Thought

by

Use What You Know – It Will Help You Know Yourself Better And Be a Guide For Your Future Efforts

The Forbidden Kingdom

Image by Gandalf. via Flickr

Some of the best encouragement I got was from my sister-in-law who writes, CretingBrains.com. She said,

Sana, you know a lot! When you start writing, you’ll see. It will come to you. You won’t believe how much you have to say.

Now when I get stuck, when no words come, I remember this, the panic ebbs away and I start to write.  I increased my listening skills …to myself, to hear myself.  It’s a terrible thing to live, loud background noise, but not learning how to become the main voice  of your own journey.  The knowledge base, emotions, energies and passive efforts although acquainted with each other never merge into rhythm.

Just write what you know.

I learned more to trust myself.  In fact, I became a better physician.

However, before this, I studied. I studied and I studied and got worked really hard, but I got the knowledge base that I have and I gained part of my platform.  I got a lot.

I share my sister’s words with others.

Just write what you know.

I’m not done.  I shudder to think about being done.  It feels like death.   However by writing, it stretches my movements.  It reminds me of those martial arts movies that show all the kicks and jumps and climbing air as if moments could be shaped differently.

That is my experience, but any of us have something worth saying.  We have our suffering at least.  Everyone has some of that.

My six year-old was asking me about writing a blog.  I’m sure she’s tired of watching me at the keys and figures she’ll join me if she can’t get me otherwise.  I asked her what she’d write about and she said,

I have nothing to say Mommy!

Just write what you think, I said.

I have nothing to say!

Just write what you feel, I said.

And then my daughter found her words.

One!  I’m lonely!  Two!  I feel left out!  Three!  I’m sad!  Four!  I’m happy!

She is a fierce creation.  She is, like me, “A big ‘F.”  (F stands for feeler in the language of temperaments.)  At age six, she has much to write about.  I remembered my sisters words,

…you’ll see. It will come to you. You won’t believe how much you have to say.  Just write what you know.

We all have something to say and for many of us, saying it increases our sense of presence with ourselves, our connections with others and inherent to the design of writing freestyle, guides us into the space of what we enjoy.  That space can be evasive and for some of us, it takes practice and increased skill to find it.  But here is an exercise in being friendly with ourselves.  Not many of us would spend this kind of time on things that bore us, things we feel awkward with, things that erode our self-confidence or increase incongruence with our inner-self.  When we write freestyle, we let our genetic self speak.  It can be used as a guide to clarify our talents and interests as per our design.

I hope I never forget how compelling my daughter was with her,

One! I’m lonely!…

That is a lot to say.  There’s a lot there worth hearing as well.

Go toward your interests and you’ll be writing what you know.  If writing isn’t in your design, something else is that will join you up with your personal journey, grow your sense of presence, connect you to others and serve as a guide to clarify your talents per the design you were created to be.  Go toward it.  You won’t believe how much you’ve already stored up.  You are treasure.

Self-Care Tip – Use what you know by using your temperament as your guide. Keep on.

Related articles
by

What Must I Do To Be Happy?

Today, I can’t get my thoughts away from the frolic in temperament-land.

Teacher, what must I do to be happy? 

Who hasn’t asked this?  I remember Nicodemus who asked Jesus,

Teacher, what must I do to be saved? 

A Certified Fresh logo.

Image via Wikipedia

I bet he was wondering, too, about happiness.

I’m not equating happiness with salvation or morality.  I am saying this might have been a parcel of his question.  Happiness is an emotion per our language and cultural definition.  And we have enjoyed our path of discovery in seeing how emotions are tools we use to interpret the world around us.  They are not universal or constant between us.

After I read,

Individualism, a stronger predictor of well-being than wealth,

in R. Fischer, PhD’s Meta-Analysis of Well-Being, I followed my thoughts toward the Jungian Typology of Temperaments.  Remember our pasture and barn people?  The Jungian Typology of Temperaments is our playground where we have a wish-basket equipped with supplies to become any variation we might choose of what our design requests.  Read the article and you might follow a similar path of thought.  Or not.

In case you’re wondering, and per Dr. Q (who is a poor statistician so take this for what it’s worth,) a meta-analysis is a study of studies.  A meta-analysis brings together a number of studies that reflect a population of people and a methodology that is as objective as we can find.  We compare them and through the tools statistics and logic offer, we make a summary conclusion.

If you are familiar with the tomatometer on RottenTomatoes.com, you already have a sense of what a meta-analysis does.  (I love rottentomatoes.com.)  There is more power in the indexed findings of many studies than in just one study.  There is also more power in a fresh tomato than a rotten one.

Questions:

  1. Do you see happiness as something that reflects your condition of spirituality and/or your condition of brain health?  Why?
  2. What do you perceive brings you happiness?  Please tell me your story.
Related articles
by

Choice and Biology – Where Emotions and Behaviors Come From

Three Legged Race

Image via Wikipedia

I left the light on outside, waiting for my husband to come home.  He was gone, though, to a meeting and wouldn’t be back until Friday.  Some bit of automatic thought current made me flip the light switch and before I realized what I’d done, I flushed.

My husband’s eyes aren’t good and he doesn’t see well without a light.  I can.  I don’t “see” so to speak, but somehow I know where things are and can find my way in the dark.  I’m not a bobcat.  I just remember the way things look by the emotions I felt around them.  This is what was happening that night.

I flipped the switch and there he was.  Walking toward the door.  Distracted.  Fitting his key; almost home.  This was all in the moment that it took me to feel happy and then disappointed remembering he was away.

I turned the light off then because I’m not daft.  But it made me think about what sets our behaviors and emotions in motion.  In that moment, finger to the switch, up, anticipation and disappointment – in that moment, I didn’t choose what happened by the cultural definition of choice.  I responded to patterns that many choices I’d made before had laid down.  Tracks in my brain, hedged and maintained by recurring choices, along with design; my emotions and behaviors also an expression of my temperament.  These moved with each other.  But were they moving along the way we generally think of them, like a three-legged race?

Who was leading who?  Trip.  Get up!

One, two, one, two.  Step.  Step.  Step.  Step.  

And in that moment, my layers of choices were counting out with my biology, “One, two!”  There I was, participant and audience.

When we think about where emotions and behaviors come from, culturally we view them as if they are awkwardly related.  As if biology and choice are tied together at the ankles, about to trip each other up.  We call out to them, hoping somehow they might not show the public how little they know of each other’s rhythms.

But you can see the ridiculousness of this.  Choice and biology are in no way separate.  Design forbids it.  The question of where emotions and behaviors come from in itself reveals our confusion.  They come from the same place.

I can hear the concern that this eliminates free-will.  Answer …”But why?”

After these thoughts that night, I turned the light back on.  I preferred how I felt when I thought my husband might arrive soon.  I chose I guess.  What else could I do?

Questions:  What does it mean to you to fuse choice and biology in the discussion of emotions and behaviors?  How does your culture view this?  Does this affect the way you care for yourself?

Self-Care Tip #282 – Don’t deny the choice available to you to feel and behave as you wish, where that wish surfaced from and the tools you use to make them.

Related articles
by

Love Differently, Love Your Flaws – Be a Tall Poppy

Tall Poppy

Image by Steve Corey via Flickr

To my family and friends, I thought differently.

But since I’ve loved my flaws less harshly, like pointing jeweled fingers;

since I’ve fallen and let myself savor who I was just then, rasping throat from less than gentle sounds, beautifully broken down, a phoenix who was afraid and not afraid to die;

since I’ve been in the same room with myself, my smells, my dying cells, my mistakes and since I’ve loved these things – since then I have loved you.

I thought I was before but this is differently better.

I am loving you when you turn away and miss your opportunity to praise.  I feel myself soften and think how you are mine.

I am loving you when you miss your self-care and come late and forget.

I thought differently before.

I thought I loved you more the other times, but this is.

It is better to see that you will never be who I expected and that you just missed the turn and won’t.

It is better since I have thought more of me.

And although this sounds off; a discordant honk in the culture score around us,

Although this is awkward showing my ankles exposed while I walk amongst tall-poppies, I even love that

and it is not to say I gloat,

just that I won’t run to hide behind my accomplishments

and won’t hide you behind yours.  I love you more because there is more.  This is differently better and I love you.

Self-Care Tip #278 – Be a tall poppy.

Related Posts:

Related articles
by

How To Be a Friend to Yourself When Thinking About Your Bully?

I love real life John Waters freeze-frames

Image by TheeErin via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #253 – Humanize and forgive your bully.

How to be a friend to yourself when thinking about your bully?

Have you noticed that when we think about our bully, we don’t feel so good.  Just thinking about him!  Sheeze!  In our last post on bullying, Nancy said,

Wow! This one brought up WAY too much pain. I’m feeling very vulnerable and uncomfortable and hurt and stupid at the moment. 

There are jumbled emotions that flood us, such as anger, shame, helplessness, anxiety or more.  Our autonomics may even trigger, making us hypervigilant as if we were being attacked.  We are in defense mode – all the while sitting alone in a chair at our desk, in the quiet of our bed while falling asleep, or any other place of our generally hum-drum lives.  These feelings and nervous system changes come in a time and place when we are not in danger.  They come without us realizing their approach, stealth feet and skilled hands; we are in their company before we know it.

Is there no hope?  What can we do so we don’t feel victimized all over again.

Humanize

1.  Do research on the bully.  Find out about him on the internet.  See what others have said about him.

This helps us:

  1. see him as a human, mortal, without superhuman powers.
  2. feel like we are less alone in this.
  3. realize that we are not chosen, so to speak, to suffer at his hands.  He is a bully and not just around “Me.”
  4. we didn’t cause his behaviors.  He chooses his behaviors because of the same biopsychosocial paradigm that we choose ours.
  5. realize that he hasn’t chosen to do his self-care, making him more vulnerable to his own negative feelings and behaviors.

Forgive

  1. Humanizing our bully helps us move towards empathy and forgiveness.
  2. Anger debts only hurt Me and that’s not friendly to Me.

Grow our self-confidence

  1. Such as doing our own thing.
  2. Grow our own natural genius.  Work hard at it and see how it is there for us, like a friend when we are feeling pushed down.  Our friend will be standing beside us, reminding us of our value when this remembering tries to beat us down.  Our friend will be there reminding us that this negative event in our life does not define us.

Now if they continue, these rememberings, and if these rememberings are frequent enough that we believe our quality of life is affected, we may be looking at something else.  There are other medical illnesses that can disable our abilities to cope.  In this scenario, I am thinking especially about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.)

In PTSD, we relive experiences of trauma (which we perceived to have been life threatening to ourselves or observed by us in other(s).)  We may also feel hypervigilant, as if we are about to be attacked at times when our lives are not threatened.  We might have nightmares and avoid things that remind us of the trauma event as well.

PTSD is easily reactivated by other stressful situations – such as being bullied.  When we have a history of PTSD that has been quiet for a time, even years, we are more vulnerable to stressors reactivating it’s symptoms.  Then, although the said stressor may not have been a life-threatening stressor, we perceive similar feelings and neurologic changes we did when in the life-threatening situation.  Then, although the said stressor may be over and not recurring, those PTSD symptoms start happening all over again and may continue indeterminately – propagated by the disease process and not our bully event.

This might be endured and it may go away in time without treatment.  But it isn’t good for anyone while it is happening.  PTSD can improve with medical therapies.

Question:  How have you been able to humanize and forgive your bully?  Please tell me your story.

Related Articles
by

Choose Back! …As Long As Life Chooses You.

A Girl On A Footbridge

Image by jyryk58 via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #241 – As long as life chooses you, it is your right to choose back – so do.

Although I am not a geriatric psychiatrist, I have still been given the pleasure of serving a “golden” few.  What has impressed me has been their willingness to start over.

Starting over takes courage and humility whether it is deliberate or not.  Sometimes fear dances between the lines of all the emotions and intentions. But still, wouldn’t you agree that it takes courage and humility to negotiate fear?

(Enters Hans.)  Hans was seventy-three years old.  He had struggled with brain illness on and off he thinks since he was at least twelve.  There were big spaces of time when his disease exacerbated, and he largely suffered.  But he chose, at this age, to try again for improved brain health.

Is there a time when we start thinking, don’t keep trying to start over?  Maybe in the dying process.  In case you don’t know, the dying process is a specific term.  It means the time when a person is facing impending death.

This area of medicine is not my specialty but I imagine at some point we want to stop with that starting over process, give up, but not in a hopeless way.  In a way that says,

I can stop trying for new anything and sit in the space of what I already have in me…

…Which hopefully includes all the ingredients and interrelations of life.

But how far before that point in life do we consider starting over reasonable?  I’ve heard of kids being told they’re too young to ride a bike, or cut with a knife, or understand the dinner conversation.  No one bobs their head at that.  But find a seventy-three year old who believes that after a lifetime of perceived failure by onlookers or themselves, who still says,

Now let’s give this another go,

…and if it hasn’t been said, it’s been thought,

give it over already!  You’ve hit your seventy-times-seven chances!

It’s like they’re shopping in the teen-ware.  We blink our eyes and angle our heads.  Even the thought of starting over as a real option feels indiscreet.

(Enters Hans.)  Hans is seventy-three.  He is starting over.  Humbly and with courage, he pursues brain health in the face of stigma.

I think I had celebrated my six birthday when my dad asked me if I felt any different from how I felt when I was five.

Yes!  I feel older!

 Then he asked me how old I thought he was.  When I answered some enormous number like, “twenty-two!” he asked,

Does forty-four seem old to you?  

Of course it did!  But I had an intuition that if he was old, than he’d die, so I said a definitive,

NO!  Daddy you’re still young!  You aren’t old!

Now, almost that same age myself, I am in awe of him and the others in their golden or not so golden years (Enters Hans) who believe that as long as life chooses them, they will choose back.  It is their freedom.

Questions:  When all your senses don’t sense pleasure in life, or you feel old and useless, or you feel that you’ve failed too many times, how do you choose to start over?  Who has inspired you and what did they do?  Please tell me your story.

Related Articles
by

You Bring Light

Tonight my eyes are heavy and I’m yearning to go exercise before the clock denies me the chance.  I’ve thought of you folk all day and your thoughtful replies to our difficult questions.  I sense that the difficult questions are not finished for us.  We wonder together, and that wondering in company with you has become my white light – many, perhaps small, particles of different colors and brilliance coming together into what we have.

 

ht. learn.uci.edu

 

 

Thinking about your comments, I remembered Marsha, a young adult who asked me, intelligently, hands flung open to the universe at large,

Who am I if I’m a different person just by taking these pills.  I’m so different!  I like that difference but I’m scared by it too.

She was so vulnerable sitting there, lip faintly quivering on her down angled face.  She asked as we ask together, as I believe God wants us to ask, to know that we have an essence and because that essence has an indestructible connection to Him, the intuitive fear falls into a more friendly perspective.

Good night friends who bring light.  Thank you.  Keep on.

by

Check Your Read. Even When You Feel Shame, Bullied and Herded, You Are Free.

Eve covers herself and lowers her head in sham...

Image via Wikipedia

Self-Care Tip #219 – Check your read.  Be a friend to yourself.

I’ve been reading the comments on suicide, thinking and reading and starting who knows how many posts for today, but just couldn’t pull it together.  I spent my time rather drawn to the same words that I hear so many others say as well in clinic, in church, on the street, in the home.  Instead of seeing them find their place in me like I normally do with this kind of crowd, the words kept their space; word-snobs – crutch, selfish, dependent, moral and other words, dusting and reapplying in their reflection.

I had to think, “Why?  Why am I staring like this?”  And so the rest of the day, I perused those thoughts, licked my finger, flick, next, paper-cut and so on.  After all, this is SELF-care I’m talking about, implying I am starting with me.

At last, after rereading yesterdays and past comments, I found the shame I was avoiding.  Why I feel shame about these things isn’t important in this post.  (Maybe another post.  So if you have nothing else to keep you reading, you’ll have that dish to bait you.)

Shame comes when implied or direct judgment creeps into our space.  It herds us.  We are bullied and lose our personal boundaries.  It touches and violates.  That is what shame does.  Any time our perception of freedom feels threatened, it is normal to want to defend ourselves.  Separating from stigma is a normal response.

Claiming the shame, however, isn’t forced on us.  It is our choice.  Once we own the shame, then wanting to get away from reminders of it, of course, is natural for anyone.  But jog back and see.  The perception of shame was never forced on us.  We are free.  We are free to feel, to perceive, to believe, to choose or to stop rubbernecking at the sparkling drama.

He made me so mad…!

She really hurt me.

You ruined my life!

I don’t want to take medications because my husband makes fun of me.

I take Prozac but I don’t have mental illness.  I’d be ashamed to…

It is a normal response to not want to be in the space where we feel these things.  That is natural and what many have thought worth fighting for.  But what if our perception, our Sixth Sense, wasn’t getting a good read?  A war might have been avoided.  Our lives might be lived differently.

We really are free, already, to choose.

Question:  How do you see shame affecting your ability to be friendly with yourself?  Or others?  How have different perceptions put you in a place that felt more free and safe?  Please tell me your story.

Related Articles
by

Competition as A Way To Take Care of Myself

Picture of an archery competition at Mönchengl...

Image via Wikipedia

Self-Care Tip #183 – Compete to be a friend to yourself.

Competition is not always thought to be a friendly word.  Pictures of hair-pulling, whining, learned helplessness, failure or success come to mind.  However I’m happy to say that we can put away that old grudge and open our arms to what competition can offer.

We are sharper intellectually when we compete.  It is stimulating and good brain exercise.

We feel better when we compete.  It releases dopamine, the feel-good neurotransmitter (brain messenger.)

We are more likely to win in self-care when we include competition.  Some people call it, “Making a game out of it.”  But that is really just saying, get competitive in a friendly way.  For example, this is one of the few successful ways to get long-term success with weight loss.

We are able to connect with others easier when we compete, believe it or not.  Competition is in fact a way to get out of isolation.  Pretty cool.

Competition can increase productivity – a boost to one’s quality of life and self-esteem.

Today I was speaking with my daughter’s teacher about bits of this concept.  I am hoping that more competition is integrated into her school curriculum.  For example, her daily writing could be shared with two fellow students of like abilities and vice versa.  She would read what they wrote, coalesce the information into her own thoughts, and write her response.

She would be working on:

  1. Writing
  2. Reading
  3. Interpretive thinking
  4. Learning how to let her thoughts travel the sometimes seemingly endless road between her mind and out her fingers.
  5. Productivity
  6. Connecting with peers/socialization
  7. Personal achievement/self-esteem/confidence
  8. more….

Question:  What role has competition played in your own self-care?  Please tell me your story.

Related Articles
by

When You Can’t Control This, Emote Empathically

Self-Care Tip #172 – When you can’t control this, emote empathically.  Be a friend to yourself.

A couple of days ago I wrote about being transparent with ourselves and others when we are not in control of things.  (Say, “I Can’t Control This” When You Can’t.)

This road sign image is in the public domain a...

Image via Wikipedia

It got mixed responses but all worth thinking about.

Jennifer responded on Facebook,

The 3 C’s help me all the time; I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, I can’t change and or cure it!

Isn’t that wonderful?!

  1. Cause
  2. Control
  3. Change

And it’s helpful to remember that claiming these 3C’s still may not remove us from the stressor.  We are however more present with ourselves and others despite the stressor.

Another reader BeeBlu’s, brought up that famous “fine line,”

I agree that it’s healthy to have this attitude to certain things in our lives, but as you say, it is also no excuse for bad behaviour and letting emotions go into free fall at the expense of others. I think there is a very fine line between the two. bb

…And her signature, “bb,” – awesome.

A line that is thin implies insecurity, danger and something precarious that may end up all wrong.  I wonder about that line.

On one side we have the 3 C’s:  cause, control, change.  On the other side of the line we have responsibility for the boundaries of others.  I wonder if there really is a dividing line after all or if it is just bad lighting.  If there wasn’t, there would be no need to thicken the line, to defend, or to pick sides.

Emotional health makes shadowy lines disappear.  It takes someone who has emotional health to be able to say their 3 C’s and still consider the internal and external milieu of others.  It takes someone who has done their self-care and put money in the bank; someone who has reserve built up that spills over into empathy.  We can’t emote empathically so well when we aren’t emotionally healthy.  The less of that, the more real the line becomes.  The less of that, the more precarious we are.

Gaining emotional health may take medication, exercise, sunlight, granola, grandma’s kisses and all sorts of things.  Each of us has to figure it out for our own selves and just do it.

Questions:  What do you think about this business of shadows, lines, and living cautiously?  When you have been healthiest, how have you been able to embrace both the 3 C’s and emote empathically at the same time?  Please tell me your story.

Related Articles
by

Connecting to Others is a Condition of Freedom Rather Than Loss of It.

Sitting on this land, fenced and gated I felt small.  It was different from my home.  Here I lost my connection to beyond the fence.  The string that attached me wasn’t long enough.  At my home, without thinking about it, I thought my self was bigger.  Small yet as large as the large connection I had to all the life that stretched out.  I hadn’t been in that place for a long time.

In the distance I saw the strange mountains, snow-covered, scoops of freedom and thought, “I must get there before I disappear.”

That’s what internet, (blogging, Facebook, Twitter) has done for me.  Taken me there.  No fences, no neighborhoods or zoning.  Suddenly my home became the great outdoors again and although I became smaller in it’s largeness, I became bigger by connection.  I had died a little in my isolation.  Designed in temperament and by human nature to get my energy from connections, I was weakening and alone.

I did not know.  I did now know a name for my condition.  I did not know the nature of my weakness.  I did not know what would happen when I took it down.  And I was afraid.

Tomorrow I’ll talk a little more about what conditions us to disconnect.  But for today I only share the openness around me with you.  It surprised me and wasn’t my conscious goal originally when I set out writing FriendtoYourself.  But as all true gifts come, It came to me from Love, not bought by labor or coin.

My land has changed.

Self-Care Tip #142 – Use the internet as a way to connect with others to be a friend to yourself.

Question:  What have been the connecting forces in your life?  Please tell me your story!

by

Stop Blushing. It’s Not About “Me.”

Beckwith James Carroll Lost in Thought

Image via Wikipedia

Self-Care Tip #137 – Take yourself out of it to be more present in it.

When I started Toastmasters, I blushed, I stammered, I um-d my way through every talk.  I thought about “Me” a lot.  I thought about others in relation to Me.  I kept thinking, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”  (Which, by the way, is supposed to desensitize Me and make Me feel better.)  But I just got more doe-eyed in the headlights.

I lasted about a year in this speaking club before life grew over it and I dropped out.  I still consider myself a Toastmaster, though, and, many friendly critiques later, I remember my hard-earned lessons:

1.  In other people’s eyes, it is not about “Me.”

Bob Freel, from Toastmasters International, often coached us to think about our emotional connection with our audience.  He made it clear that the reason so many of our talks stunk was that we were so caught up in ourselves.  We were not looking at “their” faces.  Thinking about “their” feelings.  Speaking to “their” interests.

Now how does this relate to self-care you ask?  Well, when anxiety hits my patients, they seem to find a little solace hearing that most of the things people do or say around them, to them, about them, etc. has nearly nothing to do with them.  Even when they are named by the person speaking.  That can be confusing, but just because our name may be on someone’s lips, on the program, on the tag — that doesn’t make it about us.

I am amazed at how true this is when flipped around too.  When I think about how often I’m thinking about others, (or not thinking about others,) I stop in my own tracks.  I’m pretty darn self-absorbed.  Yet, that is not a bad thing.  It’s just how it is.  For all of us.

Pulling our own selves out of the equation, helps us in fact to be more present in it.  For our own selves and later for others.

Sometimes we just can’t do this though.  That’s when we need to think biology is getting in our way from getting out of ourselves.  Let’s do it and stop blushing.

To read about #2 on this fine list, tune in tomorrow fellow friends-to-ourselves!

Question:  How has pulling your own self out of the equation helped you be more present in it?  Please tell me your story.

by

Go Toward The Pain To Get Connected

dailymail.co.uk

Audrey came in looking fresh.  Better than before for sure.  She had an aura that brought to mind the moment just when tearing off wrapping paper.  It was nice to see her.

I am doing better.  I’m able to let more of the little things go, like the house doesn’t bother me as much when it’s not clean.

She was more able to do self-care with less forethought.  What did take her by surprise though, was her guilt.  She could see that it was inappropriate but insight didn’t entirely remove what shouldn’t be there.  She said these thoughts and feelings were something her husband likely never struggled with.  She didn’t think he was worried about her home doing dishes when he was at work.  However, the reverse for her was true.  She gave a coughing laugh.

I do!  I feel bad when he does the things.  It doesn’t make sense.  If he wasn’t washing dishes when I was working he’d just be watching TV.  But I still feel bad.

For her, working her job, taking her jogs, and attending Mommy groups were all in a grey category of “extras” for life.  Not necessary but bonuses she was spending their retirement on.  However, despite this, she looked the champion she was when saying,

I still am able to take care of myself.  Even though those thoughts come.

Audrey, by thinking about, talking about, and materially man-handling these thoughts, she was able to join her personal journey.  These things became connecting forces in her life.  They drew her closer to her family and not away.  Resentment dissipated and she was able to take part in her available positive emotions and thoughts.

It could have been different.  It had been different at other times, before medications and other positive deliberate choices in her life.  But it wasn’t now.  The could-have-beens trickled away together, the other near misses that sometimes we know about and sometimes we don’t.  There they go…

Going toward the pain in life, not averting from it, is a connecting force in our lives.

Question:  What have you been avoiding?  What has it done for you when you went toward the pain?  Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip #124 – Go toward the pain to feel connected.  Be a friend to yourself.

by

Growing Up Is Not Necessarily The Same as Growing Away

 

cant decide so dance

Image by faster panda kill kill via Flickr

 

Self-Care Tip #105 – Grow up, think on your own, and stay connected.  Be a friend to yourself.

Staying connected doesn’t mean loosing your freedom.  Staying connected doesn’t mean immaturity.  And independent thought doesn’t mean disconnecting from others or your foundation in life.

When we move into adulthood, we move into roles requiring responsibility, autonomous decision-making, teaching like parents.   This is confusing don’t you think when we were designed to be connected?  Well when something feels so wrong inside, listen to it.  There is a incongruence with what you intuitive know.  Independence includes dependence

Adulthood means learning to have creative thought while being willing to learn.  It means disconnecting while remaining connected.  It’s not all-or-none.  It’s seeing the strength in vulnerability.  Part of taking care of “Me” includes choosing dependence.

Dependence never takes away freedom.  Sometimes when I listen to people telling me how I should feel or think, I feel caged and start doing things to make me feel less caged.  Unfortunately sometimes that isn’t a healthy thing, like eating chocolate or… well it’s often eating for some reason.  Other people do this too.  They may cut on themselves or bang their head.  Unnecessary, because we are free no matter.  Drugs.  Whatever it is that in the moment somehow springs you from the phantom cage only to put you in another.

Question:  How do you live free yet connected?  How do you deal with feelings of infancy, immaturity, loosing freedom when it comes?  Please tell me Your story.

Related Articles
by

Get Gangster on Your Shame

 

Photo by Wesker

 

Shame.  Ah what a cloaked villain!  In this post I’m going to tell you about why shame is not an enemy you want to ignore.

“Michael Corleone” in The Godfather Part II was not the 1st to say it, but maybe was the first to make the quote famous

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Not many people would at first think that keeping shame close might be a good thing, but I’m here to tell you that it is.

Meet Bill the highway patrol.  He’s been seeing me for melancholic depression.  Sometimes he feels a little better, but those times even still are not so great.  Bill has told me about where he thought his anxiety and fear came from.  His story made sense to him.  This wouldn’t be too much of a problem except that he thought about it often.  Very often.  He was running in sprints away from it.  Somehow after all the time he’d spent reluctantly in the presence of his fears, he hadn’t realized that shame was connected.  Shame of being treated the way he had been.  Shame of being misused.  He hadn’t faced his fears because he was always angled away from his thoughts of shame.

If we don’t go where the shame is, we won’t be free from its effect on us.  Fear is a big bad bully.  Until you turn around and say stop, you’ll be running for a long time.

 

 

We all need to be a bit “gangsta” at times.  Ignoring shame is not.  It’s not emotion-street smart.  I’m waiting for Bill to think, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”  And sit in the feelings that come with those thoughts long enough to realize that he’s still ok.

In obsessive compulsive disorder, there is a psychotherapy treatment called “exposure and response prevention.”  In this treatment, the person with the ego-dystonic fear exposes themselves to their fear for a progressive amount of time.  They realize that after going where the fear is over and over and materially seeing that nothing bad happens, the fear looses more and more control over them.

This is effective in any anxiety condition, including shame.

Self-Care Tip #83 – Get gangster on your shame.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Has shame bullied you?  Please tell me your story.