing in me is the big and small, the easy and difficult of practicing accountability to Me.

One of the weaknesses of this primitive analogy is that it piggy-backs a cultural opinion of failure if we find our bank empty.  Without spending time today on that, please accept the premise that emotions and behaviors in this discussion are not moral qualifiers.

The behaviors that bring bank might be any number of things, exercise, diet, marrying God, sleep, taking prescription medication, ECT, using CPAP, avoiding violent content, Love magic, and so forth.  However, to do these things with most success.  Pursue them through the framework gifted to us via genetics, what came to us by way of temperament.  That is style, form, and inspiration.

Temperament provides for us, like a great uncle’s inheritance. Going with that style of personality will tap into what was put aside for us without any work on our part.  It is a fortune each of us have.  This is in compliment to what bank we work for, as described above.

There are many ways we receive that we do not work for.  Love, for example.  But the choice to receive may not come easy.  The choice to pursue what is freely given to us, to unwrap a gift, to open an envelope that carries our uncle’s will, to receive Love – the choice is ours.  The choice can be as difficult or more so than hours in a sweatshop.

How do we get money in our bank?  We work and we receive.

So this is what “bank” is and book-keeping at FriendtoYourself.com, and maybe it is as interesting as tax season but I thought revisiting it might lend balance.  Keep on.

Question:  What is your bookkeeping activity?  Please tell us some of your story.

Self-care tip:  Work and receive actively.

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Answering Jim, professionally and personally – ECT

A few days ago, Jim, from blog, “I Don’t Want To Talk About It,” asked in his comment to my blog post,

What is your educated opinion about this?  A friend of mine is seriously considering this.

Jim was asking regarding ECT – electroconvulsive therapy.

021 Side Effect

021 Side Effect (Photo credit: Jester Jay Music)

Responding to a question that asks me to answer both personally and professionally is a little uncomfortable but this is my best effort.

…Alright, Provocateur Jim, I have been chewing my cheek on this, wanting to say something profound, considered “educated,” 🙂 yet not to turn anyone off with an up-tilted schnoz.

I do love ECT as a treatment option.

ECT is not for everyone of course, as nothing is, but consider it if you are looking for a treatment to work quickly and effectively .

Quickly is important.

  1. Can be life-saving, (“Timing is everything,” they say)
  2. Brain health short and long-term
  • less dementia,
  • less onset of other brain illnesses that come when one brain illness is not fully treated,
  • easier to respond to any future necessary treatments when we get more rapid and full treatment response to current illness episode,
  • ECT (as with medication therapy) that is done earlier in illness episode has a more robust response,
  • relapses are less severe, and we do not drop as rapidly when treatment is obtained more quickly for current illness episode

3. Quality of life,
4. Halt the damage to interpersonal relationships,
5. Diminish financial demise secondary to disability of brain illness,
6. Minimize side-effects,
7. Minimize medications.

Efficacy… do we really need to even say that the goal is to use a treatment that works?  ECT works more often and more thoroughly than any other treatment options.

Furthermore, we suffer less illness relapse when ECT is continued in maintenance.

Treatment response is much more robust when ECT is combined with medication.

Side Effects:

The side effects can only be measured on an individual basis, as qualified by the person going through them.

First off, there is no brain damage done by ECT, as seen in medical studies. This is a common fear.

Neither does ECT go through the body systems, it is not metabolized, and does not touch our body organs.  Yay, right!?  Medication side effects are a huge pill-dotted elephant in the room.  ECT does not touch the body (i.e. It is not a substance ingested or entered materially into the body,) all related potential side effects never happen.

The number one reason for relapse in brain illness is medication noncompliance.   This is due to many reasons, such as intolerable side-effects and the cascade of subsequent related issues.  Even dry mouth can lead to root canals.  We do not think of osteoporosis from serotonin agents.  Not taking our medication daily can be for more obvious reasons, like not climaxing during orgasm.

Zoloft Side effects in women

Zoloft Side effects in women (Photo credit: Life Mental Health)

Plus, it is just hard to remember.  Even the most consistent of us generally miss one to two days of medication a week or a month.  It is tough to be consistent.
ECT is less difficult to remember and maintenance ECT is much less frequent than taking pills every day.  Even when the ECT is combined with medication, if a day or two is missed, at least the ECT will be consistent as it has the support of the community of ECT staff and the transportation person to and from the surgery center.

In these regards, ECT has fewer barriers to treatment compliance that the majority of us suffer with medication therapies.  That is a big deal.

The side-effects of ECT are generally headache and temporary memory loss.

During index treatment, (about the first 3-4 weeks,) it is common to experience difficulty imprinting/recording memories. This typically takes about five weeks after the index treatment to return toward baseline. 80 years of data do not demonstrate that there is other memory loss but there are individual complaints of that.

Headaches are common for the the first couple treatments until the anesthesia becomes customized to the individuals experience. Generally after the first few treatments, the personalized anesthesia medications are able to resolve these from causing too much suffering. Not universally of course, but generally. Then once the maintenance treatments get going, memory loss and headaches are not common complaints.

…Big breath…

Did I do it?  Any questions about this diatribe?  🙂  Thank you for your patience.  I am trying…  Please let me know.  Keep on.

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Past week, latest on ECT on the web

  1. Shock therapy used to treat depression video from wzzm13.com community
  2. Wrong Planet Autism Forum Index -> Bipolar, Tourettes, Schizophrenia, and other Psychological Conditions
  3. Why are we still using electroconvulsive therapy?
  4. By Jim ReedBBC Newsnight
  5. PLOS ONE  :  Electroconvulsive Therapy Induces Neurogenesis
Cured by Electroshock Therapy,  Wall Street Journal

And, refreshing our memory… from http://www.FriendtoYourself.com, Related:
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How do I become a friend to Me? Start with seeing.

magic mirror

“I like the way he sees me.  I have a lot of trouble seeing myself.”

Madge really had it going, as far as I was concerned.  In this one statement, she is insightful.

Juxtaposing being able to see into oneself with the self-declaration of not being able to see, is ironic.  It is lovely, like going toward anxiety to diminish its power over us.  It is complex, as are the many hues of gray.  A beautiful weed.  Great weakness.  Useful trash.  It is a pretty great irony to come to that place of wisely recognizing how little wisdom we have.

We have trouble seeing ourselves. Part of what makes it so hard to be friends is that doing that is like shaking our own hand.  When we try, we are a purse flipped inside out.  The crude insult, “Her head is stuck up her own a–!” comes to mind.

Many like bullet points to give a, “How to.”  For example, look at Yahoo!

How to buy, store, and cook watermelon

Cook watermelon.  I know someone is saying, “Made you look.”  And maybe when I say, “How to see yourself in these moves,” someone else is swirling their eyes.  But, as I am not about to say that I know better than Yahoo!, here’s my try:

1.  Origins, (God)

2.  Brain health

3.  Community

4.  Admit limitations

5.  And a big magic mirror

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, how do I see Me?

Maybe my list is out of order and maybe it is not a perfect step approach into the soul.  So be it.  Editors of Yahoo! feel free to instruct.

Madge, in one statement, covered community and limitations.  It was nice to be in her space.

Self-Care Tip:  How do I become a friend to Me?  Start with seeing.

Question:  How do you become a friend to Me with your site?  Please tell us your story.

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Conditional Love With Me

frayed rope

We have a tenuous relationship with ourselves.  Very conditional, as if we were in a constant state of probation. Have you noticed?  Conditional love: part of the human condition.

I was reading the The Golem and the Jinni: A Novel, by Helene Wecker, and found myself getting into her golem-philosophy, that went something like this,

Since so many of us have it, can’t you just say it is the way things are, and not about freedom or fairness?

Wecker in such eloquence ironically describes the human condition from the story of two inhuman beings.

The New York Times, , describes it as,

When they are later confronted by the evil power who controls their fates, they discover that the ultimate expression of free will may lie in the embrace of limitations.

In considering our limitations in loving our own self, this idea can be useful to come to terms with the day in and out internal conflict of loving what is imperfect and distasteful, with what we would otherwise rather not identify with, and with the acts of friendship toward this seemingly inhuman part of our selves.  In embracing our limitations, we may find less conflict in loving Me, less conditioning, or perhaps a shorter probation each day.  We may experience the probation differently, Chava, The Golem, when we say, “It just is this way with all of us.  I have the community of humanity.”

Getting into the space of where our “tenuous bond” between what we love and would otherwise not love about ME, in fact diminishes the frailty and increases the strength in our personal journey.  Rather than putting us into further danger of internal conflict and self-loathing, it allows us to experience what will happen from and in the company of the tension.

More specifically, in brain health, getting into the space of our conditional love for our self, allows us to do things like seek medical treatment when needed, ally with help, with medical treatments that once repulsed us, with something as formulated as putting a pill in our mouth seven days a week indefinitely.  Or another treatment, such as ECT.

We are conditional with ourselves.  It is part of our human condition.  That is pretty close to, “Normal.”

Question: How often are you aware of your own difficulty loving yourself, your Me?  What improves this?  Why does difficulty with loving Me recur and recur without end?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Get into the tenuous space between the “good and bad” of Me where you are normal.

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Cut Here

Walking the crowded streets of Los Angeles today, I was smiling. My heart was open up, grateful for life and the privileges of sharing great company. And then, without armor, vulnerable because that is what happiness does to us, I saw what I think sodom and gamora might have been burned for,

20130820-102724.jpg

Glamorizing suicide or whatever this was glamorizing, I felt it against my soft underbelly, sheez! Snap click and up went my professional safety measures.
Back at my room, I googled “him” and got little more than his name is Trevor and,

“the famous tattoo of “CUT HERE” with the dotted line going across his neck.”

Famous.
I have never been that cool. I have never heard of Trevor or his “cut here” tattoo. You?

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Getting Older and Getting Born

Sana_Set09_LeoChaves_032

Sana_Set09_LeoChaves_032 (Photo credit: LeoChaves)

Turned another year over. Forty one now. Sometimes I already feel like there is a toe tag on me. Other times I ride the consciousness of now and innocence, as if I have forever to do whatever it is I am living for. As if fear did not pulse around me, as if life held no shame, then I carry my 41 years as lightly as a daughter spatters kissies over her mother’s arms.

Getting older is all the hype now. I was not alive 100 years ago but I wonder if 40 was the “new sexy” then. Gwyneth Paltrow is lovely. Me and Gwyneth. We have so much in common.

Huffington Post featured 30 Celebs Who Are Aging Gracefully. Tina Turner, Sting, Sigourney Weaver, the list is full of real people sharing our life-space. Remember Working Girl? Boom.

I look at my parents, friends, patients, myself, strangers on the street and stories that symbolize a person’s life lived. I look and I think of someone who climbs Everest. I think of frostbite. I think of a long long journey. I think of death.

The day before my birthday, the excitement made waiting too much to endure. A small chocolate bar, a handmade card with misspelled words and two tightly folded dollar bills disregarded the calendar date. Neatly arranged on my night table, I was told by their giggling toe-toe hopping agents, “Happy Birthday tomorrow, Mommy! I’m so glad you were born!”

And I was born again. Just like that. Love labor.

Some women have birth the way it is supposed to happen and others suffer. After my third child, my OB-Gyn, I love that woman, told me with nothing more than fatigue and honesty, “Sana, you should probably stop at three. Pregnancy and delivery is just not easy for you.” My pregnancies and deliveries were not that easy for her either.

Our rebirths also come easy and come hard. We almost die. We cruise through as if we were made for it. “She was made to have babies!” (Dodge the loogie I cannot help but hurl. Damn those women with baby-making bodies!)

I know we think things like this about people without brain illness, (if they even exists.) Maybe we think they do not have the suffering we do. Maybe we think we have it worse. We think at least we are misunderstood, when we hear,

“Get over it!”

“Just calm down!”

“Would you relax?!”

Breath. Yummy. How we love that. The list of these is longer than the path up Everest. And so helpful. Who has actually calmed down when told? Notice the exclamation points. Exclamation points symbolize emotion, in case the mountaineering porters saying the helpful emotion-directives did not know.

During our long long or short journeys we get to be born once, twice, forty-one, or the last time, because of Love. We do not get a Love that is measurable liquid or linear, like Time. Love is not healthy or unhealthy. It does not curl into our DNA, and is not dispensed by privilege. Nor a jury of Sherpas. Calm down.

Love is. Love is, and Love offers us a newness over and over and over and over because.

We have different birthing experiences, but I am glad you were born. You are loved.

Self-Care Tip:  Allow Love to bring you new beginnings.

Questions:  How has birthing gone for you?  What have been some of the new beginnings you knew Love brought you.  Please tell us your story.

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