anxiety

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Emotions come from the brain.

Margarit was a lovely twenty-something, with blue-black bouncing hair above a slim pixy framed physique. She smiled easily and chattered like she was on telephone call that was about to lose reception. Her hands moved, conducting her thoughts between us. She was dressed like one of the cool girls on campus, out of my echelon, and who just might stab me in the back if I didn’t know better. But I did. She wasn’t mean. She was super sweet, like honey, and cane sugar, and mangos. Margarit was nice. But she had always wondered if she was being so nice all the time, because she was too nervous to be otherwise.

She came because she was constantly preoccupied by worries over things, “no one should be worried about”.

There had been the counsellors, therapists, and pastors consulted. Margarit and her parents had done their due diligence. With initiating each effort toward getting help for Margarit’s anxiety, they anticipated some degree of success. They thought things would get better. And sometimes they did, in degrees, and for a period of time. but the anxiety always came back. It got to the point that Margarit was put in home school, referenced her looping thoughts for everything, and was socially immobilized.

Maybe you’ve read, Gulliver’s Travels, 1726 by the Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift. When Gulliver shipwrecked and washed ashore unconscious, the numerous tiny Lilliputians effectively tied him down. The rope anchors were so small, like acupuncture needles, yet Gulliver could not move. That’s what anxiety does to us. We become internally preoccupied by it and can’t think much outside of our thoughts. We are immobilized.

The anxiety Margarit had been harassed with since a child took her freedoms away. It chose for her before she even knew what she would decide. Example; friends want me to go to the mall with them. “No,” Before her thoughts could even play with the option. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone anyways. Or maybe she would have. The anxiety chose first though and she wasn’t given the chance.

By Margarit’s third visit, she had improved significantly. She was getting to know herself, she thought, for the first time. I met the parents this visit and they looked at me as a front. I supposed it had been them up against so much for so long now, that they had learned to go at the world this way, like a man plow they both held on to. They asked me why no one had ever recommended for Margarit to seek medical treatment for anxiety.

"We would have done anything asked by one of these professionals we took her to. We thought they should know what to do, but they didn't tell us to get her medical help."

In my mind, I flashed to Naaman being told by Elishah to dunk in the dirty Jordan river seven times to cure his leprosy (2Kings 5). Psychiatry is the filthy river and dunking in it is the nonsensical act of taking psychotropics based on magic and miracles. They were here reluctantly having preferred to start with clergy and therapists, beat up by inappropriate guilt, but ready now to consider that anxiety, in Margarit’s case, is a medical symptom of a biological illness.

The question of why no one had referred them toward a medical approach for their daughter’s illness is a good one, though. I asked a pastor what he thought, and he spoke of the difficulty of not being a medical specialist; not knowing when to refer people. And what of the therapists? Likewise, I guess, that they generally have been trained to approach emotions and behaviors through a psychological and sociological paradigm. And what of the parents themselves? Did they, when their daughter broke her collar bone in the 3rd grade after Christy pushed her off the swings, take her to the emergency room or to the movies for a night out? The ER. But when her daughter showed preoccupied thoughts that permeated her days, affecting her choices, small or large, affecting her sleep, and so forth, they did not think that the thoughts were related to anything medical, coming from her brain. They did not think that the thoughts were more than coping skills, or habits, or choice.

It is a condition of our humanity to want to look at thoughts and behaviors as many bits of our life control to be manipulated intentionally. As if we could. Like “The Matrix.” Or cooking a soufflé. Or driving a 1969 Chevrolet Camero. Shift already! There’s the good intentioned phrase, “Calm down.” “Take a chill pill.”

Oh good. Someone finally said it. If they didn’t I never would have thought of that. Now I am calm because I was told to be calm.

Emotions and behaviors come from the brain. Take the brain out and no matter what chaos hits, we would feel fine. Take the chaos away, and leave the brain in, we are still left with the brain, and what ever condition of health the brain is in.  So if the brain is ill, it expresses itself in a way that is ill. If the brain is healthy, the emotions and behaviors are healthy. They are symptoms of a medical condition.

Question: Where do you find your sense of control comes from, considering the biological paradigm? Let’s talk folks!

Self-Care Tip: Consider the biology behind whatever it is that feel and do.

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The Sins of the Fathers, and Mental Health

 

“We know the Bible speaks of sins of the fathers passing to the 3rd and 4th generations while God imbues his kindness and mercy far beyond that to those who love him and keep his commandments.”

Rosa had no experience in the world of mental health, or so she thought. She had spent her formative years studying the world through the perspective of her church and interpretations of the Bible. As you know, there is a lot in both with a lot to say about emotions and behaviors. However Rosa was taught and modelled that these were moral issues and not biological. An either or, verses, part of the same thing. Could we call it sequent variants, maybe something like genetic alleles? Or maybe something better to describe this is out there, rather than an either or.

Rosa Leticia Montoya, at this point in her development, with her own overwhelming emotions and her husband’s plummet into dark moods, felt forced into considering mental health. She did not want to go there, but here in the space of losing control, not trusting herself or Carl any more, and before she was willing to say she didn’t trust God, she was doing what was a last resort. Considering that she was going crazy was the only thing this chaos could mean.

Before she completely surrendered to the idea that biology was behind this sinister change, she had to ask, “Is this because of our parents?” She had spent her life trying to untwist the bad choices her parents had made and the consequences those choices had on her life. Drugs, alcohol, and cheating were what she had grown up with. Quietly. Hiding it in the church. Rosa there, praying a lot to live well and be forgiven. Praying that bad thoughts would go away. Praying to depend on God and not on herself, as seen through her perseverating worries ever since she was a child. Worried and worried. Not speaking of the wrong Bible-breaking life her parents wore like underwear beneath nice tailored clothes. Would she ever be forgiven? Would she ever stop sinning?

So she asked me, “What do you think?”

That’s a lot to work with as a psychiatrist. So I did what most of us do. Ran to the shelter of medicine. Whew! But there is the added benefit that God created medicine, psychiatry, and all that there is in my tool bag worth working with.

Even so, there was only so long that I could avoid the topic of God and His punishments, per her perspective. It came up every visit.

If you believe in God, at some point within your discovery of mental health, this question will come up. Rosa is not alone. Are the emotions and behaviors gone amok, such as seen in anxiety disorders and depression, secondary to moral weakness? Living with “too little” dependence on God’s power? Is it this? Or is it an “either or”, with our biology? …a matter of cellular grey matter composed of DNA-expressing pathology? And is this something evil woven into my DNA because of what parents did? Well, I’ve spent 30-some years in school and now 15+ years in practice in this space and am still trying to understand.

I’m wondering if you would help me articulate this. It’s fundamental for us in self-care. It’s not possible to be very friendly to ourselves with the dissonance.

So in our self-care question today, please answer us. What is the relationship between “the sins of the fathers” and biology? Please speak!

Self-care Tip: Pursue kindness in your belief systems toward yourself.

Thank you for speaking with us! Keep on!

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The Heroic Patient

imagesSorena wore a black knit scarf around a thick neck, folds between scarf and skin. She came in with reflective smooth skin and frozen brow.  After many botox injections, she increasingly found it difficult to change her expression.  People often accused her of not caring about difficult things they were disclosing, and she realized the issue was, she couldn’t move her forehead.

She had a lot of empathy and was frustrated that people didn’t understand this.

We pulled at this idea for some time, recognizing a tension unplugged for her with each injection, a relief she experienced at visceral level. She just felt like she had to get her injections, driven toward them, like a bee toward the hive.

At some level it takes courage to get through the day.  She sees the effect.  Despite the fact that she should take a break from Botox, she can’t stop and this feels frightening.  She’s freezing her face.  It’s a terrible thing to know she has to stop something she is driven to do. It’s really hard. She’s trying to get through each day.

I told Sorena, “What you do every day to deal with this is brave. It’s harder. You have so much strength. You are doing it. You are getting through.”

I’m considering starting a podcast, “The Heroic Patient.” What do you think?

I want to interview Sorena and others with heroic life journey’s for you to discovery, connect with, increase awareness of, and appreciate.

The idea is to interview a world-community patient who will tell their “story.” It enters through the physician’s office doorway and increases transparency.

Many in our world community do not have a great understanding of what a physician nor a patient do in this exchange. You may think, “Well, everyone is a patient so at some level they do.” But:

  • How many, do you think actually go into a physician’s office?
  • How many variety of physicians does any one patient see in a lifespan?
  • How many get to tell their story?
  • How many of us hear each other’s stories?
  • How many of us understand how a physician solicits the details of a story so someone is “heard?”

If a patient were to learn the ‘behind the scenes,’ thought processes, interview techniques and analysis of the physician, would that be helpful to the patient?  Would the doctor learn from this dynamic interplay, and would the interview process evolve and grow from this? How would this effect stigma of all variety? Who knows?

What do you think? Is there a need for the “Heroic Patient” Podcast? If so, what are your recommendations and opinions?

The idea is that we are designed for connection. It’s friendly, remember? 🙂

Keep on!

Self-care Tip: Get transparent to get connected! Be a friend to yourself.

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Know You Are Blessed

ulysses

 

Think of the worst of us.  Think of the worst about us.  Think of those with self-loathing.  Those with low self-awareness, the violent, and the violated, think of them.  Where is the blessing?

Blessed are the depressed and anxious.

Think of the healthy.  Think of the diseased.  The misunderstood, the ones who live miles apart from connection, who ever push like a dingy from the peer into waves and self-destruction, think of them.

Blessed are the poor and lonely. 

Where is the blessing when your real estate is brought low by the creeping up of low-life.  Where is the blessing when you get cancer just when you might retire, when your own body calls you stupid, when you lose your eyes after training as a surgeon?

Blessed are those whose bodies are dying.

Think of every corner, every shadow and open space and the turns you still don’t know about inside of your life.  Think of the unacceptable, the character you wrestle against to moderate away from extreme.  The rope you swing on and try to bring to rest, think of the grey you think you will never achieve.  This bit and chapter, this part of your construction, this surprise in how you deliver is Loved.

There is no aberration from the norm that can separate you from that Love.  There is no addiction or misdemeanor or illness or mutated cell that can lose blessing.

This is fact.  Our life is to live with it.

Blessed am I.  Blessed am, “Me.”

Question:  Where is the blessing in what you like least about yourself?  Please tell us your story.  We need to hear you! Keep on.

Self-Care Tip:  Be your own friend in adversity as in prosperity.  Know you are blessed.

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Love Relationships for Power or Dependence

He takes care of me.

Marrying for security is like bombing for peace.  It was not too long after saying this when Amy told me she had been served divorce papers.  She had been seeing me for several years.  In that time, we had worked through her most recent episode of major depressive disorders and a debilitating anxiety.  She had done marvelous.  Courageously fought for her own health, to be accountable to herself and grow.  Is it that surprising that when that happened, he left her?

Abuse.  When one partner uses the power in them to dominate and control the other.

On the other side, there are those of us choosing the abused role such as for the security of logistics.  Example, “I take care of his/her basic needs, s/he buys me health insurance.”

Marriages, or committed Love bonds, require full dependence on each other.  That is different than power.  It is not qualifying that each of us have different levels of power.  Of course.  But using that power to generate intimacy is like having sex to become a virgin.

Question:  How can you grow dependency in your love relationships?  Even with yourself?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Move away from power as a method to increase intimacy.

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Exercise and the Brain – and Dancing to Enrique Iglesias

taylor swift

Greg went to arrange his annual colonoscopy.  Because he was having a chronic cough, his gastroenterologist (GI specialist) was wise enough to schedule him the “double dip” colonoscopy and endoscopy.  Greg was not pleased.  He was less pleased when Dr. GI found gastritis (inflammation) in his colon, an ulcer (inflammation) in his stomach, and esophogitis (location of inflammation intrinsic to word, esophogitis.)

I got the scoop on Greg’s inflammation story when he came in to see me, (yours truly, psychiatrist, brain doctor.)  And why?  Because of his colon and stomach?  Well perhaps.

True.  Greg was not happy.  He had not been happy for a very long time in fact.  Greg was suffering.  And no, he could not exercise.  He just could not.  Fill in the blanks of why he could not.  We have all given those reasons.

Discussing Greg’s story with him, we agreed that ignoring the inflammation story of his GI would be ignoring something that just might relate to the, “Why?” of why he was in to see me.  The same inflammatory process affecting his gut was affecting his brain, the same brain where his emotions and behaviors came from.

Inflammation.  We think about pus-filled blisters, puffy painful knees, spitting back spasms.  But do we think about frothing road rage?  Do we think about forgetting car keys in the supermarket where we bought five things we did not want and nothing of what we planned?  Do we think about divorce?  About losing our job, or not wanting to get out of bed?  When we hear about inflammation, do we think about brain disease?  I think not, Count Powerball.

The other day, we were in the Kaia, “Juicy JAM” class.  (Seriously. That is what it is called.) Coach Becca does these Juicy JAM classes about once every three to five months with us, just for fun.  It combines dance with athletics in a way that is designed to burn calories, yet effectively reduces grown women, responsible women of our community, parents, book-keepers, encyclopedia saleswomen, psychiatrists, (I am just guessing at least one of us moves like a psychiatrist) and such…, into giggling, hopping, human bumper cars.  And it is hard!  It is not easy to squat, pop, and then pull your fisted arm down super latino-drama-style over your just so angled body to Enrique Iglesias… I think it was, “Tonight I’m Loving You.”

By the time we had survived our first number, all I knew was that Becca looked really good.  Me, eh, not so much.  It is too bad we can not collect disability for this, not being able to dance.

When we dance, we do not usually notice how everyone else is dancing around us, as much as we think about how we are, ourselves.  Like any other behavior or emotion, we are trapped by our own design.  Look who is telling us that after all!  Our own brain.

Then Becca’s tattoo pokes out and we all think, she is such a bad ass!  (It’s right there just above the line of her pants.)

Where do these emotions, and behaviors come from?  Do they come from the good merit we have earned by hard work?  Maybe a really sweaty muscle bending Juicy JAM work-out?  No they do not.  You are right.  The emotions and behaviors come from our brain.  They come from that bit of us that is, after all, connected to the rest of our body.  Our body, where our muscles pump, where our pancreas balances our insulin levels, where our bowels, which flaunt the highest number of serotonin receptors of our whole selves, move and flow.  Our bodies, where nerves stop or start sending pain signals to our brain, where our heart and lungs pump all the blood that touches every part of us like a master control room – this is what matters to our brain health.  It is a relationship, like Garth will always go with Brooks.  Body goes with brain.  An inflamed body, an inflamed mind.

Now we know you are all thinking about bowels and what exercise does to bowels, and you are uncomfortable.  As you should be.  At least standing at a respectful distance.

I’ll never forget some months ago, and probably most of my Kaia-peers won’t either, when Coach Alyssa was taking us through Kaia-flow, a series of twisting yoga poses slash killer exercises.

Good job women!  This is also great for your stomach and bowels.

I thought, there-after only about stomach and bowels!  It was like a beacon.  No matter what I did, I was thinking about my gut.  And then like the answering horn of a trucker to a kid’s arm signal, “please honk,” there I went.  A slow twist, quiet music in the background, the soothing voice of Alyssa urging us on, and, honk.

There was no way to hide it.  No way to pass it off on my dog or kids or farmland creatures.  I was in the middle of the room and suddenly, like Taylor Swift on a center stage, everyone heard and looked.  Just one more bit of savory evidence that exercise decreases inflammation.

With this understanding, we can perhaps consider exercise like a pill.  Like a prescription.  Do exercise because we do what is friendly to ourselves.  Do exercise because we like being friendly to others.  We know that we cannot give what we do not have – to ourselves or to others.  We exercise because if we do not, we will be the barking mom we do not like, dad, sister, child or whomever.

We will not be nice to our partners when we have ill brains.  We will not feel pleasure as deeply.  If we are kindly toward ourselves, such as exercising, we will protect the soft underbellies of them others we love.  We will treat ourselves better.  We will.

One hour later, after dancing or twisting our inflammation, shame, and inhibitions into the ground, after passing a little gas, we are reduced to inspiration, humbly thinking, “Yes. I am that good.”  And that is the Magic there. We are bad arss.  Body meets brain meets community meets Magic.

And for you scholarly folk who don’t believe me when I say, exercise decreases inflammation decreases brain illness, here are a few articles:

Question:  How have you noticed your body speaking on behalf of your brain?  Or vice versa?  Please tell us some of your story.

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Words Like: Distended abdomen! and Connection

distended abdomen

A friend of mine told me the other day,

Mentally I went to a bad place during exercise on Tuesday. Like “I’m so slow, I want to go home, the other girls probably think bad things about me”. In my head space now I see those thoughts as ridiculous. But it was tough to get through.

Excuse me but she is brilliant.  She speaks for millions.

So many times we think about the rough out there.  The words that slow our swing down, that are not said right, that somehow take away points from our identity.  We are not a two-dimensional scorecard.  Speaking up does not qualify us.  Good or bad.  Speaking up does not change our value.

I loved her voice.  I am thinking she should start up her own blog.  If she can be this transparent on a blog, she is a needed voice.

If I could fantasize a little, (Now! Now!  Stop that,) I would have her and you go back to our own, here at friendtoyourself.com, and start methodically answering each self-care question, post by post, in your own authentic way.  And just you see what a stroke speaking up makes.  Just see what it does for you inside and out.  Just see what it does for others. …Me for example.  See?  I am affected by you.

As for my transparency, in brief, …I did not survive halloween.  I ate like a motor.  Chocolate.  Chocolate and more chocolate.

Otherwise.  I think this greens-and-beans-effort I am doing has been ok.  I am eating a lot of plants.  Trying to keep the simple carbs low.  Not always the fact but the goal.  I do still eat in volume which I will see if it makes a difference or not when it is this type of volume.  All that fiber is making a difference to my gut though!  my abdomen is distended!  TMI.

A couple posts ago we shared Jessica’s, “Do This.”  My question is, what is yours? What is your, “Do This?”  Please do not make me use any more golf analogies, but where are your …words?  Your words are important for you.  They bring friendship to you from you.  They bring you to connection, community, clarity of thought, and as said in a post long ago:

“And if we stop speaking, we will lose.  If we do not respect the opportunity to connect, if we do not treat it as the treasure that it is, not only will the world miss out on the ‘Me,’ we miss out on the world at large.  It goes both ways.

We have a choice.  Get friendly with yourself.  Speak.  Listen.  Connect.

Self-Care Tip – Stay connected for your sake and for theirs.”

Question:  What has speaking up done for your friendship with yourself?  How are your words kinder said than not? Please tell your story.

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Get You Some Love

Cemetary

Cemetary (Photo credit: Vu Bui)

The ocean is like an untended cemetery, compared to my youth dives, with shoots of life breaking up the stone and dead coral.  A little family of forceps butterfly fish flutter around the tips of something brown.  I honk sounds through the water to my kids when I spy a trumpet fish, a big one, with some neon lighting up the gray long body.  My kids are so energized.

There are three turtles and I remember I have never swum with turtles before.  “Hey.  That’s cool,” I think.  I try to reconcile the turtles with the changes from when I snorkeled and dove reefs years ago, “Positive?  Negative?”  Something there in me wants to feed this info through my inner hope-machine to convince my other that when my kids swim another future day, the ocean will not be dead.  Foreboding.

I am starting to get disoriented by this and surface to get a grip. My husband pops up and I whisper to him, so our kids do not overhear and lose their energy to my negativity, “It’s like a tomb, Honey!  I can hardly stand it!”  And like a compass, he points to a better direction.  “It’s fine, Sana.  It is what it is.”  Interpretation can distort experience.

Thanks to husband and the reconnection of interpretation with presence, under water, I see this moment, this day, in the parrot fish, the coronets, and the puffers. And I, with more gravity, am able to enjoy what Love is giving now.  A solemn gift.  More informed, my appreciation is deeper and I can receive.

Receiving Love is not as easy as it sounds.  It is the work of a moment.  It is the work of a lifetime.  I am a spoiler, unable to love myself, unless I am able to receive Love from outside of myself and connect with it, in my pathway of Me-to-Me.

I am just starting to get this and am eager to understand and own more, because, this has been amazing.  This is something like how it goes so far; tense up, maybe angry Me, (reason or no reason,) pause, look, pray for it, pause, acknowledge, let it do its thing on Me. Start over. Again. Again.

In we who suffer brain illness, we who suffer cancer, we who are in the dying stage of life, in we who, we, we are in the right place to do this.  This is just where we need to be to receive Love.

Illness does not keep us from the ability to receive Love.  Poverty does not.  Dead coral and loss do not.  Nothing can.

Everything can be used by Love to communicate to us.  Illness can.  Poverty, dying, loss can.  Anything can be used to bring into our circle of Me-to-Me, Love.  Love is now.

I am glad, in age, that I am increasingly aware of the changeability inherent in everything, everything, positive, negative, everything.  This is one more way I am able to receive Love.  Age.

Being able to receive Love requires the process of changing.  It is not stagnant, stationary, unaging.  As far as we are able to understand, it is not.  We are creatures of dimension, creatures of space and time and until we are further created to receive otherwise, this is.

Question:  how do you increase your reception of Love?  How do you receive Love?  How does this affect your friendship with yourself.  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Increase your Love-reception.

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CHANGING DIRECTION: How To Move Into the Future Despite Your Past

Michele Rosenthal 2013Guest Post by Michele Rosenthal, Author, Speaker, Post-Trauma Coach
Founder, www.healmyptsd.com 

Host, CHANGING DIRECTION, a weekly radio program

Author, BEFORE THE WORLD INTRUDED: Conquering the Past and Creating the Future

Have you ever felt like something that happened long ago still defines you today? Sometimes the smallest stress or the largest trauma moves you into situations that imprint so deeply they become a part of who you are. Sometimes, too, those events change who you are: Consequent beliefs, assumptions, interpretations and perceptions alter how you see yourself, others and the outside world.

I know how easily all of this can make you be not such a good friend to yourself! For over twenty-five years I was actually very unkind to myself as the negative events in my life shaped and distorted my inner self connection. Then, I went on a healing rampage. I knew that life was so much more than simply existing or struggling to exist and I wanted to feel better and be happier. It took years to find what process would set me free. Finally, I learned how to shed the past and now have dedicated my life to helping others find healing (much more quickly than I did!) after life’s big and small traumas.

What I’ve learned through education, training, countless conversations, direct interactions and coaching others is that simply finding a path to healing is not enough. As individuals we want to move in a direction that is positive, proactive, and productive. Figuring out how to do that can be challenging, which is why I’ve decided to expand (and retitle) my radio show to talk about how we go about “CHANGING DIRECTION.”

Beginning the week of April 29th, CHANGING DIRECTION will air twice every week: Monday’s and Wednesday’s at 2pm EST/11am PST. The shows will be thirty minutes in length so that you get in-depth, concentrated content in a timeframe that adapts to your on-the-go lifestyle. In addition to the healing support and information we currently provide our dedicated audience, we will also begin providing expert insights on how to reclaim yourself and transform your life in the areas of personal growth, career, health and fitness, finances, relationships, fun and recreation, and family life. Interviewing experts in all of these areas CHANGING DIRECTION offers ideas for how you can change the direction of your life day after day.

In celebration of this shift, we’re offering all of our new listeners a complimentary ebook gift: “52 Ways To Transform Your Life After Trauma” gives you one idea per week to discover new ways to be a friend to yourself by deepening your internal connection and challenging you to explore what it really means to be you. To claim your gift, click here.

You have enormous healing potential; the goal is learning to access it. You can do this. Dig deep. I believe in you!

I thank Michele Rosenthal for her guest post today, her courage to invite us to team with her in this this and her transparent beauty of character.

Michele Rosenthal is a keynote speaker, award-nominated author, post-trauma coach, and radio show host. To learn more about how you can be a friend to yourself by healing your past visit, ChangeYouChoose.com. 

Follow Michele Rosenthal on Twitter @ChangeYouChoose. Connect with her on Facebook: Michele Rosenthal, plus the Heal My PTSD fan page. 
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To Use Tension, Or Run From it…

English: Waterfall near Lepena, Slovenia Slove...

English: Waterfall near Lepena, Slovenia Slovenščina: Slap, Lepena, Slovenija (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few days ago, we talked about tension being a tool for balance.  Col, in her comments, asked to expand on this.  Aside from feeling incredibly tense about it, I thought, “Ah!  All right.”

You’ve heard the term, “One’s man’s junk is another man’s treasure.”  Tension is like that.  It’s all kieshy now and pop! to meditate into oblivion, (I exaggerate,) and “medical” marijuana couldn’t be easier to get, but where do we get the opposition that provides so much of the pleasure in the calm?  Tension.

If you’ve never been quite calm yourself, imagine standing under a waterfall trying to dry off  when people say, “relax.”  (Got to love it when people say, “Calm down,” or, “Relax!”  …Ahem.)  Using tension as a tool for balance is learning to do something else in the downpour other than drying up, like take a shower or make a rainbow.

This is easier to say than do, for sure.  But just simply knowing that tension isn’t the enemy is a great boon.

Question:  When have you noticed that tension is a tool for balance in your life?  Do you use tension or run from it?  Please tell us your story.

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When we feel whispered about, undervalued and misunderstood

http://bit.ly/14uwdV7

The girl, with her thin lashes and small eyes, looked at her.  What was her name again?  Bee?  Bernice?  Benny?  Something with a B.

Angelica looked back and waited.  “Helloooo?!” she thought to herself, and wanted to knock back as if to say the punchline to a knock-knock joke.

Oh mercy!   This job was getting to her.  She was at the same level as her five-year-old nephew who made up what he thought were jokes, like,

“Knock-knock.

(Mommy say, Whose there?)

‘Whose there?’

Robby.

(Mommy say, Robby who?)

‘Robby who?’  Robby poopy face!”

The kid had a brilliant career in comedy coming.

Brianna was still looking at her and Angelica finally asked her how she could help her.

“It’s your note, Maom.”  Bernice, or was it Brenda, had this way of calling her mom and ma’am all at once, reminding her that she was too young to be either, but she may have well of been since she couldn’t remember the note or many other details about her colleagues.  She’d always been like that though.  It bothered her as she became more aware of how undervalued she thought she was.  All Angelica did notice were the criticisms that came to her from administration.  It made her feel like everyone was talking about her behind her back, but she knew she couldn’t be that special.

Angelica shifted in her chair.

The last boss-message was verbally delivered about when she took her lunches.  She had sat there and taken it.  Wondering, where had all the hard work gone, she gave what she thought was a polite smile.  Where was the appreciation?!  Angelica replied with thanks for the feedback and that she would continue to work on her timeliness.  Yes, she would like to revisit this in a month and how supportive that was, boss-man.

Beonca was holding her hand out and Angelica reflexively shook it.  Wait!  Was she crying?!  Hold on here.  And now she noticed that B was swiping her nose with her sleeve.  Oh hell.  Was she sick?  Great!  Now she’d get it.

“Your note was so sweet!  Thank you for giving that feedback on my job performance in to boss-man!”

Oh yah!  Now Angelica remembered.  After she’d last gotten the pearls thrown at her regarding lunch hour timeliness she had decided to put some words on paper that were good.  Since nobody was noticing her goodli-lishissness she’d notice theirs and start her own powerful paper trail.   Just cuz.

One of their customers who was giving Angelica a hard time was really happy with B and had told Angelica about it.  Instead of losing brain time on wondering what the customer did not like about her, Angelica had put in a note about how much the customer had liked B.

Since then, Angelica kept a stack of customer feedback slips handy to fill out any time she noticed a colleague and/or herself doing “it” right.  She was going to overwhelm boss-man with good stuff and just enjoy knowing that the stuff had been noticed and said.  No more would she be unappreciated.  Even if only by herself.

Angelica looked at the crumpled paper in B’s hand and read,

“Germaine is an excellent worker.  She found merchandise a customer wanted with speedy response today and the customer specifically told me about it.”

Germaine!?  Ah well.

Angelica leaned over and gave her own wet-eyed sticky hug back.

It is universal for all of us to feel whispered about, undervalued and misunderstood.  And then what?  Let us give it the elbow jab and be our own advocate.  Put it on paper.  Say it out loud.  Be grateful about it and ruminate the gratitude.

Personalizing what is not about us gets worse with brain illness.  It is almost pathognomonic for it in fact, when it gets to the point that it cannot be redirected by conscious decision, when it interrupts interpersonal relationships and when it takes away our ability to feel pleasure.  Taking medical treatment can change the way we feel and behave without beating ourselves up over it and moralizing what is not moral.  However, this kind of elbow jabbing Angelica decided to do is just plane friendly.  And if you want…?  Well?

Questions:  Have you felt whispered about, undervalued and misunderstood?  Have you been able to get friendly with it?  Or do you feel the victim?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Acknowledge yourself and others.

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Be a Celebrating Hero

An Asian black bear, shot after charging the &...

An Asian black bear, shot after charging the “Old Shekarry”, as illustrated in Wild sports of the world: a boy’s book of natural history and adventure (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Potty-stench made going to the bathroom awful. Phong would wait for days rather than use a public bathroom. Just going near one left him showering for hours under scalding water and layers and layers of soap. He would work through three bars of soap at a time before he could even think about stopping. Stopping before was too horrific. If he did, before he stopped feeling dirty, than something horrible would happen, or so his thoughts shouted at him. The devil would eat his little girl.

Phong knew that was not going to happen but the thoughts were tormenting and nothing made them better. Sometimes he would rather die than see the bloody gruesome scene in his thoughts another day.

Obsessive Convulsive Disease is a bear. Getting treatment is seriously scary. The treatment not working is petrifying. And just about anything in between is fear invoking. You get the picture. Who will go up against a bear like that?

I remember in the Disney*Pixar movie, Brave, when the dad, Fergus, yells:

Mor’du! Elinor, hide!
[Elinor and Merida run off, one of Fergus’ men passes a spear to him, Fergus charges towards Mor’du (in bear form) but he snaps off Fergus’ spear, then we see Elinor and Merida escape on horseback, then Fergus holds up his sword at Mor’du and shouts]

Fergus, like the beast he fights, growls a bellow:

Come on, you!
[suddenly Mor’du lunges forward and the screen goes blank]

Eventually we learn that Fergus won but suffered the casualty of his leg. The amount of adrenaline in that time and sympathetic hyperawareness Fergus experienced is just close to the amount that Phong has daily or multiple times daily sometimes in his Exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy and medications. In ERP, he has to choose to expose himself to this nearly incomprehensibly horrible fear, respond to it and then wait until the fear lessons. This is a bad case of, “it must get worse before it gets better.” But Phong does it. Mostly. He just does not want this to go on and like a prisoner of war, he is eating the grass under the fence line to survive. The man has courage. Can you imagine going through that kind of cortisol crisis every day?

And as mentioned, on top of that, he takes his medications. Anyone who takes medications, knows that we don’t need courage once to do it, but every day, hand to pills to mouth, we need sinew. Phong is one of my heroes.

Question: Do you know you are a hero? Any ideas, why? How do you celebrate that? Or would you if you would celebrate this? Please tell us your story.

Self-care tip: Growl a bellow at what you fight! Be a celebrated/celebrating hero.

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From a Fellow Commentor – Her Friend Suicided

Anxiety Always

Anxiety Always (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

i woke up this morning to find out that my friend shot herself last night. she texted me, said she hoped i had a good night and said goodbye. she then walked outside and shot herself in the head.  
there are so many emotions i can’t even sort them out.  i don’t know what to feel, i can’t even cry.  why haven’t I cried?  I didn’t hear her stupid text, I didn’t know… I knew she had her demons we all do, but they convinced her to end it.  it’s so finial, so F-ing stupid!!!!!
is this how it ends for us that are so f**ked up in the head?  she wasn’t on meds, would that have even helped?  I don’t know what to think sana. last month i got a phone call from my friend who lives in Fallbrook and she had been dealing with anxiety couldn’t take it anymore, said she didn’t want to feel the anxiety anymore and tried to kill herself.  she was admitted and stayed for 4 weeks.  she’s on so many meds that she’s speaks in a monotone voice.  it’s has really scared me.  
is this how it’s going to be for all of us that deal with fear, anxiety and panic? I need to go for a walk, i feel numb. i feel so pissed off and feel bad that I’m mad. 
i’m scared
didn’t know who else to share this with that would understand
Questions:  Do you?  What do you understand?  Is this how it’s going to be for all of us?  Please tell us your story.  We need to hear.
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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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The Holidays and Lonely Me

The Holidays and Lonely Me.

Easter’s a-comin’, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, laundry day, everyone gets a day…  Can invoke loneliness though the intent is to draw company.  Oxymorons doing there thing.

I reposted this to celebrate.  Keep on.

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Guest Post by Michael Cornwall PhD – Bandaid Your Emotional Injury

The Brain Limbic System

Image via Wikipedia

The physical home of emotion – the limbic area, is located in the center-region of the brain. The limbic system consists of a series of interconnected structures that include the frontal area, the hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus (anterior thalamic nuclei), septum, limbic cortex and fornix.  It is believed that these structures support a variety of cognitive, emotive, behavioral and biological functions including emotional behavior and long-term memory often necessary for emotional behavior to occur.

It is NOT essential for you, the reader, to know the names and functions of these structures – although it could benefit you.  Knowing that there are anatomical, electro-bio-chemical and hormonal correlations between your emotions and your brain is, however, critical to improving your emotional intelligence. Although you may decide not to know these structures, you will have to remember, at minimum, where your emotions live.

Your emotions live in your head.

More specifically, your emotions are an expression of your thoughts.

Without thought, you would have no emotion.

If you wish to change your emotion, you will have to change your thinking.

The limbic neighborhood, when in balance, can be described as resting.  While at rest, however, it can be instantaneously energized by thought and perception in an all-out effort to protect the body from real or perceived harm or the threat of harm. The stress response will cooperate with your thinking and automatically release neurochemicals and hormones into the bloodstream that are intent on providing the fuel you will need to protect yourself  from real or perceived threat. You can expect a sudden increase in heart rate, perspiration, flushing of the skin, hair standing on end, etc. All designed by Nature to give you the strength, energy and focus to run away very quickly, fight very bravely or just to freeze, motionless, in the hopes you will appear unthreatening to your attacker.

Let’s find a more familiar image to understand this phenomenon.

Imagine that you have a paper cut.

Blood flows from the cut, no matter how much you are against that from happening.

It is an automatic response to injury.

You can commit to do something about the cut by attending to it. You might wash it, put it in your mouth or cover it with a Band-Aid (or plaster).  Your effort to stop the bleeding will likely shorten the time the wound is active and susceptible to infection. While attending to the cut, you commit to memory how the accident occurred and tell yourself how to avoid similar injuries in the future. Injury and trauma are, in many ways, opportunities for learning.

But how does cutting your finger and attending to it compare to the expression and remediation of emotion?

Your perception of an event as threatening or dangerous is like injuring the nuclei of your brain.  Your thoughts activate a response in the brain that starts an automatic flow of neurochemicals and hormones into the bloodstream. These hormones and neurochemicals:

  1. Increase heart rate and blood pressure;
  2. Dilate the pupils;
  3. Constrict the veins in skin and send more blood to major muscle groups;
  4. Increase blood-glucose levels;
  5. Tense up the muscles that have been energized by adrenaline and glucose;
  6. Relax smooth muscles in order to allow more oxygen into the lungs;
  7. Shuts down the digestion and immune system to allow more energy for emergency functions; and
  8. Improves the ability to focus on the task of determining the location of the threat and how to respond to it.

Much like cutting your finger, there is an automatic flow of neurochemicals and hormones into the bloodstream that happens without your consent.  Similar to tending a paper cut, you can be a passive observer or you can actively respond by providing wound care.

You can put a Band-Aid on your emotional injury.

Here I will provide you with some self-care techniques and suggestions.

First, it should be noted that if the injury to the emotional areas of your brain were visible – if the flow of neurochemicals and hormones rushing here and there inside your head could be observed, rather than having it all happen deep inside your skull, you may be more active in responding to it, without all this comparison to a paper cut.

Instead, we will just have to imagine and increase our awareness of the phenomenon.

Wounds inflicted by thought require as much attention and enthusiasm for treatment as an injury to skin or bone.  We might imagine the paradigm from the following perspective:

  1. An Event Occurs: “You did a horrible job!”
  2. An Injury Results from Thinking About the Event: “You have no right to talk to me like that! I am a good employee.  I am a good person. I should be treated better.  It is awful that you are treating me this way.  I need your approval in order to be happy in my life.”
  3. An Automatic Protective Response Results from Thinking:   Your threatening thoughts instigate the flow of neurochemicals and hormones into your bloodstream, causing your body to go into a protective mode (a stress response).  These chemical will flow for some period of time specific to you.  The longer you ruminate about your perceived threat, however, the longer the chemicals will remain flowing through your bloodstream. It could be minutes, months or even years (chronic stress).  If you do not tend to the wound, you will be susceptible to infection, fatigue and a continued loss of homeostasis and likely reopen the wound each and every time you encounter the same or a similar misfortune.
  4. Attention to Thinking: “I am not in danger.  I am viewing this situation as threatening. I don’t have to view the situation as threatening.  I can view it as unfortunate. It is unfortunate that I am being talked to this way.  It is regrettable that I am being criticized this way.  I am being treated badly and that is difficult, but it is not awful. I can stand it and I will.  I can express my concerns.  I have a right to ask for respect, but I have no right to get it. I don’t need approval in order to be happy in my life.  It would be nice to have approval, but it certainly isn’t a necessary element of my continued happiness.”
  5. Interfering with the Flow of Neurochemicals and Hormones: Using more rational thought is the essential part of attending to the emotional wound.  It is also the first step toward improving emotional intelligence.
  6. The fact that the hormones and neurochemicals are already in your bloodstream will present some problem.  Although you may be thinking more rationally, your physical body will need time to readjust and return to balance.
  7. Be assured that these hormones and neurochemicals will dissipate, if you stop them from flowing using more rational thought.
  8. Your new thinking will eventually win over the process and you will be free of these toxic substances.  At least until you encounter misfortune, again – something you can certainly expect.
  9. To encourage the return to balance, you may breathe deeply, stimulating your vagus nerves.
  10. Breathing deeply (through your mouth, into the pit of the stomach and out your mouth) sends a message to the brain that all is well and that it is safe for the body to return to balance.

The next time you encounter some perceived danger or harm, try these techniques and suggestions.  How did it work for you?  Would it help to keep the suggestions in your purse or wallet, for when you find yourself in the middle of misfortune and want a quick guide?

Michael Cornwall, PhD  is an author, lecturer, clinical supervisor, educator and child behavior therapist in private practice.  In our community, you may know him as the author of blog, Emotional Intelligence Theory.

(502) 564-4321 x 2008

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Surrender To Help

GrassesWhen I was a just a bit, dirty feet and pig-tails, spending the summer on my grandparents farm with my three similarly dirty big brothers, we took grandpa’s two green John Deer out for a drive. We all delighted in the enormous strength in those beasts. The tires were taller than me, which meant nothing but fun at the time. I never thought about falling out, but I could have.

I rode with one brother and the other two were up ahead. We were toward pasture and hoped for a long run of it. The boys were yelling at each other, provoking and jocular. I was, as usual, amazed at my luck to have them for my own.

Somewhere before we lost interest and after we lost sense, the boys ahead hit mud. My goodness, but we, coming up from behind hollered laughter. Jeering, we watched them whiz those monster tires deeper and deeper. Oh the tears! right up until we followed them into our own mud-sink. Humiliating.

My grandpa farmed corn and hay and some other grains but all I remember about that field is that the ground was really wet beneath tall grass. The green came up almost to the middle of the tractors and the blades were wide and thick. We got to business pulling grass out and feeding it to the muddy tires, thinking to build traction. About an hour later and after the grass had taught our hands a lesson, we tramped back to the barn-house. Nothing to do but tell Grandpa.

That was the last day of our vacation and we heard later that he had pulled them out with his truck, gracious as ever. Grandpa Jack was such a kind and gentle man.

I remember the grass when I’m with Eilene. She is my patient with moderately treated mood and anxiety disease. The rest of her though is not well. Eilene is pulling grass to help her move. The best I can do is stand beside her.

I wonder what I’m missing in my life now. Where am I stuck? When will I get over to the barn house to surrender?

And you? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – Surrender to help. Be a friend to yourself.

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If You Love Me, Give Me Less But Give To Me Bigger and Better

Repost

Good news.  Marcy was better.  She was feeling better emotionally, less triggered by simple stressors, and parenting better.  Marcy didn’t think it was anywhere near easy, but it was better.

It had started for her about six months ago, when she realized her children were on edge around her, when she realized she didn’t want to be around her children and when she didn’t like much else either.  Was she a “crabby woman?”  Ouch.  It hurt her to think that.  Were some people just mean?  And she was one of them?  Marcy said no.  She couldn’t make anyone believe her these days but she knew she was designed for something better than that.

When this happened, Marcy hit self-care boot camp.  She cut her time with her kids, husband, any extras.  She didn’t cut them out, but she did cut back.  With that time, she went back to the starting point – herself.  She gave less to them, and more to herself so she could give bigger and better to them whom she loved, not excluding herself.

Good news.  Marcy is better.

Self-Care Tip – Give more to yourself.

Question:  What has your self-care taken from those you love?  What has it done with what you still give to those you love?  Please tell me your story.

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Today on Radio in Summary

Amateur radio station with multiple receivers ...

Thank you Michele Rosenthal at HealMyPtsd.com, and to all who listened in on my first radio interview on being a FTY – Friend to Yourself.  What fun.  It was sweet and to the point.

We discussed using the marker of the new year to commit to this and see what 2012 brings differently from before.  This is freeing, as being our own friend is not selfish but rather the most selfless thing we can offer.  How it is done by starting with Me; the starting and ending point of all intentions in our life.  Knowing that we cannot give what we don’t have, that we cannot indulge the pleasures outside of ourselves such as adjustment and coping skills if we don’t have the Me to do it with (preferably a healthy me) and knowing that going where we find shame in our lives can free us up to get friendly with the rest of Me.  This knowledge helps us find the “how.”

To make being a friend to Me an easier process, leave the injustices of our lives alone, leave the sentiment of wanting happiness, of wanting what we should have gotten or been.  To make Me my own friend easier, do what any friend would do – the hard stuff.  The stuff that good-time-Jane won’t stick around for and the stuff that only Love can follow through with – do this.  That’s as easy as it will get and as hard as it will get.

We can do this.

Question:  Looking toward 2012, how would you change the direction of your intention and energy to be more of a friend to yourself?  What do you think you will experience differently if you do?  Please tell us and connect.

Thank you dear Carl d’Agostino for calling in, boosting my confidence and saying without saying it, “You are not alone.”  I’m still smiling.

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Name Your Fear To Know You Are Free

She knew the Horned King‘s secret name.

His name?  … I never realized a name could be so powerful?

Yes….  Once you have courage to look upon evil, seeing it for what it is and naming it by its true name, it is powerless against you, and you can destroy it.

– The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Science Fair Wins Ribbons

Image by OakleyOriginals via Flickr

Mistakes and the mist of shame thicken about us and it is hard to hope.  As if each effort of our intended labor produced Seconds and Flops we must stand in our Besties beside what we have done to get a participant appreciation ribbon tagged onto our lapel.

And somehow standing there, the layer of sweat thick under too many clothes, we remember the secret name, it comes and we whisper.  We whisper it; our last courage still enough for that.  There is a moment of surprise, as if we and whatever pressed us down didn’t know we might still live.

We can see now that we are not alone; just there, in fact you are there with your own passed over table.  I remember you working nights on it, your tired eyes, a happiness in your muscles still.  In those days.

We can see that we are special for more than injury; we hear now.  We feel concern for more and taste newness that filled the space.  The secret name.

We won’t tell you or it wouldn’t be secret any more.  But now that we remember we are free.  Now that we have the knowing, we will keep the power, thank you.

There is power in a name.

We won’t forget what came after evil and will speak more readily into dark spaces, will wait less and fear less because we have already been there.  Going toward the pain like that.  What’s the worst that can happen when you name your fear?  It takes no more than a whisper to be strong.

Self-care Tip – Speak into your dark spaces the name of your fear.  Be a friend to yourself

Question – What reminds you that you are free despite the fears that tell you otherwise?  How is freedom your truth in life even when your senses tell you otherwise?  Please tell us your story.

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