Support group

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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?

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A Testimony of “Being A Friend To Yourself,” From Bipo Blogger

You might recognize these five questions from yesterday’s blog-post.  Thank you for your testimonies.  Is there anything more powerful than hearing someone’s personal story?  I think not!  Here is what Bipoblogger has to say.

Q1:  What does being a friend to yourself mean to you in real-time life practice?

A1:  That’s easy, but not so easy, LOL!  Being “a friend to yourself” means that I acknowledge I need to respect myself, just like I do other people.  It means not sabotaging my self, plans, job, relationships, etc.  I love myself enough to not kick myself when I am down. 

Being bipolar can be so detrimental to my being, but just like normal people, I still have the need to …allow for room and time to grieve about whatever horrible circumstances (were) caused (by) the bipolar disorder.  

…Stop every once in a while to acknowledge my accomplishments and own that.

Q2:  What helps you do this one time vs. another?

A2:  Yes, I have found that BPD is in part an anger disorder and knowing the true source of the anger can help me go forward.

I have chosen to no longer hurt myself cause when I do, and anyone else, I build up layers of hurt and it hurts to start to take the layers off when I’m ready, so why even do it? …

Also it helped me so much to learn that God doesn’t deal with me the way I deal with myself or another.  I’m not a fanatic, but I just believe in what makes sense.

Q3:  What still hinders your efforts?

A3:  Wanting to be better than I already am.  Not accepting that the balance I have is better than having less or no balance at all, …(which means various kinds of) risky behavior.

Q4:  What has pushed you past those barriers?

A4:  Really just forgiving myself for how I was affected by BPD and remembering that I am breakable and valid as a human, just like all of us.  If I keep practicing a constructive way of life, I will be okay, and that has been true for the last 3 years.

Last push.

Q5:  How do you understand the interplay between biology and choice in being “a friend to yourself?”

A5:  I was created with the choice to choose how I live my life and I do, BPD or none.  Natural inclination is to do the wrong thing because I am imperfect.  I seek power, fame, notoriety and in someway someone, including myself is gonna get hurt in the process.  …People without mental deficiencies don’t experience or don’t carry out to this degree.  So in short, biologically the deficient brain makes more extreme choices, overly withdrawn or overly outward and destructive.

Whoa, I smell smoke.  I never think that hard.  LOL.

Questions for you:  

  1. Anything you’d like to share with Bipo Blogger? 
  2. If you had a blank page for this, what would your own questions be?  What would you answer?  
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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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Be Aware of Your Feelings and Your Body Function When Getting Friendly With Yourself

Self-Care Tip #202 – Be aware of your feelings and your body.

symptoms and signs

Image by madamepsychosis via Flickr

Wordsmith SuziCate commented to our post three days ago on finding depression in those of us who appear “fine.”

It can be more apparent in what is not said…. When I was depressed it was the absolute last thing I wanted to talk about. I evaded the subject, and if forced to talk it was about anything but what “I” was feeling.

Yet again, the comment completing the post.  It was on my mind and in my face somehow over these sum of days.  When I would start thinking about something else, a patient would nearly quote SuziCate and I wondered if you all have met behind my back on some other blog site with intent to trip me out.  (Grandiose delusions….)

Margo said yesterday in clinic, with hands moving, eyes wide and leaning in,

When I was really down, I just quieted down, stayed low, did my thing.  The last thing I wanted to talk about were my feelings.  I felt afraid of the Nothing that waited there.

She was talking more quietly now and her whole body receded a little.

You aren’t interested or interesting to anyone.  You don’t have anything to say.

We were both quiet for a bit.

These flattening-of-the-spirit symptoms used to be called “Pseudodementia” because they resembled dementia so much.  A muting of the mental and physical function.  A disease progression slowing the nerves and body.  We now refer to them as “Neurovegetative Symptoms.” **

When thinking about getting friendly with ourselves, we can’t forget about what we don’t say or feel emotionally.  We remember also, that the brain is connected to the rest of our body.  Brain is sick, the rest of us is sick too.  This can be a good check point once we start realizing that something is wrong either by insight or by comments from others.

It can be more apparent in what is not said….

Hear more than words.

Not all depressions are these muting processes.  Some of them are activating and agitating types leading to anger and irritability.  Those are hurtful too.

All types of depression are dangerous when left untreated.  The reason isn’t only the risk of suicide or the distance it creates from others.  The reason also includes the less familiar brain changes that it causes on the brain function.  The sooner we are able to pull out of a depression, heal and return to ourselves, the better health our brains will have the long term.  The longer a depression is left untreated, the more damage is caused to the brain’s health.

Questions:  How did you figure out you were depressed now or then? Or that someone else was depressed?  Please tell me your story.

**Neurovegetative Symptoms are the things about affective disorders that most of us don’t know about.  We think about emotions – depressed, sad, happy, angry and calm when we think about mood or anxiety.  We don’t think about the body.  We don’t think about cognition, concentration, memory and what SuziCate or Margo described so well.

It can be more apparent in what is not said….

Neurovegetative symptoms are called “neurovegetative” because they are caused by the changes in the nervous system and they limit our ability to function.

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Taking Care of Yourself is The Best Part of Your Treatment Cocktail.

IMAG0142

Image by schmeezla via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #163 – Taking care of yourself is the best part of your treatment cocktail.

We often talk about partial or failed treatment in medicine, in each other, in relationships.  But those are only about 40-60% of the time.  There are many people who get full treatment response to medication and self-care.  Mindy is one of them.

Mindy has seen me for about four years in clinic for her depression.  She’s never been very anxious, which is less usual as anxiety and depression tag-team so often.  Mindy’s depression had lurked in her, stepping out in the light and slipping into the shadows, for years even before she started working with me.  We seemed to hit by chance or skill the right medication cocktail that had evaded her, and she was not depressed anymore.  However, she never told me she was great.  She was “pretty good.”  She was, “doing alright.”  She was, “you know, good.”  Mindy wasn’t great.  She was good.  We spent three and a half years like that.

Then about six months ago, Mindy came in looking hot!  (I can say that because I’m a girl.)  She had lost the mom bumps around the midline, dropped padding in the hips, her hair wore a fresh coat of glossy brown, and I could tell her outfit hadn’t been worn more than twice.  Mindy was smiling and sincere when she said,

I’ve never felt better!  I had no idea what taking care of myself would do for me!

Her eyes were telling me their own conversation.  They were so expressive saying,

I can’t believe this is me!

Mindy told me in testimonial fashion, about the strangers who now noticed her.  Being noticed was an elixir and she was drinking it as often as it was served, but not in an arrogant way.  Mindy was still very human.  She wasn’t manic or grandiose.  She was doing what Gary Vaynerchuk describes in his book, Crush It!

“Do what makes you happy.  Keep it simple.  Do the research.  Work hard.  Look ahead” (p 12).

Mindy said,

I used to think that what I got from life was good enough; from my husband and from the people out there.  I didn’t know I could get this by just doing what I wanted to do for myself all along.

Mindy was still taking her medication cocktail and had no plans of tapering any of them.  She thought the combination of these medications that took her out of depression, along with exercise and other self-care measures were just right.  Mindy had not forgotten her years of melancholy and sadness even though it was now four years since.

Questions:  1) What is your reaction to Mindy and the 40-60% of people who get full treatment response?  2) Do you have any questions you wish you could ask the “Mindy’s” out there?  3) Or something to say for the other 40-60% of people who don’t get full treatment response?  Please tell me your story.

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Know What You Are Fighting For – Your Right To Journey.

You Should Be Living

Image via Wikipedia

Self-Care Tip #162 – Know what you are fighting for.  Be a friend to yourself.

Bridget told me,

I felt free to do something creative without having to feel guilty about it.

She had read the blog post, “Self-Care is Freedom, is Democracy, is Because We Are Accountable.”  I was just starting to think about other good places to go with that but before I got too far she hit me with,

I just hate myself!

Hearing those words is like watching squishy and partly moldy tomatoes hit the wall.  It’s messy.  It’s dirty.  No one’s excited about dealing with it.  And, there is something negative that brought it on.  Readers, you’ll remember this countertransference when you’re the counsellor in some other situation and think, “Darn that Quijada!”

My thoughts bumped and piled up.  Stopped, until they started pulling themselves off of each other.  I tried to put these disparate bits of Bridget’s narrative together.  And I wasn’t alone.

I don’t get it!  Why do I feel this way?

Who doesn’t have conflicting feelings about themselves?  Bridget perceived and celebrated her freedom to self-care, yet was betrayed by her own, just when she was reaching for it.  Is that ok?

What strikes me about Bridget is her journey.  She has struggled with anxiety and depression for many years.  I know with me, she’s been in treatment for five of them.  During that time, she has been lovely although not perfect.  She does her hair, glossy blond in large waves, trim body frame and polite like no one I’ve met.  Many medications have failed her and she has taken those failures and claimed her future over again.  The intense forward movement of her inner self has never been muted, even when she has had thoughts of wanting to die.

I have learned what she values, what she’s willing to let go of and what she isn’t.  Her appearances matter.  She is artsy and gets energy from being alone.  She loves people.  Her marriage is rocky.  She struggles with parenting.  She loves her husband and her children.  Bridget’s journey is a journey of imperfection, beauty and courage.

And here she is again.  Conflicted self, ill, hopeful and claiming her future.  Bridget is right on her course.  I wish I could help more.  I wish she wasn’t still ill.  But I can at least be as courageous as she is.  I can hope with her.  I can stand with her or walk.  I know that put to the question, Bridget prefers this journey than losing the right, the privilege, to journey at all.  Bridget is free.  Many of us are not as free as she is, who knows what she is fighting for.

Question:  What are you fighting for?  If nothing were to ever change for the better in your life, what makes your journey worth it?  Please tell me your story.

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Keep Talking

Day 349 of 365 - Self Care/Friends!

Self-Care Tip #160 – Keep talking.  Be a friend to yourself.

Lingering in the afterglow of what all of you have said in your comments over that past six months, I am distracted in the best of ways.  The comments so often complete the post.  We are a team you know.  I hope that more of you noncommenters will shuck off your shrouded lovely selves and say something to us.  Because it is not true on this blog, that casting your bread upon the water just makes soggy bread.  Nope.  You’ve all been my living examples of this.

Yesterday, Nancy wrote,

“But to associate self-care with freedom actually made me feel free today….”

I could have cried because… I just can’t say all the many reasons why she blew me away with that.  I don’t have enough fingers to point with.

Sarah,

the civil war inside of us.

Mr. Rick C. in his Blog-Jacking #2,

Folks, you have not experienced incomprehensible demoralization until you have had a Flowbee lock onto your head with the full force of a ShopVac behind it.

That one just won’t stop coming back!  The visual itself is an almost permanent gift.

Kevin Blumer keeping things light talking about stress,

I love stress I absolutely love it being busy 10 pizzas to make in 2 mins…

Some days ago, Pattyann wrote,

I think it is much easier to ask for help and receive it when we stop looking at an illness as a personal failure.

Is there any better way of saying that?

Our own articulate CarlDAugostino who shows so much interest and respect to so many of us gave me this,

I have never really heard of this “self -friendship journey” It is a wonderful concept…

Yes, you show me that I matter and that I am not alone and that it turns out, …taking care of myself has been a pretty good idea after all.  You show me that it starts (goes across a few oceans and continents) and ends with “Me.”   Thank you, all of you for that.  There are soooo many things you’ve said, (you know who you are) that have totally rocked me.   Keep talking.

Question:  What shows you that it starts and ends with you?  Please tell me your story.

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Do The Opposite. For Your Self.

Condomaniac

Image by VideogameVisionary.com via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #121 – Do the opposite, do the “un,” and go where you don’t want to go.  Be a friend to yourself.

Frank, accomplished in chess, employed in a 3 digit salary job, married with children, and he heard that things were going well.  From other people.  In his opinion, Frank believed the inside life-details were more destructive than the redemption of the apparent details.  Frank listed himself off to me like a confession, but he got little relief from the exercise.  It didn’t change that he was still addicted to sex, ashamed and the addiction was changing his ability to function in the other areas of his life.  He was taking more risks and realized that if he didn’t get clean, he’d lose “everything” but the addiction.  Not wanting the addiction didn’t make it go away.

How many of us wrinkle our nose at the Frank’s out there!  How we avert.  Either side is not really good or bad.  It just is.  Frank is addicted.  And we are ignorant.  Sex addiction is in the recesses and communes of where any of us live.  And, “we” are no better than they or worse.  It just is that way.  The qualifiers are the stink that kill our connections.  The qualifiers are rotten.

One thing I love about Jesus’ earth-story is that He was always un-everything.  He was Un-segregation, un-rules, un-prejudice, un-divided, and many people thought he was un-qualified.  Wherever these things were, He went there.  I love seeing people who use Him to draw lines between their spaces.  To say, “This is because Jesus wouldn’t…”  Hmm.  Jesus wasn’t scared of mucking up in the chaos of people’s lives.  Jesus not being scared is actually the wrong way to say it.  Let’s say rather, Jesus honed in straight to the muck and chaos, drawn there because He couldn’t and didn’t want to stay away.  We are not so loving as that but who cares about motives?  I also say with confidence that Jesus/God understood biology much better than we did then, now or will.

When we can look at each other objectively, when we don’t personalize what isn’t about us, we can let go of some of what separates us.  It goes both ways.  We are afraid of Frank and what he does.  Frank is afraid of what he does and of us.  But it’s not the fear so much as it is the qualifiers that ruin us.  Bad, good, Clang!  Down go the dividers.

None of this is meant to minimize the pain that these things bring on, such as addiction.  Rather, taking away whatever is dividing us helps us be more present with the pain, with each other, and often leads to healing.  It is another opposite, another “Un,” another Jesus-move.  Doing just the opposite of what we think should be done.  Got to love that Man!

Why would any of “us” want to be connected to the addict, or to whomever is doing something hurtful, scary, negative whatever it may be?  Why?  For your self of course.  Our life is better if we are.  That is a motive I think is worth pursuing.

Question:  How has your life gotten better when you did the opposite of what you felt like doing?  Please tell me your story.

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Grieve to Be Present With Yourself

 

Maria Yakunchikova "Fear" 1893-95

Image via Wikipedia

 

We grieve when we get sick.  And we grieve again when after getting well, we get sick again.  Then the grieving can be even more terrible because you know what’s coming.  In Pearla’s case, she didn’t know she was grieving but she knew she was sad and terrified at the same time.

I asked her if she thought that staying in bed, loosing interest, isolating, crying jags out of the blue might be related her grief about getting sick again.  She said no at first and then said, “I’m disappointed.  I thought this was over for me.”  All over, she couldn’t trust herself.

Pearla was afraid. And that fear was always there.  Now she couldn’t put it out of her mind.  “What if I have another panic attack?  I can’t take it!”  “What if,” was always on her mind.

Readers, a panic attack is more terrifying than just about any immediate experience.  If you’ve never had one, it is almost impossible to imagine the depth of terror it causes.  It is so horrible, that people even change professions because of it.  I remember a surgeon who actually went back to residency and studied a new specialty because he linked his panic to his profession.  That’s another 4 years of grueling work, readers.  That’s the kind of fear panic produces.

Pearla was not only in the throes of this fear, she was also in the throes of grief.  This is a deep sadness any of us who have lost a beloved hope can relate to.  Pearla didn’t know that was why she didn’t want to get out of bed.  All she knew is over the last 2 weeks she was loosing herself and in exchange, getting something she desperately did not want.

Somehow though, after hearing about her sadness from her own mouth, Pearla agreed.  She saw the grief and after seeing grief, she could be more present with it.  It was almost like her face materially came out from hiding.  Grief lost some hold on her.  She was a little less sad and a little less afraid.

Self-Care Tip #111 – Let yourself grieve.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  How do you grieve?  Was it worth it to you?  Please tell me your story.

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Be Empathic to Others to Get Friendly With Yourself

 

Drawn by early 20th-century commercial cat ill...

Image via Wikipedia

 

Self-Care tip #79 – Be empathic to others.  Be a friend to yourself.

Yesterday I wrote about considering intent and context when comparing self-care with selfishness.  That carries over to the people sharing life with those of us who have mental illness.  Do they see us as selfish?  For example, how is the spouse of the Panic Disorder going to make sense of the 40 phone-calls he gets while at work?

Mary’s husband told me that she’s been calling him “all day,” terrified she was going to die.  Checking to see when he was coming home.  She couldn’t go to the market because people would laugh at her.  Afraid.  Afraid.  Just plain afraid.  Really, everything had become about her.  She was like a scared kid.  Frankly it was annoying.  He was in a stressful work situation with the economy slumping.  People he knew were being laid off.  The other day he had to leave in the middle of an important job to go home and reassure her.  She was sobbing in the living room.  Sure she was going crazy.  He realized that he might have to tell his boss what was going on but what was going on?!  Who had his wife turned into.

In yesterday’s blog, we spoke about the ability to abstract v. concrete thinking.  Being able to abstract helps with empathy – connecting emotional content between people.  To put yourself in someone else’s shoes, as if you were them.  This is a critical part of relating, i.e. being in a relationship.  Many different mind illnesses affect our ability to abstract, including panic disorder.

In Mary’s case, she was not empathic when she was anxious.  She was thinking about herself.  Understandably, if you read the part about her believing she was going to die or go crazy.  But when you’re married to her, empathizing with her gets old.  It’s not so easy when it seeps into your work life, you haven’t had sex for months, and you have to do everything that has anything to do with going outside of the home.  Some part of you knows it’s not true, but another part of you screams, “Get over it you selfish child!”

Is Mary selfish?  Some might be able to answer even after all the phone-calls and unrecognizable behaviors, no.  Mary is not selfish.  They can do this specifically because they can abstract.  They can empathize.  They can consider the context of Mary’s disease and the intent of her behaviors.

Not everyone does this.  Not everyone is able to let “It” be about someone else.  Not everyone doesn’t have to have “It” be about them.

The best thing for those in relationships with someone emotionally ill, is to view the way they are behaving as biological.  When treated medically, than Mary or whoever it is in your life can do their own self-care.  But until then, staying in their lives requires maintaining an empathic view that considers intent and context.  It also means furthermore, doing your own self-care individually.

There are over-lapping flaps to our lives.  Scales on the back of an armadillo.  Me as encased by my body.  Me, that includes the space between me and you.  Me, that includes you, because you will always be a part of me.  Self-care really involves all that by degrees.  A chain-link.

So the question is, can empathy be chosen?  With money in the bank and wisdom, yes.

Self-Care tip #79 – Be empathic to others.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Does any of this ring true for you?  Please tell me your story.

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Get Access to Information – Get a SmartPhone

 

Fast Company magazine cover: April 2010

Image by karen horton via Flickr

 

I read an inspiring blog today on SparkPeople titled, “Could Staying on Track be Addictive?”

SparkPeople is a great site that does what any other lifestyle change/weight loss website does and probably more – free!  I can’t say enough good things about it.  It’s one of those things that has given comparably to what it has taken.  I’m not crystal clear on this, but I think they profit from advertising and publications (The Spark.)

I appreciate the practicality of the phone app especially, which allows us to real-time journal our food.  We often can’t change our lifestyle if we don’t food-journal for at least a week or two to get an honest grip on things.  This ties our journal immediately into our SparkPeople.com member site and all its other benefits.  That is one reason that I like this food-journal phone app better than others.  It has continuity.

How much do many of us spend on weight loss efforts?  Let’s say we simply subscribe to a different on-line weight-loss program such as e-diets.  This plan starts out at $17.96 for 1 month. The cost of a smart phone runs roughly around $100.  The monthly cost for the internet access runs around $30/month more than a plan with just telephone service.  It’s a fair bargain to get a smart phone with internet access just for the apps in my opinion.  We get so much more quality of life from access to information.  SparkPeople is just one of a huge number of potential options on our side.  If affordable in our budgets, it is a friendly thing to have in hand.

Soon I’m going to write more about the idea referred to above, that staying on track can be addictive in a good way.  I liked her blog.  I like SparkPeople.  Having a smart phone helps me be friendly with myself.

Self Care Tip #69 – Think about getting a smart phone.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Has easier access to information helped you take care of yourself?  How?  If not, why?  Please tell me your story.

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Criticize if You Love Me.

On the receiving end of criticism.  Different from playing football or tag, no one wants to be chased, i.e. criticized.  If given the choice, which would you choose?  Chase vs. flee?  Humans can be a bit predatory when it comes to offering up feedback.

However, what I’m talking about has nothing to do with abuse.  Verbal emotional abuse is about unequal power.  Abuse of any kind, including spoken abuse, is scary, painful and shameful.

What I’m talking about is simply criticism.  You mismanage something at work and your boss, corrects you.  After coming home from that, tired and feeling beaten up, your children are picking on each other.  Then you get them in bed and find that you forgot to write-up a report and it has to be done.  Your spouse tells you that he misses his time with you.  

It takes a lot of love to deal with something.  Turns out, it’s much easier to let it go.  Walk away.  Examples of trying to promote criticism are the advertisements targeting parents to tell their kids not to use drugs.  It takes love to say no.  Loving yourself as well as love for someone else.  Kids who don’t get this feel neglected and confused.  Adults can also feel lost in so much impersonal space and act out just to get noticed.  Some people might call this “gamey.”  I just call it normal.  It’s a normal instinct to want the boundaries of someone who cares pressing around you.  It’s normal to feel adrift without knowing that you are worth somebody’s bother.

I say,

spare the rod and spoil the child

…at all levels.  At any age or station.  And further more, with your self-to-self included.  If you love yourself, you end up wanting to do and be better.  Coming from any direction, we can take it when we know we are loved.

The best part of Proverbs 12:24 is the second half,

but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.

So now, if given the choice, which would you choose?

Self Care Tip #56 – Bring it!  Take it!  Give it!  You are loved.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Have you been criticized and known you were loved?  What’s your story?

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Yell and Someone Will Hear

Today a reader responded to the blog posted on August 30, 2010, “Own It.  Our Life’s Work.”

Al-Anon, a great program. I really feel blessed to have found a 12 step program that is so gentle yet so encouraging with wonderful results for me personally.  It has taught me how to quiet my mind, live in the moment, live and let live, and let go and let God.  All principles I apply daily and the pleasure I get from living this way has enhanced all aspects of my life.  This program is not only for the loved ones of alcoholics but for anyone who has a family member suffering from addiction or if you were raised in a home with perfectionistic standards.  These standards stunt emotional growth and the results emotionally are no different than growing up in a home with addiction.  From the outside the perfectionistic home may look functional whereas the alcoholics home looks chaotic, but the emotional impact is the same.  Growing up this way may result in other acceptable addictions like workaholic, churchaholic, perfectionism, eating disorders etc… …It got me thinking about how thankful I am for Al-Anon.

She said it well.  First hand this woman of courage tells us bits of her story.  She demystified some of the suspicions about a group like Al-Anon.  She invites all of us, by her testimony, to also have courage.  To also share.  To also work on our own battered selves.  She unclosets getting treatment.  She tells us we need each other.  Al-Anon is a group meeting.  There is healing.  Healing is not a condition of stalemate.  She tells us about healing and progress.  We can choose.

In the Wizard of Oz

Tin Woodsman: Help! Help!
Scarecrow: It’s no use screaming at a time like this. Nobody will hear you. Help! Help!

Self Care Tip #37 – Yell and someone will hear you!  Be a friend to yourself.

Question: What do you think?  Please tell me your story.


by

Own It. Our Life’s Work.

We can control what others do about as much as we can control the Democratic government.

My patient asked me if her medications were changing who she was.  After asking her more about where that came from, she disclosed that her husband was blaming her medications for the emotional distance between.  He was not blaming his daily alcohol intake nor that he see’s her as “The Patient” and not himself.  This is after she has spent years investing in herself through medications, some counseling, and regular exercise.  This woman had courage.  Yet she still bought into what her husband was telling her.

We personalize things that have very little to do with us.  Sometimes we know we’re doing it, but more often we don’t.  In this woman’s case, I had to think, how much of this was about her versus the accuser, i.e. husband.  We came to understand together that either way, true or not, the only person in her relationship she could better, is that same person she’s been attending to so well for so long.  In the end we were talking about going to CoDA, Al-Anon, or local support groups through NAMI.  She focussed on herself, excited about her opportunities to grow some more.  She wasn’t thinking so much about her husband getting passed up by his own opportunities.  Nor about the accusations.

Talking to a friend who recently shed 15 unwanted pounds, we did a celebration whoop!  She wasn’t perseverating on her husband who was smoking again. She was hurt by it, but used the energy in that emotion to motivate change in her own life.  Who knows.  Maybe her husband will grow from wanting what he see’s in her.  Courage, self-respect, inner congruence, hope, and so many more great things that come when you fight hard for your precious self.

Not taking things personally though can be much easier said than done.  If you try over and over but see that it continues to get the best of you, consider getting an opinion from someone you trust.  Get a “third-party” opinion to bounce your perspectives from.  Maybe this is something biological and medical as well. Personalization is a familiar problem in medical illnesses such as Affective Spectrum Disorders or Anxiety Spectrum Disorders.

Self Care Tip #35 – Own it.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  What do you think?  Please tell me your story.