Month: December 2013

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Between You and Me, Interpersonally, Do this

Between you and me

Between you and me (Photo credit: flekotech)

First, allow transparency.

Second, practice the Three C’s – I didn’t Cause this, I can’t Control this/him/her, I’m not responsible to Change it/him/her.

Third, use the Three C’s to practice presence with yourself and within the connection you seek – interpersonal or otherwise.

Fourth, move into pursuit of “Quality of Life” – what increases your quality of life experience.

Be a friend to yourself.  It starts with Me.

Question:  Does any of this feel kind and in the interest of you? and thereby, others?  Please tell us your story.

 

Related:

What Was Missing Was You  2011/01/28

 

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Quirky Blessings

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I did it again!  Left the house in my slippers.  Mercy.  Didn’t realize until I parked at work.  So, I think again about balance and slipper reminders.

Oh, and about the socks… I have my reasons.  Smile.

Question:  What has been helping you toward balance?  Please tell us.

Self-care tip:  Allow quirks in life to be the blessings that they are.

How do we get ourselves to actually receive Love?

Pick A Love!

Pick A Love! (Photo credit: theotherway)

Despite the distance he had come, he still controlled much in his acts of intimacy.  The timing, the moves, the style, Bernard was not always aware even of how or when he called the how and when, but he did, still, on occasion, like someone with a clipboard and whistle.

He was sincere in his love-making.  It was not false.  He was even in love.  At odd moments of the day, the wonder of it would come over him.  Without forethought, he would respond to the magic and he would call her, needing her voice to reassure him.  He was in love with her and she loved him back.  The backside of where he came from reflected in his rearview mirror like inky, murky swamp-mass and his sense of salvation swelled around him.  He knew he wanted to be connected.  This was right.

Then, Bernard would be working in his shop, pressed under a cabinet, where he could reach the corner spot and she would be there.  Home from work, she would sidle up and want to …What did she want?  He was dirty.  He was involved.  He was not prepared for that.

How do we receive Love?  It is not the wanting.  It is not the need.  It is not even the availability of Love that opens us up to receive it.  Receiving Love is a quandary.

So often I hear patients complain, “I shouldn’t feel this way.  Everything is really good in my life.  I have so much.  I should be happy.  I should be grateful.”  And then they list some of these happy-life-qualifiers, and peter out into a shrug or cry before they are done.  Before either of us are convinced about how great their life is.  This list of why they apparently should receive Love is not enough to actually bring it in.

Bernard wondered how this was happening to him.  “No!” he would scream to unknown forces.  ”I want Love.  Don’t leave me!”  Bernard hated being an island.  The Bernard Island.  It had its own name.  It was landscape.

How do we receive Love?

And the dichotomy of wanting Love, of needing Love, of Love being available, yet while not receiving Love would acidly crawl up Bernard’s esophagus.  It burned.

How do we receive Love?

Love loved us first.

Love, Love everywhere and nothing to drink.  Is that the way it goes?

I propose that receiving Love is more than the perception of receiving it.

It flows across all of the paradigms and dimensions known and unknown.  Love is.  Receiving it therefore does not depend on its availability.

Our need is constant, integral of course to life’s breath.  In deep.  Out.  Love is.  Receiving Love is not dependent on our need.

Wanting Love, now that depends on our perceptions.  Knowing this, we can return to our earlier discussions on where perceptions come from – the brain and magic.  To know our want, we need both.  To receive Love, however, doesn’t depend on our wanting it.  Love comes because Love is.

Question:  How do you increase your Love quotient?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Grow your Love intake.

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Magical-Self Sabotaging Our Biological

take treatment

“I just can’t be on medication when I go back to work!”

I had seen Rowne four times in clinic already and he still had not started his medication treatment trial.  He had seen multiple other medical physicians for other medical problems that needed addressing.  He had made appointments.  He had made phone calls.

“I’ve done so much, doctor!  I don’t want you to think I don’t want to get better!”

Rowne could have painted his house, changed the brakes on his car, had his foot bunions removed, but none of that was directly treating brain illness.  Rowne was mistaking activity for treatment.

Too often, those of us like Rowne, will gather courage to engage in the initial stages of treatment but not execute through.  Going to see a psychiatrist is its own effort.  Taking treatment recommendations and executing is another unto itself.

This is not unique to psychiatry of course.   Not even to the medical field.  Each of you in your own professions, perhaps in an auto body shop, or retail, or as a fifth grade teacher, those who seek our expertise find that the asking is, in their perception, as good as the doing.

None of us are out to create automatons though.  It is the intelligence, the self-interest on both sides, the freedom of the individual and Love that bring much of the value to treatment.  The humanity and magic combined with biology, element, and carbon matter trumps all.

Silly us though, when we allow our magical selves to exclude biology.

Self-Care tip:  Take treatment and execute.

Questions:  How do you bring yourself to take treatment and execute?  Or, what keeps you from doing it?  Please tell us your story.