Psychology

by

Why Not Skip Medication and Go Naturallllllll?!

The little Train

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

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

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

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

Moving.  Not moving.  Progressing.  Stopped.

But the sensory descriptors were misleading.

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

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

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

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

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

Brain disease runs something like the steam engine train.

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

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

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

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

Related articles
by

Noticing the Signs – Friendship Status

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

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

Related articles
by

Holiday stress may be a coverlet

138. i seem like someone else

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

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

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

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

Why?…

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

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

“It’s just the holidays.”

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

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

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

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

Related articles
by

Tell Your Story

English: Vin Scully

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

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

So what has brought you here?

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

Why am I here?!

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

Uh!

You look at your physician and doubt her interest.

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

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

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

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

Related articles
by

Let your calendar serve your own needs this year

stress elf

Sometimes, a holiday is just a day.

So much of life happens off of the calendar.  Why the holiday, then?  If we unclicked the icon on our google calendar, the blue letters would disappear.  Just like that.

Sometimes letters are just letters.  “Words are just words.  Ways to capture the real thing.”  And to add to this from Ally Condie, I’d say, sometimes a holiday is a just a day.  A way to capture the real thing.  

Self-Care Tip – Let your calendar serve your own needs this year.

Question:  How does a holiday help you capture the real thing in what life is about for you? And when it doesn’t, how do you let it be?  How do you let it be just another day?  Please tell us your story.

Related Posts:

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

by

Mistaken Expressions of Freedom and Medication Compliance

Sabrina

Sabrina (Photo credit: joaoloureiro)

Sabrina is here with her sadness, anxiety and inattention in full swing. She is able to say that she knows she’ll get better. However, her body and expressions tell me she is bewildered. She doesn’t know. She wonders who she really is and how this can be. She is vulnerable. A little girl looking into such a great unknown, though wrapped up in a forty-something year-old body.

One and a half weeks ago, Sabrina ran out of her medication. She knew she was coming in to see me so she didn’t bother with it. She waited. One and a half weeks.

The number one reason for relapse is…? You remember. Medication noncompliance. Is it life stressors? There are so many. No. All those reasons for why we feel what we feel and do what we do, all those forces acting on us from the outside in, they aren’t the reasons we relapse most often.

There is something like a super-bug growing amongst us who take our meds on and off. We take them four or five days a week, not seven. We skip here and there and don’t “over-react” if we do. “They don’t control me, after-all.” We apperceive the situation. We think we, by not being consistent on medication, demonstrate our freedom. We are free when we take medication or when we don’t. We are free because we are human.

The super-bug in brain illness is a progression of disease process heightened and sharpened by medication noncompliance. A growing resistance to treatment and an acceleration of our falls, how long it takes for us to drop into a relapse and how hard and far we fall.

Sabrina and I are working together to take away barriers to consistent treatment.

What are your barriers? Do you mistake how to demonstrate your freedom? Or what is it? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip: Take medication consistently. Be a friend to yourself.

by

From a Fellow Commentor – Her Friend Suicided

Anxiety Always

Anxiety Always (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

i woke up this morning to find out that my friend shot herself last night. she texted me, said she hoped i had a good night and said goodbye. she then walked outside and shot herself in the head.  
there are so many emotions i can’t even sort them out.  i don’t know what to feel, i can’t even cry.  why haven’t I cried?  I didn’t hear her stupid text, I didn’t know… I knew she had her demons we all do, but they convinced her to end it.  it’s so finial, so F-ing stupid!!!!!
is this how it ends for us that are so f**ked up in the head?  she wasn’t on meds, would that have even helped?  I don’t know what to think sana. last month i got a phone call from my friend who lives in Fallbrook and she had been dealing with anxiety couldn’t take it anymore, said she didn’t want to feel the anxiety anymore and tried to kill herself.  she was admitted and stayed for 4 weeks.  she’s on so many meds that she’s speaks in a monotone voice.  it’s has really scared me.  
is this how it’s going to be for all of us that deal with fear, anxiety and panic? I need to go for a walk, i feel numb. i feel so pissed off and feel bad that I’m mad. 
i’m scared
didn’t know who else to share this with that would understand
Questions:  Do you?  What do you understand?  Is this how it’s going to be for all of us?  Please tell us your story.  We need to hear.
Related articles
by

Paper Doll Syndrome – Changing Symptomotology Can Be an Opportunity to Remember and Celebrate

Paper Doll Photographer - 2/52

Paper Doll Photographer – 2/52 (Photo credit: Mark Hopkins Photography)

Fred didn’t remember his panic.  He thought his main problem was his sleep.  His
so-called “main problem” changed with his symptomatology.  Fortunately or unfortunately he didn’t know it was happening.

Fred reminded me of a paper doll.  Now I’m a veterinarian, now I’m a clerk.  Of course there are all the stories that accompany each outfit.  Our smithy imagination is fast.  Pull this off and press this in and now I’m a fire-fighter.  Now I’m a noble, now I’m a… patient.

The other day after the Hemet NAMI meeting, (they meet monthly on the first Wednesday at the Hemet Seventh-Day Adventist Church), a member told me that when they do outreach, they begin their stories with something like, “We are people who,” or “I am a person who,” deliberately avoiding the word, “patient(s.)”  Hoping to allow others to connect with their humanity, the specialness of their, “Me,” rather than the distortion that suffering is special they try to keep away from the paper doll experience.

Thinking of NAMI, thinking of Fred, I splayed the biopsychosocial-model tools I use.  What was here for Fred?  Fred’s biology was toward healing as he wasn’t having panic attacks any more and his thought processes were less circular.  That’s what we wanted and signified that his treatments, (including medications and psychotherapies,) were at least not harming him as far as we could tell, and might even be part of what influenced his healing process.  However, his ongoing symptomatology as seen in his poor insight, (paper-doll syndrome,) insomnia and persistent worrying thoughts demonstrated that his biology was only partially treated.

Fred, like you and I, and like women who labor babies into this world never remember their pain, by forgetting his panic, he lost his point of reference.  I said,

Fred!  This is significant!  Yay!  

Fred looked at me like I didn’t get it.  He wasn’t sleeping.  What was I thinking, “Yay?”  Well…  “Fred I was thinking you aren’t panicking on a gurney in the emergency-room today.  Yay.”

Remembering our suffering isn’t necessary but it can be a friendly reference point if we want.

Self-Care Tip:  Use previous suffering as a reference point to celebrate when you aren’t.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Have previous sufferings lost their strength in your memory and diminished your celebrations?  How has suffering been used after they are gone to your advantage?  Please tell me your story.

Site Related Blog-Posts:

by

The Fifteen Minute Warning

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

(Photo credit: Kenny Teo (zoompict))

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related articles
by

Cultivate Fantasy To Improve Reality

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

Best T-shirt ever was on the road.

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

by

Salty Me. Taste it When tempted to Judge Others.

English: boiling water עברית: מים רותים

English: boiling water עברית: מים רותים (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do kind and friendly things for yourself before you do them for others.

Awkward!, No? But 🙂 not what we will talk about today.

Speaking with a dear friend of mine yesterday, this is what I remember caught his attention. I was rewarded by his expressions. He has always been something of the limited-response genre. The kind eye-contact, head tilt, warmth and curiosity his face described morphed into an energy deposit in my happy-place bank*.

I wondered if many of us assume he’s hard to impress, but I think that is presumptive until we can mind-read. Maybe a kything-skilled One is in our future our past, but till now, I’ve not met her. Even with that fantastical telepathy talent though as described by my fave, Madeleine L’Engle, we must ask, would that give license to judge*?

This is important to answer for us. It is with the Interrogative of Self-Care*, the The “Five W’s” (and one H)*, before we get derailed with the anecdotal, in-the-field, he-said-she-said and personal opinions. It is what hard element we find when we boil the water off. Salty Me. Taste it doing the unfriendly judging of others…. Unfriendly to Me.

Questions: How is keeping things about Me being a friend to yourself? When personalizing what others do, do you find friendship in looking into your salty self? Please tell me your story.

*Referenced Blog Posts*:

Bank

Interrogative of Self-Care

Who? When?, Where?, What?, and How?

Judge

 

 

by

Sleep Related Blog Posts – A Reference Guide

Sleeping German Shepherd

Sleeping German Shepherd (Photo credit: rightsandwrongs)

Organizing the “shelves” 🙂

  1. Sleep.  Be a Friend to Yourself.

  2. Sleep Hygiene – My Version

  3. Self-Care Does NOT Always Mean Doing What You Want

  4. Draw Sleep Hygiene Into Your Culture

  5. Sleep Is The Vital Sign Of Psychiatry

  6. Just Go To Sleep

  7. Good Sleep

  8. You Can’t Barter With It.  Sleep.

  9. Keep It Simple

  10. Regardless The Reasons Not To, Go Get Your Sleep

  11. Sleep Does Not Lose As Gracefully As He Lets Us Think

by

A short story starter

20120702-093516.jpgLeslie tugged on her shirt. Mussing with it didn’t give it or her the laundering they needing. Leslie stank of what you or I would, if we had at fifteen, ran toward a twenty-five year old, running toward something more so than what others might call, running away. He was what she wanted and she had simply responded. But now just one week later, she was for the first time, truly running away. He had been a lot different from she imagined. He had been, brief, let us say. And almost immediately unfaithful.

Leslie pulled on her shirt again. She was running away. But what was she running toward? Her eyes blinked and stung and her anxiety was so high, she couldn’t process. What was she doing again? Running away; not toward anything. Where could she go? Another tug on the stained cotton-T. Her long hair stuck to her damp neck.

No matter how many times she checked, yes, her shirt was down. She had to check again. It was something she might never stop doing. Now where could she go? The car on the corner honked at her and she jumped.

Nice! I like what I see! a voice delivered.

Why some cultures think it’s rude not to ogle women would always be a mystery to her.

Could she go to a friend’s? No. CPS might get called, maybe the police or worse, her parents. Some part of her split off then and asked the other,

Would going home be the worst?

The thought of facing her mom and dad after a week of not telling them, talking to them; after a week of subjecting them to that, she was so ashamed. Shame loomed over her, filled her and all she could think of again was what Jared had done. Leslie’s shirt had stretched out. An uneven hem hung the stains from her dirty hands. She gave it another firm two-handed pull down. No. Jared wasn’t with her now. Pull.

On the bus ride home, Leslie let the static and crackling sounds of her frantic thoughts turn into white snow and obscure and hypnotize her. She finally slept and would have missed her stop at the Stop-and-Go if the bus driver hadn’t used his mic to announce it three times. There was a crust of saliva on her cheek. Why was she doing this? The closer Leslie got to home, the surer she was that they hated her. How did she have the stupidity to even try? What was she doing?

Before she knew it, she was on the front porch. She knew the folks would be home because it was Sunday and Dad was ritualistic about Sunday yard work.

A flat of Freesia beside bags of gardening fro-frou lay around. What was she doing here? Tugging, she felt the threads pull apart in front. Her shirt! Leslie let out an involuntary sound, that was something like a growl. There. That was better. Anger came and stood with her. Some of the fear went away.

But this was suddenly awkward. What in the world does girl-gone-bad do when she comes home? Knock? Walk in? Leslie pulled her shirt down. There was another rip and she tried the door. In that moment, icy panic brought the memory of reading Peter Pan with her mom.

“Long ago,” (Peter) said, “I thought like you that my mother would always keep the window open for me, so I stayed away for moons and moons and moons, and then flew back; but the window was barred…”

Q: What can Louise do to be a friend to herself?

….I heard this hymn and thought I’d share it as an aside,

If you should feel sad and dejected,
When no answer comes to your prayers,
And when it seems you are neglected,
Remember, God knows and He cares.

Refrain:
He knows and He cares,
Your burden He bears;
He drank the whole cup,
While we take but one sup,
Your suff’ring He shares.

And when you get weary with toiling,
When no one your sore burden shares,
When evils your efforts are foiling,
Remember, God knows and He cares.

When confidence has become shaken,
You give Satan place unawares,
The Lord will not leave you forsaken,
He sees you, He knows and He cares.

When feelings of joy have subsided,
When sickness your health so impairs,
Don’t fail in your trust, be decided;
God sees you and tests you, He cares.

See Christ in your furnace of trial,
“I’m with you alway,” He declares;
When suff’ring severe self-denial,
Remember, He knows and He cares.

by

If You Want To Die, Tell Others.

McCulloch Electric Chainsaw. Photo by Eric Bea...

Image via Wikipedia

Have you been having any thoughts about wanting to die?

You folks know about these questions I must ask. Some people are offended by them. Many people are grateful. Trisha was guarded.

Yes.

I asked,

Did you have a plan in mind on how you would kill yourself?

There was a black pause and then,

I’m not sure I want to tell you that.

I could understand your reluctance Trisha but telling me is a good thing. It helps the ideas lose some of their power. It’s no longer as much of an option when you tell someone than it would be if you kept it a secret, I said.

Ok.

Another black pause and then,

I wanted to use a chain saw.

When it comes to ways of suicide, this one sounded pretty painful.

Ouch! I said to Trisha.

Her response, well, I didn’t expect it.

I hadn’t thought about that! The pain from that would have been nothing compared to the pain I was going through!

Trisha’s words schooled me. I don’t care how many times we talk about the darkness, the hopeless horror and the suffering of some brain illnesses, somehow, I know that I really don’t want to have full knowledge. When having your neck sawed off by your own hands with a chain saw seems like it would feel better than the full body despair, not many others will understand. Trisha wasn’t processing well, true. But the point isn’t her poverty of suicide options. What is the point here. Well, there is one major point to take home and there is a minor. Starting with the minor point – We can’t presume much about others. Moving on…. Major point – Tell people when having thoughts about wanting to die and what those thoughts are. Why? Because it’s friendly to Me. Telling someone isn’t as much about what they’ll do for Me, although once in a while someone may do something right on our behalf. Rather, telling someone is about what the telling process and knowledge of the telling does for Me. It lets us know that we are not alone. We lose some of the magical quality to the suicide plan. It dilutes our conviction to self-harm as a solution.

Question: What else do you think telling someone about thoughts of suicide does for Me? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip: If you have thoughts of wanting to die, tell others.

by

Set Your Self-Care And Moral Jailer Free.

Repost

Self Care

Image by Mskadu via Flickr

Self-Care Tip – Set your self-care free.  Be a friend to yourself.

Self-care just is.

The problem about saying self-care starts and ends with Me is that people forget about the journey it travels between here and there.  People become fearful that it means alone-care, apart-from-God-care, selfish-care, and so on.

When we take care of “Me,” we can connect more with others, including God, have more inside of us to give to others, and have more interest in the world around.  The opposite disables our abilities to do those things.  Again we say, “Can’t give what we don’t have.”

God gave us this person, “Me,” to take care of.  He considers “Me” valuable and of high priority.  He celebrates with me and cheers me on.  He stands beside me and He doesn’t see self-care as having exclusionary implications to anyone else.

Please, shake it off.  Self-care is no more of a moral issue than anything else.  It just is.  It is a choice, a freedom, an opportunity.  It is as much about salvation as any other act of good or bad, and has no influence on our worth.  It just is.

Lord, What must I do to be saved?

– Paul’s Jailer.  Me.  Could be you.

Questions:  How do you speak to the stigma in your church, community or self toward being a friend to yourself?  How do you get to Me, despite the pressure to pay-up to all the others around you in emotional and physical energy first?  How is your relationship with God when you are friendly with yourself?  Please tell me your story.

Related Articles
by

How to Trust Whom You Serve and Whom is Serving You

Michael E. DeBakey, world-famous cardiothoraci...

Much of what we do in medicine is elementary. I wouldn’t know how to quantify the amount of plainness involved with our goings-on. Behind the writing of controlled substances on pricey government controlled paper, behind our, “Hmm’s”, our flow of learning and teaching, and more (or less) than the laying on of professional hands, we are… we are common.

To say it simply, physicians are dealing with themselves. In medical practice, separating the self out, effectively breaking the emulsion of the physician from their personal journey leaves many of us suspiciously grouped into the numbers of old and lonely but practically excellent. Some medical specialties are infrequently bested by anything other than 80+ hour work-weeks, knowledge retention and steady hands. The imminent peril and the literal moment by moment of life-saving interventions helps the rest of us understand.

Even so, I’ve known some who have been “the best” and still managed to be connected to their personal. I imagine some other dimension is forced open by all the space that that kind of nearly fictional human occupies: Cardiothoracic surgeon, Anees J Razzouk, M.D., at Loma Linda University, for one; Gisella Sandy, M.D., critical care specialist, general surgeon and medical missionary in Peru, for another. We are all happy to say that the list is long here. We think of the ordinary physicians planted around our planet who are heroic enough to do the simple. After all, how much can a physician offer to her patient if she hasn’t taken care of herself first?

Those of us who seek medical care from a physician will be interested to know that the physician as well as the patient can only carry so much before things start to fall out of their arms. Before a sack tears on our way from the car to the kitchen, before there is spillage and things go unnoticed, we want to know that they thought about it. We want for them what they want for their patients in other words. Accountability to Me.

Wanting this for others, because we are afraid, is understandable. But it’s not at the aorta where life pumps and freedom flows. Each of us, regardless of fancy prescription pad or paper gown, to trust the other, we must have their own wanting. Wanting this for themselves. For Me. That is the pulse on trusting each other.

Questions: How has being a better friend to yourself improved your trust in those who are serving you? How has being a better friend to yourself improved your ability to trust those you hope to serve? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – Follow the thoughts that bring you back to Me where you will healthily grow your accountability, wanting and trust. Be a friend to yourself

Related articles
by

Don’t Let Your Sense of Need Get Away From You

Pinocchio Illustration - When He Becomes a Donkey

Pinocchio Illustration - When He Becomes a Donkey (Photo credit: Kev.Kirsche)

Self-Care Tip:  Find your need, grip it tight enough to not let it be taken from you and loose enough that fatigue will not lose it for you.

If we don’t know our need, if we don’t know our wanting, the reason we say “Evangelize,” “Buy this!,” “Don’t miss it!,” if we don’t know why we care what other people are doing, we will not be so productive.  We will be a poor salesman.  We will have a droll experience.  Things will not make sense to us and will be something other than friendly.  We bore ourselves when we don’t know why.

What was it like when not being a friend to Me?  Remember the way we treated others, the disconnection from the people we wanted and the way life didn’t absorb.  Remember why we started with Me.

This is everywhere in our lives – taking medications and resenting it, skipping our exercise, staying up late at night when we are feeling so good, turning our addictions over to our Higher Power becomes rhetoric and you know what more.

This is just a short trip into this idea today.  I’ve been blessed remembering my lows, being in my lows, and experiencing my wanting.  I’ve been messed up when I didn’t.  I don’t want so many goodies that I turn into a donkey.

Keep on.

Questions:   How has remembering your wanting improved your ability to be a friend to yourself?  How do you keep the memory of your wanting even when you don’t?  Please tell me your story?

Related articles
by

Discover Your Sweetness – Value, That is To Say

English: Casimiroa edulis, White sapote fruit ...

Image via Wikipedia

My kids look at fruit as if they are inspecting a diamond for flaws.

Is this a good one Mommy? 

My daughter was pointing at a blemish that comes from fruit grown outside in dirt and not genetically engineered.

My huffing sounds are barred by something almost like maturity, just in time.  I pick up a different White Sapote with broken skin and beak marks where it is half eaten by whoever got there first.

After spitting out the seeds, I remembered bits of my filthy self as a daddy-chasing kid.  The words dusted off and important to me again, I heard Dad say,

Pick the fruit that the birds have pecked at.  They know what’s good better than we do.  Here Sana.  Take this one.  This is really sweet.

The fruit turning in my daughter’s hand, the cast-offs still in the basket, her anxiety about finding the best and my dad’s words came at me like the sounds between Broadway and 42nd Street.  And out walked Jean.

Jean was a patient I had known, particular to me despite common problems.

Abuse since at least my daughter’s age or younger.  Neglect.  Disgusting trauma survived.

Jean who, after getting picked on for the first thirty years of her life, came to me, insisting on living.  She resisted being a White Sapote in a bowl on the counter, inspected by passerbys.  Her community had tried to declare her value, her second chances and hoped to cast her off.

Pick the fruit that the birds have pecked at.  They know what’s good better than we do.  Here Sana.  

Jean’s face was in my memory.  Her white scar on her black skin shocked me; a large keloid.

Take this one.  This is really sweet.

I gave my daughter a squeeze and told her what Papa had said.  I’m so glad my daughter reminded me about this in we who have been hurt.  (Okay.  That’s all of us, see it or not.)  The way Jean grew, looked for light, the courage she answered to, the newness that came out of used up and shabbiness – Jean was teaching me about value.

Even when we are not behaving well, when we don’t look good and when we drop the market price, we have value.  Somehow, being chosen for life is more important than being chosen to suffer.  I wish I could explain why and how better but it’s just something each of us will have to experience for ourselves.  We will have to in humility and wisdom, like Jean’s or my dad’s wisdom, find the sweetness in Me.

Questions:  What is it about you that is particularly sweet?  Do you perceive your value?  Per what measure or qualifier? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Discover your sweetness.  Be a friend to yourself

Related Articles:

by

Purposefully Harness The Power of Social Influence

A piece of chocolate candy.

Image via Wikipedia

Hello Friends.

I’m starting the 4-week detox for sugar addicts.

I know I’m more empowered with your company, so join in if interested.  And because it is friendly to you/Me too, spread this around to others.

(#Obesity – Abstract of article: social influence affect #weight loss http://bit.ly/xn1Bjq #selfcare #community #service.)

This is my list of reasons re: my choice today as part of step 1:

Reasons why I am cutting back on sugar

  • inflammation,
  • clarity of thought and subsequent depth of experience,
  • #obesity and related illnesses (comorbidities,)
  • appearance and social stigma,
  • social influence,
  • self-esteem,
  • quality of life and
  • longevity

If you choose to participate, and are interested in what the power of social influence can do for you, please post your own reasons here.

Looking forward to connecting with you. Keep on.

Self-Care Tip – Deliberately and purposefully harness the power of social influence in becoming a friend to yourself.

Related articles