Mental Health

You Are Valuable, Even After Losing So Much
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You Are Valuable, Even After Losing So Much

Artist Forrest King artismoving.blogspot.com

We all might take what we have lieft and love it.  We have this remaining and losing self.  The now person and the person that is losing something else on top of it all again and again.  Another tooth chipped.  Now it’s hard to find words.  Now training takes longer to get the same time.

We have what is left.  More or less, we have this.  This here in this moment in this person we might love, we have.  We have these with indefinite value, yet to be described by what passion and friendship we bring.  We have the bigger experience.  We have the slower pace.  We have the deeper understanding.  We have another night of rest.  We have breasts that have been remade.  We have a cancer free day.  We have a way of making bread like a story baking in a pan.  We give the value or spend our emotional bank on taking it away.

Whom of us hasn’t seen the little child’s vulnerable eyes taking a verbal slap,

“You are such a f—er!  Why did you do that?!”

The value was placed so low on that potential.

What do we do for our remaining selves?

Let us join together, lean in and enter the unknown space of discovering this person we have and are becoming during and after loss and gain.  Let us grieve together what and who has died.  Let us discover together what we have left.

Self-Care Tip:  Discover the value of what you are after losses.

Question:  Tell us your story of loss and gain in your remaining self.

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Designed to Stand But Not Alone – Day 2, Say It Out Loud

20091101 - TouchGraph friend graph (normal)

20091101 – TouchGraph friend graph (normal) (Photo credit: Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL))

Hello Friends.

Yesterday, hearing your voices was like drinking a green tea soy latte, no sweetener, extra matcha, with a scoop of protein!  Your courage to say what you like and are grateful for about yourselves out loud is supportive, inspiring and necessary for the well-being of those around. We are all designed to stand, to be accountable to self, to start and end with Me, but not alone.

Sometimes when I’m in the middle of a work-out, the urge to pack up and go fork into a greasy breakfast is almost overwhelming.  Looking around contemplating my escape, I see the Kaia-girls.  I would never make it without them.  Never!  (Arg!  She’s still here!?!  Dang-her!~  Maybe if she knows I’m going to Denny’s, she’ll leave too…?  Alright.  I’ll stay!  Darn it!)

Yes, designed for community, saying it out loud is friendly to Me.

Please join us in day #2 of our, Say It Out Loud, challenge!

Throughout the next two days, when you think of something(s) you like & are grateful for about yourself, say it out loud to us.

I’ll start!

I like my increasing Kaia-girl self-value.
Say It Out Loud.

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Say It Out Loud. Three Day Challenge.

Hello friends. Please join us at Friend to Yourself in a three day, “Say it Out Loud,” challenge.

Throughout the next three days, whenever you think of something you like & are grateful for about yourself, say it out loud to us.

I’ll start! 😉

I like my body.

Say It Out Loud.

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Tension between camps

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We all have our pet beliefs we collar, “Reality.”

How do we get these? Through our perceptions, built on the foundation of sensory input, such as, sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, emotion and logic we construct our real world.

Reality is different of course than Truth.  Anything higher than a rutting pig, (Snort! Snuffle!) will say that our reality changes as we grow, as we perceive differently.  That is to say, as we sense otherwise.

Anyone less primitive than a grub, (Munch! Wiggle!) volunteers limitations to our knowledge.  Or else we imagine Truth to be as small as the profound brilliance of our vision.

When one camp of knowledge responds to the natural tension any of us feel when opposed with the cliff wall of the unknown, how to respond?
I’m thinking

  • teen v. parent,
  • church v. science,
  • medication therapy v. homeopathic remedies,
  • to eat off of the floor v. trash what is there,
  • and whatever other contrast you and I contend with in our perceived real worlds,

we have a time, like a stone in a stream we stand on, before we pivot and move into the current.

What do we do while in that place of tension? Do we fight for what we know is right, wielding word, fist and spit in right-ness, or righteousness expected? (Watch it! Here comes a tomato!) How do we respond to the tension between what our senses have built for us and the rightness of the sensory construction of another’s reality?

(Look out! Some mud just splattered in my eye! Well that’s one way of getting to the next stone.)
Or… We could try inspecting the architecture of our beliefs, ask our own Me, “Where is the conflict?” “How did the wall get built?” Then go toward it with the humility that comes from knowing we are at least above a garden grub, if not far, in how we perceive the world around us.

We have a point when we can argue with others or we can look inside ourselves and say, “This is our tension.” “This is coming from the way I perceive things.” “This is about Me.”

One more time, we can go home to Me, where everything starts and finishes.  It’s not very nice if we don’t, to Me.  Because in the process of starting elsewhere than home, we miss the freedom, the presence, and the place of change.  That’s where the tension is, the place of change.

Question:  How does reviewing your sensory input improve your ownership of your reality?  How does owning your reality improve your friendship with yourself?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Own our reality.

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Unrequited Love of Me

tony

tony (Photo credit: Foxtongue)

A broken heart is.  Colors left behind give clues to whom was involved.

Wanda worked hard at her friendship.  She went into it with optimism.  She had chosen deliberately to do this, the steps toward taking care of herself. Taking these steps, like climbing a fine promise, notarized contract in hand.  She had the confidence of one who has turned aside from indenturehood to property.

Did Wanda get what she thought she would?

Miles was a good-looking man with nicely aged skin, obvious strength anyone noticed in his muscled limbs, and grooves more than wrinkles on his intense face.  He never lacked expression.  He was intense.  And it was with this body and emotion that he went into his relationship with Sara.

Did Miles get what he thought he would?

The most intimate exchanges, the most elemental, the very basic level of love to Me, you or any other is disappointing when it is a negotiation.  We will never get back what we gave for.  Relationships are never satisfying when they are mercantile, even with Me.

Question:  How do you get out of a mercantile relationship with yourself?  How do you give in friendship to “Me” without defined parameters of what you will get back?  When you do, what has happened in your relationship with “Me?”

Self-Care Tip:  Grow friendship with yourself as a lover not a merchant.

Related Posts:

Be as Good To Yourself As You Want Your Loved Ones to Be to Themselves

What Comes To Me From Others Is a Gift

Connecting to Others is a Condition of Freedom Rather Than Loss of It.

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Why Not Skip Medication and Go Naturallllllll?!

The little Train

The train was tarnished from soot.  The engineer, Jack, grimaced over the craft, while he hauled wood into the fiery oven hidden in her belly.  She was a steam engine and her whistle sounded through the air like a shiver breaking ice.

Indians watched from a bouldered distant peak.  They saw the smoke and marked its passage with each puff.

Just then, a mischievous current sucked up that chimney-spew like a genie to her lamp and the loud wind masked the sound of her turning wheels.  To the unfamiliar natives looking on, the tiny far off train appeared to have stopped, silent to them now and no smoke to ribbon the air.

Not so, though.  Jack did not know they were watched, he and his steely lady.  He did not know he was described in the mind’s of others.

Moving.  Not moving.  Progressing.  Stopped.

But the sensory descriptors were misleading.

Music please.  (Perhaps tom-tom pow wow drums.)

As in this tidy little parable, we think that when we get relief from symptoms, it means that the disease process is better.

Anxious?  Have a beer and vuala!  Better.  Can’t sleep?  Smoke some weed and, “Aaaah.”

No?  “Of course not!” we say.  “We don’t do those plebeian substances.  We use our medications as prescribed.  We don’t abuuuuse them.  If we need more, we ask for more.”

This dialogue is usually regarding benzodiazepines.  “Doctor, I can’t take antidepressants or those other meds!  Why is everyone always pushing drugs on me?  I’m just taking klonopin.”  Or, “Doctors over-prescribe!  I just need xanax!”

Brain disease runs something like the steam engine train.

The steam coming out of the chimney is what we see in symptoms, such as, anxiety, inner tension, fear, insomnia, irritability and so forth.  Get rid of the smoke and we think the disease is dealt with.  However, the train is still going.  The disease is still progressing, although not as notably disruptive as before.  To stop the train, we must stop the engine, or the disease process.  I’m not saying we must cure the disease, rather, just slow or stop the disease progress to treat it effectively.

Our goal is more than symptom management.  Our goal is to treat the underlying illness to preserve brain health and prevent against further injury.

Self-Care Tip:  When medically indicated, consider medical therapy.

Question:  When your symptoms improve, how do you continue toward treatment goals?  How do you go past getting “better” to full treatment?  Please tell us your story.

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Noticing the Signs – Friendship Status

We people who are friendly to ourselves act when we notice that cruelty starts to creep up. Our response usually involves a combination of simple remedies – clean air, beans and greens, sleep hygiene, exercise, water, and when indicated, medical treatment compliance.  These are remedies but they are also a process.  The remedies are the construct of our way of life.  We get out of the mind-set of being “good” or “bad.”

Question:  However, how do we notice that we are not being nice to ourselves?  Please speak out.

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Super Act Of Friendship

fitness

fitness (Photo credit: o0bsessed)

One of my biggest bestest connections is now Kaia Fitness.  In the year 2012, shortly after the onset of a life-morphing tragedy, and while in line to order my green tea no classic soy latte with extra matcha and a scoop of protein, (big smile), I noticed two bonny blonds standing behind me.

I met the initiative and creative sisters themselves.  They both practice medicine and passion for being a friend to Me, which you can imagine, had me wagging.

Would you like to join us this morning in Kaia?

Here we are thirteen weeks later and I’m spilling over in gratitude.  So much that I can’t but tell you, too.

One of the favorite lines of Kaia-girls is in brief that no matter how slow or “behind” or ashamed we are of the condition of Me, we’re still better off than someone on the couch.   And I am.

I’m better off than I was thirteen weeks ago.  My body brings me more pleasure than shame.  My beloved tenuous weaving threads, including friendships, have increased in number and I am designed for connection.  I suffer less ridiculous guilt.  I have more of my freedoms, hope, purpose and presence with the frailty of my Time-tied life.  I see Me a little more; the blend of my flaws with my fine stitches.

I’m better to others.  That’s what others notice of course.  Barely.  Not the stars in my rug, but sometimes, they notice, or rather complain less about Me.  Otherwise, they don’t.  Not much more fanfare than that.  Not much endorphin-ee drama.

Yet again, I see that it all comes back to Me.  Where it started.

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Tenuous Connections – Where is Our Rock?

Skógafoss waterfall

Skógafoss waterfall (Photo credit: big-ashb)

So thinking more about Alena and her alien psychiatrist-poser…

Why is Alena known, or recognized, by Alien?

Where Alien came from, brain illness isn’t sustained by the stress of living on her planet.  Those with brain illness either adapt to the primitive resources they live in or they, (pause,) “don’t.”  The community doesn’t know this is happening consciously.  They just know that some people are able to do what earthlings consider magic.  Those with brain illness evolved to survive.  Alien was one such benefactors of time and stress on biology.  She was not there for the process, but for the product

Earth was alarming.  It was the first time she’d ever seen someone with a broken mind.  Knowing where she came from gave her mixed feelings….

I’m getting my hands into this Time-play playtime!  Woohoo!  I have been rumbling over the beauty of all the beloved connections I enjoy, the cherished anchors and reflectors that I’ve used so long to stabilize my identity with.  My heritage, my profession, my employments, my interpersonal relationships, family, my body, currencies, and so much more gives me a sense of security.  A sense, however, in truth and not Time-less.  As so many of us know what the other side of that water-fall looks like – divorced parents, physical/sexual/emotional abuse, illicit drugs, loneliness, poverty, a bone spur or arthritis.

If Time is an arrow, what gives the increasingly obvious wispiness of our securities power?  What is our strength from?

I remember back when we discussed our Essence, the bit of Me that isn’t lost to death, suffering or brain illness.  According to, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, by Sean Carroll, he’d say this can only exist if this Essence in Me is connected to space and Time.

Question:  Where does your connection come from?

Self-Care Tip:  Discover where you security comes from.

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Feeling Afraid

Celine was made to fidget by something moving inside her.  It tooled with her body while working her over.

I’m afraid.

Rich.  We are all afraid.  Knowing it and naming it is more than many of us have the spit to do.  But not being named doesn’t make us more courageous.

I am afraid.

Celine wanted help and as her perception grew of what she was looking for, she knew.  It was fast.  Awareness appeared in progressive pictures into her own flip book.

Remember those flip books when we were kids like, Mickey Mouse tapping his foot as the pages sped by, leaning over to kiss Minnie?  Celine’s flip book showed her that she felt unappreciated at work.  She resented her authorities, lack of control and felt ashamed that she wasn’t acknowledged.  Scenes in her life gave her the illusion of movement toward more than just danger though.

Being in fear is not in itself wrong or amoral.  Sure as yams are sweet, it’s going to happen.  We all have fear.  Feeling afraid doesn’t mean that we are bad.  It doesn’t confirm the accusation or shame.  It doesn’t close on us.  It just is.  Fear.  Celine’s illusion was that she was moving toward being the wrongness, being amoral, and being especially bad.

Ironically, Celine found some comfort in this and decompressed.

The medical reasons behind fear are of all varieties and certainly important, but this post isn’t about those.  It’s about our flip books.  Lick thumb and finger and let’s see what pictures we’ve sequenced into our own illusions. We all have a book.  We all have fear.

Question:  What does looking at your flip book do for your sense of value?  Please speak.

Self-Care Tip:  Remember what makes “Me” special by being present with fear.

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Holiday stress may be a coverlet

138. i seem like someone else

138. i seem like someone else (Photo credit: rachel a. k.)

Penelope came in with her tinsel sweater hanging around her round shoulders and tinsel in her hair. She was bright and beautifully made up. I swear, you wouldn’t know she was stressed if you met her out and about or even talked with her on the phone. She was designed for holidays, in the best of ways. She innately knew how to bring tinsel out of tacky and into classy. Genes, I tell you. Genes. Despite her nature, however, Penelope, like anything leafy in the elements, she was vulnerable.

She wasn’t very old when she first became ill. Just just in life, at a point of unfolding, her colors still almost fluorescent, not yet muted by age, Penelope got sick.

Penelope was designed for pleasure, yes. Penelope was designed for spending power, yes. Penelope was designed to bring us around her into better perceived experience, yes. But Penelope got sick. And the sickness, as sicknesses often do, came and went. Sometimes, she had more space in her emotions and behaviors for her nature. Sometimes, the sickness found more space, and we around her, were not taken to places of better perceptions. We around her may not have always been conscious about it, but we didn’t like ourselves as much. When Penelope was ill, we felt more selfish. When Penelope wasn’t Penelope, we were more aware of the browning effect of life.

Why?…

Ack! Such a question we could argue over for years. So many “good” reasons. What was done to her? What choices she made? Sure. We’ll get to those in psychotherapy and try to right the course of her rudder. But her ship isn’t going well with a hole in the hull. Disease is like that. Don’t forget biology.

Penelope came in stressed, “over the holidays,” she thought.

“It’s just the holidays.”

How could Penelope look so good when she was ill? Well she is not a vending machine or a computer card. She is complex and unique and dynamic. She is a changeling, as we all are. We cannot say her tinsel and beauty define her. We give allowance. We are concerned for Penelope. “Stress,” can be the coverlet of much and take caution from her history. Brain health is not a constant for any of us and we have the added benefit of remembering the days of her fluorescence when she first lost her natural powers to spread beauty. We have the benefit of remembering when they came back and then distinguished again. We have the benefit of remembering her effect on us and use ourselves as well as a reference point.

Penelope complains of holiday stress but, although it is tempting, she is wise enough not to stop there. She came in. She came in to lift the coverlet and consider her biology.

Questions: Which coverlets threaten your ability to consider biology in your life? For you and/or those you love, what gives you allowance? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip: Lift the coverlets in your life.

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Tell Your Story

English: Vin Scully

Telling our story can be as just as easy or hard as approaching a blank canvas with a pallet and brush.  What to tell?  We wonder if others will want to hear or know us.  We wonder if we will bless or be blessed or after a blink she will turn her eyes and find another view to look at.  She will look at a view and in so doing, will qualify us as something other than.

Imagine that you are coming to see a physician for the first time.  You enter and sit.

So what has brought you here?

And there you are with another chance to tell your story.  You are trembling with the same fear that was screaming across your nerve surfaces like an Olympian bobsled on and off over that past many years.

Why am I here?!

You’re sure she can hear the sound of your os ripping as you deliver the word,

Uh!

You look at your physician and doubt her interest.

We’ve all heard a skilled interviewer on the Late Show, such as Jonny Carson, or talk radio with Jim Rome.  My best friend has always loved listening to possibly the last great baseball host, Vin Scully.  He used to listen on his transistor radio in bed late into the night when he was a kid.  What makes them great interviewers?  The stories.  It doesn’t matter who they are interviewing, talking about or show-casing, the story of the individual grips us and we feel connected and less alone.

Well, talking to your physician may not be the same as talking with Jonny Carson… but, you are.  You are the story and you and I are what has made these people renowned.  Without us, without the real connections between Me and thee, the real commonality in our humanity, in our suffering, in the discovering of how little space there is just when we thought we were alone – yes! we are worth hearing.  You and I have a story to bless and be blessed by.  Even when talking with your physician, you are what it is all about.  Speak, to bless and be blessed.

Self-Care Tip:  Tell your story to be a friend to yourself.

Question:  What is it like for you to talk about yourself?  How has telling your story been friendly to you?

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Entitled to Understand – NOT

Entitled Toddler Boy Having a Tantrum Vector Cartoon Stressed child having an emotional meltdown crisis being selfish and misbehaving entitled stock illustrations

We, many, share the not so friendly distorted belief that we are entitled to understand everything.  Bull bullhorn in hand, supported by the scaffolding round our personal renovations, we trumpet our oppression per the noncommunicating swine we once called our relations.

“Isn’t it our job to try to understand?” you ask.   Well, no.  The duty to understand starts with Me and ends with Me.  (I think I just felt a poison blow dart pierce my flesh!  Stop that!  Is this being received well!?  Hello?  Anyone?!  Ouch!  Not another dart!)

Motives too easily change to build a case against each other rather than reconcile or to account for our Me.  What does someone owe us, if not to let us understand them?  Nothing.  Sounds harsh?  Or maybe, not so harsh.  Not as harsh as being victimized.  Not as harsh as spending one’s bank on illusive control of what isn’t ours to control.  Not as harsh as the crescendo anger swells into when a child watches her parents behave poorly.  Not as harsh as watching your beloved friend “un-choose” you.  No.  Claiming title to the thoughts and behaviors of others is generally and commonly done with little insight, but it can only be policed by the individual on either end.  After all, everything starts and ends with Me.  (Plink!  Hear the pennies dropping?)

We deserve as much as the value of our own self.  Understanding others will come perhaps or perhaps not.  But it is as deserved as any other gift.  That is to say, not.

Question:  How do you stay in your space, when you are grieving the behaviors of those you love?  How do you keep your entitlement to, “Me,” where you have title?  Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Something as easy as remembering, “They don’t owe Me anything; even understanding,” can be friendly.  Keep on.

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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 Fifteen Minute Warning

KIDS HAVE FUN....ME WISH TO BE KID AGAIN TOO

(Photo credit: Kenny Teo (zoompict))

The five-minute warning wasn’t enough for my daughter.

Mommy, please tell me when it is fifteen minutes before it’s time to leave.  So I have time to finish my game.

The truth is, sometimes I forget to give a warning at all and we just have to go when we have to go!  Warning or no warning.  But my daughter had a point that reminded me how often we take for granted or even assume we have a right to be warned.  Oh the rights we possess!  Or not.  Well, not really.  We don’t have many rights in life and “the fifteen minute warning” isn’t one of them.

We have the right to love and friendship, (with who is another discussion,) but not much else.  Yet even without the right, many of us have the privilege of “the fifteen minute warning.”  And time tics away and what have we done with it?

At work we are told about working better as a team member.

At home we are asked to stop yelling when we are upset.

We are warned.  Time passes.  Pride keeps us from being friendly to ourselves often enough.  Friendly would be to forget about how we are right and hear the warning.  Being right is over-rated.  Friendly is the crisis.  Friendly is to go toward the wanting.

If we can’t do this even though we know we hear, maybe we don’t have what it takes?  That’s a turn in the warning to get an opinion of “why” from a medical professional and then to respond to the recommendations.  “The fifteen minute warning” is designed to improve our experience and readiness.  If we can’t, than shift gears into finding out why.

Questions:  What warnings have you heard that improved your experience and readiness?  Please tell us your story

Self-Care Tip:  Deliberately use warnings as the privilege that they are, rather than entitlement, to be friendlier to yourself.

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Connecting to Celebrate

Really Big Pumpkin

Really Big Pumpkin (Photo credit: alansheaven)

Hello friends.

I’m just back from two weeks of travel through four states involving lots of family, too much food and the large Iowa State Fair experience.

I spilled yellow mustard on my new clothes.  Mustard stains.

In both Iowa and Missouri, I had the honor and pleasure of conducting two workshops on being a friend to yourself.  They were well received and seemed to be considered a message most in attendance hadn’t previously considered.  I was and am really grateful to be a part of this.

I said some inappropriate things as I look back.

In Iowa approximately 45 of us processed being a friend to yourself specifically as related to “Sleep.”

In Missouri about 30 of us kept it more general, covering the foundational concepts of using the tools: Simplicity, Starting and ending with Me, Using our freedom to choose more deliberately, and Working for Me as responsibly as working to earn money at our day job.

In Iowa, the workshop was recorded, but I regret that in Missouri I forgot.  My Toastmaster friends are more awake now I am sure.  I have yet to get a hold of the video to view and critique but am hoping it will surface soon.

I am eager to see my dog now, who has been boarded at the fine Dogtopia of Temecula.  This is the first time we’ve ever boarded an animal.  The threat of repeating history of his escape from our property when we are gone has influenced our choice.  I can’t wait to see how he is.

This is a little of what I’ve been doing lately including imperfect behaviors.  Connecting with you is a way of celebrating.  Thank you.

How bout you?  Please tell us your story.

Keep on.

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Everything starts and ends with Me ….Still talking about it

You make your own definitions of Me, self, and friendship. This is mine I share because it is friendly to Me. It is not meant to be a template.

I am the bride of Christ. When I speak of Me, I speak as one claimed by Love and in Love. When I speak of Me, I speak of this person I am in that complex union, dynamic and without lines. My self is the same as to say, Me with Christ and Christ with Me.

Using the term, Me, is a general term for that part that remains in each of us that is timeless, unchanged by trauma or indignity. The Me describes who you or I are still in any dimension or medical condition. The Me does not depend on a heart beat.

Being a friend to yourself means believing and treating yourself in ways that are consistent with your belief that although we are victimized in life, being the victim is a free choice. We are free to choose.

Out of this, our friendship grows to include the truth that we accountable to ourselves. We don’t look for nidus of control outside of our friend, Me.

Our friendship grows further to include presence with our personal journey, which in turn heightens our presence with what connections we share with others. These connections naturally require bank to generate and maintain and bank, as in any country, requires hard work. To serve others demands funds, even emotional and behavioral funds, physical funds and sociological.

Everything starts and ends with Me. (Refer to above.)

Question: What is your “Me, self, and friendship?” Please tell us. I’d love love to hear.

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Consider Sleep as a Symptom of Brain Health

English: Lou Ruvo Brain Institute

English: Lou Ruvo Brain Institute (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the brain gets sick, what does it look like?  Do we grow warts, or turn purple or loose our thumbs?  How does our brain say,

Help!

Through emotions and behaviors.  That’s how.

If we were an internist, a primary care physician, we would look at the vital signs.  We’d put our fingers on the wrist, count beats of the heart and breathing, and measure the pressure in the blood filled arteries.  This would tell us some of the story, the introduction to the body.

A church secretary came in complaining of indigestion times two weeks….

Or,

In a far off land, there once was a young maiden who by chance came to a magic filled glade…

Smile.

How does one do this in psychiatry though?  We start with the vital sign of SLEEP.

A farmer in the vast expanse of corn fields went each night to his bed with determination, gritted teeth and racing thoughts.  He worried over things that others thought were insignificant.  He ruminated and chewed over information.  Making decisions followed him around as if each were a crisis life balanced on.  The farmer was awake in the night for hours before his mind turned off.  And when he awakened, he was not refreshed….

Question:  Are you comfortable with considering sleep as a symptom of brain health?  When do you decide to look for medical reasons for poor sleep verses adjustment issues?  Please tell us your story.

Self-care tip:  Get to know your story to know better about your health.

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Cultivate Fantasy To Improve Reality

I am the proud finisher of the SF Half Marathon.  It was the most beautiful run I’ve been on and  my miles ran one minute faster (twelves) than I had planned (thirteens.)  My husband coached and joined me as my birthday present, (yes, I’m rounding my fourth decade,) and I was listening to another sumptuous novel.  Oh my.  Thank goodness my emotions caught up with the undeniable blessings.  Too often, we dutifully list off our gratitudes detached, like reading a latin prayer-book.  And not often enough do our fantasies connect with our realities.  Delightful! when they do though.

Best T-shirt ever was on the road.

 

The runner told me that the quote comes from the Rocky Horror Show.  I could barely stop giggling.  Just awesome.

That was a random bit of joy I wanted to share!

Pairing our duties with our pleasures brings bank.  But today’s self-care tip is something a little to the left – cultivate fantasy and see what it brings to our reality.  (This is a brief post but I hope to write more another time too :).)

Question:  Where does fantasy fit in to your friendship with yourself?  Please tell us your story.