Mental Health

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Self-Care Workshop for Parents

A Series of Thursday Night Workshops

Thursday, February 9
Thursday, February 16
Thursday, February 23
Only $10 per session for 3 sessions.  $30 total.
Workshop and Q&A: 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Workshop Address:
River Springs Charter School, Murrieta Campus – Recreation Room
41862 Kalmia Street
Murrieta, CA 92562-8825
We will work to define and teach self-care, attack guilt, stand up to shame, live as we choose despite stigma and work harder than we ever have on perhaps the hardest job of our lives. Self-care is not weak but rather courageous. It brings us to humble accountability for our lives, not seeking to erase our history but still reminding us that we are free to start over any time.
These workshop lectures are informal and sensitive. Dr. Q believes in a self-care approach to personal mental health.
Please join us for an informative lecture on personal and family mental health issues.

(Private sessions are available by calling (951) 514-1234 for an appointment either in person or by telemedicine via Skype (www.PrimeTelemedicine.com).)

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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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Resist The Lure of Suicide

Dangerous Risk Adrenaline Suicide by Fear of F...

Image by epSos.de via Flickr

Sometimes I wonder, how come other people get to get away without having to deal with this?  Why can’t I get a break?

Heidi wasn’t talking about fair or foul fortune in life.  She was talking about suicide.  Heidi found the suicide idea alluring and promising.  She found life unfair and death a form of equalization.  She reminded me that suicide contagion is a real effect.  I didn’t know this before.  I don’t know when it became an understanding for me, but it was after medical school and definitely after residency.

So much of what I know, came to me outside of those places of learning.  So much of what I know, came from my patients and a settling effect into my specialty of practice.  I have learned, in one way of consideration, too much about suicide.  In that way, I wish I didn’t.

There are good things too, of course.  Suicide is no more moral or amoral than another act in life, it is simply (if one could use such a word with this) and most objectively the last.  I remember commenter Mike J said on December 17, 2011,

Whenever I feel suicidal I remember that I’m going to be dead a long time. As bad as the pain is, I understand but, why rush to get there?  

Life is like pizza or sex, even when it’s bad it’s kinda good.

I know.  Who wants eat bad pizza?!  Sigh.  Each to his own 😉 but you get the meaning – clever man.

Mike J has used this to inoculate himself perhaps to build suicide resistance.  He and you might be interested to know that the CDC takes the risk of “catching” suicide so seriously that they have made formal recommendations for our protection.  In reading them, we find friendly ways to protect ourselves not only from suicide, but also from the contagion of other extreme thoughts that actions such as suicide cluster in; such as self-injury, catastrophizing, all-or-none thinking, and self-flagellation.

Suicide is contagious as a learned behavior, which is part of why it is so confusing for Western Cultures to conceptualize it in any way apart from morality.  Another reason we have a hard time not moralizing suicide is that we still struggle with where emotions and behaviors come from.  (But moralizing emotions and behaviors is for another discussion.)

When I heard Heidi say those words,

Sometimes I wonder…

despite the patients I have known who’ve died by suicide, despite the knowledge gained in clinical practice and despite the diagnosis I had already reported to her insurance carrier – I had an autonomic response.  My skin erupted in goose pimples, breathing sped up and I realized I was afraid.  Despite being a psychiatrist whom our community imagines thinks of who is going to commit suicide next all the time, I am not.  I am not that jaded.  I am affected and I am still taken off guard.  “Heidi,” I thought.  “No.”

Heidi had the “benefit” of media exposure to suicides, media who was promoting suicide contagion through learned behaviors but also as activating her already infirm brain to increase in degree of illness, producing more suicide-thought symptoms.  When I weighed Heidi’s risk of hurting herself knowing her medical condition, I had thought, “Ok.  She’ll make it. We’ll do this and she’ll heal.”  But when the knowledge of news-worthy suicides spread in her, I knew her medical risks might be catalyzed and I knew enough to be afraid.  “No Heidi.”  What to do?

The CDC tells us to turn the copycat-suicide risk upside down by using the  media, which the gypsy in me really likes.  Instead of being silent and afraid, we can describe the help and support available, explain how to find persons at high risk for suicide, and tell about risk factors for suicide.

Today is Christmas and you may be wondering why I am speaking about suicide today.  It is because I’m hoping that by going toward our fears and our places of pain, that they will lose power over us.  I am hoping that on Christmas, which is for some a positive time, that we have a knowledge that Christmas is for others much less.

Furthermore, I am hoping that we know that we and Heidi are up against our illnesses as well as media-poisons.  And most importantly, I hope that we also know that we have power.  We don’t have to be a victim and we are free to choose.  At every level, we are free.  In every paradigm, we are free.  We are free until we do not – AKA, die.

I’ll take it.  I hope Heidi and you do too.

I hope you will speak into the wind if it be windy.  I hope you will look into the flash if you must and I hope you will fight against your own destruction as long as you can choose.   I hope you know that you are free.

Questions:  How do you oppose the lure of suicide, even when you have to oppose it repetitively and against multiple forces?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  When others inappropriately describe suicide and when your thoughts tell you to die, be your own friend by speaking about suicide, even to yourself, with this knowledge.

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If You Want To Die, Tell Others.2011/10/17
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The Holidays and Lonely Me

Feeling anxious about Christmas, or whichever December holiday celebrated?  We are not alone.  We think we are.  We worry about the in-laws, parents, money, gifts for our kids, keeping the romance, abandonment, alcohol abuse, anniversary-grief of loved ones lost, and on and on.  I’m thinking now especially of our dear blogger-friend, Lisa, who is spending this first Christmas without her mom.

Lisa, we are standing with you.  We are weeping with you.  You are not alone and we value you.

In this precious sum of days, “the holidays,” going into the space that holds our fear seems almost morally wrong.  (Do we really have the responsibility we perceive we do to be “festive?”)  The smiles and joy appear to occupy any organ-cell(s), from the lowest creature to our neighbor, who doesn’t deserve more than a broken shoe in his stocking.  We think,

How can this be?  Why don’t I feel joy or care?

Even when our mind knows the true answers that we are not chosen to suffer, we are not alone and that we are safe to be in the space of our fears – even then, we don’t perceive it.  In the cold environment of our lonely selves, white breath condenses, freezes and, made heavy in winter-thought, falls to the ground before the “knowing” has a chance to reach the rest of us.

There are no universal-tips to dispense, cups of warm cocoa or four-sided tickets, except this.   Remind any part of us that can hear our friend, that is to say Me:

We weep together.  

We are present with our suffering.  This does not take sincerity away from the things we actually do still enjoy and feel pleasure with.  Inversely, feeling pleasure does not deny the grief or other negative feelings.  

We will make it past this.    

We love ourselves and see our flaws as tools to use towards furthering our efforts in self-care – potential assets.  

We claim our freedom to choose to start over at any time, to choose not to be a victim and to go where our intuitions wrongly advise us not to – our fears and shame.

We take our medication, despite stigma. 

We account to ourselves, despite what has happened in our lives.  

We keep it basic when things complicate.  We return to the home of Me whenever our view  of where we are in time films over.

Keep on my friends.  We are persons of courage and value.

Questions:  What fears complicate your holidays?  How are you friendly to yourself during this time?  Please tell us your story.

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How To Stop A Relapse Before It Starts

Australian garden orb weaver spider, after hav...

Image via Wikipedia

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah…

– Leonard Cohen

Relapsing in brain illness is the pits.  The prodrome, as it starts creeping into our awareness, is worse than knowing we are about to walk into a spider web with the spider and his dinner still in it.  It’s so horrible that even before the prodrome hits, imagining a relapse can trigger foreboding and anticipatory anxiety.

What will I do if I…?  

Dear God no…

Recently we did a brief series on ECT and discussed how ECT can improve brain health, signal neurogenesis and trigger healing.  This brought many of us to wonder about what causes brain damage.  It became apparent that many of us had forgotten that brain illness, in fact, damages the brain.  We still have a hard time, despite all our progressive activism and awareness, believing to the core that the brain is human, that emotions and behaviors come from the brain and that a diseased brain is what generates disease symptoms as seen in emotions and behaviors.  We still have a hard time believing that the brain responds to medication, much like the liver does.

What?!  Depression causes brain damage?

What?  

Now compound that with the spider’s cousin, Medication-For-Life, and you’ll see us doing a funny walk-hop-dance in the dark to avoid what we wish we weren’t getting into.

The wonderful bit about all this is that staying on medications, even for life, is the best way to dodge the worst of it.  Sure, even with medications, as prescribed, compliant and all that fluffy five-star behavior, we still relapse.  “Depression should be considered as a continuous rather than an episodic process,” as stated so well by French biomedical expert, Vidailhet P.   But, (this is really good news,) when we relapse, we do not drop as fast, we do not fall as low and we do not hit as hard when medication compliant.  Staying on medication is prophylactic against those miseries.  Staying on medication is protective against progressive brain disease and it’s deteriorating effects.  Staying on medication is friendly.

…Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

–Leonard Cohen

Question:  What have you noticed that staying on your medication has done for you?  How do you manage to stay on it even when you don’t want to?  

When you’ve come off of it and relapsed, how was it different from when you relapsed while still maintaining your medication therapies?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – Stay on your medication.

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AfterShocks (…Smile) From our ECT Series

Reference cat

I am hoping to get a running stream of references for those interested in finding out more about ECT.  To start, some are:

  1. As relayed in our last blog post, check out Mayo Clinic
  2. Kitty Dukakis: Shock Therapy Saved My Life – ABC News on abcnews.go.com
  3. Kitty Dukakis And ECT – CBS News Video
  4. Kitty Dukakis And ECT video – CNET TV
  5. Katherine Kitty Dukakis on ECT | Psych Central
  6. Kitty Dukakis & Shock Therapy | World of Psychology
  7. Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy – Amazon …
  8. Kitty Dukakis Backs ECT for Depression : NPR
  9. Scientific Articles on Neurogenisis From ECT as described on PubMed
  10. Mortality Rate From ECT
  11. University of Maryland describes their understanding of ECT as a treatment option for Bipolar Mood Disorder and Depression
  12. Currently under research at Duke University, “Not-So-Deep Brain Stimulation:  Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
  13. I also really love the 1st hand words from    Here is one of her excellent statements – “No one really knows how ECT works. For the longest time everyone just said it “rebooted” the brain. Hardly scientific. What we now know is that ECT creates neurogenesis, in other words, neuron growth. And this is needed because long term depression kills brain cells and shrinks the brain. (Antidepressants also induce neurogenesis, FYI.) So ECT is able to make connections in the brain that weren’t previously there, and it makes them very, very quickly compared to any other method.”  She has done her research.
  14. Also, enjoy reading The Bipolar Badger who is going to be writing more on his experience with ECT this week (he’s promised).  The Badger says, “there is very little positive or objective is more like it out there on the interwebs. While I do not expect every post out there to be positive as not everyone has a great experience with ECT. It as important to mention positive outcomes as well.”
If you know of more, please tell us!
Be a friend to yourself.  🙂

 

 

 

 

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The Non-Dramatic Ending To Our ECT Series

Bert the Turtle

Image via Wikipedia

Not much traffic over here since drifting into electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) territory.  That’s alright.  Everything in its own time.  We got some feedback from some who didn’t find ECT helpful, some who would never be interested in ECT but not much from anyone who has found ECT helpful – and I know you are out there.  Healthy and quiet about it.  I know because I know from my patients and from the studies and statistics available.  You are there.  And you are not alone.

I was corresponding with my trusted mentor on this subject, Richard Weiner M.D., from Duke University, who has treated patients with ECT for 40+ years.  He referred us here at FriendtoYourself.com to the clean presentation by Mayo Clinic.  If you are interested in further introduction into ECT, check it out.  They have a lovely video, outline and inquiry resources.

On a slightly shifted topic, I’d like to introduce you to my friend, B.D.Erline.  This guy’s really rocking the friendship thing to yourself these days.  He’s writing and spending himself on his new, “Act-Like-You-Wanna-Live” series.  It’s brilliant.  Say hello if you’d like.

That’s all for tonight my friends.  I thank you for coming along even when topics interest you less than other days.  Keep on.

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Celebrating Your Courage Will Connect You With Your “Me” and With Community

Veterans Day

A seriously cool veteran was cruising Old Town today on his Harley with about fifty American flags affixed in mysterious ways to his bike and person.  I cannot figure how, but those flags were not going anywhere he was not.

I had forgotten today is Veterans Day, even though my kids were all home, off from school, properly running amok.  This man, in his leather skins and industrial number of stars and stripes, reminded me.  As we approached each other from opposite sides of the street, I saw him nod to another biker passing him by.  His nod was enough to say, “Hello.  You are not alone.  I am not alone.  We connect by this brotherhood.”  I watched him in my rearview mirror and immediately dialed my dad, of course.   “Happy Verterans Day.”

Sometimes we do not wear our history as confidently as this cool vet.  How messy that would be, right?  Imagine a world where people used their hard-earned losses as a tool to empathize with themselves and others.  Where people’s pain was used as a force to connect with their Me and with others.  How tiring to receive nods, to accept judgments and applause, as it may be.  Right?  Company can be a burden.

This is my guess as to why not many of us speak up about what electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has done for us.  We hear about the miracles of medication therapies from first person reports, heck, even second, third or tenth hand.  We do not hear much about the miracles of ECT.  Instead, we hear the sound of quiet or else hopeless barbarism.

I was talking with a patient, Carla, about ECT as an option for treatment, and we laughed that we are anesthetized for a colonoscopy for much longer amounts of time than we would if we had ECT.  They seemed like such funny things to juxtapose.  The convulsion lasts around thirty seconds and you are done.  There are no broken bones.  No tongues bitten through.  There are no chickens sacrificed on anyone’s chest.  Carla had never heard about the physician-patient who had undergone thirty-six ECT treatments as a patient, whose morbid melancholia resolved and who later returned to practicing medicine in full capacity.  Why would the physician tell people about his history?  What kind of nods do you think he would get?  What patients would be willing to go to him for medical care?  Carla had not heard about the gamers, computer programmers, the nurses or anyone from the functioning productive public who had the courage to fight for themselves by choosing ECT.

My patients with whom I discuss ECT have concerns.  You have concerns.  Much of the world is concerned.  There are reasons.  ECT has improved farther than Jack Nicholson’s report on One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, though many of us were alive when his movie was first viewed.  The distance we have come in refining the practice of ECT is out of proportion to the distance in time from when ECT was not much more than sticking your finger in a socket and getting voltage in a continuous sine wave for therapy.  Is it shameful being connected to that history?  Is it too soon to say, “These are the ancestors I claim?” You know what to do with shame.

There are few medical specialties that gather as many opinions as psychiatry.  Yes.  Well there are even fewer medical treatments that are found in the company of so much frothing opinions than ECT.  No wonder we are quiet.  No wonder we are concerned.

So, although we veterans of ECT perhaps have not spoken up in our community, although we may not tear up at ceremonies for what our courageous self-care has done for our country or understand how we fit in, although we may not hang flags or tattoo it into our skin, we are courageous important citizens in company.  We are heroes.  Maybe not as cool in leather, but we are where we are because of those who have come before us and for what we have carried on.  We have suffered and died and lived and we are connected.  We have community and we are not alone.

Happy Veterans Day.

Self-Care Tip – Celebrate your courage.

Questions:  How do you celebrate what others think is shameful but you know is not?  What have you found in doing so?  What has gaining your community done for your ability to celebrate?  Please tell us your story.
Series on ECT:
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Consider the Barrier Stigma Plays in Your Ability to Take Care of Yourself

Esther... The Girl Who Became Queen DVD Cover

I am just going to come right out and say it.  I have been trying to be clever, a Queen Esther toward her King and Hamon, on behalf of the people she loved.  (Yes.  I am Queen Esther in this story.  You can play her in another one.  Maybe tomorrow.)  I have been talking about treatment options for brain health and it is just not going where I was trying to take us – ECT.

ECT, my friends.  Electroconvulsive Therapy.  Many people see this as an extreme option for the dire, filtered out treatment failures.  That is an ugly description but I believe pretty close to what we have culturally got.  Many of you have told us how you escaped receiving electrically induced convulsions.  You hid from the boogie man and lived to tell us.  (There are chemically induced convulsions but we have more control of the convulsions through electricity, so that is the standard of care.)  Others have testified that it destroyed them with a catalog of specific and nonspecific complaints.

Interestingly we have not heard from you who have received ECT.

Come out, come out wherever you are.

Stigma perhaps hides you, and we can understand why.  Stigma toward ECT is like stigma toward anything – pretty off topic and hurtful.  Although it is improved by education and empathy, it is not fun challenging it “alone.”

Tonight I am not going to talk about the pros and cons of ECT, but to say that you are not alone.  You who are in treatment or have been in treatment or are considering ECT – would you tell us what you know, personal or impersonal?  There are many of us who would benefit from your education and empathy.

(What would that do to stigma?  What would that do for us?)

It would be wonderful to hear questions any of you have, as well, and anything related to ECT that you would like to share.  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – Consider the barrier stigma plays in your willingness to receive treatment and to connect with others.

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What We Will Do For Brain Health – Looking For Heroes

Death and the Maiden #2

Image by CapCat Ragu via Flickr

My dad is turning seventy-seven tomorrow folks.  He could have died a gazillion times before now, but it is the tumbling of those near-deaths into big life that teaches and recruits me.  He makes life feel like open space, warm skin, color and lyrics.  Now his spine is crumbling, his legs are weak, his lips are always moving in and out like a rabbit and he’s almost too hard of hearing to comfortably socialize with.  Still, it is the life, the interest he has, the way he doesn’t stop growing that somehow dims the many times he might have died.  Why does the one time he will die seem impossible to juxtapose against any future then?  Where will life go, if he is not there to infuse us with his humble will?  I think it may fall asleep with him but I know it will not and I cannot imagine it otherwise.

These past few posts we have talked about “special efforts” for brain illness.  We asked, “Is there any treatment you think is too extreme to consider to get brain health?”  We have not said the reason we cannot fairly answer.

I don’t know how life will be without Dad; we never know how life will be when our brain is bad and then more bad.  It’s hard to tell.  We can only imagine and usually our imagination will be wrong anyhow.

Any answer to this question, “Is there treatment you think is too extreme to consider to get brain health?” is shaped by our understanding of what “extreme” means.  It changes shape and margins with the degree of brain illness.  With each turn, as our disease process exacerbates, so progresses our willingness to believe what is reasonable versus what is “extreme.”

Many of you have told us of your own specifics in your fight for brain health.  People do heroic things and I’m thinking you and I might have a bit of a living hero in us.  In part, it is the inherent unknown in growth that testifies to life itself.

“Is there treatment that you think is too extreme to consider to get brain health?”  I imagine my answer would be, no.  Please tell us more about yours.  Your view from your degree of extreme helps.  Keep talking.

Self-Care Tip – Let the hero in you speak, grow you and testify to life.

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You are Valuable. Being With You Is A Privilege. Even for You.

A scattering of "brilliant" cut diam...

You are valuable.

Things in life; status, emotions, perception of different realities change – but this will not.  You are valuable.  Any time with you, even if only in your thoughts, is an immense privilege – for me or anyone, including you.  You? Privileged to be with you?  Yes.

Have you ever lost yourself?  Have you felt the heat hit your face when your thoughts fly into a rage, words rushing out as if exploding dynamite.  Bewildering, no?  You know then.

Have you forgotten where your car keys are but do not care because you are still in bed and have no motivation to move.  Your calendar, that once excited the tap of your fingers across your keyboard, holds no interest now.  You hide, ashamed but mostly you just do not want to explain to others.  “Too much energy,” you think.  If so, you know then that being with you is a privilege.

All these things you despise are reminders that you are precious and of immense value.  You are worth anything and everything to have the chance of holding once again.  You are the reason people crossed the prairies, fought against the sun and hunted for food to survive.  You are the reason the ark survived for forty days and forty nights.  You are the reason precious metals are considered lovely.  And it is because of you that you want to be your friend.  You are valuable.

In the previous chapter, we talked about Briggs and his wife.  They did not like the condition they were in, but they valued themselves as evidenced by seeking help.  While taking their history, I gathered together the names of medications Briggs had taken, when he took them, why he took them, how long, why he stopped and what they did for him.  And then the foreboding came.  I started thinking about numbers.

Now, you know that I am not a number person.  Remember?  “Big fat F.”  (F for feeler in terms of Jungian Typology.)  But here was Briggs and when the numbers started obstructing my “F” I got uncomfortable.  That meant to me that Briggs was risky.  He could die.

In Chapter One, I asked you, “Is there any treatment you think is too extreme to consider to get brain health?”  I did not say this directly to Briggs but I said it.  In my thoughts, Briggs is so courageous to fight the cruel sun the way he does.  In my thoughts, he is why freedom and fresh flowers and hope remain.  He is valuable.  I wanted to know his answer.

“Briggs, what do you want to do now?” 

Our culture does not remember that Briggs is the reason that diamonds cost more than more.  Culture tells us that he is damaged and not so much of a treasure.  Culture says, some treatments are shameful and the value of hiding shame is more than the value of Briggs, or me, or you.  For shame.  The value of Me is more than the value of hiding shame.

We are part of culture and culture is part of us.  Knowing what we want to do when what we have done has not yet worked, this knowing begins with our culture and with our self-value.  This knowing of Me increases our freedom to choose.  Knowing the value of Me increases our courage to choose what is difficult, what takes energy and hard work and a standing up against stigma and the taking of risks.  Knowing what we want to do when starts with knowing the value of Me.

You are valuable and being with you is a privilege.

Questions:  

  • Do you know your value?  

  • If you are lost, what are you willing to do to be with yourself again?  

  • How has knowing your self-value increased your freedom to choose?  

  • How has knowing your self-value helped you decide what to do when you were or are ill?

Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip – Remember your value.

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You Are Allied, Chosen and Of High Value to Our Efforts In Self-Care

Squirrel

Image by nsavch via Flickr

I remember starting with my research team about eight years ago. Some of the terrain between then and now returns like a welcoming committee every time I consider a team venture.

My research team and I have learned a rhythm and trust in each other’s talents that constitutes much of the travel pleasure experienced. However, knowing that their excellence is “behind” me, in front, and surrounding has been much of my medium for improvement. It has taken a lot for me to get this far, not absconding what we still hope for. What obstruction a colleague is when they lose their interest in growth. I am thankful they allow me multidimensional space to change, know my flaws and relax to know theirs. The ability to gift this to someone takes a lot of bank.

One of the beauties of having had received this type of gift once, is that it improves our vision to know where we might find it again. You readers have chosen me to work with but I have also chosen you and this is why. You have bank. Thank you for being persons of such high value.

When someone wonders about our talents, they are simultaneously wondering about our flaws. Standing under such scrutiny takes courage, I admit, but courage is improved by a sense of safety. Thank you for being safe. That takes bank.

I am a teacher. I am very good at teaching about emotional quotient, emotional and behavioral insight and interpersonal exchange. I am very good at teaching efficiency and perspective to achieve that. I am a Jedi in intuiting emotional milieu and harnessing that information into the goal at hand. I can do this for others, as well, with empathy and speed. I am talented.

Now. Surely when put this course way, and with your growing familiarity with me over the past one and a half years, you have some knowledge about my flaws. I am inspired that you believe more in my brilliance than in my Achilles. I am inspired that you ally yourself with me to make sure that my flaws do not kill me off and thereby kill the self-care work we endeavor together. That takes a lot of bank.

Your bank is more than you were given in your gene-purse. Your inheritance does not account for your long hard work on the continuum of growth. That is from intersecting personal dimensions that include things like in-process God-deposits, choice and more choice.

It is said that wealth begets wealth of which you are a rich example. Your riches are blessed, just as the men who did not bury their gold. I am happy to be with you, who are getting more bank. I am smart enough to know that after the shower, I will find something in my benefit. Ruth knew that of Boaz. Pond fish know that about the rain. I know that about you.

We are at a turning of seasons now, when creation takes stalk. Like so many squirrels, brown bears, tree frogs and you, I am glad when my pantry and borough reflects that I have a team, (allies to my desire and labor to be a friend to myself,) who are safe and rich and want Me. Wow. That is what they call, “Bank.”

Questions: How does it feel to know that you are known as, “Money-Bags?”

How do you choose allies to your self-care venture?

How has your sense of safety affected your ability to invest in yourself?

Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip – Remember that you are chosen and of high value.

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Secure Connections Allow Us to Feel Safe When Proximate or When Distant From our Other

Your romantic partner just left on a distant work related job.  Inside, two days later, you feel a growing chill.

You are not alone in this type of response. Physical separation can challenge intimacy. (Save the snarky comments on the positive influence physical distance can also have Carl. 🙂 )20111013-114942.jpg

We want safe connections. What and how do we get those?

Secure interpersonal connections allow us when together or apart, in any place we find ourselves, we find that we are still connected.

In contrast, when you and I, he and she, her and she are doubting our own self and/or each other, in crisis and unpaired spirits, when together or apart, in any place we find ourselves, we find that we are not. We are not connected. Connection isn’t only about proximity of person to person.

This can be one of the healing forces in victims of abuse. In the discussion of our last post, Col said:

I have been trying to figure out how to connect back to a part of me kind of lost behind….

…Time to build some trust bonds.

Likewise, Antonia reminded me of this.  Although she came in with “her eyes rolling in her head” – her words weren’t always entirely connected, Antonia’s courage in life was undiminished.  I learned a lot from this survivor who spoke with a Sevillian accent, (including the theta sounds.)

I am so pleathed to meet you, Doctora!

Her teeth were stained and overlapped each other and the right side of her face and right arm I saw were in a ruin of tumbled scars. Story unfolded that she was molested as a child by her brother for years. Her mother had died young and her father had helped her understand that that was what girls were for. Escaping from Spain to France, she married in hopes to be given a “start-over.” Her husband was violent though and finally when he lit her on fire, she was hospitalized long enough to grow some scars; inside and out. She threw herself into another “start-over,” this time including God and three years later, landed in Temecula.

Throughout the progress of her story I was sounding dismay at her suffering. However, I couldn’t for very long at any time before she’d offer me comfort to me!

No no! That was all before….

…I am thankful for my life!

I hab so much! God is really good to me. He sabed me!…  Her scars were tight around her soft smile and eyes.

I know in my boots that Antonia is not all that she is today because of her medications, psychotherapy and life-saving skin grafts.  She is connected.  She is connected to her Me and to her Other.  She has security that is bigger to her than her insecurities.  (Remember yesterday when Suzicate described the friendliness of that?  Thank you Suzicate.)

This ties us in to one of our premises of what it takes to be our own friend – accountability to Me.  Although we are all victimized, being the victim is our choice and we have the power.

Questions: What has grown your sense of safety in your connections? How does your perception of abuse, victimization and maltreatment relate to this? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  You have the power to have safe connections to self and others.

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Seeing Your Brain As The Place Emotions and Behaviors Come from is Terrifying

Terror

Image by pablokdc via Flickr

Where do emotions and behaviors come from?

Now think about it and answer your true beliefs.

I was speaking with a wonderful physician the other day to whom I asked this question, (let’s call her Doctora.)

I respect Doctora for her character, personality, standard of medical practice and interpersonal beauty. She is a bulldog in the operating room. When patients need studies done that insurances won’t pay for, she tears barriers to treatment apart with vicious tools of rightness. And she cares.  She sits.  She asks.  And she cares.  She sees the person in the paper gown, each one for the person she knows them to be and the person yet unknown.

I admire Doctora greatly not only for these qualities but also because it gets personal.  I, who have my own special practice of medicine, cannot do her’s.

When just a green bumbler in medical school, there was a fateful day when I shadowed another great artist of medical care into a locker room.  I suited up in that blue sack they call scrubs.  I put little blue sacks over my tennis shoes too.

Do you know why there are blue sacks on the surgeon’s shoes?  So that when wet things come out of the human body and fall onto their feet, their toes won’t feel squishy. Yep. That’s what was going through my mind as I scrubbed my hands, each finger and each finger nail the ten minutes it takes to reach what is considered clean.

Surgery in progress, the color red mixed with a smell and monstrous sensual force that clobbered me to the ground.  I swooned, gagged and promptly ended my surgical career.

There is nothing more irritating to a surgeon than someone who doesn’t appreciate the “fun” of “cutting.” Yes. I irritated this mentor and others too I’m afraid.

This doesn’t keep me unfortunately from pleasuring in telling people, “I am licensed to do surgery.”  I am you know.  Any Jane with a medical license can pick a scalpel up and bring back the dark ages, or contemporary, depending on who holds the license.  I’m irritating to my mentors, remember.  It reminds me how anyone can go online and pay to become a marriage registrar, i.e. perform a marriage ceremony for couples.  My brother did that twenty years ago and has yet to perform the marriage ceremony for a willing couple.  For real judges and clergy, this might be irritating too and that makes me a little happy as well.

Anywho, Doctora and I were rolling with the injustices haranguing us in the practice of medicine, both from the angle of the physician and the patient. I was pumping her up for being the cutting-wonder who she was and she was dutifully marveling at my jabber-mouth work that she would, “never be able to do in a million years.”  Somehow this brought us round to how our culture avoids embracing the biological paradigm of anything inside our skull but is so willing to celebrate it for any other part of our human bodies.

Where do emotions and behaviors come from?

Doctora answered me with a frozen breath. Then after I soiled the air with a lot of jabbering and she was finally able to speak, she said,

I would just be horrified if my brain got sick!

I wondered if it was scary enough to clobber her to the ground, but I do agree.  Terrifying.  Don’t you think?

Question:  Is that why hardly anyone can speak about the brain being human and largely responsible for where our emotions and behaviors come from? How has this played into your experience of self-care?  Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip – Go to the fear that keeps you from embracing your biology to gain more freedom.

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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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Fighting For Brain Health Is At The Core Of Being A Friend To Yourself

Nose-picking in progress.

Image via Wikipedia

Demanding what we cannot give is a cruel relationship with ourselves.  It is cruel that we must have insight to pursue health treatment for the brain whose variety of illness destroys our capacity to see into ourselves.

It’s one thing for us to choose not to do what we see is to be done.  We all choose not to take care of ourselves by degrees.  We all make choices against information and sight;

Smoking, exercise, sugar intake, sleep hygiene, working more hours, avoiding interpersonal connections, soda, driving fast, jay-walking, hand-washing, self-medication, self-injury, brushing hair from the top down, splashing our soup, flossing, nose-picking and eating with our mouth open.

Insight is there and we choose not to.

Even so, it is arrogant to presume insight into our own human condition and the more I know, the more I agree with the humility of any great teacher – there is so much out there that we don’t see into.  However this is critically different from the inability to see into and that is the cruel irony of requiring a decision that our brain is unable to be informed about.

There are a number of these.  I’m wondering if you can tell us about your own story of what healing has done for your ability to “see?”  It’s a service to many to know that fighting for brain health is at the core of being a friend to yourself.

Self-Care Tip – Fight for brain health – it is at the core of being a friend to yourself.

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Victim to Emotions Versus The Friendliness In Accountability

Thin layer chromatography is used to separate ...

Image via Wikipedia

It’s just hard!

It is hard.  Do you feel like a victim?

Yes I do?  It’s hard when they are making you feel this way and no one gets it unless they are here fighting against both sides like I have to.

Juanita’s self-perception and emotions; suffering is special and specific to Me, I am chosen to suffer, I am alone in my suffering and I am helpless, were carried by the air particles through our room.

In 1910, Russian botanist Mikhail Tsvet used water to do this to plant dyes.   The water in the plant dyes carried the pigment, separating them for his needs.  This is now called chromatography and we use it to determine what makes up a particular flavor or scent, to analyze pollutants, to find traces of drugs in urine, and to separate blood proteins.  You might remember doing this yourself as a child in the simple science experiment with a marker, a couple drops of water and a coffee filter.

Juanita’s son also knew about chromatography, I could tell.  He may not have called it that with words, but he did call it out with his body, his eyes and the muscles around his lips told me as I watched that the emotions had made their way over to him and that he was bringing them inside.

Some people call emotions contagious and others may describe them as spreading.  No one thinks they don’t travel.  No one thinks they remain stationary.  In fact, if we were to reduce everything in the known world, living and nonliving matter, and expand our thoughts into a large large amount of time, we’d agree that nothing is stationary.  Furthermore, everything is changed by the influencers in its universe.

Juanita’s son knew this even if he didn’t cognitively piece it together.  He was taking in his mom’s emotions and they were making their changes on him.

What I asked Juanita was if it mattered in the end.  She’s still left with herself, regardless of where things came from.  We’d like to think others should take care of us, at least not do damage to us, but if they don’t or if they do, in the end, we are left with ourselves.  All these perceived degrees of abuse she suffered – what now?

Saying we are left with ourselves, accountable to ourselves and should take care of ourselves is not making any statement about the condition of our connections with the world around us.  It’s just talking about Me.  Sometimes we perceive how others take care of us, sometimes we don’t.  The same goes with feeling alone and so forth.  But that isn’t about accountability to ourselves.

I would have liked to have said the same thing to Juanita’s son but couldn’t.  I hope he learns it from watching his mother.  If he or mom gain insight into this and can act on that insight, wonderful.  If they cannot do one or the other though, I’d bet there’s something biological going on and need to take care of themselves by looking for medical help.

Question:  How do you perceive accountability to yourself being different from where the problems drift towards you from?  Or from how you have been changed by problems?  Please tell me your story.

Related FriendtoYourself.com Articles:

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What Makes A Doctor-Patient Relationship

Power

Image by JAS_photo via Flickr

In our last post, The Struggle in A Doctor-Patient Relationship To Not Get Personal, your comments were critical to bringing it all together.  So much so, that I think it’s worth our time to review the main points about the doctor-patient relationship.

1.  People wonder about how to relate or conduct themselves.  It’s not clear and there are no directions.  In fact, for something so objective, why isn’t it?

  • a subject I have often wondered about – Cindy Taylor
  • when I see the new Doc, I just tell my story and describe symptoms????  – Sekan Blogger
  • hope that those professionals would be much more upfront with their patients – Nancy

2.  The professional distance itself between doctor and patient lends to the healing process

  • The doctor patient relationship is one thing that makes healing possible – Pattyann
  • if friends could help me I wouldn’t need to see a professional… – Patricia
  • distance …is such a strength – Kate Shrewsday
  • something far more greater than what a friend could provide and if I knew the intimate details of her life, that would have changed – S Sanquist

3.  The exchange of money for service is generally part of its constitution and brings motives into question.  Is there a price for the value of a patient’s health or even life?

  • You better keep me alive or there will be less money for you to make – Carl D’Agostino

4.  Power Imbalance

  • health professionals and I are not on the same social level when I am the patient and they are my health provider – Val
  • It (is) a loss to move from friend to patient. That is just how it has to go in the self-care process. Then there is the anxiety of the Dr. discovering who you really are and perhaps being disappointed. – M
  • same fine line in the teaching profession – Sarah McGaugh
  • most of my relationships have some sort of power imbalance – Shout Abyss

In truth, all relationships have an imbalance of power.  In healthy personal relationships, there is a flux in power, back and forth.  It’s a problem if they don’t pulse and is possibly one of the signs of an abusive relationship.

However, this doesn’t hold true in doctor-patient combos.  They are imbalanced by design and stay that way.  It feels counterintuitive at times to those involved.  But a good physician is like a good book – he/she/it is there for Me.  It is a unidirectional relationship.  There aren’t many good unidirectional relationships otherwise, …except for all those others.  You’ve heard of police, cashier’s, housekeepers, entertainers or, for example as Sarah reminded us, teachers.  But these are professional relationships and none of these are personal either, are they?  Unless you’re human, and then they are.  Oh bother!

Self-Care Tip – Find out what pleases you and what bothers you about your doctor-patient relationships.

Question:  What does please you and what does bother you about your doctor-patient relationships?  How do you imagine it would be if it were even better for your needs?  Please tell us your story.

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The Struggle in A Doctor-Patient Relationship To Not Get Personal

Conversation between doctor and patient/consumer.

Image via Wikipedia

In a patient doctor relationship, one of the realities is that our roles limit us from personal relationships.  Do things get personal?  I suppose inevitably as long as we are both human they will.  But we do our best to stay professional and use the standard of practice and the guidelines presented by our profession’s specialty board to help counsel us.  Because of years of increasing litigant awareness on both sides, patient and physician, this has culturally become important.

Each physician must decide what defines their ethical boundaries in their practice of care.  Each patient at some point must understand that there is a difference between what they are receiving and what they are giving in this relationship.  The patient doctor relationship is different from a friendship in part because there is an unequal level of power between them that opens up a huge index of interpretations on motives, intentions and fair play.  It also robs the patient of receiving what is considered a more objective level of treatment.  When things are personal, it’s more difficult to be objective.  It’s more difficult to do our job.

When I was in medical school, the psychologist I saw became intensely special to me.  She was the one who saw my vulnerabilities in every color.  Even though I cried regularly, brought her gifts that, thank God she accepted, and felt affection toward her, she somehow reciprocated without making me think I’d ever hear about her personal life, see her cry, receive gifts from her nor affection beyond what was appropriate for our professional exchange.  I learned so much from her but wish I could learn more.

Physicians do different things to help themselves learn and practice professionally.  It isn’t easy.  After all, we have feelings.  Some of us have temperaments that are naturally what culture would consider professional; temperaments that predispose for cognitive processing, naturally not personalizing what isn’t about us and have needs outside of interpersonal relationships.  Other physicians are designed to bring people into our inner space, and when that is not considered ethical, have an ongoing degree of struggle to maintain distance.  It is an important skill for anyone who plans on practicing outside of prison to learn quickly.

In psychiatry, historically when we used to do more psychoanalysis, it was accepted practice to collect all fees at the beginning of the session.  The patient placed the money on the table where it stayed throughout the hour as a reminder that this is a professional relationship.  I have chosen to maintain a variation of that practice where I try to collect the fees in cash from patients rather than my staff.  Sometimes when I’m behind or such I’m not able to but I try.  My hope is that Freud got something right and that the patients, at some level, register that I am hired for a medical service which is perhaps more than friendship.  You can imagine how this is less obvious to some seeing their psychiatrist rather than their podiatrist.

I have other support to help also, such as through my malpractice insurance, CAP-MPT.  They are wonderful.  They are available any time for a phone or email consultation on any question I have.  (I believe they know my name by now.)  They also send out regular newsletters on related topics to their clients which I read seriously and try to implement.

Before writing FriendtoYourself.com, I was much more guarded.  I never treated friends or family and felt isolated from my community which I thought I was doing to maintain patient confidentiality issues.  I’m so glad that has eased up a bit inside of me.  I’m a better physician because of it.  I will continue to learn about this dynamic balance in patient doctor relationships from my patients and from experience and welcome the growth.

Self-Care Tip – Give yourself the benefit of keeping a professional in your life who knows their role.

Question:  What is your opinion about the patient doctor relationship?  Do you ever struggle with boundaries?  How do you see those boundaries as being in your favor of getting better medical care?  Please tell us your story.

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Know When to Stand and When to Lean – Getting is Giving

Guest Blogger:  Asia Sharif-Clark

If I could compare us to part of a tree, it would be a solid trunk.  We stand firm, strong, and tall securing the roots beneath and the leaves above.

There’s only one problem and it’s a big one, most trunks don’t lean.  Leaning symbolizes receiving support from others, standing means giving support from oneself.  We’ve got standing perfected.

Now we must allow ourselves to lean. That’s where the branches comes in.  They move with the wind, sway in the rain; giving to leaves, yet receiving from the trunk.  Giving and receiving.  Standing and leaning.

I’ve learned to lean more and more over the years and am amazed at the immense joy others experience from giving to me.  I am open and happy to receiving.

Self-Care Tip – Wishing you more moments to lean.

Question:  Can you tell us about the leaning motion in your life?

I’m Asia Sharif-Clark, founder of Centered Self Worldwide, the Glow Weekend, and the Glow Circle. In 90 days, I take women from overworked and overwhelmed to empowered and energized. And, that’s just the beginning.   I invite you to Raise Your Joy!