Employment

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Are You Empowered to Start Everything and End Everything With Me?

Yesterdays blog-post brought a few neighborly questions for us to follow-up with.

One is regarding emotions from bluebee.  Is jealousy medical?  Followed by, What part of emotion is under our control?  Indeed.

Second, Sarah quietly slipped the question under our door of how to respond to emotions and behaviors that come from brain illness.  How?  Indeed.

Third, Carl banged a little louder when asking, what keeps him in a relationship with someone who is maltreating him verses leaving?  Indeed.

There is a nice flow to these.  They are leading into the next and circle back.  Emotions and behaviors come from the brain, much which is out of our control and some of which is.  The choice to engage in the life of the ill is like any other choice.  Our own.  If it matters to us if the way the brain is working in the “other” is in their control or not, we can spend more time trying to sus that out.  I’m not sure myself when I get it good from someone mean, but it has become easier to take care of my junk rather than there’s.  For that, I will say a million thanks.  If I’m getting yelled at, I do the checks on myself – anxiety? fear? anger? fatigue? shaking? dizzy? tone of my voice? do I know what this person is yelling about? (most often it has nothing to do with Me), empathy? empowerment? You’ve told me that you are growing in similar refreshing ways.

Face Down w/Laundry and Gwen Stefani

Image by NCM3 via Flickr

I’ve seen this play out a little in my children.  My daughters and son are supposed to do the laundry every morning before they play.  I don’t know how many years now, but their arguments haven’t changed.

I’m doing this all by myself.  No one is helping me!

Mom!  He’s just laying on top of the clothes!  

Mom!  …

These questions above…;

  • where emotions and behaviors come from,
  • control over biological symptoms,
  • do I respond to others with brain illness
  • or do I walk away

These questions don’t mean much if we don’t find where our empowerment comes from.  Me.  Everything starts and ends with Me.

I’m ill for reasons I have nothing to do with, yet I will be accountable for myself and how I affect others.

I feel emotions I didn’t ask for, behaving ways that I am a spectator to rather than a whole person, yet I will do what I can to gain health.  In that, I have control.

I surrender what I don’t control to my Higher Power.  I take medication.  I exercise, guard my sleep hygiene and get regular sleep, eat responsibly, gather and engage community, attend therapy groups and/or individual, I try while at the same time I let go, I love my flaws as I love my perfections, I try to develop my natural genius, try as often as I can to pour any energies I have in that direction as I know I will heal faster, enjoy life more and be more successful at all my efforts when I do.

It reminds me of that saying, that if I have success, it is from standing on the shoulders of giant midgets.  We are all flawed.  We are all wonderful.  We are supported by others who also are full of flawed perfections.

Do I have control?  You bet.  …And no way.  Always, there are both.

Do I talk when someone is mistreating me? or mistreating themselves by neglecting their own self-care? by letting their illnesses shape their lives?  Do I walk away as that may be what my self-care demands.

Everything starts and ends with me.  There are a lot of stops along the way with other forces, but empowerment is mine.  Indeed.  That’s what I hope my kids will learn when doing the laundry.

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Being A Student… To Yourself!

Montmartre

Image by John Althouse Cohen via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #240 – Be a student to yourself.

The PossAbilities Triathlon today was the best.  It was the first triathlon for my young niece.  Doing it with her made it so much more than just a triathlon.  She is someone who works hard on what she loves.

Her father, who is my brother Vance, and I had more time to chat today, thanks to my niece’s excellent pacing.  Vance is a natural teacher as well and he’s been practicing on me our whole lives together.  The fact that we are old now doesn’t change the dynamics much and I think we are both just fine with that.

Today we talked about teaching directly.  Vance said,

To teach well, first you have to understand what their fears are, and waylay them.  Then you inspire, but you can’t inspire until the fears are examined at some level and trust grows.

Isn’t that lovely?  So my question for us today, is how do we do this for ourselves?  Sure, we want to be humble students as well as educators in the teams we work with involving others.  However, reducing this to the basics of self-care, we finger the idea that this can start right here, where things start and end with “Me.”

Understand our fears and let them lose their power over us.  Then spend our time and energy on what inspires us.  This is how we can teach ourselves and learn from ourselves!  What a delight.

Questions:  What do you think about the idea of being a good teacher to yourself?  Is it ridiculous?  Arrogant?  Possible or not?  How do you teach yourself?  Is it the same as a “doctor-heal-thyself” trap, or as described in this bl0g-post, “teacher teach thyself?”  Is there still self-care potential in this, despite its obvious limitations?  Please tell me your story.

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What We Get For Our Work

 

 

Number three on Bella’s List:

Farmer Brown hired help to get his crop in.  Half way through the job, he realized he needed more help, so he got some.  This happened at least 3 times before the job was finished.  Come paying time, Farmer Brown gave everyone the same, $100.  “What’s going on here!?” the people who worked the longest complained.  “We should get paid more!”

Farmer Brown, …well you probably know that this is my version of the story from Matthew 20:1-16.  The Farmer gave them more than money.  But what did he give?

What are we getting for what we do?  Intuitively we probably think, like the hired farm-hands, and like my patient Bella, that we aren’t getting what we should at times.

“The day has been ruined!” Bella said.  Her eyes sparkled and flashed as she spoke of her injury.  Bella was not so pleased with her labor’s reward.

The real point of our stories here – the hired farm-hands, Bella’s, and our own story – is figuring out the reference point of why we do things.  Everyone makes their reference point in their own way.  Find your reference point.  Just find it.  You’ll get more for your dollar, so to speak.

You might remember from some earlier posts, about doing what is congruent with our hard-wiring, i.e. our temperament.  This gives us more joy in our work, we are better at what we do, we feel less self-pity, and an energy generated simply by our own natural interest drives our efforts.  As a believer in biology, I’d list temperament not as a reference point, but as an influence of how we search for and how we define our reference point.

Finding our reference point is not impossible if we don’t do what comes natural to us.  Finding our reference point is impossible though if we aren’t looking.

After searching in my special way for why I do what I do in life, I found God.  Is that true?  Just ‘cuz I said God is my reference point, doesn’t make it true.

Self-Care Tip #95 – Find your reference point.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Have you actively, purposefully used your biology (like a hoe in the field) to find why you do what you do?  Is it helpful?  What have you found?  Please tell me your story.

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Are You a Victim or What?!

 

 

Number Two of Bella’s List – victim or what!?:

Last night I took my 5 year-old daughter on a sleep-over date at a hotel.  Generous I thought …and boy was it!  To me!!  I couldn’t believe how much fun I had.  I quickly realized why I had done this.

A bit of me still wants to float away on wings of the modern-martyred-Mom, and I can, because it did take a lot of time and money and energy and….  But it’s not too friendly to me.  As attractive as that flight may seem, I’ll lose air at some point and take a big fall.  Ouch.  I might fall on my kid too which is against my intuitive effort here.

Being a victim is attractive at some level, no?  My story is a softer example, but we all have tougher ones.  Like Bella’s when “she spoke of her injury.”  The gravity of her injury was created by her perception of things.  Our perception makes our emotional success.  My story about last night with my daughter sounds pretty because that’s how I perceived it.  However, I have other stories that have negative power over me as Bella’s had on her and as yours have on you.

The key here is that when we take the victim role, we aren’t just telling our story or venting.  We are feeling self-pity. But venting is not necessarily self-victimization.  Venting can be healthy.  Venting can be done without taking a victim air-bus to no-where good.  Venting can be a way of being present in your suffering, of going where the pain is and letting it lose power over you.  Self-pity only gives the suffering more power.

The great novelist and philosopher, David Foster Wallace, who courageously lived and died with major depressive disorder, encouraged,

To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties.

The willingness to learn or grow is the foot-path away from victim-ville.  Could we even say that being a victim is “arrogant?”  We – Me, my patient Bella, you – have we taken steps to tell our story, to be present, to live with the humility it takes to look at ourselves and not escape/fly-away?

Whatever it is you are going through, it might help to vent it!  Grow and learn and get bigger than that experience.

Self-Care Tip #94 – Get in your own space to choose freedom from self-pity.  Be a friend to Yourself.

Question:  What barriers have you felt to telling your story?  What has made it difficult to be in the space of your own feelings?  Please tell us.

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A Little Bit is Not Enough – Claim Full Health

The good news is, I just ate 3 chocolate chip cookies.  You already know the bad news.  Has nothing to do with my post.  I’m just sharing it for the sake of your own

Schadenfreude 🙂

…Onward.  Question:

Does emotional disease get worse even while on medication therapy?  Sometimes.  It does so more often when the disease process is treated but only partially treated.  Read a little more about this in this post if your interested.  A primary care physician recently told me, “I think the term ‘Partial Responder’ is a marketing gimmick to get physicians to prescribe more medications.  I don’t think it even exists.”

There’s a lot to be said about interview skills in sussing out the partial responder.  If I asked someone if they felt better, many things play into their response. Everyone’s responses are biased of course.  We don’t have sterile minds.  For example there’s the patient who wants to please their physician.  “Yes I’m better!”  i.e. “Yes you’re a good doctor!”  There are the patients who don’t want to be patients and minimize whatever they’re going through.  There is the physician who leads the interview.  “So, you’re feeling better?”  “The medication is helping?”

Partial response means that at the end of a full treatment initiation period, there is some disease remaining but a reduction of disease.  For example, in depression, I may no longer be suicidal, but I still have trouble feeling pleasure in life.  In cancer it means that there is tumor reduction of at least 30%.

Now why would a physician presumably agree that there is a partial response in cancer, but not agree that it happens in mental health?  Anyways….  (Ahem.)  When we partly respond to mental health treatment and don’t push further for full response, about 70% will relapse.  Versus maybe 25% in those who reached their pre-disease baseline emotional health through treatment.

Don’t get lost in this.  The point is, get treated and get fully treated.  Mental illness is progressive and causes changes at the cell level.  The brain is connected to the rest of our body.  The brain is human.  A bit better, is not enough.

Self Care Tip #61 – Go all the way!  Claim health.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Did you find this to be true in yourself or someone you know?  Please tell me your story.