self care

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Words Like: Distended abdomen! and Connection

distended abdomen

A friend of mine told me the other day,

Mentally I went to a bad place during exercise on Tuesday. Like “I’m so slow, I want to go home, the other girls probably think bad things about me”. In my head space now I see those thoughts as ridiculous. But it was tough to get through.

Excuse me but she is brilliant.  She speaks for millions.

So many times we think about the rough out there.  The words that slow our swing down, that are not said right, that somehow take away points from our identity.  We are not a two-dimensional scorecard.  Speaking up does not qualify us.  Good or bad.  Speaking up does not change our value.

I loved her voice.  I am thinking she should start up her own blog.  If she can be this transparent on a blog, she is a needed voice.

If I could fantasize a little, (Now! Now!  Stop that,) I would have her and you go back to our own, here at friendtoyourself.com, and start methodically answering each self-care question, post by post, in your own authentic way.  And just you see what a stroke speaking up makes.  Just see what it does for you inside and out.  Just see what it does for others. …Me for example.  See?  I am affected by you.

As for my transparency, in brief, …I did not survive halloween.  I ate like a motor.  Chocolate.  Chocolate and more chocolate.

Otherwise.  I think this greens-and-beans-effort I am doing has been ok.  I am eating a lot of plants.  Trying to keep the simple carbs low.  Not always the fact but the goal.  I do still eat in volume which I will see if it makes a difference or not when it is this type of volume.  All that fiber is making a difference to my gut though!  my abdomen is distended!  TMI.

A couple posts ago we shared Jessica’s, “Do This.”  My question is, what is yours? What is your, “Do This?”  Please do not make me use any more golf analogies, but where are your …words?  Your words are important for you.  They bring friendship to you from you.  They bring you to connection, community, clarity of thought, and as said in a post long ago:

“And if we stop speaking, we will lose.  If we do not respect the opportunity to connect, if we do not treat it as the treasure that it is, not only will the world miss out on the ‘Me,’ we miss out on the world at large.  It goes both ways.

We have a choice.  Get friendly with yourself.  Speak.  Listen.  Connect.

Self-Care Tip – Stay connected for your sake and for theirs.”

Question:  What has speaking up done for your friendship with yourself?  How are your words kinder said than not? Please tell your story.

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Get You Some Love

Cemetary

Cemetary (Photo credit: Vu Bui)

The ocean is like an untended cemetery, compared to my youth dives, with shoots of life breaking up the stone and dead coral.  A little family of forceps butterfly fish flutter around the tips of something brown.  I honk sounds through the water to my kids when I spy a trumpet fish, a big one, with some neon lighting up the gray long body.  My kids are so energized.

There are three turtles and I remember I have never swum with turtles before.  “Hey.  That’s cool,” I think.  I try to reconcile the turtles with the changes from when I snorkeled and dove reefs years ago, “Positive?  Negative?”  Something there in me wants to feed this info through my inner hope-machine to convince my other that when my kids swim another future day, the ocean will not be dead.  Foreboding.

I am starting to get disoriented by this and surface to get a grip. My husband pops up and I whisper to him, so our kids do not overhear and lose their energy to my negativity, “It’s like a tomb, Honey!  I can hardly stand it!”  And like a compass, he points to a better direction.  “It’s fine, Sana.  It is what it is.”  Interpretation can distort experience.

Thanks to husband and the reconnection of interpretation with presence, under water, I see this moment, this day, in the parrot fish, the coronets, and the puffers. And I, with more gravity, am able to enjoy what Love is giving now.  A solemn gift.  More informed, my appreciation is deeper and I can receive.

Receiving Love is not as easy as it sounds.  It is the work of a moment.  It is the work of a lifetime.  I am a spoiler, unable to love myself, unless I am able to receive Love from outside of myself and connect with it, in my pathway of Me-to-Me.

I am just starting to get this and am eager to understand and own more, because, this has been amazing.  This is something like how it goes so far; tense up, maybe angry Me, (reason or no reason,) pause, look, pray for it, pause, acknowledge, let it do its thing on Me. Start over. Again. Again.

In we who suffer brain illness, we who suffer cancer, we who are in the dying stage of life, in we who, we, we are in the right place to do this.  This is just where we need to be to receive Love.

Illness does not keep us from the ability to receive Love.  Poverty does not.  Dead coral and loss do not.  Nothing can.

Everything can be used by Love to communicate to us.  Illness can.  Poverty, dying, loss can.  Anything can be used to bring into our circle of Me-to-Me, Love.  Love is now.

I am glad, in age, that I am increasingly aware of the changeability inherent in everything, everything, positive, negative, everything.  This is one more way I am able to receive Love.  Age.

Being able to receive Love requires the process of changing.  It is not stagnant, stationary, unaging.  As far as we are able to understand, it is not.  We are creatures of dimension, creatures of space and time and until we are further created to receive otherwise, this is.

Question:  how do you increase your reception of Love?  How do you receive Love?  How does this affect your friendship with yourself.  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Increase your Love-reception.

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Fatal Game of Playing Chicken

Stubborn in a game of chicken, who will win?

“The principle of the game is that while each player prefers not to yield to the other, the worst possible outcome occurs when both players do not yield.”

chicken race

As said by one avid chicken-owner at the UK World Championship Hen Races, “Listen birdbrain, you either perform for me, or perform for Colonel Sanders.”

Sometimes it is like that between the idea of, everything starts and ends with Me, that we hold here at FriendtoYourself.com and others who say, Love God first.

So, in the spirit of hoping, and “racing well,” let’s discuss.

If we could Love another first, that would just be great.  But we can’t.  (Hear the whine? 🙂  I suppose I have made those sounds before.)  We can’t.  I think that is the curse of Adam and Eve.  We can’t love anyone truly more than ourselves.  It always comes back to me.  We can be thankful for Jesus saving those Garden-of-Edeners, and the rest of us from that lonely circle.  Jesus inserted Himself into our round and round so first, we are never alone, and second, we have Love that is bigger than any catastrophe we think we were born into or happened upon along the way.

When I was a young-in, I studied at Rosario Beach.  We took samples from the ocean and did funky things to them and finally were tested and passed the class.  In this process we studied insertion genes.  These are awesome in their changing power.  This is how mutations happen in nature as well as how we now do genetic engineering.

insertion gene

None of us, like lined up chromosomes, can insert into ourselves the ability to start or end anywhere but with Me.  But, just like the stupidity of working out before you go to the gym, we do not wait for that to be inserted into Me before we pursue Love.   Love inserts in.  Until then, the Love part is foreign to Me.  It is a mystery.  Our life journey of beginning and ending with Me is changed from the one we started with.

Like weaving in magic into the common circle that everything starts and ends with Me,…  But we are not magicians.  I am no magician, although I have watched, “Now You See Me,” 🙂 and I understand that even magicians do not believe what they do is magic.

We have often said and heard others say, “Don’t love Me first, Love God first.”   We are not worth much to our neighbor though if we do not like Me.

So basically any time on our personal life journey, we might have enough insight to perceive the Loving of another more than Me, think Magic.  Someone did you an insert.  Now, even though your circle will still end with Me, your Me is changed and connected to Love.

It is a bummer that so many of us, with inherent self-recrimination, tell ourselves and others to, “Love God first,” when we might as well demand that we do our own gene engineering with Magic.  If and/or when we do love another first, by definition, that is not about Me.

“We love, because He first loved Me.”  ‘Member?  1Jo 4:19

We can, however, enter ourselves in for the insertion.  If we do not put our name in, it is harder to get called I would think.

Self-Care Tip:  Believe in Magic to treat yourself and others kinder, with less self-recrimination, and with more hope.

Questions:  I’m still growing on this.  What do you think?

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Honking my horn

….check it out ( yay! smiling!)

Sleep Well

Sleep Well: A “Friend to Yourself” Resource

by Sana Johnson-Quijada MD (Author)

In a culture that demands our time, our attention, and our energy 24-7, sleep has gotten a bad reputation. A full night of rest can feel like a weakness, an indulgence, something selfish. But sleep, says Dr. Sana Johnson-Quijada, is critical to our mental and physical health. And when we are not getting enough quality sleep, our lives suffer. Dr. Q explores the reasons why we sabotage healthy sleep patterns, identifies our unique sleep temperaments, and offers practical, positive, and achievable goals for sleeping better. From a daily sleep log to the 12 Rules of Sleep Hygiene, readers will walk away with the motivation and tools to get the rest they need.

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Your Fabulous Stardom

Image“Taylor Swift is a rock star!”

The girl was in awe.  She had written versions of this all over her paper in various star-quality designs.  Everything was about Taylor Swift.  I was watching her at the park and drifting among my own thoughts, when her father leaned over and said, “Now write, Susan is a rock star.”  Young TS-Fan, alias Susan, looked up with an expression capturing a combo of wisdom with a big flip-off.  My thoughts were not adrift.  She was my interest.  She was a star.

And so was her dad!  What a guy!

Think about what your temperament gave you.  Think about what you like most to do, what your thoughts noodle when you aren’t “thinking.”  Is there someone who emulates the “star?”  Write that person’s name down in a bumper sticker statement.  Now write your own name in another.  You are peers.  Meet your cohort.

Susan’s dad had it going.  Be productive at any age.  Know that you have something to offer.  You have valuable stock.  Put you name out there, where ever that is.

Christian is a brilliant gardener.  Mindy is being her real self all the time.  Craig works words in classic timeless style.  You are a star.

Self-care tip:  Put your name into print.

Question:  What are you a star at?  Please tell us your fabulous story of self.

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Bank and Book-Keeping

Lathe operator machining parts for transport p...

Lathe operator machining parts for transport planes at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant, Fort Worth, USA (1942). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are like the national bank of our own nation.  If we do not invest and do book-keeping, we get the great depression.  But what does that mean?  What is investing in Me?  What is book-keeping?  “I am not an accountant and I am not good with numbers,” we say.

We are talking about putting it in and seeing into when it is running low.  Putting it in, well, it might be fun, intuitive, the best part of what makes life worth living, or it might feel like working nine to five.

How do we get money in our bank?  We work.  We work jobs we like, and ones we do not.  This is not meant to be a discussion on the employment crisis we are in, but rather our basic needs.   Basic needs, like energy, self-esteem, a desire to live, freedom, the ability to feel pleasure, think about those.

Have we considered them as our entitlement for being human?  Are they a choice?  Investing in me is the big and small, the easy and difficult of practicing accountability to Me.

One of the weaknesses of this primitive analogy is that it piggy-backs a cultural opinion of failure if we find our bank empty.  Without spending time today on that, please accept the premise that emotions and behaviors in this discussion are not moral qualifiers.

The behaviors that bring bank might be any number of things, exercise, diet, marrying God, sleep, taking prescription medication, ECT, using CPAP, avoiding violent content, Love magic, and so forth.  However, to do these things with most success.  Pursue them through the framework gifted to us via genetics, what came to us by way of temperament.  That is style, form, and inspiration.

Temperament provides for us, like a great uncle’s inheritance. Going with that style of personality will tap into what was put aside for us without any work on our part.  It is a fortune each of us have.  This is in compliment to what bank we work for, as described above.

There are many ways we receive that we do not work for.  Love, for example.  But the choice to receive may not come easy.  The choice to pursue what is freely given to us, to unwrap a gift, to open an envelope that carries our uncle’s will, to receive Love – the choice is ours.  The choice can be as difficult or more so than hours in a sweatshop.

How do we get money in our bank?  We work and we receive.

So this is what “bank” is and book-keeping at FriendtoYourself.com, and maybe it is as interesting as tax season but I thought revisiting it might lend balance.  Keep on.

Question:  What is your bookkeeping activity?  Please tell us some of your story.

Self-care tip:  Work and receive actively.

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Answering Jim, professionally and personally – ECT

A few days ago, Jim, from blog, “I Don’t Want To Talk About It,” asked in his comment to my blog post,

What is your educated opinion about this?  A friend of mine is seriously considering this.

Jim was asking regarding ECT – electroconvulsive therapy.

021 Side Effect

021 Side Effect (Photo credit: Jester Jay Music)

Responding to a question that asks me to answer both personally and professionally is a little uncomfortable but this is my best effort.

…Alright, Provocateur Jim, I have been chewing my cheek on this, wanting to say something profound, considered “educated,” 🙂 yet not to turn anyone off with an up-tilted schnoz.

I do love ECT as a treatment option.

ECT is not for everyone of course, as nothing is, but consider it if you are looking for a treatment to work quickly and effectively .

Quickly is important.

  1. Can be life-saving, (“Timing is everything,” they say)
  2. Brain health short and long-term
  • less dementia,
  • less onset of other brain illnesses that come when one brain illness is not fully treated,
  • easier to respond to any future necessary treatments when we get more rapid and full treatment response to current illness episode,
  • ECT (as with medication therapy) that is done earlier in illness episode has a more robust response,
  • relapses are less severe, and we do not drop as rapidly when treatment is obtained more quickly for current illness episode

3. Quality of life,
4. Halt the damage to interpersonal relationships,
5. Diminish financial demise secondary to disability of brain illness,
6. Minimize side-effects,
7. Minimize medications.

Efficacy… do we really need to even say that the goal is to use a treatment that works?  ECT works more often and more thoroughly than any other treatment options.

Furthermore, we suffer less illness relapse when ECT is continued in maintenance.

Treatment response is much more robust when ECT is combined with medication.

Side Effects:

The side effects can only be measured on an individual basis, as qualified by the person going through them.

First off, there is no brain damage done by ECT, as seen in medical studies. This is a common fear.

Neither does ECT go through the body systems, it is not metabolized, and does not touch our body organs.  Yay, right!?  Medication side effects are a huge pill-dotted elephant in the room.  ECT does not touch the body (i.e. It is not a substance ingested or entered materially into the body,) all related potential side effects never happen.

The number one reason for relapse in brain illness is medication noncompliance.   This is due to many reasons, such as intolerable side-effects and the cascade of subsequent related issues.  Even dry mouth can lead to root canals.  We do not think of osteoporosis from serotonin agents.  Not taking our medication daily can be for more obvious reasons, like not climaxing during orgasm.

Zoloft Side effects in women

Zoloft Side effects in women (Photo credit: Life Mental Health)

Plus, it is just hard to remember.  Even the most consistent of us generally miss one to two days of medication a week or a month.  It is tough to be consistent.
ECT is less difficult to remember and maintenance ECT is much less frequent than taking pills every day.  Even when the ECT is combined with medication, if a day or two is missed, at least the ECT will be consistent as it has the support of the community of ECT staff and the transportation person to and from the surgery center.

In these regards, ECT has fewer barriers to treatment compliance that the majority of us suffer with medication therapies.  That is a big deal.

The side-effects of ECT are generally headache and temporary memory loss.

During index treatment, (about the first 3-4 weeks,) it is common to experience difficulty imprinting/recording memories. This typically takes about five weeks after the index treatment to return toward baseline. 80 years of data do not demonstrate that there is other memory loss but there are individual complaints of that.

Headaches are common for the the first couple treatments until the anesthesia becomes customized to the individuals experience. Generally after the first few treatments, the personalized anesthesia medications are able to resolve these from causing too much suffering. Not universally of course, but generally. Then once the maintenance treatments get going, memory loss and headaches are not common complaints.

…Big breath…

Did I do it?  Any questions about this diatribe?  🙂  Thank you for your patience.  I am trying…  Please let me know.  Keep on.

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Past week, latest on ECT on the web

  1. Shock therapy used to treat depression video from wzzm13.com community
  2. Wrong Planet Autism Forum Index -> Bipolar, Tourettes, Schizophrenia, and other Psychological Conditions
  3. Why are we still using electroconvulsive therapy?
  4. By Jim ReedBBC Newsnight
  5. PLOS ONE  :  Electroconvulsive Therapy Induces Neurogenesis
Cured by Electroshock Therapy,  Wall Street Journal

And, refreshing our memory… from http://www.FriendtoYourself.com, Related:
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How do I become a friend to Me? Start with seeing.

magic mirror

“I like the way he sees me.  I have a lot of trouble seeing myself.”

Madge really had it going, as far as I was concerned.  In this one statement, she is insightful.

Juxtaposing being able to see into oneself with the self-declaration of not being able to see, is ironic.  It is lovely, like going toward anxiety to diminish its power over us.  It is complex, as are the many hues of gray.  A beautiful weed.  Great weakness.  Useful trash.  It is a pretty great irony to come to that place of wisely recognizing how little wisdom we have.

We have trouble seeing ourselves. Part of what makes it so hard to be friends is that doing that is like shaking our own hand.  When we try, we are a purse flipped inside out.  The crude insult, “Her head is stuck up her own a–!” comes to mind.

Many like bullet points to give a, “How to.”  For example, look at Yahoo!

How to buy, store, and cook watermelon

Cook watermelon.  I know someone is saying, “Made you look.”  And maybe when I say, “How to see yourself in these moves,” someone else is swirling their eyes.  But, as I am not about to say that I know better than Yahoo!, here’s my try:

1.  Origins, (God)

2.  Brain health

3.  Community

4.  Admit limitations

5.  And a big magic mirror

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, how do I see Me?

Maybe my list is out of order and maybe it is not a perfect step approach into the soul.  So be it.  Editors of Yahoo! feel free to instruct.

Madge, in one statement, covered community and limitations.  It was nice to be in her space.

Self-Care Tip:  How do I become a friend to Me?  Start with seeing.

Question:  How do you become a friend to Me with your site?  Please tell us your story.

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Conditional Love With Me

frayed rope

We have a tenuous relationship with ourselves.  Very conditional, as if we were in a constant state of probation. Have you noticed?  Conditional love: part of the human condition.

I was reading the The Golem and the Jinni: A Novel, by Helene Wecker, and found myself getting into her golem-philosophy, that went something like this,

Since so many of us have it, can’t you just say it is the way things are, and not about freedom or fairness?

Wecker in such eloquence ironically describes the human condition from the story of two inhuman beings.

The New York Times, , describes it as,

When they are later confronted by the evil power who controls their fates, they discover that the ultimate expression of free will may lie in the embrace of limitations.

In considering our limitations in loving our own self, this idea can be useful to come to terms with the day in and out internal conflict of loving what is imperfect and distasteful, with what we would otherwise rather not identify with, and with the acts of friendship toward this seemingly inhuman part of our selves.  In embracing our limitations, we may find less conflict in loving Me, less conditioning, or perhaps a shorter probation each day.  We may experience the probation differently, Chava, The Golem, when we say, “It just is this way with all of us.  I have the community of humanity.”

Getting into the space of where our “tenuous bond” between what we love and would otherwise not love about ME, in fact diminishes the frailty and increases the strength in our personal journey.  Rather than putting us into further danger of internal conflict and self-loathing, it allows us to experience what will happen from and in the company of the tension.

More specifically, in brain health, getting into the space of our conditional love for our self, allows us to do things like seek medical treatment when needed, ally with help, with medical treatments that once repulsed us, with something as formulated as putting a pill in our mouth seven days a week indefinitely.  Or another treatment, such as ECT.

We are conditional with ourselves.  It is part of our human condition.  That is pretty close to, “Normal.”

Question: How often are you aware of your own difficulty loving yourself, your Me?  What improves this?  Why does difficulty with loving Me recur and recur without end?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Get into the tenuous space between the “good and bad” of Me where you are normal.

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Getting Older and Getting Born

Sana_Set09_LeoChaves_032

Sana_Set09_LeoChaves_032 (Photo credit: LeoChaves)

Turned another year over. Forty one now. Sometimes I already feel like there is a toe tag on me. Other times I ride the consciousness of now and innocence, as if I have forever to do whatever it is I am living for. As if fear did not pulse around me, as if life held no shame, then I carry my 41 years as lightly as a daughter spatters kissies over her mother’s arms.

Getting older is all the hype now. I was not alive 100 years ago but I wonder if 40 was the “new sexy” then. Gwyneth Paltrow is lovely. Me and Gwyneth. We have so much in common.

Huffington Post featured 30 Celebs Who Are Aging Gracefully. Tina Turner, Sting, Sigourney Weaver, the list is full of real people sharing our life-space. Remember Working Girl? Boom.

I look at my parents, friends, patients, myself, strangers on the street and stories that symbolize a person’s life lived. I look and I think of someone who climbs Everest. I think of frostbite. I think of a long long journey. I think of death.

The day before my birthday, the excitement made waiting too much to endure. A small chocolate bar, a handmade card with misspelled words and two tightly folded dollar bills disregarded the calendar date. Neatly arranged on my night table, I was told by their giggling toe-toe hopping agents, “Happy Birthday tomorrow, Mommy! I’m so glad you were born!”

And I was born again. Just like that. Love labor.

Some women have birth the way it is supposed to happen and others suffer. After my third child, my OB-Gyn, I love that woman, told me with nothing more than fatigue and honesty, “Sana, you should probably stop at three. Pregnancy and delivery is just not easy for you.” My pregnancies and deliveries were not that easy for her either.

Our rebirths also come easy and come hard. We almost die. We cruise through as if we were made for it. “She was made to have babies!” (Dodge the loogie I cannot help but hurl. Damn those women with baby-making bodies!)

I know we think things like this about people without brain illness, (if they even exists.) Maybe we think they do not have the suffering we do. Maybe we think we have it worse. We think at least we are misunderstood, when we hear,

“Get over it!”

“Just calm down!”

“Would you relax?!”

Breath. Yummy. How we love that. The list of these is longer than the path up Everest. And so helpful. Who has actually calmed down when told? Notice the exclamation points. Exclamation points symbolize emotion, in case the mountaineering porters saying the helpful emotion-directives did not know.

During our long long or short journeys we get to be born once, twice, forty-one, or the last time, because of Love. We do not get a Love that is measurable liquid or linear, like Time. Love is not healthy or unhealthy. It does not curl into our DNA, and is not dispensed by privilege. Nor a jury of Sherpas. Calm down.

Love is. Love is, and Love offers us a newness over and over and over and over because.

We have different birthing experiences, but I am glad you were born. You are loved.

Self-Care Tip:  Allow Love to bring you new beginnings.

Questions:  How has birthing gone for you?  What have been some of the new beginnings you knew Love brought you.  Please tell us your story.

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More on Life-ers. (Those darn perdy dandelions.)

Taraxacum, seeds detail 2.jpg

Image via Wikipedia

I had an interesting comment a couple of days ago on the concept of Life-ers.

If you have a weed in your garden, you pull it.  If there’s something wrong in your life, you don’t fall in love with it.  You get to weeding.

However, there are Life-ers that are both weeds to pull and weeds to just plain garden I reckon.

We here at FriendtoYourself.com, got one of the most practical life examples of a Life-er.  It is both one that can be weeded and one that cannot.  Emily said in response to blog-post, One Woman’s Struggle,

…I have been a self-identified compulsive overeater (or binge eater) since I was a child. It has always loomed large (pun intended) in my life. I have successfully dieted and lost 30-40 pounds at a time, and then I’ve gained everything back — with interest. It has been my obsession and my bete noir.

Eight years ago, out of pure desperation, I went to a Overeaters Anonymous meeting. I didn’t necessarily like it at first, but I recognized my problem as an addiction. If you hold my experience up next to an alcoholic’s, there is no difference. I struggled a long time with the program, but today I am living what OA calls an abstinent life. My definition of abstinence is three reasonable meals a day with nothing in between. I am shrinking to a healthy body weight.

I have also developed my spiritual side and my relationship with my higher power (that I get to define) is what makes it possible to eat like a normal person. My obsession has been lifted, one day at a time. Like an alcoholic, this is not something I can do on my own.  This is supported by about 25 years of data.

I am experiencing freedom I couldn’t even imagine walking in the doors of my first meeting — freedom from fat, freedom from compulsion, openness to change and growth and a life that is no longer nearly as self-centered.

Sana, you asked if it helps to think of it as an addiction — for me, it’s not an analogy; it IS an addiction. I use the Big Book for the solution. My recovery is just like that in any other program.  And it’s the ONLY thing that made a difference — not just for me, but for the dozens of people I share OA with. I hope this is something health professionals will understand one day. OA is an underutilized tool, and I think that could change with better understanding and guidance.

Thank  you Emily for your story.  I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind.

Addictions is a weed we could more often agree is a Life-er.  That is not to say there are not those of us who think that they can yank and be done with, but the general consensus in medicine is that addictions are Life-ers.

There are other Life-ers besides addictions.  Recurrent major depressive disorder, treatment resistant major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, okay – a gazillion other medical illnesses that will not be eradicated by weed killer or a gloved garden-grip.  There are also non-medical Life-ers, such as poverty, natural or unnatural disaster, stigma and so forth.  We could even use the biopsychosocial model to catalogue them if we wanted.

One of the things that intuitively sits poorly about Life-ers in our culture and communities is the perceived helplessness that can soil it.  However, we are not implying helplessness at all.  The opposite in fact. Just as this courageous Emily described, when we take care of ourselves, when we befriend ourselves, we take accountability for where we are now, our yards improve neighborhoods.  We have more freedom and choice.

For the world out there who is scared to garden over the long term, let’s get over ourselves.  What we are growing is worth the space we occupy and of high value.  You may never know it but we are and have bank to show for it.

Questions:  What is your response to those who call your Life-ers weeds to pull?  What are some examples of Life-ers you have fallen in love with and how did you? How do you get away from perfectionism? Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – If there is a weed in your life you can pull, pull it.  If you cannot, or if you do and it just keeps growing back, fall in love with it and grow a garden with those perdy dandelions.
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Use something other than your condition to mark your value

typical American family, September 1940

typical American family, September 1940 (Photo credit: austinevan)

I do not really want to examine my faith.  It is just a paper flower.  Where my faith comes from, now that excites, like a outlet into energy.

Watching, The Grapes of Wrath 1940 drama film directed by John Ford, tonight with my family, we all knew that we were frail, one or two missteps from disaster.  One of us asked,

“Why wasn’t it a big deal when someone died?”

Oh, but it was.  The people were breaking, could barely dig a grave for their family member, and that may have come across to a youngin’ as if they did not care.  When we are breaking, we look at life differently.  It is a big deal.

Casy says it at Grandpa’s burial, “All that lives is holy.” Chapter 13, pg. 184

I see this in patients sometimes.  People who are done with the bull.  People who know that whatever it is they thought was so great about themselves is just rubbish.  People who know they are more than the sack of skin that holds their fire.  These people are looking for where their life comes from, for a moment of realness to fuel on.  And these people taking medications, getting electroconvulsive therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, scraping at life to survive, these people are.

However, we do not really want to examine our hard work, though it is so close to what makes life great.  Our courage and grit rises up like a green mountain.  Where our grit, hard work and courage comes from, that is Holy.

There is strength and Holiness there, no matter about our condition.

Question:  What is special about humanity?

Self-Care tip:  Use something other than your condition to mark your value.

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A Note of Thanks For Collaborating

typewriter 1

June 30, 2013

You
Friend to Yourself
Colleagues
Practitioners
Referral Sources

Hello,

I just wanted to send a note of “Thanks!!!!”
Thank you so much for including us in the care of your patients.  I hope we continue in your and their trust.

Practicing variety psychiatry brings me toward my quality of life experience and I am grateful.  I am not alone in this but blessed to be included in a fantastic team and community of treatment providers.

We believe passionately that our own quality of practice experience is the first step to engaging in a patient-doctor relationship.  Connection brings change and so our patients become a changing force in our lives with their courage.

Our patients work through multiple modalities, pressing toward healing and presence with electroconvulsive therapy, treatment-options awareness groups, medications, psychotherapy, and homeopathic remedies.  If there is more we might benefit from in practice, please let us know.  This is a life-journey we are honored to share.

Keep on.

Dr. Q

951-677-2333 ECT Centers, Medical Director
PrimeTelepsych.com Personal cell available, Concierge Telepsychiatry
951-677-2333 Treatment-Options Awareness Community Groups
800-670-4960 Pharmaceutical Research, such as, for those who cannot afford care otherwise – Principle Investigator
PatientFusion.com or (951) 514-1234 Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic
FriendtoYourself.com Us, you and I, Writing and Public Speaking

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What would brain illness look like

Look Mommy! Look at my note!

 

crinkledShe pulled out a crumpled treasure.

See?!

It was a white paper. Blank. I paused with the, “I’m very interested,” and, “I’m a good Mom to whom you want to divulge your innermost thoughts and secrets to,” expressions on my face. I am you know. All that. Sniff.

Another mystery maker, handy, said,

Where’s your pen?!

She was getting agitated. I did not get it. I was less of a P.I. than she had hoped. She had a non-P.I. mom. Just great.

A third wheel rolled in and stuttered out,

You need the pen, Mommy! You need it! You need the light!

I noted the multiple exclamation points hovering about and knew the sand in the glass was almost out. Communication needed to be received or my three secret agents were going to increase their level of effort. Be warned.

I am an emotions-Jedi after-all. I sense these things. The Force is strong in me, still, young Padawans.

Then, there it was. Under the blue penlight, shown the hidden messages.

No. I do not remember them. Just the sense of them. And…

And, I thought it was a super illustration of how brain illness is there but not generally seen.

I am sure this was disconcerting to my investigative kids, who had dreamed I would do what they wanted with my life and thoughts. I wish they would just let me be me! (Flipping hair.)

Brain illness does not get as much air time as cancer. It is not as obvious as a withered hand. Nor a rash. Nor a big outcropping of plantar warts seeded across the soles of our feet – brain illness is not.

Brain illness does not engender connection easily because not everyone has the Force in them. Not everyone is a Jedi like you and I. It does not have the advantage to connection as a name tag illness. Brain illness does not wear itself on our visage like an invitation to others to embrace us in shared experience.

Where is the Light?

Right. In us. We are the light. We are what brings awareness to this secretive suffering. We are secret agent Jedis. Yes. Exclamation point. Exclamation point. Exclamation point.

Questions: What would brain illness look like if it was visible?

How has brain illness become more of a shared experience? How can it?

Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip: Share your experience.

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Canine Support Team and me – Personal Story of Dr. Yanoschik

Canine Support Team and me – my story

by James D. Yanoschik, DDS

US Navy 101118-F-5586B-144 Marine Sgt. Brian J...

What is the best thing being involved with the puppies does for me?

1.  Love.

Puppies are examples of unconditional love.  No matter what kind of day I am having, when I walk through the door, that tail is wagging and they are jumping up and down – just so happy to see me.  My problems melt away when I take the dog in my arms and they start to lick me.  Have you ever heard the laughing of a young child being caressed by the licks of a puppy?  You just smiled to yourself didn’t you?  That is who I become again too.

2.  Community.  

I enjoy is that I get to be around people that want to help other people.  

My wife and I have found some wonderful friends through the CST puppy raising programs. We have outings called “Yappy hours”  and visit various training locations throughout Southern California. 

3.  Me.

When I get into these situation where I volunteer, I wonder who really gets more out of these situations?  The person being helped or me?  I find that I feel better when I help my fellow-man sometimes in small ways and others in big ways.  But in a self-care way, I help others to help myself.

4.  Saving Dogs and People.

This organization has partnered with breeders and animal shelters to recognize the temperament in puppies that would make a good service dog.  When these puppies reach 14 to 18 months they are put into the Prison Pup program at the Women’s Prison in Chino, CA for their advanced training to become full fledged service dogs.  To date, any prisoner that has been involved in the Prison Pup program that got out of prison, has not re-offended.

My wife and I are now raising our second puppy in the program.

It hard to give up the puppy.  But what makes the transition easier is that we have met, in person, folks that have benefited from the service dogs.  For example, I met a young veteran who said that he has called the suicide hotline several times and made plans for his “transition” into the next life.  Fortunately, however, he got matched up with a service dog that helped him want to live again.  Another example is a mother who said that she saw a distinct change in her child since they got a service dog from CST.  These people are now able to have relationships and live.

Please get involved. Become a puppy raiser to a service dog. 

James D. Yanoschik, DDS

Dentist and Puppy Raiser

A little about Canine Support Teams (www.CanineSupportTeams.org).

Their goal is to provide service dogs for disabilities other than blindness.  This organization has partnered with breeders and animal shelters to recognize the temperament in puppies that would make a good service dog.  When these puppies reach 14 to 18 months they are put into the Prison Pup program at the Women’s Prison in Chino, CA for their advanced training to become full fledged service dogs.  To date, any prisoner that has been involved in the Prison Pup program that got out of prison, has not re-offended.

The program is lacking is puppy raisers.  Our job as a puppy raiser is to train the puppy with basic command skills, and to socialize them to various situations and environments that they may come into contact with in the course of a normal day.

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A Young Man’s Wrenching Journey

Children!

On Jun 18, 2013, Anon wrote:

Hello Dr. Sana L. Johnson-Quijada,

Thank you for coming to talk to share some of your experiences and views associated psychiatry. I am sorry I have not emailed you sooner.  This was my first year taking three sciences and when it came time to study for finals, I pretty much ignored everything except school.

Thank you for giving the class and myself some exposure to psychiatry. Your talk was very intriguing, especially how you see a person, in particular how their brain health affects their personality. When you started to talk about homelessness it brought back painful and confusing memories from my childhood.

My parents divorced when I was seven and the majority of my time was spent with my mother because my now deceased father had a difficult time keeping a roof over his head and doing the activities of daily living. When I was a little older I even loaned my dad some money when his car was impounded. I could not understand why my dad was in the situation he was in and why I was seemingly more capable than him. I loved him very much and wanted to help him in any way I could.  But in the end, I could not make any of his decisions for him.

My older brother is living in a shelter and he reminds me of my dad in so many ways. When we lived together, before my parents divorced, my brother was just about as hard to get along with as my dad, and my dad was physically abusive to him. I was so confused and could not understand why we could not love each other or ourselves. My dad’s incessant fear of doctors and my brother’s fervent choice to self medicate only complicated the situation we were in.

My heart goes out to my family and people like them and I have a strong desire to help people. Your short talk resonated with me and I was intrigued by psychiatry because I thought it might be a way for me to help. How do I learn more?

Sincerely,

Anon

On Jun 18, 2013, at 5:16 PM, Sana Quijada wrote:

Hey. So good to hear from you. I remember you well. Sniff. Big hug. You are not alone, dear man. 

How to learn more?  Hmm. I would start by attending some local NAMI meetings. Follow up with me in a bit after you do and we can keep the lines open and ideas flowing. It is an honor to connect with you. 

I celebrate your focus and completion of finals. 

I would love to post your email letter on FriendtoYourself.com … 

Your story is seriously powerful.  As my six-year-old says, boom! Smile. 

Till next time,

Sana Johnson-Quijada MD
www.FriendtoYourself.com

On Jun 24, 2013, at 5:00 PM, Anon wrote:

Yes you may post my email I feel honored. It took a lot of courage to write and I am glad you were receptive.

This is a "thought bubble". It is an...

Questions:  How would you recommend a young person find out more about psychiatry, before pursuing years of study?  How did you investigate your profession before committing?  

How do you talk about your family of origin history?  How do you find the courage to share these things, to find community in what hurts?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip:  Find the courage to connect with others and your story.

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Just Left of Center, We Celebrate You

Base on balls

Dear One, (You know who you are)

Congratulations on this life-milestone.  Congratulations on what you have come through and what toward.  Congratulations on being connected.  Although you walk, you do not walk away from your life journey.

There are other crossings when we all step away from our life and look on at a safer distance, binoculars in hand, because not to would bring the apocalypse, or at least frizzy hair.

peruvian casi-frizz

peruvian casi-frizz (Photo credit: casimira parabolica)

At this time we see that you are more than a spectator, more than a narrator or a newscaster, not a stranger to yourself described in shame-filled words and judgment, as if you were the sum of right or wrong.  You are, at this intersection, more than your performance, behaviors and emotions.  You are.  You are more.

Some other day, you may find your binoculars again.  You may need them, and that is what it is.  Not good or bad.  For our part, we will celebrate you then too.

We are blessed.  All this that you are is a benediction for us; the walking, breathing wonder of what comes from Love.  We, as might anyone connected to Magic, bless you in return.

“Keep evil away.  Keep walking in Love.  Bless.”

Congratulations for your proximity to what is difficult, for working hard to love yourself, for finding your specialness in more than what hurts in you.  You are special.

You are special, like a seed or a grown and aging tree.  You are special, like San Francisco is in summer or Australia at Christmas.  You are special, like the worst of us.  Like the best, you are special for more than your imperfections.

You stand, with us, just left of center.  We celebrate you.

Self-Care Tip:  Live a celebrated life.

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Patient-Doctor Relationship

shoes

Tonight I pulled together all the posts we have on the patient-doctor relationship into one page.  Please let me know your reactions.  This is a journey I am really grateful to travel with you.  Keep on.