Suffering

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Use something other than your condition to mark your value

typical American family, September 1940

typical American family, September 1940 (Photo credit: austinevan)

I do not really want to examine my faith.  It is just a paper flower.  Where my faith comes from, now that excites, like a outlet into energy.

Watching, The Grapes of Wrath 1940 drama film directed by John Ford, tonight with my family, we all knew that we were frail, one or two missteps from disaster.  One of us asked,

“Why wasn’t it a big deal when someone died?”

Oh, but it was.  The people were breaking, could barely dig a grave for their family member, and that may have come across to a youngin’ as if they did not care.  When we are breaking, we look at life differently.  It is a big deal.

Casy says it at Grandpa’s burial, “All that lives is holy.” Chapter 13, pg. 184

I see this in patients sometimes.  People who are done with the bull.  People who know that whatever it is they thought was so great about themselves is just rubbish.  People who know they are more than the sack of skin that holds their fire.  These people are looking for where their life comes from, for a moment of realness to fuel on.  And these people taking medications, getting electroconvulsive therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, scraping at life to survive, these people are.

However, we do not really want to examine our hard work, though it is so close to what makes life great.  Our courage and grit rises up like a green mountain.  Where our grit, hard work and courage comes from, that is Holy.

There is strength and Holiness there, no matter about our condition.

Question:  What is special about humanity?

Self-Care tip:  Use something other than your condition to mark your value.

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Paper Doll Syndrome – Changing Symptomotology Can Be an Opportunity to Remember and Celebrate

Paper Doll Photographer - 2/52

Paper Doll Photographer – 2/52 (Photo credit: Mark Hopkins Photography)

Fred didn’t remember his panic.  He thought his main problem was his sleep.  His
so-called “main problem” changed with his symptomatology.  Fortunately or unfortunately he didn’t know it was happening.

Fred reminded me of a paper doll.  Now I’m a veterinarian, now I’m a clerk.  Of course there are all the stories that accompany each outfit.  Our smithy imagination is fast.  Pull this off and press this in and now I’m a fire-fighter.  Now I’m a noble, now I’m a… patient.

The other day after the Hemet NAMI meeting, (they meet monthly on the first Wednesday at the Hemet Seventh-Day Adventist Church), a member told me that when they do outreach, they begin their stories with something like, “We are people who,” or “I am a person who,” deliberately avoiding the word, “patient(s.)”  Hoping to allow others to connect with their humanity, the specialness of their, “Me,” rather than the distortion that suffering is special they try to keep away from the paper doll experience.

Thinking of NAMI, thinking of Fred, I splayed the biopsychosocial-model tools I use.  What was here for Fred?  Fred’s biology was toward healing as he wasn’t having panic attacks any more and his thought processes were less circular.  That’s what we wanted and signified that his treatments, (including medications and psychotherapies,) were at least not harming him as far as we could tell, and might even be part of what influenced his healing process.  However, his ongoing symptomatology as seen in his poor insight, (paper-doll syndrome,) insomnia and persistent worrying thoughts demonstrated that his biology was only partially treated.

Fred, like you and I, and like women who labor babies into this world never remember their pain, by forgetting his panic, he lost his point of reference.  I said,

Fred!  This is significant!  Yay!  

Fred looked at me like I didn’t get it.  He wasn’t sleeping.  What was I thinking, “Yay?”  Well…  “Fred I was thinking you aren’t panicking on a gurney in the emergency-room today.  Yay.”

Remembering our suffering isn’t necessary but it can be a friendly reference point if we want.

Self-Care Tip:  Use previous suffering as a reference point to celebrate when you aren’t.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Have previous sufferings lost their strength in your memory and diminished your celebrations?  How has suffering been used after they are gone to your advantage?  Please tell me your story.

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Self-Care and Joy: How You Can Use What You Love to love Yourself – By Michele Rosenthal

Self-Care and Joy: How You Can Use What You Love to love Yourself

Guest Post By Michele Rosenthal

Like any other commitment, self-care can become a chore. Whenever we force ourselves to do something the fun factor flies out the window. Yet, self-care should be one thing on our schedules that feels good! How can we turn a commitment into a pleasure? I think the key is committing to something that brings you joy. Let me explain…

Six years ago, at the age of thirty-seven, I was diagnosed with advanced osteoporosis. Putting it bluntly, my endocrinologist explained, “If you don’t immediately commit to a regimen of strength training, your bones will begin to crumble spontaneously.” You can imagine my following crash course in self-care.

Up until that point I had never thought about what I do to take care of myself. I had worked out, or not, when the spirit moved me. I meditated or not when I felt the desire for that kind of inner connection. My self-care was based on whim, not necessity.

So there I was facing the spontaneous crumbling of my bones and needing to commit to a regimen not only of strength training, but of a level of self-care I’d never previously entertained. Suddenly, self-care wasn’t some amorphous idea but an action that pertained to my very ability to walk upright. Suddenly, self-care had a purpose.

Making the commitment to self-care isn’t easy. Mood, other activities and time constraints can make it difficult to follow through. Fear, however, is a great motivator. Terrified that my bones would crumble I committed to self-care with the ferocity of a hurricane. I didn’t enjoy it but I did it. Within two years I completely reversed the osteoporosis. Since then I’ve stuck to my workout regime without a hitch.

When motivated by fear, sticking to a self-care schedule becomes incredibly easy. The problem comes when we don’t have that instant inspiration. When self-care offers purely emotional or spiritual benefits we’re much more likely to forgo the commitment altogether. Unless, I’ve discovered, the commitment centers around something fun.

Not long after the osteoporosis diagnosis I fell into a very deep depression. As a trauma survivor, years of trying to outrun the past finally caught up with me; I needed to do some intense emotional work. The arduous process left me feeling powerless and overwhelmed. I needed to commit to emotional self-care at a time I didn’t feel capable of committing to anything except the black hole in which I lived.

One day, as I was marveling at just how black the hole actually was, a thought occurred to me. What I really needed was to do something that would help me get in touch with the part of myself that could feel joy. What I really needed, I mused, was a way to feel something outside of the despair in which I lived. There was only one thing I thought might help me do that: dance. Throughout my life dance had always offered me a transcendent feeling of release. I decided to dance. A lot. I signed up for a dance class every single day of the week.

At first it was just sheer will that got me to class, but then a funny thing happened: After each class I felt so much better that I began looking forward to the classes. I began to look forward to the time I set aside for my self-care each day. Having fun elevated self-care from chore to respite.

The benefits were astounding. The more I danced the more I began to feel a sense of balance between the dark and light in my mind, the more I connected to the possibility of feeling better, the more I connected to myself during a time that it was much more comfortable to disconnect. Ultimately, that feeling of joy filled me with the courage I needed to do the post-trauma recovery work that had to be done.

That was all years ago. I finished the recovery work and brought myself to a place of freedom and peace. Al that dancing turned me into a really terrific dancer, too. Today, I still incorporate dance into my schedule 2-3 times a week as that connection to joy and fun fuels my creativity, bolsters my energy and connects me to a community I enjoy.

The biggest lesson I learned in all of this was how important the fun factor is in self-care. Now, any time I wish to develop some aspect of my self-care, I ask myself, “How can I make this fun?” By ensuring some form of enjoyment I strengthen my emotional buy-in to the commitment. You can do this, too. We don’t often think about how we can turn tasks into pleasurable experiences, but shifting our approach in this way can make all the difference between defaulting versus following through on a self-care regime.

Self-Care Tip – Use what you love to love yourself.

Question:  How do you get the fun factor into being your own friend?  When being friendly to yourself isn’t what feels like a good time, how do you use what you love to improve your experience?  Please tell us your story.

Michele Rosenthal is a certified professional coach and the host of Your Life After Trauma on Seaview Radio. Her post-trauma recovery memoir, Before the World Intruded: Conquering the Past and Creating the Future, will be released in 2012. To connect with Michele, visit www.yourlifeaftertrauma.com.


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The Gift in Wanting – Water, is Taught by Thirst

Water, is taught by thirst. 
Land -- by the Oceans passed. 
Transport -- by throe 
-- Peace -- by its battles told 
-- Love, by Memorial Mold 
-- Birds, by the Snow.
-Emily Dickinson

“Some people think of the glass as half full. ...

I have been quiet here for what seems like a long time and I am happy to be talking out “loud” again.  Thank you for being, friends.

Over the past year-and-a-half of writing and reading with you, of speaking and hearing, teaching and learning – instead of diminishing my interest, exhausting my energies and instead of completing this “task,” I am rather in process of crescendo.  This thing called, being a “friend to yourself,” apparently must continue.  It must because otherwise we would not.

Emily Dickinson knew the value of what was missing; but more so, she knew the value in the wanting of it.

Water, is taught by thirst.

I am ever aware that you and I do too.  It is this wanting that spurs in us our creative genius in this effort.  In any area of interest, in fact, whether it is this, to cultivate the caring of our own person, or to improve our eye of canvas, to swing our sword or to put pen to paper – if we do not sense potential, pleasure still to come, if we do not see beyond where we are to what might be and if we don’t want it, we will miss our selves.  We will lose our pearl to the muck that hides us.

Counter to intuition, presence is in fact enhanced by our wanting.  We clarify our point of reference to each other and to Love when we realize that we are toward something greater than ourselves.  Having that point of reference is nourishing.  It is active and it is connected.  The understanding of what we want still, have yet to obtain, rather than destabilizing or isolating us, it improves our footing and our community.  And like Emily, we give up much just to experience the exquisite process of joining our own journey.

This is what thirst has taught me.  What about you? Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip – Before the gift of your thirst, pursue it knowing you are blessed.  Be a friend to yourself.

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Be Friendly Enough With Yourself To Acknowledge the Gift In Your Suffering

Strange Lady

Image by bending light via Flickr

Pain. There are so many of us suffering from pain that sometimes it is as if nobody escapes. Even so, in the contorting agony that pain brings, we have a very hard time thinking outside of ourselves at all. We are preoccupied with ourselves. We do not think about the others hurting or others in general at all. Pain does that – emotional and/or physical.

Penelope was preoccupied too. She had suffered and was suffering still. Peeling her thoughts away from survival during those times when, with teeth and muscles clenched, her body felt like a universe unto itself. Everyone outside of her were aliens she was able to visit occasionally. Watching her and hearing her describe how it molded her current person, I remembered the book by Paul Brand, Pain: the Gift Nobody Wants. (We mentioned this book before in our blog-post, “Emotions: The Physical Gift We Can Name.”)

When we are sick with Pain Syndrome, with symptoms seen in our emotions, behaviors and nerve language, it is hard to perceive what good can come out of bad. Saying, when we are in that ditch, that the sun is happily shining overhead is rude and boring. Especially when it is rhetoric. Change that rhetoric to insight, well that would then be worth friendly and interesting. That would be hope. There comes a degree of knowledge that hasn’t reached our sensory selves yet but sits in our intellect. We have a glimpse of the ark of the covenant, a promise, nearly prophesy in fact – we have a knowing that something good can come out of this.

This is why I thought of the work of Paul Brand, M.D. with the lepers. I thought that Penelope might want to know that there is something good that could come out of her bad if she were healthy in other ways, enough to receive it. If her senses could perceive it, her emotions, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell could take in that information and deliver enough of it uninterrupted, what was promised to her would come true; past the pain that distracts and preoccupies.

It is as if this good that comes out of bad were like a runner in a war zone. Bombs are exploding. It is noisy even though hearing was taken out after the last gun fire. Dirt and sweat drip over eyes and into mouths and no one believes they will survive. And then the runner trips into our shelter and collapses still alive; still holding the message in his hand. Something good made it across a land in havoc and war and we know about it now.

I thought of Paul Brand, M.D., telling Penelope that her pain is her gift at that point of knowing, with that timing. Better than I could. She wouldn’t laugh angrily and give him a bad review on-line. She would hear him. “Something good is coming your way. You have hope.” In my imagination, Penelope would not hear Dr. Brand moralizing her experience – “You are good if you perceive your gift and you are bad if you don’t.” In my fantasy, Penelope would understand that this offering wasn’t intended to make her feel guilty for hurting. It was an offering of hope.

Not so easy to do, as it turns out, in real life. I am a very human psychiatrist without

much magic about me very often. But if I did…

Question: How do you give yourself hope when your senses don’t perceive it? How are you your own friend when you are preoccupied and distracted from that which is friendly? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – Be friendly enough with yourself to believe that there is something good that will come out of your bad. There is hope.

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When You Fail, It Is Just Part of Your Journey so Keep On – Presence

No one can tell me what’s wrong with me!

When medications don’t do what we hoped we wonder what that means.  We think about the possibility that our diagnosis is wrong, that we are outside the known world of science or a new variation of diseased who will suffer without a label.  Is suffering without a label even decent?

I predict imminent catastrophe

Image by forestine via Flickr

Stephani wasn’t the only one in the world with these thoughts but she felt like it.  It was as if she was waiting for her real life to begin when she considered herself well.  There was the good part of her that was about fifty percent of her day hanging around.  The rest of the day was wrong.  She wasn’t able to cope with stressors and became helter skelter at random times of the day.

Trading places, in the door and out, out and in, polite enemies at best, the good Stephani and the wrong Stephani vied for platform.  Either part of her never felt fully right because of the looming flaws.  She couldn’t trust herself as long as they divided her life.

I don’t know why I don’t get better.  

I don’t know either.

That’s a precarious position to maintain as a physician.  My job is at stake because who goes to a specialist without answers?  …At least not traditional answers.

Take this pill tonight and put this warm compress on your bladder.  In the morning you’ll feel better.

Darn it!  Sometimes I so want to be that doctor!  But this is me.

What are you waiting for?  Is this place in life better than losing your life?  Why?

And then Stephani mentioned a few things that kept her breathing:  hope to get well, hope to have a family some day, life itself, her husband….

Why are you right or wrong?  Why are you well or sick?  Can you be both?  

Hm.  I saw some relief begin to settle in.  However, I also saw frustration.  Stephani wasn’t ready to be flawed and perfect.  She really like either/or.  That’s fine for now.  We were able to spend a little more time on the idea of loving all of her, of being a friend to all of her and of counting this moment worth living more actively.  If she doesn’t bale on me, we have time for her to get into the same room with herself.  The joining up of her wrongs and rights will make her life journey a lot better and less confusing.

People like Stephani have an addiction-like disease process to the either/or, the extremes, the poles, which we describe as “all-or-none” thinkers.  They remind me of any other blessed addict.  They would most likely do great working this over as an addiction.  Working the Steps.  Then they would understand what any other addict who works The Steps understands.  Failing is just part of the journey.

Questions:  Can you be both flawed and perfect?  How?  How do you love both parts of you?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – When you fail, remember that it is just part of your journey and keep on.

Related Blog-Posts, FriendtoYourself.com:
  1. You Might Fall In Love With Your Flaws
  2. Love Differently, Love Your Flaws – Be a Tall Poppy
  3. Lady Gaga – Born This Way
  4. Try, Knowing We Will Fail
  5. Loving Me Without Ambivalence
  6. Codependent
  7. Finding What Perfectionism Can Offer Our Self-Care – In Summary
  8. Celebrate Your Imperfections
  9. Getting Away From All-Or-None Thinking
  10. Adequate
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basics on Weight Management

A tipped cow. Taken near the Cliffs of Moher i...

cow-tipping

A day or two ago we talked about life-ers.  You and I gave our own.  Whatever yours is, you are not alone.  We share that being a friend to ourself means embracing our flaws, going towards our flaws and letting the shame dissipate in our familiar presence.  Weather it’s cigarettes, weight, yelling or cow-tipping, resisting our instinct to hide it, to ignore it and deny it brings us into a place of friendship and connection.

In all my blah-blah’s, sometimes people just want me to get down to the specifics.  I’ve never found those to be too exciting for me personally, but they do help when afraid.

Today I’m going to hit weight management up.  When hope seems to be leached out by failures, these are my efforts that keep me connected to my journey.  I eventually always go back to these.

Three Things That Have Long Term Influence on Weight Management:

1.  log your food.  For example, Sparkpeople.com or myfitnesspal.com are both wonderful sites that will help with this free, including apps for our smartphone.

2.  weigh yourself every day.  Just weighing in has long-term benefits.  Sweet.  Improves presence with our bodies, awareness, goes towards shame, etc…

3.  compete/support network

4.  the rest of it.  This is for all the other stuff that is critical on many levels.  However, only the three things I’ve mentioned have been shown to have long-term effects.

I know.  Where are my references?  This is my blog, so me.  But there are references if you like.  I don’t have time to pick them off of my under-table unfortunately.  Hope that doesn’t keep you from participating with us.

Self-Care Tip – Know where to go when you feel afraid – towards it and not away.

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What Do You Say About Bullying?

Rally

Image via Wikipedia

Bullying:  Series Continued. 

  • #144 Leave Space In Your Beliefs To Grow
  • #163 ”He’s Never Hit Me.” Abuse.
  • #251 Just Ordinary Bullying – The Bully and The Bullied
  • #253 How to Be A Friend To Yourself When Thinking About Your Bully
  • #254 Free To Do Self-Care, Despite Our Bully

Being a friend to ourselves in the context of bullying has been one of the most difficult things to get positive about, to talk about with hope, to feel empowered and to claim our freedom to self-care.

Why is that?

How do we claim our freedom to self-care?

We talked a lot about kids, many of us hopeless to a degree about their vulnerability to bullies.  But what about adults?  What are some examples of empowered adults in the context of being bullied?

Our own Sarah McGaugh of birdinyourhand blog-site asked yesterday,

What should we do to keep from getting angry when we are forced to interact/negotiate with a bully? Say, in the line of work, when we have to sit in a meeting with them or something. Some people come into those situations with only fight in them. Usually in my previous position I was fairly good at diffusing them…but I would still feel the anger over it. How do we not let a bully get into our inner world, and still deal with them?

How can we respond?

I would love to hear from you.

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Anger – Sometimes There Doesn’t Have to Be A Reason

A metaphorical visualization of the word Anger.

Image via Wikipedia

Self-Care Tip #244 – When emotions and behaviors come without being asked by you, think about the medical reasons.

She needed to keep going, Minka felt hurt and angry.  Control and failure nipped at her.  She wondered what it would take for her to recognize her own success.

Minka had a child who provoked her.  But worse for Minka, was not perceiving progress in their relationship.  Minka was bewildered by it.  But still and more so, angry.  She asked me what she needed to do to be happy and feel like what she did when life was good.  It reminded me of the man who came to Jesus and asked,

Teacher, what good thing must I do to have life forever?  (And listed off all his good deeds.)

Just as I was thinking about this, sure enough, Minka listed off her self-care efforts, angrily as if they failed to redeem her.

Turning this around in my mind, my thoughts ran over a differential – the 3 C’s, her temperament, her biology, other medical conditions, other influencing stressors and I wondered if Minka was angry in other situations as well.  (See The Biopsychosocial-How-To.)

No one really likes themselves much when they are angry.  Anger is pulled through the capillaries and passed on until it colors all of us red.  It is a confusing emotion; internally preoccupying.  Many people don’t remember chunks of their lives during which they said things and did things in anger.  It just disappeared into the white noise of the emotion.  During anger-binges, people can black-out too, much like alcohol.  Often times anger comes without invitation.  Often times, anger is not something that will leave by invitation either.

So we know already that the 3C’s apply to this kind of anger.

I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, I can’t change and or cure it!

Minka hurriedly answered that they didn’t work for her but she had tried.  It was on her self-care list apparently.

I don’t want to blame my daughter.  I know I’m responsible for how I feel but I keep holding her responsible even though cognitively, I know she’s not.

That was pretty big.  In my opinion, she could put that on her self-care list and check it off as well.  Steller.

the

Image via Wikipedia

Through further disclosure, I learned that Minka hadn’t enjoyed anything much lately – not only her daughter.  She was irritable, edgy, felt superior to others and then kicked herself over it.  Minka said she tolerated less and less of what life touched her.

I wrap those descriptors in the same nap-sack as anger and mood.  They are on the affective spectrum and for Minka, it wasn’t for lack of trying hard enough, for lack of being spiritual enough (it makes some of us uncomfortable to say this), or missing a puzzle piece from her psyche.  Minka was medically unable to put her anger aside and connect with her daughter.  Minka’s medical condition was isolating her not only from her daughter but most other bits of life touching her.  She was ill.  She wasn’t choosing those emotions.  Now came the job of helping Minka see that and go for help in the right direction.

Question:  What is your opinion about behaviors and emotions coming without being invited or chosen?   …without a “reason” for being there?  Please tell me your story.

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Your Pain is Not Special. It Is Normal.

Self-Care Tip #243 – See yourself as special rather than your pain and know that you will find your normal again.

What is your normal?

When we were kids, we all had a perspective of what normal was.  Let’s say it was “here.”  Let’s imagine we were lovely then, nurtured and emotionally bonded.  We struggled through peer conflicts, social anxiety and rivalry.  We wanted a bike.

Two Sisters

Image via Wikipedia

Then we got a little older.  Maybe our parents divorced.  Maybe, a sibling died.  Maybe we were abused or in an accident and damaged.  Damage changes normal.  What we never would have thought would be acceptable in our lives became acceptable.  We suffered.  We lived.  Life was indiscriminate and ignored our status.  We think there must be a mistake.

What is our normal at one point, filtered through remaining hopes, grew into regenerating fantasies, through real potential and it moved again.  We are older now and more suffering comes.

Where is our normal?  We survive our child, our own dear perfect boy, hanging from a tree.  Normal?  No dear God!  No!  And we continue to live.

Two years.  Two years are what it takes for our biology to catch up to the shock.  Two years are what it takes for us to begin to accept and realize that in this new normal we care again.  We choose it in fact.

People don’t remember his name or talk about him and we can’t remember his eyes.  We are ashamed and lose our breath from panic just trying to see them.  We want to bang our head because we know there is something wrong about feeling normal! Ever! Again! after that.  But we do.

Our normal mutates over financial ruin, abandonment and a growing healthy list of disfiguring illnesses.  We accept them and say yes please.  Live.  We want to live.  This is acceptable.  This is normal.  Our friends die.  Our memory.  We can’t find our teeth.  Our heart stops.  We die and the world finds normal.  The world chooses just like we did.

What we don’t think will ever be allowed to happen while we brush hair, clip our nails and microwave food, happens. We endure these changes.  We find normal again.

What is your normal?

My brother, Vance Johnson MD, is a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist.  He said that during his residency, close to 100% of spinal cord injury paralysis survivors he worked with wanted to die after their injury.  Many of them would beg him to let them die.  They would cuss at him for keeping them alive.

I leaned very heavily on the studies and data during those times.  It was very hard.

Vance said that what kept him faithful to his task was knowing that close to 100% of them after two years would be glad they were kept alive.

Even the ones who were basically breathing through a straw and that’s all that moved on them; even they wanted to live.  These people found a new normal.

Where is our normal?  We will want it.  We will adapt.  Biology will catch up to our reality.

Remember that your pain is not special.  You are special.  Not your pain.  Pain is normal.

Question:  When this happened to you, how did normal find you despite the rubble?  How does this concept feel to you, that your pain is not special?  Does it make you angry or what?  Please tell me your story.

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Number One Reason For Relapse In Mental Illness

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (etching...

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Self-Care Tip #230 – Remember why you feel the way you do.

Olive was doing well.

How are you doing Olive?

Oh fine.  Just fine,

Olive would say.  And she was.  A sense of rightness filled her when she thought about it.  Right with the world, her garden, her work and even her kids.  She wondered that there had ever been a time when she hadn’t been.

It was almost easy for Olive to forget about why she was better.  Almost, except for her probably thirty seconds of opening the lid, dumping the contents into her hand, tossing them, all of them into her mouth.  One swallow with water and it was over.  Thirty seconds she thought.  I’m doing it for my kids.

Then came the best reason she ever needed.  And despite knowing that she had done this before and had relapsed, something about the rightness of the reason made her feel like the relapse wouldn’t be allowed.  The rightness would keep it away.  After all, she was stopping her medication for her kids.  If she didn’t have medical insurance than she would be a huge burden financially and she would die before doing that to her children.

So quietly Olive stopped.

By stopping medication, many of us have this sense of eliminating the reason we started the medication in the first place.  Take medication.  Disease continues.  Stop medication.  We are superior.

When my son was about one year old, he learned that if he turned his head away from you, it was as good as denying your existence.  Turn.  You’re gone.  Turn back.  You reappear.  Turn.  And just like that, you’ve been eliminated.  Even now, remembering it delights me.

Not so cute however, is the number one reason for relapse in mental illness – stopping medication.  For Olive, she turned her head, and hoped her recurrent Major Depressive Disorder would not be there when she turned back around.

How are you Olive?

(Sigh.)  Fine.  Just Fine.  (Sigh.)

But Olive wasn’t.  Even though she knew she had been better on her medications, she couldn’t see any more, how much better.  Her face tightened up, her thoughts wandered and she exploded more.  Self-loathing of course followed and she felt like her suffering was unique to her.  No-one understood her, especially her ungrateful children.  She was doing this for them, just like everything she did through her whole unappreciated life.  This was all wrong.

Is this why I worked all those years and raised them?!

Readers, you may not agree with the crystal clear logic that emboldened Olive’s heroic stopping of her medications, but it’s not the only one out there.  This being the number one reason for relapse implies that there are many that seem to make really good sense.  So forget about they specific “why” of why Olive turned, and just know that many of us do.  Many.

Question:  What has helped you stay on your medication when it seemed to make sense not to?  What do you think about people who choose to stay on medications for life?  Please tell me your story.

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Where Do You Think Behavior and Emotion Come From?

Animation of an MRI brain scan, starting at th...

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Self-Care Tip #229 – See yourself as a friend by including biology in your self-perception.

In clinic, out of the clinic, here, there, if I were to pick one barrier to treatment anywhere, I’d pick the misunderstanding that behaviors and emotions come from somewhere other than the brain, and then from there, the outcropping of understanding why.

I don’t think most of us say it in so many words, but it’s intuitive. Maybe when pressed we’d say, “Where else do they (behaviors and emotions) come from?!” And then agree, the brain. But the connection that allows for self-care is missed. The connection that allows us to choose the freedom to feel good and behave well for our own sakes is lost in the shame of failing to do those very things.   The stance of courage it takes to be our own friend when we don’t even want to be in our own company, takes a lot to maintain.

The marvelous @MarjieKnudsen, tweeted a reference to a wonderful post by Sarah Boesveld, How ‘self-compassion’ trumps ‘self-esteem’. I enjoyed reading it very much as I felt it spoke to me and my generation with great perception… except! that it was without mention of biology, the brain; i.e. where behaviors and emotions come from.

In clinic, Naomi told me about her “failure” when ever she felt anxiety come on.

Why do I feel depressed when I feel the anxiety come?

I’m wondering what you think, reader, about this simply related story and the question.

I mirrored Naomi’s question,

Why do you think you feel depressed when that happens?

Today (similar to Naomi,) girl-crush, alias Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent, wrote about feeling like a failure as well.  She asked at the end of her post the pithy questions,

What about you? How have you failed? What kind of wisdom has helped you deal with it (i.e. sense of failure)?

And I thought, how to answer? Here I am again “in the presence” of someone wonderful who in her post didn’t make it apparent that she was considering that this emotion might be a symptom of something biological.   We are willing to look under every rock, be in the space of our emotion and ponder reasons why.  We have the courage not to “run” even when we don’t like ourselves, but haven’t said it out loud to ourselves yet,

I might feel this way because my brain is dishing it out.   I might otherwise have not done anything to set this emotion or these behaviors in motion, other than being alive.

Girl-crush remains despite response.  So readers, don’t be scared to answer what you think.   If you even care, I’ll still admire the socks off you! – even if you think you are hyper every day since conception because you ate too much sugar.

Questions (In case you want me to write them again, which I’m really happy to do – anything you want so I can hear your responses): Where do you think your behaviors and emotions come from? …such as a sense of failure and/or a depressed mood? What has helped you deal with it? Please tell me your story.

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Your Bridge Between Choosing and Being Chosen By Guilt

INNOCENCE/GUILT

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Self-Care Tip #227 – Find out about your bridge between choosing and being chosen by guilt.

Guilt.

Sometimes we think people who do wrong should feel guilt.  But how many of us improve ourselves or others in response to guilt?  And because this is a self-care blog (wink), I have tooled around with what it is all about and if it is a positive self-service.  In my meanderings I remembered, Schadenfreude.  (Isn’t that a marvelous Americanized German word?!)

Schadenfreude is different from guilt, although often in the same company.  It is a natural response in which we find pleasure at observing another’s demise or suffering.  I speculate that when we see someone feeling guilty and suffering from that guilt, even against our better natures we experience a degree of Schadenfreude, i.e. pleasure.  Because we moralize things, we responsibly feel shame when insight dawns on Schadenfreude, but “it just is.”  It is a part of who we are in this time of humankind’s history.

However would we go so far as to say that we want people to feel guilty when they do wrong because of the motivating reward that Schadenfreude has on us?  For example, Mom is disciplining her children and just won’t stop until someone cries.  I remember hearing jokes about this in mommy groups when my kids were a bit younger.  …Mom thinks silently,

I’m suffering so I want to see you suffer.

Even though we maturely and grandly empathize (the counterpart to Schadenfreude) with the kids, there is a simultaneous “secret Schadenfreude” (a private feeling) that goes on at their failure.  The blend of both can be confusing.

As we continue to travel the bridge between voluntary and involuntary, we are learning more about how choice remains regardless which side we are looking at.  For example, if guilt and Schadenfreude are so natural, so biological, so reflexive, we look for our choice.

Cathy wrote on the blog-post, Choosing Perspective,

I become trapped in my own guilt. Yes it is about perspective but what to do when even changing your perspective provides no relief, only a different source of constraint?

Questions:  I can’t help but wonder what you think about this?  Where and what is your bridge between choosing and being chosen by guilt and other negative emotions?  How do you choose when guilt and other negative emotions come involuntarily and inappropriately to context?  Please tell me your story.

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Self-Care Is Science And Magic

 

Illustration from around 1882 by S. Barth

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Self-Care Tip #217 – Connect better with ourselves, others and God.

I was watching (and I’m not proud of it), Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010,) while working my stationary bike over.  It is an offshoot of Goethe’s poem, Der Zauberlehrling, written in 1797.

Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel) becomes Balthazar’s (Nicolas Cage) apprentice.  Dave asks,

Is sorcery science or magic?

Balthazar replies,

Yes and yes.

This short conversation was potently familiar of our questions regarding the connection between emotional health, behaviors, biology and our essence/spirit.  This affects how we practice self-care.

Is self-care science or magic?

Yes and yes.

That word “magic” makes many of us uncomfortable so if you like, use spiritual or that which is yet not fully known.

The reason this is important to self-care, is that it allows for us to connect better with ourselves, others and God.  Suffering is when we feel alone.

Questions:  Is self-care science or magic?  What does that mean to you?  How have you seen that affecting your quality of life?  Please tell me your story.

Related Blog-Posts:

  1. Connection, It’s Medical But Still Magical
  2. Get Your Butter Knife And Spread Your Biopsychosocial Self Together
  3. The Paradox
  4. Sunshine
  5. Having Mental Health Means Sleuthing Magical Perceptions Sometimes
  6. Leave Space In Your Beliefs To Grow
  7. Forget About Divisions In Knowledge
  8. Things Will Always Be About Me
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Does What You Live For Make Life Better For You or Worse?

Project 365 June 2008 Mosaic

Image by Newbirth35 via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #212 – Figure out what you are living for and use it to make your life wonderful.

All of us have at least one thing in life that will undo us.  We all have something(s) that we consider worth living for.  For the most primitive to the most cultured, from the most defended to the most vulnerable, we have this (these) soft spot(s).  For me, it is my family.  Many of us might say the same, but there are others of us who have other beauties, treasures, The Pearl (as described by Steinbeck) that they would unravel over.

Because this is so scary, we might get snared up in where to go banking when we think about this.  We buy more guns, build more storehouses, fill our basement with jugs of water and like Japan, we find ourselves undone by our own preparations.

An interesting statistic is that homes with guns in them have more suicides.  In famine, the rats eat all the grain before we can.  And poor Japan, who had the most amazing defenses against, an unheard of, three simultaneous natural disasters, is leaking cancer.

Pricilla, also, was almost undone.  She’d argued with her husband and she felt fragmented by it.  She felt herself dissolving from the emotional pain and did not even want to recover.  The argument was bad.  The construct of her world precariously balanced moment by moment immobilizing her.  If she moved, she was afraid of which way life would tilt.

Soft spots can be our greatest strengths though.  We can see them as weakening our defense against life’s cruelty, or we can see them otherwise.  When we live defensively, we miss a lot.  Pricilla, I was fortunate enough to witness, chose to go towards her pain, which was in fact going towards what made life valuable to her.  Pricilla wasn’t able to do this until her emotions (what she interpreted her reality with) became more friendly to her.  Her emotions had been awry and she had been a fearful person for a long time.  After working hard on her medical illness through self-care, including medications and other life-style changes, Pricilla became less preoccupied with her ruminating fears.

Pricilla was learning through gene therapy (i.e., medications and lifestyle changes) to use her love for her husband as a strength.  I wonder about those in Japan.  I know we have prayed for them and hurting for them and hoping.

The other day in my children’s Classical Conversations class one of the teachers prayed for the rescue and survival for the citizen’s of Japan.  I prayed for a wonderful death or dying process for those who weren’t going to live.  I don’t think either of us prayed better or braver than the other and I don’t bring this up to qualify prayers.  I say it to highlight how we were holding our soft-spots.  The individual Japanese is at the point in their life’s journey, I imagine, where the life lived till now was a preparation of sorts for how they would hold themselves during this disaster.  How did they defend themselves?  Were their soft-spots their points of vulnerability and weakness, or strength?

Questions:  What do you live for?  Is it empowering to you or does it make you scared?  Please tell me your story.

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Write Your Letter To Get Self-Care Insight

Grafitti with social statement

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Self-Care Tip #206 – Write your letter to get what you’re looking for from self-care.  Be a friend to yourself.

So why am I so interested in self-care?

I’m not sure who said this first, but I heard it from speaker and author Peter Rollins, and it rings true.  People write letters not necessarily to communicate to others but because they needed to hear the words themselves.

For example, the smooth Paublo Neruda wrote in his poem XVII (I do not love you…) as translated by Stephen Tapscott,

…I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

You may also remember this verse from the movie Patch Adams.  I think Paublo Neruda must have really wanted connection.  And so with me, I’ve been writing my own letters of sorts – every day about self-care.  What do you think about that?

The truth is, it’s not hard to see why I’d need that.

This leads us to victims.  We’ve all seen them, and probably been them at one point or another.  Parents who blamed their kids behaviors for their feelings.  Spouses who blamed their Other for their feelings.  Physicians, nurses, accountants, judges who blamed their colleagues, who blamed their employers – “Every day there is just so much work put on me.  The system’s corrupt.”

What I realized is that I was also living like a victim.  I wasn’t taking care of myself.  No one can give what she doesn’t have.  And I didn’t think I was responsible for this.  I actually thought at some conscious and including subconscious levels that all these other things in life were reason enough to suffer like me.  Many of us think this way – stress leads to poor treatment of ourselves.  It may, or it may not.  But all we can have any control in, is our own selves.

Love Letter

Image via Wikipedia

 

This was my ah-ha.  Self-care begins and ends with Me.  This became a passionate love-letter for me even though I’m still not above “victimhood.”

For us who were “ruined” by their circumstances, tired and loveless because someone cheated us, mad because of thoughtlessness – we were in need of Love.

 

No one is responsible for my emotions but “Me.”

Questions:  Why are you interested in self-care?  What letter have you been writing?  Please tell me your story.

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Be Willing to Stick Your Toe In The Water of Self-Care – Just Start.

Three Capetian French scholars consulting an a...

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Self-Care Tip #204 – Be willing to stick your toe in the water of self-care – just start.

I’m not interested in medications.

I used to really wonder why anyone would come to me and say this.  Sometimes we would both realized that they didn’t know what a psychiatrist was.  My degrees seemed transparent as they hung so quietly on the wall.

My girlfriend, who’s an Ophthalmologist, loves it when her patients homogenize her work with what optometrists do.   And it wasn’t until I read Madeleine L’Engle did I understand more of the differences between astrology and astronomy by understanding their similarities first.

For the magi, astronomy and astrology were one science, and it is probably a very sad thing that they ever became separated. That is yet another schism which looks for healing…

–Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas.

In those cases when my patients don’t know who they came to see, I have tried to bridge the awkwardness with something to put them at ease.

Don’t run for the door.  There’s no cage.  See, the doors unlocked.  There’s no implication that you have to take medication just because you came to see a psychiatrist instead of a psychologist.

But I’m not interested in medication.

Then there are those who know who they came to see.  But they may not know the connection between behaviors, emotions and their brain health.  (Of course there are other reasons to see an MD I’m not covering here.)

I’m not interested in medication.

Who wouldn’t wonder?  Now I realize an MD is good for more than just prescribing, if she wants to be.  I know.  Wild and outrageous idea, right?  So before I educate anyone on my enormous fund of knowledge or my stealth abilities to diagnose and treat, I think about what it is that this someone thought they might get from coming to see me.

(Enters Fatima:)  Fatima came in this way.

I’m not interested in medication.

Fatima wasn’t feeling good.  Her emotions were corrupting her behaviors and quality of life and she was trying to help herself, stretching her toe into the pool of science, slowly.  She had never been a person to jump in and splash.

After speaking with Fatima for some time, we were able to come up with what she felt she needed help with, what she thought might be medical, what she might be willing to try – for now that meant engaging in psychotherapy, starting omega 3’s and vit D, working on her sleep hygiene, trying to get more aerobic exercise in (like a pill) and doing a mood chart.  We decided together that she would see how this goes for her over the next two to four months.  After that, if she wasn’t doing better or better enough, we’d consider a medical intervention.  We’ll see if she’s interested in medication.  Maybe not.  She can choose when she believes she’s making the right choice.

Questions:   What helped you take the plunge into medication therapy?  What held you back?  Or in someone you know?  Please tell me your story.

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Take Care of Yourself Better by Knowing What That Means.

Self-care tip #203 – Take care of yourself better by knowing what that means.

What is self-care?

Starting with the responsibility of our own persons needs, not necessarily for selfish reasons or self-less reasons – although it may be.  Self-care may also be starting with our own selves is not so simply because it is the shortest route to doing anything we want in life.  Pick something, anything.  Community service.  Parenting.  Science research.  Evangelism.  Rock-in-roll.  Name it.  Self-care gets you there more effectively and efficiently.

Self-care is not alone-care.  Self-care is a connecting force between Me and Me, Me and you, Me and all Life and Me and God.

What is self-care?

mbti, getting things done, productivity, technology

khouricc.com/blog

Insight.  Insight to our needs.  Insight to our feelings.  Insight to our body function.  Insight to the needs around us and how we intersect with them.  Insight into our behaviors.

Self-care is insight into our own temperaments and pursuing the natural desires, talents, interests of our own design.
Personality Types.

Choices.  Choices to align ourselves with the constructive/positive efforts of our conscious and subconscious selves.  Choices to respond to the insight and own our role implied by the insight.  Choices to take care of our body, concretely – eat well, sleep well, exercise, drink water, take our vitamins and medications as prescribed.  Choices to Love and be Loved.  Choices to connect with others and relinquish the pride that drives our isolation.  Choices to be as healthy as possible as a gift to yourself and to those you love.

Self-care is letting go of our history.

Self-care is grabbing responsibility for now and our future.

Self-care is knowing that no one is responsible for how I feel, behave, think or function, except Me.

Question:  What is self-care for you?  Please tell me your story.

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Be Aware of Your Feelings and Your Body Function When Getting Friendly With Yourself

Self-Care Tip #202 – Be aware of your feelings and your body.

symptoms and signs

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Wordsmith SuziCate commented to our post three days ago on finding depression in those of us who appear “fine.”

It can be more apparent in what is not said…. When I was depressed it was the absolute last thing I wanted to talk about. I evaded the subject, and if forced to talk it was about anything but what “I” was feeling.

Yet again, the comment completing the post.  It was on my mind and in my face somehow over these sum of days.  When I would start thinking about something else, a patient would nearly quote SuziCate and I wondered if you all have met behind my back on some other blog site with intent to trip me out.  (Grandiose delusions….)

Margo said yesterday in clinic, with hands moving, eyes wide and leaning in,

When I was really down, I just quieted down, stayed low, did my thing.  The last thing I wanted to talk about were my feelings.  I felt afraid of the Nothing that waited there.

She was talking more quietly now and her whole body receded a little.

You aren’t interested or interesting to anyone.  You don’t have anything to say.

We were both quiet for a bit.

These flattening-of-the-spirit symptoms used to be called “Pseudodementia” because they resembled dementia so much.  A muting of the mental and physical function.  A disease progression slowing the nerves and body.  We now refer to them as “Neurovegetative Symptoms.” **

When thinking about getting friendly with ourselves, we can’t forget about what we don’t say or feel emotionally.  We remember also, that the brain is connected to the rest of our body.  Brain is sick, the rest of us is sick too.  This can be a good check point once we start realizing that something is wrong either by insight or by comments from others.

It can be more apparent in what is not said….

Hear more than words.

Not all depressions are these muting processes.  Some of them are activating and agitating types leading to anger and irritability.  Those are hurtful too.

All types of depression are dangerous when left untreated.  The reason isn’t only the risk of suicide or the distance it creates from others.  The reason also includes the less familiar brain changes that it causes on the brain function.  The sooner we are able to pull out of a depression, heal and return to ourselves, the better health our brains will have the long term.  The longer a depression is left untreated, the more damage is caused to the brain’s health.

Questions:  How did you figure out you were depressed now or then? Or that someone else was depressed?  Please tell me your story.

**Neurovegetative Symptoms are the things about affective disorders that most of us don’t know about.  We think about emotions – depressed, sad, happy, angry and calm when we think about mood or anxiety.  We don’t think about the body.  We don’t think about cognition, concentration, memory and what SuziCate or Margo described so well.

It can be more apparent in what is not said….

Neurovegetative symptoms are called “neurovegetative” because they are caused by the changes in the nervous system and they limit our ability to function.

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Bring Your Separate Selves Together – Personal Journey

National Museum, Czartoryski Collection

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Self-Care Tip #199 – Bring together what you are naturally inclined to do with what you spend your energies on.

When we do what we like to do, what is congruent with our hard-wiring, what is naturally inspiring, fatigue becomes part of our pleasure in my life.  Cliché,

Enjoy the burn,

…is common for a reason.  There are times when pain, fatigue, difficulty and hard-surfaced days are bits of what make life journey one of richness, rather than diminished.  I was reminded by Jaclyn Rae’s Blog-post today, that when we can say,

I’ve learned that I’m tired but still want to do what I do,

…we are paddling the same river our life is floating down.  When we by mental illness, misfortune, choice or neglect, don’t – we are more observant of our lives rather than participants to them.  We find being present in the process difficult.  It’s not something everyone can do in all aspects.

However, we don’t have to be defined by those particulars, choosing instead to do the hard work of processing our choices, our energy and where it comes from, our emotions and see how they weave into our constitution.  Then, some time when breathing hard, limping and spent, we will remember this and reconnect the experience with the choice and the emotion a little quicker.  We will less often separate from the water our life is traveling.  Not become observers but participate more often, more actively, more tangibly with that kernel in us that stays, our essence.  (See blog post, My Essence.)

In the marvelous work, “His Dark Materials” trilogy, Philip Pullman describes us as split persons, a body and a spirit (“demon”) that might be parted by neglect, carelessness, abuse, or other disasters.  But when it is separated, the body suffers and is disconnected from it’s life purpose, what brings pleasure and presence in the world around.  (See blog post, Soul and Body.)

There are medical illnesses that do this, as mentioned above, and in those cases, perhaps all to do is get medical care, heal, treat and get on with life.  Other times, it might be that we forgot ourselves in the midst of caring for children, a demanding job, an opinion that victim-hood defines our life possibilities or what not.  We have options.

As Jjen reminded us some days ago,

The bad doesn’t disappear but it is not a qualifier for the rest of life’s potential.

Questions:  How have you reconnected to your life journey?  Your essence?  What is constant about you in your changing self?  Please tell me your story.

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