Dear Farida,

I’m writing to you to thank you for the opportunity to share your experience with postpartum depression and anxiety. You are in a class where the most courageous of the courageous live. I remember when I told you that and you asked,

Why? Why do you say that? I can hardly get up in the morning. When I think about going into public places, I want to throw up! I don’t look people in the eye. I avoid everyone. I know they will see that I am crazy. I am ashamed.

When I drive, I have to pull over at least once every two miles to catch my breath.

Some days, I don’t shower. I smell. I don’t eat so my breath stinks too. I don’t want to exist. Why would you say that about me?

And that is exactly why. That and the fact that you pushed despite the wall of fear and bottomless gloom and came through our office doors. You came again. You swallowed medications you at first didn’t believe in. You took chances every time you put hand-to-mouth, hand-to-mouth, with those damn and blessed pills that remind you every time that you have this illness. You did that long enough to start believing and to hope again. You do that even when you think you don’t need to anymore.

You are brave.

There are too many of us out in our community who don’t know about this incredible heroism. It is heroism when mother fights for her health, wife fights for her health, fighting for her family. You have the guts to start with yourself. Over and over again. You are the hero who, when it feels like regression to say the words, “I need help for the way I feel,” when it feels like failure to take pills, “…to live better,” when thoughts don’t make sense with feelings and are collectively, exactly at that point in time, when the word “crazy” is broken out into all it’s bright rainbow glory, you are the hero just then.

You are courageous getting here. Getting here in the first place was and is no small feat. But you took it further. You take it further still. I am inspired.

Dear Farida, Thank you for letting me be your physician. Thank you for letting me believe a little more that I am more than my own emotions and behaviors. For driving me to discover my identity. I am scared too. I’m scared of being that vulnerable to something as seemingly sure, like “brain health.” My own beliefs are being challenged by it. It changes how I see the world. And, I know our community is challenged by you too.

You help me hope, in the context of being someone with a changing body and mind. I’m learning about what I can control and cannot. I’m learning about goodness that is more than cooking a meal for someone, bringing in a paycheck, or basic needs.

You are a part of this journey-discovery.

And agenda – as doctors are not supposed to have any… (Ahem! Anyway!) Your bravery lets me bravely disclose even to myself. My agenda. Being your physician, in the face of so much courage, I think about what I’m working with you for. Thank you for giving me your life story as an opportunity to discover more of why I want to know Me. You are my teacher as well as my patient. I hope to live each day with courage too.

Keep on.

Dr. Q

Question:  What are you doing that is courageous? How is your life one of bravery? Please tell your story.

So what about other practitioners not in the mental health field?  How do they talk to psych patients?  Do you have any stories of your own that you’ve observed or experienced?

Say the cardiologist?  The nurse checking blood pressure?  The patient on a medical unit for a broken hip?  In these, out of context, contexts, psych patients are still treated differently at times than other “medical” patients.

I’ve heard a ton of stories about the ER (emergency room), when a patient comes in with chest pain, for example…

Tears are flowing down Frank’s stubbled face.  He is shaking, and sweating, and is sure he is going to have a heart attack. Everyone takes Frank seriously, that is until they see Frank’s medication list.  Some not so nice words are exchanged, and so forth after that.

Frank’s story and others like it are all bummer stories. But it hits me hard when later, if one such patient was fortunate enough to press the issue and the work up, and later it is found that they were having symptoms of both anxiety and heart disease, and would have died if that wasn’t discovered. I can’t help imagine and remember real people who were not so “fortunate.”

Or a someone is inpatient on the infectious disease ward for a MRSA+ leg cellulitis.  They are, in the hospital staff’s opinions, a sad patient.

Let’s call her Susie.  Susie’s finger never hits the nurse’s call button. She cries alone and people stay away. Who knows why.  Without asking her about her emotional and behavioral symptoms, they practice as if it was assumed that it is normal for someone in her condition to “get a little depressed.”  Susie recovers from her leg cellulitis and is feeling better.  She is feeling good enough in fact to realize that she doesn’t want to live, and hangs herself by the hospital sheets.

How do we talk to a psych patient?  Please speak out!  Tell your stories.  Tell your thoughts!  Good experiences and bad ones.  Good opinions and lesser.

Keep on!

Hello Friends!

I believe the last NAMI meeting went well. Huzzah!  On to the next…

I was invited to speak at the IACC Annual Conference, April 22^nd at the Riverside Convention Center. Guess what they want me to speak about? “How to talk to a psychiatric patient.” Interestingly, I was also asked to speak on the same topic for the AMA Annual Meeting in June. Who would’a thunk?

Before you throw your popcorn at me, please put it into words here, at FriendtoYourself.  What do you think?  What to say?

Will you help me?  How to talk to a psychiatric patient…

Keep on!

NAMI of Temecula Valley will host an event during their monthly meeting on January 21, 2015, at 6:00 pm at the Assistance League of Temecula, 28720 Vía Montezuma, Temecula, CA 92590.

Sana Johnson-Quijada, M.D., will speak at 7:00 pm on the topic of, “The Effects of Sleep on Brain Health”.  Dr. Quijada attended medical school at Loma Linda University School of Psychiatry, and was Chief Resident at Harvard in 2002.  She has written two books on being a “Friend to Yourself” and facilitates a variety of community presentations.  She currently is in private practice in Murrieta, California. 

For more information on NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) please visit our website at www.namitv.org 

I keep hoping she calls and tells me she regrets this.

I’m amazed every time at how much suffering any one of us experiences.  If we live long enough.  This statement above was from Frank.  He and his wife separated one week before Thanksgiving and now Christmas had passed.  And now New Years was here. She wasn’t though.  The pain came, deep where he thought his roots once lived.  Frank found that some mornings, he would roll over in bed, reach out and in the empty space that found him, he would awaken. He was alone.  A pain that only the absence of something important and enourmous can bring, gaping, vacuous, and with it’s own force of gravity, that pain would grab at him, cold and sticky. Formless.  He was losing shape.

Why won’t she come home?

This is familiar perhaps to you.  In some one thing or another.  You lost.

As this 2014 slips away, we hear a lot of the gratitude we “should” be feeling.  And, well, we should.  But for Frank, and those of us who have a struggle against the loss, if you can in any way, pick what to remember, remember that your love is not without form.  Love is that way.

…Even so, just for the fun of it, to Frank, and the rest of us, let’s shake our fist at the losses like this!

you did not deserve my lashes

my curves the

drop from my hip

these lips or ankles I wear.

remember holding hands under the table?

you did not deserve my efforts

my passion that came like buckets of milk

nor the whisper of my

thoughts my nuggets of gold

remember?

the best that I have was

almost yours but you did not deserve

Self-care tip:  Let us discover the form of Love again, in 2015, knowing that although we will inevitably again suffer, we will still have Love. That makes all the difference.  Keep on!

Question:  What have you lost?  How does Love show you Her form?  Please tell us your story.

Well you just have it all set up, don’t you?

Your life is cush! What are you complaining about?

Quoting good Theodore again, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Well life iiiiisssss easy,

…like chaos.  

Self-care tip: Whichever side of these statements you find yourself today, take notice.  Keep on.

Question:  Which side of these thoughts do you find yourself?

Today was a great day to pick up sea glass.  My intent was to get the walk in, until I saw the glass.  Then my intent became intentions.

For all of you who are throwing these bottles into the oceans, I prefer blue.

Picking up sea glass is about as distracting to me as the weeds in my garden when I am “just trying to take a walk,” but it wouldn’t be, if I didn’t want the glass or the perty garden.  I am not a victim.

This morning, at Crystal Cove, the big number of other folk sharing space wasn’t expected.  Too funny how many of us were out there trying to walk as much as we could for the right to eat. As much as we can. True. I project.  Reality as defined by my perceptions. I ate a lot today. 

Walking on the beach, sometimes I feel proprietorial.  I think, “This beach is mine.  These shells, these rocks, nobody else gets the wonder of this.”  Then I remember, there are a shucking load of other beaches out there and walkers who call the sand under their feet of personal value.  And isn’t that useful.  

While walking, I came across an unfortunate bird. Fortune is a two way mirror, however. This Life, fishing wire and multiple hooks, ensnared. Fortune-Bird was discovered by other foot-stompers-for-eating. The fishing wire had encircled its right wing and throat. Fortune-Bird could not fly without choking itself I suppose. Bummer. Other more MacGuiver-like observers, on (My) beach, threw a shirt over the bird to allow handling.  However the hooks in the mouth required more extraction tools. We contacted the Rangers who shared what fortune would bring, and the bird was free free free at last. It was almost too much for my little heart. 

Here is Fortune-Bird. Fishing wire and hooks are around the neck space.  Not great lighting for visualizing them but you see Life and value.

Sniff.

Later, thanks to Runmeter, Twitter captured: “Finished Run, Newport Coast, 564 calories, time 2:08:12, 5.07 miles, average 25:16 /mile, ascent 161 feet. #myfitnesspal”  It didn’t explain the glass, or the effect of seeing hooks pierced through the face of Fortune-Bird, or the families who were clustered here and there – at least one member or more understanding at some level that they were with us just for the upcoming eating.

That little tweet did give enough though, for remembering, for connecting, for increasing presence – distractions included, and allows my experiencing, with you, gratitude for Life.

Self-Care Tip:  #Gratitude.

Question:  What are you thankful for?

you are where I go when I go home

grass stains on my knees, I return,…

I chewed despite the sensory scream to stop.  Stale ak-mak crackers.  Not much can compare.  These usually wonderful “sesame crackers made with organically grown ‘Whole of the Wheat’ flour stone ground crackers,” which my children love to eat like bread in peanut butter sandwiches, or like chips with guacamole, had been opened and left unsealed in the dark of our pantry.  What happens to crackers without preservatives?  Most of our packaged foods are preserved to last until Jesus comes, but not ak-mak.  They are good for about thirty minutes.  That is exaggerating it, but you see.  They are lovely and healthy and like a smile on any face, best served fresh.

Why did I chew on?  They were sucking up the saliva in my mouth faster than the spigot would allow.  I chewed, insisting the memory of ak-mak experiences would triumph over the current reality.

Exploring ideas about God and self-care has been sometimes fresh and sometimes not.  She is a smile that jumps on the face before the thought even comes out in words.  He is the energy we awaken with after depression lifts.  She is the space on Mother’s lap.  A sun-dress in a California winter.  He is not forgotten, oxidized, or dry supplement.  This I know.  So when the thoughts and the words contradict this Truth, I spit it out.  Or I hope to.  None of us need that.  But if I don’t spit it out, if I chew even after it is obvious to the rest of you, “Time to spit!,” would you, in your generous hearts, please pull the kindness forth and call it?  Stale.

This poem is my current humble effort toward speaking about God.

you are where I go when I go home

grass stains on my knees, I return…

More to come from poetry and thoughts on God and self-care.  How does God intersect with your self-care?  Please engage and speak.  We are designed for community and need you.  Keep on!

Dr. Q

I so regret my distance lately from you here at Friend to Yourself!  Thank you very much for your presence and forgiveness.  I am not “gone” although quiet.  My brain has been working on this idea of God and how he intersects with self-care, which has been challenging for me.  I’ll start talking again soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to connect you with another wonderful article,

Excellent personal story, insights, and disclosure. Thanks for speaking out. We don’t hear enough about ECT. Keep on.

These topics that we take coffee breaks over; loneliness, selfishness, God, sleep, medical, these are common enough, no? 

The idea at, Friend to Yourself, is that these ideas are all common and in-common.  They all start and end with Me. 

The irony of loneliness being common enough for books to sell on it!  Laugh about it a little. Don’t you want to shout out in the self-help section of the book store, under L’s, “I feel lonely!”?  And then you wake up from the zoning-out moment and realize people take turns apparently to peruse.  That must be the “why,” in why no one is standing there with you.  But what if we just said it.  If we told our kids, for example? “I feel lonely.”  Someone in the cashier-line who notes your book? “I feel lonely.”  What if we told?  Someone.  We would be kinder to Me than staying quiet.  It starts with Me. 

Loneliness in company is ironic but not exclusive.

Or take the topic of selfishness. 

Self-care is now becoming so politically correct.  It’s losing its potency.  Comparing self-care with selfishness isn’t even provocative any more. Snore. 

But what shall we use to describe the prejudice against us?  Even from ourselves to ourselves. Where shame wires in is the button.  So as it turns out, I am selfish.  I am. But taking care of Me is more than that.  Self care is more than selfish care.  It is selfless. Ironic.  It is different than altruistic.  I can’t give what I don’t have.  Self-care is homage.  Homage to Who made Me.  It is worship.  It is respect. 

Is there anything more disrespectful to those we love than giving them a whole lot of care-giving labor without asking them permission?  I love you therefore you get to tk care of me because I never did. 

It is freedom.  It is power.  Self-care is humility. 

I am not a just a noun.  I am movement.  A verb-noun.  We can’t get polite about self care.  We can’t be PC.  Rip the rug out, fall on our knees, and scramble.  It is marvelous to move.  Self-care is selfish and selfless.  Dichotomous but not exclusive. 

The distance, the aloofness, the academia with which we mouth, “Selfishness,” as if it were a bobble to teethe over and spit out, mouth again, and let it fall to the dirty floor. As if it weren’t part of us.  …If we describe it just right, we can pull it out.  A foreign object. 

We here at, Friend to Yourself, speak.  But we do also.  How do these break room topics become more than the words?  They all start and end right here, with Me.  That is how.

Another coffee room topic we are awkwardly polite with is the “God” word. 

I have never been someone who could quote Bible verses.  Some mistake this for unfamiliarity and disuse. 

Maybe they’re the same ones who think self-care is as proper as saying, “women have rights,” who took “gay” and made “same-sex,” or those who enjoy writing up packets of hospital procedure for admissions but have no idea about sickness. 

I’ve been this person one time or another too.  The one who handled self-care so much that it lost its shape.  Who forgot that the whole point is Me. 

It is the disconnect between Me and these as topics; God, selfish-care, loneliness.  They are not topics if they are of full use.  They are not the same as a travel game.  Open up.  Play around.  Lose a piece.  Shelve it.  Clean out and send to charity. 

Bring something out as sacred, sensitive, vulnerable and personal as loneliness with common frequency, will bring loneliness into company.  Ironic but not exclusive.  Enough to join the perception of ourselves with our life journey.  Freedom.

Each one of these topics is good for a book of their own.  But we don’t want to talk about any of those if we lose Me. It’s not functional. It loses context.  Discussing marine biology at a bridal show.  Interrupting a friend telling you about her soccer goal, with an observation about dark matter at the Exploratorium exhibit.  It’s interesting in a state of disconnect only so much as anything is out of context. This is why I think bringing them together and finding the Me in the beginning and end of them is a great way to look at self-care.

Self-Care Tip:  Name it.  God agrees.  :0  (That was forward!)  Start and end with Me.

Question:  Challenge yourself.  Challenge us.  What doesn’t start and end with me?  Why?  Please tell us your story.  We need to hear you.  Keep on.

Please join twitter chat today. First one of our kind! Smile.

#yourMH chat on PTSD 12-1 pmET

Best Practices & Tools

Always use #YourMH in your tweets.

They keep track of all of our questions T1, T2, T3, etc. We recommend that you reply with T1, T2, T3 to follow Twitter chat.

If you are planning your responses to the questions from @drgabycora in advance, target your answers to 100 characters to allow room for #YourMH as well as room for retweets to mention your handle.

Use http://twubs.com/YourMH and sign in using your Twitter handle to participate. This tool has a lot of great features including:

a. Automatically adding the appropriate #hashtag(s) (#YourMH, #PTSD) to all of your tweets (so you don’t forget when replying and engaging with the audience).

b. It has a pause button that allows you to pause and slow down the Twitter stream.

c. It can also remove retweets so you aren’t seeing multiples of the same message.

Be sure to have your Twitter mentions page open in a separate window. Check it periodically throughout the chat. Many people don’t know how to participate and/or forget to use #YourMH, so you may receive some questions or comments there. Be sure to complete your reply with #YourMH, so that everyone can see the benefit of your comments/answers.

Have fun and remember you don’t have to reply to everyone!

Blessed are the depressed and anxious. Blessed are the poor and lonely. Blessed are those whose bodies are dying and who know their humanity.  

Keep on.

Fraternal, not maternal of course.

Happy weekend, friends.

Dear Friends of NAMI,

We hope you’ll join us next Monday (March 24) for our monthly program meeting in Hemet at the Spirit of Joy Church, 3126 W. Johnston (corner of Johnston and Sanderson, near Hemet Wal Mart) at 7:30 p.m.

Dr. Sana Johnson-Quijada will speak on Stigma and ways to turn its negativity around, empowering people with mental illness and those who love them.
For more information, call (951) 765-1850
Please come!
Mt. San Jacinto NAMI