courage

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A Young Man’s Wrenching Journey

Children!

On Jun 18, 2013, Anon wrote:

Hello Dr. Sana L. Johnson-Quijada,

Thank you for coming to talk to share some of your experiences and views associated psychiatry. I am sorry I have not emailed you sooner.  This was my first year taking three sciences and when it came time to study for finals, I pretty much ignored everything except school.

Thank you for giving the class and myself some exposure to psychiatry. Your talk was very intriguing, especially how you see a person, in particular how their brain health affects their personality. When you started to talk about homelessness it brought back painful and confusing memories from my childhood.

My parents divorced when I was seven and the majority of my time was spent with my mother because my now deceased father had a difficult time keeping a roof over his head and doing the activities of daily living. When I was a little older I even loaned my dad some money when his car was impounded. I could not understand why my dad was in the situation he was in and why I was seemingly more capable than him. I loved him very much and wanted to help him in any way I could.  But in the end, I could not make any of his decisions for him.

My older brother is living in a shelter and he reminds me of my dad in so many ways. When we lived together, before my parents divorced, my brother was just about as hard to get along with as my dad, and my dad was physically abusive to him. I was so confused and could not understand why we could not love each other or ourselves. My dad’s incessant fear of doctors and my brother’s fervent choice to self medicate only complicated the situation we were in.

My heart goes out to my family and people like them and I have a strong desire to help people. Your short talk resonated with me and I was intrigued by psychiatry because I thought it might be a way for me to help. How do I learn more?

Sincerely,

Anon

On Jun 18, 2013, at 5:16 PM, Sana Quijada wrote:

Hey. So good to hear from you. I remember you well. Sniff. Big hug. You are not alone, dear man. 

How to learn more?  Hmm. I would start by attending some local NAMI meetings. Follow up with me in a bit after you do and we can keep the lines open and ideas flowing. It is an honor to connect with you. 

I celebrate your focus and completion of finals. 

I would love to post your email letter on FriendtoYourself.com … 

Your story is seriously powerful.  As my six-year-old says, boom! Smile. 

Till next time,

Sana Johnson-Quijada MD
www.FriendtoYourself.com

On Jun 24, 2013, at 5:00 PM, Anon wrote:

Yes you may post my email I feel honored. It took a lot of courage to write and I am glad you were receptive.

This is a "thought bubble". It is an...

Questions:  How would you recommend a young person find out more about psychiatry, before pursuing years of study?  How did you investigate your profession before committing?  

How do you talk about your family of origin history?  How do you find the courage to share these things, to find community in what hurts?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Find the courage to connect with others and your story.

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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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Choose Back! …As Long As Life Chooses You.

A Girl On A Footbridge

Image by jyryk58 via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #241 – As long as life chooses you, it is your right to choose back – so do.

Although I am not a geriatric psychiatrist, I have still been given the pleasure of serving a “golden” few.  What has impressed me has been their willingness to start over.

Starting over takes courage and humility whether it is deliberate or not.  Sometimes fear dances between the lines of all the emotions and intentions. But still, wouldn’t you agree that it takes courage and humility to negotiate fear?

(Enters Hans.)  Hans was seventy-three years old.  He had struggled with brain illness on and off he thinks since he was at least twelve.  There were big spaces of time when his disease exacerbated, and he largely suffered.  But he chose, at this age, to try again for improved brain health.

Is there a time when we start thinking, don’t keep trying to start over?  Maybe in the dying process.  In case you don’t know, the dying process is a specific term.  It means the time when a person is facing impending death.

This area of medicine is not my specialty but I imagine at some point we want to stop with that starting over process, give up, but not in a hopeless way.  In a way that says,

I can stop trying for new anything and sit in the space of what I already have in me…

…Which hopefully includes all the ingredients and interrelations of life.

But how far before that point in life do we consider starting over reasonable?  I’ve heard of kids being told they’re too young to ride a bike, or cut with a knife, or understand the dinner conversation.  No one bobs their head at that.  But find a seventy-three year old who believes that after a lifetime of perceived failure by onlookers or themselves, who still says,

Now let’s give this another go,

…and if it hasn’t been said, it’s been thought,

give it over already!  You’ve hit your seventy-times-seven chances!

It’s like they’re shopping in the teen-ware.  We blink our eyes and angle our heads.  Even the thought of starting over as a real option feels indiscreet.

(Enters Hans.)  Hans is seventy-three.  He is starting over.  Humbly and with courage, he pursues brain health in the face of stigma.

I think I had celebrated my six birthday when my dad asked me if I felt any different from how I felt when I was five.

Yes!  I feel older!

 Then he asked me how old I thought he was.  When I answered some enormous number like, “twenty-two!” he asked,

Does forty-four seem old to you?  

Of course it did!  But I had an intuition that if he was old, than he’d die, so I said a definitive,

NO!  Daddy you’re still young!  You aren’t old!

Now, almost that same age myself, I am in awe of him and the others in their golden or not so golden years (Enters Hans) who believe that as long as life chooses them, they will choose back.  It is their freedom.

Questions:  When all your senses don’t sense pleasure in life, or you feel old and useless, or you feel that you’ve failed too many times, how do you choose to start over?  Who has inspired you and what did they do?  Please tell me your story.

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Where Does Courage Come From?

I want to do that, but I have no idea where I’m going to find the courage!

This is real folks.  People think this, say this, believe this and behave accordingly.  The other day, a young woman in her forties with a rolled scroll of precious problems including joint disease, extreme morbid obesity, nicotine dependence, depression, anxiety, obstructive sleep apnea, eczema, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), heart palpitations, diabetes, hyperlipidemia and polycystic ovarian disease – this woman told me these words.

I have no idea where I’m going to find the courage!

Where does courage come from?  Is there an odds ratio, statistics, intuition barometer or what?  Where do we find courage?  (I am remembering the dear Lion in The Wizard of Oz.)

I see courage coming from our ability to make decisions.  Being able to decide comes from many paradigms, including my favorites as broken down through the biopsychosocial model (listed in no particular order):

  • Biological – temperament (genes or personality,) mental health/brain health (the brain being the organ we use to make decisions with,) developmental (the neurodevelopment of the brain is different at different ages,) things we put in our body (diet, illicit drugs, alcohol or nicotine,) medical illnesses, sleep issues, exercise, rash, ingrown toe-nail….
  • Psychological – self-control, coping skills, catastrophizing, negative thinking, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors….
  • Sociological – culture (including home, religion, race, gender,) stressors on our body, social support, God, interpersonal relationships (friends, marriage, kids, colleagues,) parenting, unemployment….

(WHEW!  Recovering my breath.)

Where do we find courage?

I drew a picture in the air for her psychological self,

17th century

Image via Wikipedia

I see you 100 pounds lighter, not smoking for the past six months at least, off of six of your twelve medications, your medical problem list shortened down to two or three.  You are able to feel pleasure again.  It is a real option for you.

If you don’t, I see you growing demented, paralyzed and dying from a heart attack.  I can’t say when these things will happen but they will happen if you don’t start taking care of yourself.

Where does courage come from?

For her biological self, I targeted the language of her temperament.  I remembered that we make decisions either through thought or feeling.  She was a “Feeler.”  I drew forth my light saber and went for the emotions.

You can do this!  Think of the gift you’d be giving yourself and to those you love.

For her sociological self, I talked about everyone in the family choosing with her, including husband.  Talking about how this changes the family culture, not to smoke together, setting boundaries with her husband to care for herself and thinking about getting other support networks like starting to go to church again or calling her pastor.

Question:  Where does courage come from for you?  Please tell me your story?

Self-Care Tip – Use your biopsychosocial model, that is to say all of what makes you you, to find your courage.  Be a friend to yourself.

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The Spider Sat Down Beside Her – Mental Illness

Self-Care Tip #178 – Find your courage and answer to stigma.

The Little Miss Muffet scenario explained by D...

Image via Wikipedia

Something as simple as taking pills can sabotage us.  The act of putting it in our mouths signifies all sorts of things from religion, to freedom, to personal identity and beyond; even someone who is trustworthy versus not.  Pill – take away her children.  No pill – could be president.  Pill – discredit whatever he says.  No pill – worth listening to.

Martha is a mother of four lovely girls.  Her husband is divorcing her and she wonders what he will do in the process.  She’s been depressed in the past and anxious with a history of panic attacks.  She took two years to get over them using breathing exercises and other therapies. She didn’t use medication.  I don’t need to tell you what her husband thought of meds or of her during that time.  It was a miserable time for her.

Now, during this new stressful time, she has relapsed in mood and anxiety problems and is terrified that if her husband finds out, he’ll take the kids.  Martha sees mental illness as a bullying tool for anyone to dump her over.  Little Miss Muffet is a story she often has compared to her situation.  The spider is the mental illness she feels is dangled over her to her demise.  Martha is bullied and scared away.

Taking pills makes me feel like I’m crazy!

Note: it’s a type of crazy she interprets as being something different from the crazy of mental illness.  For Martha, the crazy that comes with medication therapy is more sinister and discrediting than the worst experience of terror any of us have ever gone through, i.e. panic attacks.

Every day, we who take medication for emotional illness have to answer to those accusations.  We contend with the fingers pointing our way, the jeering in our memory of loved ones and the boxed presumptions we find ourselves in.

This may sound a little dramatic to some out there, although familiar.  To others, it is an understatement of what they courageously confront to take care of themselves.  Each of us must come up with our own answers and find our own courage.

Martha finally decided on medication treatment and within two days she was amazed to find that she could eat without throwing up and no longer felt anxious.  She still insisted that taking medication was only temporary but getting a pill dispenser had helped her get past some of her daily battle with stigma.  She just opened the lid and poured the pills into her palm, threw them back and swallowed without looking.  Martha found it easier not to dispense each pill each day out of each bottle.  It was also easier for her to keep this information secure in the confines of our office.  For Martha, for now, this was how she answered.

Question:  How do you answer to stigma?  How do you maintain your sense of freedom when other forces tell you that you are not free?  Please tell me your story.

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Your Personal Fight For Emotional Freedom

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Self-Care Tip #151 – Fight to be a friend to yourself.

My friend Carl, after reading yesterday’s blog-post, introduced me to this gorgeous song.  I found it on YouTube connected to a slide show of our soldiers.  Thank you to our courageous American troops fighting for the freedoms we enjoy and take and take and take.  We know that when you fight, there are losses.

We all are soldiers of sorts, fighting in life for our own selves for so many reasons.  But it’s not about the reasons or motives.  God takes care of those.  So regardless of why, thank you to all of you out there fighting for your own selves.  You who want your own emotional freedom.  The good that comes from this courageous fight ripples on the life-waves and reaches us.  Thank you.  We know that when you fight, there are losses.

Carl, thank you.  Your personal fight, your courage, touches all of us.  What you do is self-care, is care for us, is care.

Let There Be Peace on Earth, by Gill Vince

Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with Me.
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be.
With God as our father
Brothers all are we.
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with Me
Let this be the moment now.
With every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow.
To take each moment
And live each moment
With peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth,
And let it begin with Me.

(child)
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with Me.
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be.
With god as our father
Brothers all are we.
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with Me
Let this be the moment now.
With every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow.
To take each moment
And live each moment
In peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with Me.

Question:  How do you see your personal fight for emotional freedom rippling into the space of others?  Please tell me your story.

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Courage Not To Presume.

Pony Express

Self-Care Tip #116 – Have courage not to presume.

Courage.  Courage is doing what frightens us.  I heard this definition and as usual I got a little stiff.  Definitions sometimes feel sticky to me and I’m trying to understand why.  Why is my lip curled?

In line the other day for the theater, a grandfather in front of me got talking.  I didn’t get any names; just that he was a grandfather of a 7-year-old girl who owned him.  Naturally he drifted into stories about her, including their most recent vacation to Knott’s Berry Farm.  They rode “The Pony Express” despite his fear and instincts.  I asked him if he was proud of his granddaughter’s courage and he replied, “She wasn’t scared!  So she wasn’t the one with courage.  I was!”  He laughed, and then I laughed, but I walked away to the ticket booth whispering, “What does he know about her thoughts?”

I see so many faces flashing across my mind’s eye.  I see them, and I hear them.  I realize their whispers have become mine because I believe them.  My patients are courageous.  These, who have not told others.  Who have not screamed when they wanted to.  These people who have put on the appearance of calm despite their fears.  They are a study in functional mental illness.

Functional mental illness, although historically refers to mal-behaviors and emotions without medical cause, now after years of increased knowledge and study, it includes their biological organic etiology.

As an example of functional mental illness I’ll tell you about Miranda, a mother of 2.  Miranda says her kids stress her out and she can barely take care of them.  However at her job, she performs adequately and no one would say she seems depressed.  She falls into bed when her kids do between 7 or 8 PM yet never feels refreshed.  Crying while pouring their cereal each day, she packs them dry bread and a pickle for their lunches.  No one would know the courage it takes for her to survive the moment and then the next.  They all presume she is fine.

After teasing apart my thoughts on courage, my lip has uncurled.  I understand that definitions bother me because they can sometimes imply freedom to presume more than one should.  We can never know people’s thoughts, motives, feelings entirely and that bit that we don’t know, may be the bit that changes their story.  If you want to read more, check out this post.

So for now, I can push down my fear of definitions, put on the face of calm, …and what?  Be a friend to myself.

And you?

Question:   Where do you need the most courage to do good for yourself?  How do you deal with your fears?  Please tell me your story.

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Toughing It Out! …Is Not What You Think.

Mental Health of our Military

Image by Truthout.org via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #114 – Tough it out.  Be a friend to yourself.

Trying to tough it out is good it’s just not what most people think.

Many people think that toughing it out means staying med-free and getting through melancholy, anxiety, emotional chaos with gritted teeth.  They gather a degree of commendation from weathering out the behavioral and emotional problems until they either feel better or don’t.

This is not the kind of toughing it out that I’m calling worthy of our life efforts.  It is in fact the opposite.  Toughing it out is doing what may be socially and culturally counterintuitive.  Getting medical care sooner than later.  Not waiting to see what will happen before getting medical care if it is indicated.  Believing the medical data, the physician you trust, the knowledge that mental illness is medical, biological and often PROGRESSIVE over time.

Waiting means you are getting more ill on a cell level and at higher risk for your future and waiting is not being tough.

Toughing it out is digging into your courage bank every day to take that pill when you feel ashamed of it.  Toughing it out is fighting for your brain’s future.  Toughing it out is sacrificing what ever you need to, to give your loved ones and yourself the healthiest you possible.  Even if that means talking yourself into it, going up against your fears, ignoring prejudice, ignoring opposing recommendations from your favorite sources.

picasaweb.google.com

This calls for thick skin.

Candace tells me she still intuitively can’t believe this, even though her mind tells her it is true.  She takes her medication but it still hurts a little every time.  Like she’s betraying herself.  Like she must grieve for herself.  Candace says the apparent calm, decrease in anxiety, improved relationship with her children, and the flowering hope eases her inner psychic pain.  Candace is drawing strength every day from the growing evidence of health.  Candace is tough.

Question:  What are you getting tough with in your life?  How do you do it?  Please tell me your story.

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It’s Not All Good

 

soundtrackcentral.blogspot.com

 

Self-Care Tip # 100 – Don’t forget what you know to be true, when other people don’t keep up with your learning curve.

You have finally started to understand that You take care of you.  You bought into that when you do, you can do more of what you want to do for others.  You believe that the responsibility to be healthy in mind and body starts and ends with the “Me.”  Isn’t that wonderful?  Yes.  Don’t forget it when other people don’t keep up.

Cynthia was on a self-awareness high.  She saw through open eyes her neglected self.  She was astounded looking at her thrashing person giving her last bit of stuff to the jobs she infrequently satisfied.  Instead of feeling defeated, however, she now felt empowered.  She was so ready!

It went well for a time.  Her husband noticed, approved, commended, and encouraged her.  They talked about it.  Her kids, reluctantly let go of her legs so she could leave to exercise.  At work, she personalized less and was not as interested in office politics – contented to do her own job.  Then it slowly started.  People started resenting her for it.  Her peers starting making jabs.  The kids would climax and tantrum just as she was about to leave to exercise.  But what really surprised her, and not in a good way, was when her husband got upset.  Not a lot.  But enough that the guilt she had talked down seized the opportunity to multiply.  It was like gremlins.  When the guilt gets wetted like that, it multiplies!

Doing what is right is not always celebrated.  Cynthia is working through that now and every day, as it is for you and me, she is finding the courage to get past that.

Question:  What has surprised you good or bad in your journey towards self-care?  What have you needed the most courage for?  Please tell me your story.

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Your Heroic Self – Waiting For Normal

Self-Care Tip #82 – Have courage to go for what is lovely to you in life.  Be a friend to yourself.

Pretty, blond, about 5’6″, slender, in her 30’s, mother and wife, no funny shapes or movements but Britt still asked me, “Am I normal?”  It takes guts to ask someone that.

I just finished this heart-squeezing book, “Waiting For Normal,” by Leslie Connor.  (Yes!  I finally read a book!  It took me 5 times as long but it was no less pleasurable.)  Connor tells us about pre-teen Addie who grew up on the waves of her bipolar mom’s chaos, salvaging bits of wreckage along the way to survive.  Addie is the life-preserver her mom uses for life.  Addie’s own buoy through it all is her hope of one day finding normalcy.  She uses all her smarts to avoid the thrust her mom’s messes force on her.  It requires her full attention.  Addie must have looked pressed for something because her Mom finally asked her

What’s so special?  What are you chasing after?!

Addie was fisting optimism when she answered

I’m not chasing after anything.  I’m waiting.  Waiting for normal.

Later Addie explains to her mom

Normal is when you know what’s gonna happen next.  Not exactly what because probably nobody gets that.  But normal is being able to count on certain things.  Good things.  And it’s having everyone together – just because they belong that way.

My son used to have shaggy hair with curls that flew at the world around him.  He came home the other day and told me he wanted it short.  I finally figured out that because none of the other boys in his class had longer hair, neither should he.  He showed me pictures of what his hair should look like.  The whole process was too cute.

We are all looking for normal.

Putting aside defining normal, for now I am content to just contemplate the largeness of the effort to find it.  The journey, the process, the coming into such a thing reveals the beauty in one’s character and essence.  It is that, rather than the “hair-cut” that makes me say, “Wow!”

When Britt, my patient, strove towards her health and normalcy, her intent in context was lovely.  She seemed to me, in those moments we shared together, as one of the great heroes of our day.  A woman of courage.

Self-Care Tip #82 – Have courage to go for what is lovely to you in life and appreciate the beauty in your heroic self.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Have you struggled with the question, “Am I normal?”  Please tell me your story.

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Believe What You Say! It Might Make a Difference.

If you want to get passionate about something, You have to believe it.  Many people speak it, read it, plan on it, but they don’t believe it.  Do you?  Do you believe that you can actually start doing what you want to do, feeling what you want to feel, become who you want to be?

And how bout the opposite?  Too many of us quietly or loudly hold our negative patterns.  A Heathcliff with Catherine scenario in Bronte‘s Wuthering Heights – slowly bringing on our own demise.  Reminds me of the mistletoe, a parasite on it’s host but accepted and beloved nonetheless.

MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung gave a wonderful TED conference, “I am my connectome.”  He tells us the good news that we are more than our genes. Our memories are not “stored” in our genes.  They live amongst the neuronal connections.  He empowers us saying that because we can change our neuronal connections, we can change our behaviors and habits – which are based on neuronal memory (indian trails.)  You see, because our habits are really memories ground into the fiber of our minds, and not into the constitution of our matter, we can make different ones.

Wow!

We may not have pixie dust or elf stones, but we do have power.  We can stop, drop and roll! to that destruction in our lives.  We can be friendly with ourselves at any level of our beings – neuronal to behavioral and emotional.  Mr. Seung, that is great news!

Self Care Tip #70 – If you are going to do it, have courage and believe it!  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  What do you think?  Please tell me your story.

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Journey

“Mumford, The screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan, describes Henry Follet, a man who is living in his fantasies.  The superior problem isn’t that he’s living in his fantasies however.  It is that he has never been a character in them.  They only included other people.  At some point he gets more connected to his own journey, which is when he started appearing in his fantasies.  Or one could say his fantasies became his reality.

Connecting to our journey is multidirectional.  It includes the folding and opening of time.  Someone asked me why I started this blog.  I told him one of the reasons is that so much of what made me who I am was shelved when I went to medical school and then had children.  Time is folding for me when I write now, connecting me here to where this writing-self was last seen then.

When avoiding crucial work, it is as if a broken person’s bits of self are walking their different directions.  There is a divorce and the kids….  What does the father do?  Five years later he is still trying to get the courage to ask them to love him again.  Relapsing negative relationships, and she found herself again with someone abusive.  Overweight, and still buying and bringing binge-foods home.

As Will Rogers said,

When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

Lately I’ve enjoyed my journey more since I stopped breaking traffic laws.  Exhale.  Now I can relax when I’m driving and think, pray, listen to podcasts, be with myself.

Immaterial things like our hopes can both connect us and disconnect us.  When a thought like, “I wish I did…” comes, when employment is more a job than an interest, when anger flares often – look at times like this as opportunities to find your path.  I found that this yearning in me was really a portal for my fantasies to come through and join me.

Self Care Tip #29 – Take your opportunity.  Be a friend to yourself.

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Successful People

“Successful people expand their dreams to move them forward, others shrink their dreams to justify where they are.”
—Sam Meers

How do you see yourself? To be truthful, any of us will find ourselves in a straddle. Which side we think we’re leaning towards will depend on emotional confidence at the time and our perception will flux accordingly. Getting yelled at by a respected mentor may make you see yourself as stalemate, but that doesn’t make it truth.

If we stayed on the exact course of our current, what do we imagine our lives will look like in 5 years? There are bits of tack and turn we influence. No matter the level of abuse suffered, individuals have a sense of their own person. Their separateness. Their choice is there held fast on the buoy of their human right.

While shrinking some dreams to justify condition, the mere courage to persist in life is a form of expansion. You might not agree with this. We all have people we scorn. But this isn’t a matter of opinion. Without expansion, we die, even the grossest of us. There are more obviously lovely examples of expansion, of going towards what is congruent with your inner self, of doing what gives you energy. When someone is in flow, aren’t we all drawn to them? When someone is not, it can be hard to make eye contact, even with yourself.

When getting friendly with yourself, give your straddle a nod of courtesy. Counter intuitive at times, this in fact promotes self-respect. The more we trust the ebb and flow down our river of dreams, the more a part of our own journey we can be.

However, if you can’t look yourself in the eye, if despite setting your jaw and keeping a strangle grip on life you still feel like the ground is sucking you under, think about a medical reason. You always have a choice.

I really liked what Mr. Meers said, but I’ll say it differently for our purposes:
Successful people expand their dreams to move them forward even while they shrink their dreams to justify where they are.

Self Care Tip # 21 – Be a success by joining your journey. Be a friend to yourself.

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My Essence – A Matter of Love

Betrayal?

Connecting that behaviors are linked to brain health is often confusing. The distance traveled to reach that point may have been long. It may have involved experiences painful to themselves and their loved ones.

For example, they may have lost a job because they couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. A divorce might have come after changing into someone irritable and angry. A trucker might no longer be able to drive on the freeway because of panic. But once they connect that this change in personality relates to a change in their brain health, how do they feel about that?

Some people feel relief. That they didn’t personally fail. That they aren’t a bad Christian. That it wasn’t because they didn’t try hard enough to “feel good,” to stop itching, to get up and do something with their life, to quit gambling, etc… Maybe they feel for a moment that judgment can be suspended for them.

However there is a group of people, maybe overlapping these, who feel betrayed. Betrayed by their very essence. The question of, if they can’t trust themselves, what is real in life at all? They struggle with the shame of betraying their own person. “Who am I if I’m not…?” and the questions roll on. It must be a question for all of us with changing bodies, Who are you if your mind gets sick?

There is the temporal line of thought, that if your brain changes, your memories, your personality, than you change. Your human form is different. Like getting your arm cut off, you have to grieve and grow a new picture of how you see yourself. A changing person through the span of life. This is in fact healthy adaptation.

There is also a thread in this weave of believing that our essence isn’t wholly related to our changing bodies. That somehow when the various curtains of life fall and open and the final curtain comes around, that this bit remains. I don’t think you can believe this unless you believe in a Love which is stronger than death.

Love is stronger than the death of my neurons, my dendritic connections, stronger than the death of my mind.

The adaptability needed for this life is a no-brainer. We can’t survive if we don’t. It takes courage to adapt when your person is changing. It takes courage when you are loosing yourself. Such courage, like someone in war or flight or determined movement that others could only imagine.

But how you define your essence also matters. I see it as a related step, but also apart from these excellent coping skills. I see it as a matter of Love. It’s win-win when Love weaves through you.

Self Care Tip #16 – Choose Love. Be a friend to yourself.

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Courage to take medication

So when is a psychiatrist going to get around to talking about medications already? Nobody really wants to take medications. But it turns out in this world that our brains are just as human as the rest of our bodies. When they get sick, what does it look like? Behaviors and emotions. Our brains are not hovering over us like a supernatural aura. When our brains get sick, our behaviors are in the fist of control about as much as our liver function is.

The people I see in clinic are some of the most courageous people I know. We find each other at an amazing time when they are aware of their plight, that of being disconnected from their journey. They are humble people, willing to consider that behavior is more than something the “will” or “force of character” can control. They use as many healthy means they can to get healthy. They believe that you can’t give what you don’t have, even to yourself.

Counterintuitive to culture and prejudice, taking medication is an act of courage.

Self Care Tip #11 – When your emotions and behaviors are messing you up, think of the many modalities to getting healthy, including meds. Be a friend to yourself.

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