Parenting

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Me! Where Emotions and Behaviors Come From

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Image by Erik - parked in Cairo these days via Flickr

We are doing a narrative series on understanding where emotions and behaviors come from:

  1. Emotions Are Contagious – Emotions shared
  2. Our own Emotional Junk – Emotions hidden
  3. Positive Emotions and Behaviors are Contagious Too 
  4. Our Conscious Self is Our Board and Paddle at Sea – Small conscious self and BIG unconscious self
  5. Biopsychosocial Model – Biological, Psychological, Social selves
  6. Me!  (Today’s Post)

What we have covered so far in our series is that we know emotions are contagious.  We know that if we take care of our own first, we might not be as “susceptible” to negative “contagion” in turn and perhaps, be more available to giving and receiving positive “emotion-contagion.”  Further, we hope that if we do this, we might be able to choose to be with people we love even if they don’t do their own self-care.  We can have that connection without personalizing what isn’t about us.  Sigh.  That is nice, isn’t it?  Then …out at sea (away from our narrative for a day,) we talked about the pleasure in engaging with what bits of biology are directly available to us and the relationship we maintain with the big expanse of our unconscious biology.  Yesterday we reviewed our biopsychosocial model as a tool for further understanding where our emotions and behaviors come from.

Self-Care Tip #272 – If you are ever unsure about where your emotions and behaviors are coming from, it is always safe and true enough to say, “Me.”

Where do emotions and behaviors come from?

Me.

For example:  Me <–> Emotions Shared <–> Me <–> Emotions Hidden <–> Me <–> small conscious self and BIG unconscious self <–> Me <–> Biological, Psychological, Social selves <–> Me… round and round, starting and ending and starting with Me.

Rob and Yesenia were both breathing hard.  Rob was pale and Yesenia flushed.  Where to start?  With Me.  This is what I shared with them both.

Put your spouse down and take three steps back!  Own your own self.  Take care of your own self.  In the process, you will be able to pick each other up again and share love.

Questions:  What are you holding, carrying, using to explain where your emotions and behaviors come from?  How have you been able to put those down and hold yourself?  Please tell me your story.

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Emotions Are Contagious – Such as, Anxiety.

We are starting a narrative series on discussing where emotions and behaviors come from:

Anxiety bubbled, frothed and infused the air.  Yesenia could barely catch a breath.  Here’s the thing.  Yesenia is not in treatment with me.  Her husband, Rob, is.  Yet it was Yesenia who filled our space.  There was barely room for Rob and I to sit or speak with all that anxiety around.  Rob was breathing faster every moment and his face didn’t have much color.  …Where to start?

Unknown source

(What do you think? think?  think? echo echo echo…)

It was too early in our work together to expect Rob to know this, but emotions are contagious.  Anxiety is very contagious.  To say this another way we could say, the emotion of anxiety around us influences how our genes express themselves.  It is further explained by saying that my “patient” isn’t only Rob.  My patient includes the system he lives in, i.e. his home milieu, wife, kids, work and so forth.  But especially his wife.  Because of Yesenia’s untreated emotional disease, Rob’s emotional disease worsens.  The inverse is true as well and so we go round and round gaining momentum.  Like a big ball of hard packed snow gathering speed and girth as it rolls down the mountain, anxiety grows.  …Where to start?

(What do you think? think?  think? echo echo echo…)

Self-Care Tip #267 – When suffering from emotional illness, remembering that emotions are contagious (no matter who they come from) is useful to your self-care.

Questions:  How have you experienced the contagion of emotions?  or seen it play out in others?  Please tell me your story.

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The Self-Care Bank

A Frisian Holstein cow in the Netherlands: Int...

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I spent the day with my lovely uncle and aunt from Iowa.  We had chocolate something or other about six times, which is just to say that we indulged in the opportunity to have joy and share the goodness of each other’s company.

It is almost ten PM and they’re still talking.  Too cute.  They’re like little college kids in a late night chum session.  I’ve never heard so many analogies to different foods.  Turnips, tomatoes, corn, heifers, steers, cows, bulls – I did not know that there were this many types of cows….  We’ve talked of many tear-jerking stories and things that don’t die when we do.

Today in clinic, my kids stayed home from school to spend the day with them and fitted puzzles, read stories, petted dogs ‘n such.  I felt rich.  This kind of wealth of heart around can’t be banked other than that of self-care.

Goodnight friends.  My uncle’s still talking ‘n I have to catch this story about my dad when he was milking cows and playing pranks.  Thanks for sharing this with me tonight.  Keep on!

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Scheduled Intimacy – Mother’s Day: The Good and The Not So Good

Afghan women celebrate mother's day at a guest...

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Self-Care Tip #256 – Think about the good and the not so good on scheduled memory-maker days like today.

Questions:  What do you think scheduled intimacy has to offer you?  How do you manage to allow the not so good to come together with the good in your life?  Please tell me your story.

Just like any scheduled memory-maker, Mother’s Day brings the good and not so good.  And for most of us, we have some of both, even if just a little.

Yesterday, in the company of my three healthy children, I couldn’t help but notice the lady I sat beside was sniffling.  “Should I say something?  Should I not say something?”

…Almost six years ago, my nine year-old niece suddenly died.  One week later I delivered my second child.

I don’t remember most of my daughter’s first year of life except a couple random things.  My sister-in-law, sitting alone on a rock just staring.  I remember her clothes, the weather during that moment, the texture of the rock, but I don’t remember nursing my baby.  I think this was still in the first month when I saw my sister-in-law on the rock.

We buried my niece’s ashes under a Jacaranda tree and it took forever for that tree to bloom.  I watched its skeleton month after month thinking, “This is terrible!  It needs to bloom!”  Isn’t that ridiculous?  And I remember my brother, red-eyed.  The lines on his face cut in deep.  He said,

I’m so glad you’re having this baby Sana.  It’s just what we need.  You remind us, this baby is reminding us that we are still alive.

The good and the not so good.

Of course I sensed what my brother was saying, but I still had a moment of hypervigilance when my body seemed to say, “What?!”

There was a lot of insecurity and emotional confusion that year but I don’t remember much more.  I believe my daughter  breast-fed, learned to sleep through the night, transitioned to solid foods and took her first steps.  But I don’t remember.

Namibie, une femme Himba et son enfant

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, I turned to the lady and asked,

Are you sad?  Is there something you are sad about?

More water-works.

I used to have a son.  I had a son.  He died.

The good and the not so good.

Right on schedule.  Mother’s Day came.  We knew it was going to happen.  And yet our bodies crack open, poorly defended.  Little our calendars did for our emotional preparation.

The lady grabbed my hands in further intimacy than I anticipated.  She told me her name but I wasn’t listening.  I was thinking about my niece, her sometimes blooming tree, my children around me; so much.  I was thinking about the good and the not so good on scheduled memory-maker days like today.

There is a coming together of our parceled selves that have been scattered to the east and to the west by the winds.  There is a coming together that this Mothers-Day, Christmas, Valentine’s or my nieces birthday, have on us and the process itself is bruising.  It is an opportunity to gather what we will or won’t.  It is an opportunity to be present with our changing selves.  In the tears, in my daughter’s crooked rainbow pictures and backwards letters,

bear mommy, i love yu….

In the grip of a stranger’s hands, in the company of our own Mom’s, wherever we find ourselves on these blue-lettered calendar days is where we have this

Hope all you moms had fun today!

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opportunity to do some of the sometimes hard work to grow presence.   Without it, we will continue to change.  That can’t be stopped.  But with it, with our choice-making, with accepting the gift of our folding up of the space between our past and our present, if we hadn’t cried again for our loss, if we hadn’t we might not have remembered what has made us and who we are.  Changed.  Covered by Love.  Connected.  Doing what a friend would do for Me.

Tonight my daughter sits on my lap.  We are watching a blue-ray recording of Les Miserables (musical) Twenty-Fifth Anniversary touring production at the London’s Barbican Centre.  I am listening to an excellent tale of the good and the not so good in life.

To God, our Mother, today was scheduled and I thank you.

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Self-Care Works You, Pushes You, Tires You Out Until You Are Happily Spent On Your Friend – You

two-girls-exercising-cayucos-beach2

Image by mikebaird via Flickr

What is being a friend to yourself?

Being a friend to yourself is more than getting our manicure, shopping, watching movies, being spontaneous and doing what we want.  In fact, often times, being a friend to yourself is not doing what we want.  Sounds great right?

Being a friend to yourself might be the hardest work you ever do.  For a time, it might feel like you are turning your back on your family, being selfish, sacrilegious and unfriendly.  You won’t get kudos from your support groups.  You won’t be noticed or hear thank-you very often.  I’m sure you can’t wait to hear the rest!  “Where can I sign up?”  Right?

Being a friend to yourself is taking accountability for our lives.  It says, everything starts and ends with Me.  It looks for accountability for our actions, our feelings, our health, our spirituality or connections in Me and not towards any external locus.

When we are a friend to ourselves, we don’t apologize and then say, “but….” We make amends for what we believe we are responsible for.  We do this without clarifying and justifying our behaviors.  We are not victims even though we may have been victimized, hurt, misused and forgotten.

Being a friend to yourself protects us against apperceiving that we are defined by anything we don’t choose.  Public opinion, stigma or even our pain does not define us. Our pain is not special. We are special.

We believe that we are free.  Free to choose self-care.  Free not because of the men who died for our freedoms, not because of our behaviors or spending power, but we are free because we are human.  Being our own friend is a privilege that we can choose freely to exercise or not.  No one can make it happen except Me.  Just like no one can make me love you or demand a gift because of the inherent freedom within them.  These things happen only because we believe in them, won over by Love.

We become our own advocate, admirer and treasure of high value.

When we are a friend to ourselves, we don’t deny our history but we claim the freedom to start over any time.  The history does not define us.  We are more than actions good or bad.  We have an essence that is timeless and unchanged by the ravages of illness or misuse.

Being a friend to yourself means caring for the specifics of your body, your simple needs that lead to complex outcomes.  Your exercise, your sleep, your diet, water and air are all worth fighting for.  These things you do for yourself become your currency.  You find that the better friend you are to yourself, the better you become for others.

At this new place of safety for you, where you give less, you give more to those you love.  You discover the mystery that no one can give what she doesn’t have.  Just like any bank, we deposit and withdraw and must protect our basic assets before we are taken over and lose the freedoms because we were poor managers of this one body that God gave us.

Everyone pull out your wallets and please empty them on the desk.  How much do you have?  How far will that take you?  Do you ever go a little crazy wondering where you will get more?

Now imagine that this is your body.  You have these assets; this currency.  Currency like your energy, positive emotions, interest, motivation.  You have bank when you can move around, walk, and muscles to lift your child, this vision to admire her new dress.  This is money, this beauty that you offer your significant other, your body, and your shape.

Now you are giving to your children.  Up in the night when they wake up and you can’t sleep afterwards.  You skip exercise the next day, in fact, why even talk about it.  You haven’t exercised in a year or more.  It’s been really hard when your body is either pregnant or recovering from pregnancy over the past seven years.

You never lost the weight and for some reason, now that you want to, your body is firmly telling you, “No.”  You don’t care enough about not having had sex with your husband in four months, but it does bother you that he uses porn so much.  You don’t talk about it.  You’re too tired.

Your child now develops eczema.  She’s nervous and complains of stomach-ache often.  She cries a lot and you can’t remember the last time you enjoyed being with her or any of your kids.  No doubt.  You do love them.  That’s what all this is about, right?  You are sacrificing everything for them and would do it again.  They are your life and when they move out in 15 years, you’re moving with them.  Husband or no husband.  What else do you have?  You aren’t even interested in anything to want to do anything else besides bleed yourself for them.

You can see that this story isn’t anyone’s fantasy.  But can you see that the mother-character – she’s not very nice.  She is not nice to herself and not that nice to anyone else either.  Even though many people are on her list of party invites, she is not connected much to any of them.  You can bet that her family enjoys her about as much as she enjoys herself.  She is angry with them for this but doesn’t realize that she feels ashamed by it more than angry.  Betrayed.

Now enters the victim-role this mother plays.  Oh boy.  I know.  You probably don’t want to hear about it.  It hurts just to start in like this, huh?  So let’s not.  Let’s draw another picture.

Look at your wallets again.  Now how do you get what you need to keep it full?  How do you get what you want to give and splurge on the ones you love?  Where does all that money come from?

Work.  You said it sisters.  And so this is you.  You are a mother of how many?  Three?  Two?  Who do you live with?  What are your jobs at home and elsewhere?  How much of that can you do if you don’t have energy?  Motivation?  Interest?

Oh but you do.  You take care of your basic needs.  You exercise even when your kids are pulling on your sweat pants all the way out the door to the gym.  You don’t get up for your kids at night as quick.  You let them cry it out or do what ever it takes for them to get themselves back to bed.  You take medication if you must to get back to sleep after you are awoken.  You practice sleep hygiene and although you miss, you desperately miss having spontaneous late night TV, you don’t.  You go to bed.  Recently you lost twenty pounds and you are working all your resources to keep it off.  You can’t believe how hard it is to keep off even though you can barely believe how fantastic it feels every day without that weight.

You take your medication because you understand that emotions and behaviors come from the brain.  When you used to not feel pleasure, it wasn’t because you didn’t want to, try to, pray to.  It was because the symptoms from the condition of your brain health were emotions and behaviors in the down direction.  And thank goodness!  Now when you see your kids, you not only love them, you like them.  Sometimes it takes your breath away.  You just can’t believe that you didn’t feel this before.  You like your kids.

I can go on.  But I think you get it.  No one can give what you don’t have.  Now show me your wallets.  Put whatever you took out back in.  Not much?  No worries.  You are your own friend and will take care of yourself.

I know I’m making it sound like being a friend to yourself isn’t that fun.  Having fun isn’t the agenda of friendship.  The agenda is doing what is positive for your friend.  It is some of the hardest work you’ve ever done.  It means connecting with others because you know it is good for you – even though you are shaking, nervous or just plain don’t want to.  It means going out to find love when love doesn’t find you.  It is hard!  It isn’t necessarily doing what is smooth and easy, although sometimes it may be.

Self-care is a discipline of action, presence or whatever is called for by you, your friend.  It takes your natural genius, the things that came to you without working, and it uses those to steer your energies.  It uses those to tell you where you will be working like a mad-dog at times to find the most pleasure and be the most productive, have the most service to offer, be connected in the most intimate way with those you love – God and man.

Self-care is not for the people who need it.  It is for those who want it.  If you don’t want it, stop listening and be on your way.

Questions:  What is called for by you, your friend, to do?  What has pushed you, worked you, tired you out until you were happily spent on caring for your friend, you?  Please tell me your story.

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Our Feelings Begin and End With Me. We Are Not Victims.

Freedom is useless....

Image by rAmmoRRison via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #245 – Our feelings begin and end with Me.

Are we victims of victims?  I know I blame people and am not above a good rant on all the why’s “I feel this way!”….  However, the cleanest air I’ve ever breathed is when I’ve stepped out of that space and started naming myself responsible for my own feelings.

Slavery comes in many ways.  Thinking about being a slave by our own design is an odd twist but choosing the victim role does it.  Choosing freedom to self-care is liberation by the same government.  This is a cornerstone of understanding the “Five W’s and One H” of self-care.

Victims also generate victims not only of themselves but also of others.  Somehow the emotions, heavy, immobilizing, irritable, angry, coming off of the person in the victim role are absorbed by others if those others aren’t seriously insightful and vigilant against them.  Considering this, we can understand the difficulty of being present, in the moment and not either running away or trying to change the person in the victim role.  (Remember the 3 C’s?)  Anyone porous to them is at risk.  Too often, we all find ourselves pointing, pounding, pity-party preaching victims – none of us naming ourselves responsible for our own feelings.

We know that we are more prone to personalizing things when we suffer different emotional illnesses.  In this case, we can’t help but catch the familiar features of depression.  There are other illnesses of course with these symptoms, but an irritable depression is one of the most difficult to endure for all parties. Sometimes, simply gaining insight into our coping skills can make us better friends to ourselves.  That is such a relief.

Too often however, being the victim is not fully under our control.  Too often being the victim is a symptom of the disease process that came without an invitation.  Also, just as often or more, the person in the victim role doesn’t have insight into any of these aspects – their choice into slavery, their influence on others, their medical condition generating these symptoms or their options to gain healing.

I could easily tell you a number of word-pictures, maybe describing the before or after treatment, maybe letter-layering the innumerable ripples that self-care made on the world after treatment or maybe I will more easily just not.  All these stories bring me, at this late hour of our week, too close to those contagious emotions and I’d just rather not.  Maybe you’d like to share though?

Questions:

  • When you started owning your feelings for things that you never thought had anything to do with you, what were your thoughts?  How did it ripple out of you and affect others?
  • What do you see at the cornerstones of self-care?
  • Please tell us your story!
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Your Pain is Not Special. It Is Normal.

Self-Care Tip #243 – See yourself as special rather than your pain and know that you will find your normal again.

What is your normal?

When we were kids, we all had a perspective of what normal was.  Let’s say it was “here.”  Let’s imagine we were lovely then, nurtured and emotionally bonded.  We struggled through peer conflicts, social anxiety and rivalry.  We wanted a bike.

Two Sisters

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Then we got a little older.  Maybe our parents divorced.  Maybe, a sibling died.  Maybe we were abused or in an accident and damaged.  Damage changes normal.  What we never would have thought would be acceptable in our lives became acceptable.  We suffered.  We lived.  Life was indiscriminate and ignored our status.  We think there must be a mistake.

What is our normal at one point, filtered through remaining hopes, grew into regenerating fantasies, through real potential and it moved again.  We are older now and more suffering comes.

Where is our normal?  We survive our child, our own dear perfect boy, hanging from a tree.  Normal?  No dear God!  No!  And we continue to live.

Two years.  Two years are what it takes for our biology to catch up to the shock.  Two years are what it takes for us to begin to accept and realize that in this new normal we care again.  We choose it in fact.

People don’t remember his name or talk about him and we can’t remember his eyes.  We are ashamed and lose our breath from panic just trying to see them.  We want to bang our head because we know there is something wrong about feeling normal! Ever! Again! after that.  But we do.

Our normal mutates over financial ruin, abandonment and a growing healthy list of disfiguring illnesses.  We accept them and say yes please.  Live.  We want to live.  This is acceptable.  This is normal.  Our friends die.  Our memory.  We can’t find our teeth.  Our heart stops.  We die and the world finds normal.  The world chooses just like we did.

What we don’t think will ever be allowed to happen while we brush hair, clip our nails and microwave food, happens. We endure these changes.  We find normal again.

What is your normal?

My brother, Vance Johnson MD, is a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist.  He said that during his residency, close to 100% of spinal cord injury paralysis survivors he worked with wanted to die after their injury.  Many of them would beg him to let them die.  They would cuss at him for keeping them alive.

I leaned very heavily on the studies and data during those times.  It was very hard.

Vance said that what kept him faithful to his task was knowing that close to 100% of them after two years would be glad they were kept alive.

Even the ones who were basically breathing through a straw and that’s all that moved on them; even they wanted to live.  These people found a new normal.

Where is our normal?  We will want it.  We will adapt.  Biology will catch up to our reality.

Remember that your pain is not special.  You are special.  Not your pain.  Pain is normal.

Question:  When this happened to you, how did normal find you despite the rubble?  How does this concept feel to you, that your pain is not special?  Does it make you angry or what?  Please tell me your story.

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Imagine If You Were Your Own Friend, And Take Your Advice

Postcard - Sexy Woman writing a letter

Image by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #234 – Imagine if you were your own friend, and take your advice.

Joana Johnson, author of CreatingBrains.com, full-time mom of six, part-time University history teacher, student, wife, confidant, friend and sister-in-law… (no she’s not running for president) …Joana asked me today,

Write a letter to someone you love sharing what you want them to do to take better care of themselves.  You don’t have to give it to them or you can.

Now imagine what letter with what self-care requests would someone who loved you write to you?

…You’re right.  I’m going to have to talk her into running for president.

And so, I offer this challenge to you.  I wonder after you.  I am sitting in waiting.  Please tell us this part or more of your story.

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Choosing Connections – Take The Good and Take Care of Yourself

Beit Nir, a kibbutz in Israel.

Image via Wikipedia

Self-Care Tip#228 – If we choose to have someone in our lives, if we choose that it is better for us than not, than take what is good and leave the rest.

We’ve all seen them, or been them at some point through life.  Those walk-outs.  Either choice, leave or stay, takes immense courage to do well.

Tonight however, I’m thinking about the courageous who stayed.  Those who stay despite the stink in life.  Those who stay when there are bad choices by “the other” that spill over and touch us.

We choose to stay in the relationship but do we have to choose to suffer with them?

Mandy comes to mind.  Her mom was old and disinhibited.  She said inappropriate things and had mood swings.  In their past together, Mandy’s mom was younger but had still said many hurtful things and done hurtful things.  However Mandy stayed connected because she wanted her mom in her life.  Many said,

I just choose to have her.  I don’t worry, as much as I can, about the things Mom does that I don’t like.  I take care of myself now.  I stay emotionally as safe as possible but still be present in her life and let Mom be present in mine.  As long as I want her.  As long as I know I’m safe.

Mandy was like a mini version of the kibbutz I remembered visiting in Israel many years ago.  The kibbutz’s members worked a thrifty irrigation system, had interdependent living combined with separateness in a romantic setting – something green and amazing in the middle of very dry hot and otherwise empty sands.  I wanted, even then, to bring their irrigation secrets home, which brilliantly used, not misused, precious water.  They lived in something that looked close to “plenty” in a place that seemed barren of natural resources.

But memories of the kibbutz in and out through the years brought questions too about connection.  What would be enough to turn our choices to resemble theirs?  Maybe at least some of the hardships many of them have suffered.  Maybe something like abuse or terrorism would make me “walk” out on the connections my community or an individual offered.  Others may also do it for temperament reasons but extroverted temperaments would never choose that unless they felt they had to choose to be walk-outs.

Why did Mandy do it – connectedness, interdependence combined with separateness?  She chose to.  She used but didn’t misuse her mother.  For Mandy, misusing Mom would have held Mom responsible for how Mandy felt.  Mandy preserved her precious connection with Mom by taking care of her Me, her own feelings, and her connections.

Questions:  How have you stayed connected to the one(s) you love?  When they made negative choices, how did you stay safe but still connected?  Please tell me your story.

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Your Bridge Between Choosing and Being Chosen By Guilt

INNOCENCE/GUILT

Image by ~fyrfli~ via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #227 – Find out about your bridge between choosing and being chosen by guilt.

Guilt.

Sometimes we think people who do wrong should feel guilt.  But how many of us improve ourselves or others in response to guilt?  And because this is a self-care blog (wink), I have tooled around with what it is all about and if it is a positive self-service.  In my meanderings I remembered, Schadenfreude.  (Isn’t that a marvelous Americanized German word?!)

Schadenfreude is different from guilt, although often in the same company.  It is a natural response in which we find pleasure at observing another’s demise or suffering.  I speculate that when we see someone feeling guilty and suffering from that guilt, even against our better natures we experience a degree of Schadenfreude, i.e. pleasure.  Because we moralize things, we responsibly feel shame when insight dawns on Schadenfreude, but “it just is.”  It is a part of who we are in this time of humankind’s history.

However would we go so far as to say that we want people to feel guilty when they do wrong because of the motivating reward that Schadenfreude has on us?  For example, Mom is disciplining her children and just won’t stop until someone cries.  I remember hearing jokes about this in mommy groups when my kids were a bit younger.  …Mom thinks silently,

I’m suffering so I want to see you suffer.

Even though we maturely and grandly empathize (the counterpart to Schadenfreude) with the kids, there is a simultaneous “secret Schadenfreude” (a private feeling) that goes on at their failure.  The blend of both can be confusing.

As we continue to travel the bridge between voluntary and involuntary, we are learning more about how choice remains regardless which side we are looking at.  For example, if guilt and Schadenfreude are so natural, so biological, so reflexive, we look for our choice.

Cathy wrote on the blog-post, Choosing Perspective,

I become trapped in my own guilt. Yes it is about perspective but what to do when even changing your perspective provides no relief, only a different source of constraint?

Questions:  I can’t help but wonder what you think about this?  Where and what is your bridge between choosing and being chosen by guilt and other negative emotions?  How do you choose when guilt and other negative emotions come involuntarily and inappropriately to context?  Please tell me your story.

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What Moment Do You Have? This is Enough For Life.

orange toes in sand

Image by olive eyes via Flickr

Self-Care Tip # 224 – When you have something beautiful, stop and think about how you feel, and then shrink it into some words to remember for always.

The day is late and sand is in my ears and between my toes.  I don’t have much left on the clock before I should shower and sleep.

Earlier, while walking to the car with my daughter, I remembered Anne Hathaway‘s performance in the movie, “Love and Other Drugs,” based on Jamie Reidy‘s 2005 memoir, “Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman.”  Hathaway plays the role of “Maggie,” who despite her progressive demise secondary to Parkinson’s Disease, says to her love,

This is how happy I am, in this moment right now, the way the light’s hitting that face of yours, there’s this little breeze coming…, it doesn’t matter if I have 10,000 more moments like this or just this one because…. Right now this moment.  I have this.

The sun had set and we were wet and barefoot trying to get back to the car before dusk faded out.  I asked my daughter that if she could put all the feelings inside her she was feeling right then, that moment, into a tight little ball, “What are the words to describe it?”

This isn’t easy for a seven year-old to do developmentally and poor girl, I torture her with these questions.  And for all her suffering, I couldn’t tell you what she said beyond, “happy.”  But I do remember thinking, “This moment.  This moment is enough.”

She was so beautiful, full up of goodness.  She belonged in the moment.  And me?  I was a part of it by God’s magic.  And now I have it.  Some bit of heaven already.

Questions – What moment(s) comes to mind that you have to remind you of what makes life worth living?  What do you have that is enough?  Please tell me your story.

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Living Where We Feel Safe is Part of Self-Care

Self-Care Tip #213 – Live in safety.  Be a friend to yourself.

In My Fridge

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I love psychiatry because for me it is a safe place.  A place where I am comfortable pushing aside distractions.  The blinking lights disappear and I don’t have to waste myself on B.S.  Some time ago, I told you about how Mom has been when Dad’s been hospitalized in the past.  When she pushed his tubing aside and just got in bed with him to hold him.  All that mattered then was Love.  They didn’t see the clutter any more.  That’s what psychiatry offers.  If we want, we  can come together and be real.  In twenty to forty minutes, we can hune and warp time and find a gravity where we breathe differently.

Chewbacca

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Unfortunately, I have found that the longer I do this psychiatry thing, the worse I am with life otherwise.  Whether I’m with the grocer, dog-trainer, my child’s teacher or person in front of me in the coffee-line – I just don’t graze well.  (See blog-post, “Do You Feel Pleasure.”)  I’m always yelling, “Hit it Chewbacca!” and we’re off at warp speed into asteroids of personal information; perhaps inappropriate to the setting.  (See blog-post, “Using The Force.”)  I hate to think what I’ll become when I’m more thoroughly demented and disinhibited.  These things just get more pronounced with age and soon I’ll just be that crazy Auntie with her bra snapped on top of her bathing-suit in winter yelling at the young kids to turn the music down so we can talk.

The truth is, I’ve never been so wonderful in tinsel-town.  I found home and found that home needs to be a place where we are safe.  In fact, this is true materially in the home we live in.  It starts there and diffuses out.  If at home we are able to speak uncensored knowing we respect others and are respected because we are human, not because we have to earn it, if we can enter our kitchen and not fear temptation from chocolate chip cookies, open the fridge and know as an alcoholic the wife or husband didn’t buy beer, argue and trust that we are loved enough to be a priority, we know the issue won’t be lazily passed up, we know we are safe – then there is a ripple and a ring of safety and another ripple and another ring of safety and soon safety follows us because we just aren’t interested in anything else.  (That was a super-sentence.)  We have found home.

Questions:  How do you define safety?  What feels safe for you?  How do you grow your circle of safety?  Please tell me your story.

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Emotions – The Sixth Sense and Moralizing Self-Care

17th century representation of the "third...

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Yesterday we talked about self-care being about bigger things than just the individual – bigger than “Me.”  This leads us into today’s questions.

Question #1:  Is Not Doing Self-Care Selfish?  Please tell me your story.

As if there weren’t enough things to feel guilty about, we had to ask this question!

One of the intuitive responses many of us have when we hear this kind of question is to moralize our behaviors by using our emotions to interpret their value.  This can lead to inappropriate guilt, and even more so when we suffer from an affective (involving mood,) and/or anxiety illness(es.)  We do this to ourselves and/or to others.

Some time ago we spoke about emotions often being used by us to interpret our reality; even though they don’t decide our reality.  To emphasize this, let’s name emotion, as others have done before us, “The Sixth Sense” – and I’m not referring to that scary movie with Bruce Willis in it.

Just like our traditionally named Five Senses, the emotion senses are used to interpret the world around us and define what we perceive as true.

  1. Smell (olfacoception or olfacception)
  2. Vision (ophthalmoception)
  3. Hearing (audioception)
  4. Touch (tactioception)
  5. Taste (gustaoception)
  6. Emotion/Feeling

We have many other senses as well – temperature (thermoception), kinesthetic sense (proprioception), pain (nociception), balance (equilibrioception) and acceleration (kinesthesioception).  We argue as to how to define a perception.  But unlike with the sense of emotions, what we don’t usually argue over is qualifying a moral value to these other more familiar senses.

Senses are perceptions.  They are not objective.  They are subjective.  For example, we cannot measure vision in a vial.  Even people who are neurologically blind, have things they perceive that they see.  There are visual pseudohallucinations that happen with visual system lesions, such as a stroke – hallucinations like moving, colored or geometrical forms, real objects or scenes.  We won’t get into all the different types of hallucinations or pseudohallucinations there are.  Rather, we will highlight that what we “see” is a perception and not a measured value.  Same with emotions.  Emotions are perceptions and not measured values.  The Sixth Sense.

If we could quantify the sense of emotions and qualify the sense of emotions than it would be easier for us to be more objective when thinking about our original question.  So what now?  A lot of help that does!

Question #2: What now?

This brings us back to the self-care practice of “presence.”  It just is.  So it goes.  Oh well.  Stay connected so you have other reference points to yourself.  Go towards your fears to be more present with yourself, …and so on.

Question #1:  Is Not Doing Self-Care Selfish?

It depends who is asking and who is answering in context of how they are using their emotions to qualify self-care.  When we think about not doing self-care, we can’t help but remember all the people in the wake of the uncared for life.  Those people if asked might say, yes or no, depending if they interpret selfishness as a moral issue and where they assigned moral value otherwise.  When we think about the person not doing their self-care, she might say, no or yes, depending if she interpreted selfishness as a moral issue and where she assigned moral value otherwise.

Another intersecting paradigm into our perceptions, and there are many, is the temperament typology.  Many of us, in fact the majority of us, interpret our reality through our Sixth Sense – how we feel. This is as we were designed, as we were wired, as we do from a biological level.  Yet we assign moral value to The Sixth Sense – Emotions.

Consistently, those of us who are genetically interpreting our reality from thought, executive thinking and more detached from the limbic system of the brain – we have moralized, assigning value to those abilities or the lack of them.  (Don’t go there.  My brain is tired.  Don’t bring up the idea that The Seventh Sense is thought!  Ah!)

The fact that we can say, No! to taking on the moral assignments of others, comes to us from our freedom to choose or not to choose self-care.

Question #1:  Is Not Doing Self-Care Selfish?

Self-Care Tip #209 – Embrace your Sixth Sense to be present with yourself in self-care.

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Self-Care Is About More Than “Me”

Self-Care Tip #208 – If for no other reason, get friendly with yourself simply to survive and you’ll see what that means later.

my self care reminders

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It is not unusual to think of “selfish-care” when we hear “self-care.”  I can imagine children gripping their mother’s skirts more tightly, husbands pulling their helpmate’s hands away from this influence, church-folk sniffing over rejections to service-calls or friends personalizing the way their phone doesn’t ring as much as it used to.  This is a natural response, although it is a false perception.  Think – feeling suffocated by her penance, he’s wearing a martyr’s cross or she’s giving to us from victimhood.  Those are the times we would rather not receive the gifts of time, person or anything dripping with that kind of guilt and implied debt. This kind of service comes from someone impoverished, giving on credit.

I’ve been known to say, “We can’t give what we don’t have.”  Or as Jasmine said,

You can’t give someone a ride if you’re all out of gas!

So when is self-care selfish?  To be true to what self-care is, I’d say almost never.  However, because the question comes from such an intuitive fear in any of us, “never” can’t be an entirely fair answer.  To answer it best though, we need to turn it over and go back to trying to discover why we wanted self-care first.  What brought us here?  Jacqui said it well in yesterday’s post-comments:

Ditto about ‘self-care boot camp’. I may steal that one. You’ve given me permission to be selfish if need be. It’s all about self-preservation.

Sometimes we are reduced to self-preservation.  It has an intensity to it, a survival mode of live or die, which may be appropriate to a desperate condition in life.   Many of us know what that feels like.  So in this context, self-care is in part about survival.  Alright.  But is survival a selfish need?  Are we worth that little?  Does the life in us hold value only at that level?

rejuvenation.self.care.logo

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You hear the clomping my words are making and can follow that I answer, no.  Survival has far reaching significance.  I matter.  You matter.  We have value beyond our own selves and Me booting up to live better also ripples over those same infinite number of connections.

I am confident that if for no other reason than getting friendly with yourself simply to survive, you will still see at least some of what more that means later.  Self-care is about more than Me.

Question:  When do you think self-care is selfish?  Why do you think self-care is not?  Please tell me your story.

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Bring Your Separate Selves Together – Personal Journey

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Self-Care Tip #199 – Bring together what you are naturally inclined to do with what you spend your energies on.

When we do what we like to do, what is congruent with our hard-wiring, what is naturally inspiring, fatigue becomes part of our pleasure in my life.  Cliché,

Enjoy the burn,

…is common for a reason.  There are times when pain, fatigue, difficulty and hard-surfaced days are bits of what make life journey one of richness, rather than diminished.  I was reminded by Jaclyn Rae’s Blog-post today, that when we can say,

I’ve learned that I’m tired but still want to do what I do,

…we are paddling the same river our life is floating down.  When we by mental illness, misfortune, choice or neglect, don’t – we are more observant of our lives rather than participants to them.  We find being present in the process difficult.  It’s not something everyone can do in all aspects.

However, we don’t have to be defined by those particulars, choosing instead to do the hard work of processing our choices, our energy and where it comes from, our emotions and see how they weave into our constitution.  Then, some time when breathing hard, limping and spent, we will remember this and reconnect the experience with the choice and the emotion a little quicker.  We will less often separate from the water our life is traveling.  Not become observers but participate more often, more actively, more tangibly with that kernel in us that stays, our essence.  (See blog post, My Essence.)

In the marvelous work, “His Dark Materials” trilogy, Philip Pullman describes us as split persons, a body and a spirit (“demon”) that might be parted by neglect, carelessness, abuse, or other disasters.  But when it is separated, the body suffers and is disconnected from it’s life purpose, what brings pleasure and presence in the world around.  (See blog post, Soul and Body.)

There are medical illnesses that do this, as mentioned above, and in those cases, perhaps all to do is get medical care, heal, treat and get on with life.  Other times, it might be that we forgot ourselves in the midst of caring for children, a demanding job, an opinion that victim-hood defines our life possibilities or what not.  We have options.

As Jjen reminded us some days ago,

The bad doesn’t disappear but it is not a qualifier for the rest of life’s potential.

Questions:  How have you reconnected to your life journey?  Your essence?  What is constant about you in your changing self?  Please tell me your story.

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So Many Choices, So Little Time …For Self-Care

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Self-Care Tip #198 – Being a friend to yourself might be saying,

No.

Our culture is brimming.  Brimming with…, well take your pick; walking the dogs, turning in a take-home test, watching The King’s Speech, writing a journal entry, making pancakes or reading Savvy – we have options.

However, today and often, options are stalkers we think difficult to restrain.  …More difficult, say than filing a restraining order against your husband.

Walter filed for divorce with his unhappy wife.  Vengefully, his wife turned around and filed a restraining order on him and just like that, he was unable to see his kid for over two months.  That was easy.  All she had to do was file it.

And when we have these many options, all we need to do is say, “Yes,” to one and to the rest,

No.

I love it when my four year-old son is rocking carelessly on my outstretched legs, flopping about, a happy-drunk bird-on-a-wire, and predictably although unintentionally falls.  Crumpled on the floor, he flicks his bangs back and says rather coolly,

I was okay, Mommy.  I was okaaaay.

I had tried to rest on the couch and type, doing my self-care thing after doing Mommy-stuff with the kids for a large chunk of the day.  But telling him to stop doing that really cute thing he does was not so easy.

According to The Economic and Social Research Council,

Having older siblings is not related to children’s happiness with their family, but having younger siblings in the household is associated with lower levels of satisfaction and this effect is greater the more younger siblings present in the household.

It turns out that children feel more happiness in their homes when there are fewer younger children.  They perceive that there is less energy available for them from their parents with each born child.  And I’m here to say, there is.  With my son on the floor, flicking his hair and going,

I was okaaay…,

my middle daughter kissing my shoulder and burrowing into my arm like an ear-wig, my eldest daughter came back to ask for the sixth time if I would play jump rope with her – I remembered this study.  So true.  I don’t need more options, i.e. more children who ask and I say,

No.

With these many wonderful options, choosing Me, is not always easy.  (See post, “‘You’ Are the Best Gift.”)

Now throw in a little inappropriate guilt, some ruminating thoughts, self-loathing, bad sleep, some low motivation and energy and choosing Me becomes the hardest thing anyone has come up against.

Questions: How do you choose you when you could pick so many other great options?  How has this helped quality of life for you and others in your life?  Please tell me your story.

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Blog-Jacking By Dogtor Timothy Q (Alias Mr. Rick C.)

This photograph of my dog was taken by me in S...

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Guest Blogger:  Dogtor Timothy Q.


For some time “The Queen”, as we like to refer to her, has asked me to help out with her fine blog.  Technically, she may have never asked directly.  However, I think “Stay in the gosh darn yard before I go bazookas” could be translated into our language as “Please write my blog for me”.  I would like to begin by introducing myself.  My name is Timothy and I am a dog that lives in a magical floating house that is at the top of the bottom of a hill.  (This confuses me, also.  I just go with what I am told.)  As you may have guessed… Our Queen is none other than the very “I’m gifted”, “I’m talented”,  and “shucks I am so fat” … Dr. Q.  This description is not my own, but rather, what she repeats each morning as she looks into the mirror before chasing the fine young prince and princesses around the house as the one we like to call “The Knight” pets us and escapes.

I have worked on this for the last month.  Not because I have a lack of things I would like to say, but because paws and keyboards do not go well together.  This is just one of the many discriminations that we as dogs face.  I am proud to say that, rather than make excuses or bark endlessly about my problems (I tried that once and endured something called mad neighbor with a water hose), I have learned to use my nose.  My tongue worked better but seemed to create issues with the computer.

I grew up with all the comforts a Labradoodle could hope for… Gourmet meals, attendants, a plush customized mini van, grooming at the finest spas.  Yet, I have always felt like I have missed something.  Recently, I discovered a loose patch of grass right next to the fence.  The sign could have been no clearer.  It said to me, “Dig!, Dig!, Dig!… your time to explore the world has come”.  That is just what I did.

I have made many friends during my adventures through the neighborhood.  I have also learned that there are many out there that will lead you astray.  Being a stray is not a bad thing and can happen to the best of dogs.  I have quite a few friends that fit into this classification, even.  Many dogs are born stray, such as the ones they call coyotes.  As my grandfather once told me, Labradoodle translates into “Feared by every single coyote that has ever even come close to us”.  With this in mind, I reached out a paw to the yotes and found out that they’re not so bad.  We have a lot in common… We all dislike cats and agree that they do taste a lot like chicken.  Trust me… after hitching a ride on a banana truck back from Tijuana, I will never ever listen to a cat as long as I live.

Screenshot of Barbra Streisand from the traile...

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Interestingly, people seem to let their guard down when they think that it’s just us dogs watching.  Aside from enduring the occasional really bad rendition of Barbra Streisand, we pick up some pretty interesting information.  Gets kind of complicated sometimes.  Too much of this, not enough of that, need to change,blah, blah, blah, blah, woof.  Believe it or not…. most of the stuff we see and hear as dogs doesn’t change what we have for people that feed us and pet us…. unconditional love.

How has your dog been rewarded today?  What bad things have cats done to you?  Do you know any sweet young female dogs (censorship!) that are looking for a good time?  How does your dog see you and do you really have to dance while you sing the same gosh darn song every single morning?

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Love – Take What is Already Yours. You Have Been Given Love.

Stef's Present with Handmade Wrapping

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Self-Care Tip #194 – Take what is already yours.  Be a friend to yourself.

Parenting, we hold the power in the relationship between us and our child/ren.  If we are emotionally maltreated by our child/ren, we parents are still the ones with the power.  What are we giving to her if we teach her that we will take the terrible words and dark emotions?  When we take the projected anger when we have the power to choose not to, what message are we giving to ourselves about ourselves?  What is the message if we say by our actions that Love demands from us to accept, to take and to be a victim to the emotional abuse?  Is that what love tells us?

It is difficult to receive maltreatment from anyone.  And because of the suffering involved, we can misinterpret the message, “This is the sacrifice that Love demands” – the sacrifice is doing what other people want before taking care of yourself.

It is difficult not to receive maltreatment as well.  Which choice is more consistent with our understanding of Love?  The words in the message might be the same, “This is the sacrifice that Love demands.”  However, the interpretation of the message, of what the sacrifice is – that meaning is different.  The sacrifice is, rather, taking care of yourself first so that you have the best of you to offer to others.

To read more on this topic, please see posts, Criticize if You Love Me, Listen to The Intention in What People Say and Stop! Before Hurting Yourself or Others.

Because we as parents hold the power in the relationship, we can feel trapped by our own power.  What a confusion for many of us.  Holding power but feeling helpless.  Holding a stick in both hands, so to speak, not seeing that we can still use our occupied hands for anything else in the mean time.

This kind of choice takes Love.  This is the kind of choice that is a work of a life-time or of a moment, but is life.  See, Let It Go and Keep Going.

We can’t teach others that we are valuable and how to treat us with Love if we don’t do it ourselves for ourselves.  When we act on Love, self-care means that we don’t accept treatment that is inconsistent with Love.  If we accept bad treatment, we are saying that self-care is accepting our lack of choices versus making the choices that are still available despite the circumstance.

FriendShip... A gift of God.

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This of course applies to any relationship.  It applies to any connection, whether it is in the work-place, marriage, if you are the child in the parent-child role, friendships – take your pick.  You can choose Love.  You can choose.  Self-care starts and ends with “Me.”

Freedom is a gift.  No matter how many times it is wrapped up and placed in our hands, if we don’t open it, use it, own it, we will never have it.  Freedom to choose has been given to us before we were born, just like our salvation.  The salvation will never be taken away.  Nor the freedom.  Both are elemental and constant.  But if we don’t pull on the ribbon, lift the lid and take – we can’t expect anything but living without what was inside.  Does the title “victim” even hold if it was our choice not to take what was already ours?

Question:  How do you claim your freedom to choose when all you perceive at the time is what has been taken away?  Please tell me your story.

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Stop! Before Hurting Yourself or Others

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Self-Care Tip #192 – Before hurting yourself or others, stop.

Sometimes all we can do is leave.

Not being created as a limp noodle, that’s what Brenda said.

In the moment of conflict with her daughter, she had used up the coping skills she thought of and in the end, her purse had no more gum, lip-gloss, candy-money or crayons.  She couldn’t stop the acidic emotions from taking their turn to burn.  Brenda yelled (yes she knew it wasn’t right) and then she yelled again, this time to her husband that he was on kid-duty.  She left.  The mom-van keys were the last thing left in her purse of things to do to stop the burning she was giving and receiving.

Emotional abuse is equal to or more damaging than physical or sexual abuse.  This made Brenda gulp, who could still hear her own mother screaming with bulging bubble-packing veins and eyes.  Brenda didn’t know she could say,

Let’s stop.  It hurts Mommy.

When she first had her babies, tiny with soft bones, fluffy warm sweet cakes just out of the oven, Brenda was scared.  Her pediatrician gave her baby care directives that said things like,

If you are angry and feel like you’re going to shake your baby, stop!  Call for help.

And there was a number.  Now that her kids were older, her pediatrician never gave her helpful sheets of instructions and rescue phone numbers.  Brenda drove away to stop, hoping to come back with more available to offer.

Not bad, huh?

Question:  When you can’t think of any more coping skills during a crisis, how do you stop?  In what feels like an emotional emergency, what have you seen others do that you think is useful?  Please tell me your story.

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Just to Feel Pleasure

week-end-pleasure

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Self-Care Tip #189 – Heal for yourself, and you’ll see that also, everyone heals.

The best thing I ever did was go on antidepressants.

Bianca sat, but her whole body was talking.  She was telling me about her changing life.  She had read some of her journal from a year ago when she pounded on herself for her behaviors.  She thoroughly grieved the time with her children when they heard her scream about small things that kids do.  She told me about her sons face when she was irritable.  He showed all the waiting tension that an open child will when waiting for Mom to lose it.  She was trying to push it aside and think rather about how she now could finally enjoy them.  Bianca said,

I just had no idea before how much better life could be.

Bianca’s face became tight and she didn’t make eye-contact,

There’s no way to describe what it’s like to not enjoy your kids – My own kids! – for most of their born lives and then wake up and experience something different.  I just can’t explain what it means to now actually like being with them.  I’ve always loved them but I didn’t feel the pleasure and I hate that.  I want that time back but I can’t have it and I can’t give it to them either.

I’m so scared it will end, the pills will stop working and I’ll lose this new life.

Before her medication, Bianca worked hard at taking care of herself.  She was a check-list of responsible self-care.  Bianca thought it was important that I knew this.

  • Aerobic exercise – check!
  • Healthy diet – check!
  • Sleep hygiene – check!
  • Bianca talked about God but things got confusing for her there.  She didn’t like to think about Him being on “a list.”  He was in her life and didn’t feel He failed her even though she couldn’t feel pleasure or joy.

Still, she continued to coil up and release hard punchy words at her kids and then hate herself for it.  She had prayed so much about this and wouldn’t even mind if God had to puppet her, if that’s what it took, in order for her to treat her kids better.  She could not stop herself from being what she called,

Crazy Mommy.

But now, after she was treated, Crazy Mommy was gone.

Aside from dropping the shame, the best thing for Bianca was knowing that her kids could trust her, felt safe with her and that she felt safe with herself.  Everyone was healing subsequent to Bianca healing.

How many of you have told us a similar story.  A similar rescue.  Yet, never-the-less others of us are afraid to go there.

Question:  How are you present with others who don’t understand your rescue story?  How do you stand beside someone who needs medical help for emotional illness but won’t accept it secondary to stigma?  Please tell us your story.

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