Archives for the month of: January, 2013
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How Do I Find ‘Positive’, When I Feel So Negative?

January 14, 2013 //
2

Just in case you ever wonder if I have bad days, bad moments, insecurity or self doubt… you needn’t wonder.  And with the magic of modern medical science, I can tell you exactly nothing about whether my brain injury, my hormones, or my post traumatic stress bear the larger burden of my poor experience today. I can tell you, however, that exactly as with all my other bad days, bad moments, poor choices, tough times… every moment has one thing in common: me. Sometimes the choice very much seems to be between being…and… not being. It’s hard to read my own words on other days, from some other perspective, trying to make some other choice, written from some moment of hope or positive experience.

I probably cry more than a necessary amount, and lately I’ve been getting re-acqainted with despair (one of my least favorite emotions). My intellect tells me I can not count on these feelings for good decision making, but right now I doubt I can count on anything at all for good decision making. My experience feels permeated by doubt, soaked in fearfulness, wrapped in anxiety, and certainty that any solution to today will be forgotten in some tomorrow’s other problem. I feel worn down and regretful, tired and discouraged.  I lack hope.

What sucks is that broken or not, I have a decent brain that does its best to tell me something true and real. I know there are people without clean running water, without enough food to eat, without appropriate clothing to wear, without the certainty of the security of their home and person, or even entirely without a home.  So, ‘poor me‘, right? What right do I have to complain that my experience doesn’t feel good today? I don’t really know what to do with that.

Yesterday ended well (I think…), so why do I hurt so much today, over so much of yesterday? Why do I get hung up on what hurts? I’m tired. Brain tired. Heart tired. Soul tired. I do what I can… I don’t know how to make it feel like ‘enough’. There is no Rx for ‘happiness’, just me, some words, and time… the cycle of my thoughts and emotions today brings to mind the driver mired to the axles in mud, spinning his wheels, gas pedal to the floor, frustration and fury… over and over again, even though it didn’t work the first time. If I could just gain a few moments of calm, a few experiences of success, a few days of joy… maybe I could take another look at the challenges and find a solution that works… or not.

…Maybe I just need some sleep.

Tags
Categories Brain Injury, Menopause, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Words

The Parable of Glitter

January 11, 2013 //
2

One of the lessons I have learned from practicing meditation is that life is full of education, parables, allegories, metaphors, and that the lessons I learn largely depend on whether my eyes and my mind are open to the moment.

Consider the Parable of Glitter.  I’ve loved the sight of glitter as long as I can recall. Tubes of it catch my eye when I shop, and I fondly recall the simple crafts of childhood that often involved glitter and glue. (If you have memories of glitter crafts, too, this may be more meaningful for you.)  I woke this morning to a landscape of white.  A very heavy frost, or perhaps as suggested by my partners over coffee, actual snow had accumulated in the night.  I sipped my coffee sitting alone and quiet watching the morning sun slowly heat the deck, a soft mist beginning to rise. I noticed to my great delight that the very air seemed just filled with glitter! Silver bright flecks with sharp edges flashing like twinkle lights densely filled the air, the sky, every space I could see outside the window. I was in awe with childlike amazement – I’ve never seen such a thing as the sky filled with glitter!

I went outside to see it up close, to see it in more detail, perhaps to touch it and ‘make it real’. Standing in what must have been the thick of it, I was surprised and disappointed, frustrated to find it had all but disappeared in all directions. A few sad flakes appearing to linger in the air was the extent of anything to see.

Like choices. From a distance, eyes wide open to the possibilities, there are so many choices in each moment we have. We can alter our reality at any time, simply by making a choice.  Standing in the thick of life, the choices we see available to us are limited – by our vision.

This is not the end of the Parable of Glitter. Later as I walked and thought about choice, meditated on the nature of how our vision limits our perception of choice, I realized that when I was mindful of what was ahead of me along the way, I could see all that glitters, just ahead on my path.

The Parable of Glitter – choice is limited only by vision, and glitter looks amazing in sunshine.

Categories Metaphors, Parables, Perspective, Words

Stress, Weirdness, and a Good Night’s Sleep

January 10, 2013 //
0

I still manage to be surprised how much really good quality sleep matters to my overall quality of life, and the enjoyment of my every day experience. Post traumatic stress can drive an intense cycle of poor sleep and anxiety; nightmares and sleep disturbances of a variety of sorts, decreasing both my ability to sleep, as well as the actual value of any sleep I am able to get. The anxiety gets worse, the longer I go without good sleep. The worse the anxiety is, the worse my sleep is. As the days go by I become more moody, more volatile, more prone to tears, less rational, less coordinated, less able to remember recent conversations or requests for task completion. The headaches become more frequent, and less responsive to treatment.  My emotional foundation begins to shift from one of relative calm and every day satisfaction to one of frustration, hostility and anger. I stop enjoying my relationships and begin to feel confrontational. I become negative, and my experiences begin to be filtered through the most negative possible interpretations and I make assumptions about the motives and intentions of others that are based on my own hostile and unhappy experience-of-the-moment. I hurt inside. I feel on edge and prone to easy tears.

…A few days of that, and I start feeling very disconnected and surreal, and unsure of the validity of my experiences. I get angrier. I feel unimportant and displaced. I feel resentful. If I can’t manage my behavior in spite of my internal experience, eventually I become a living breathing time bomb – a fight just waiting to happen. I can see it coming, in my most lucid moments, and feel helpless to prevent it, fix it, or make it stop.  It’s got to be very hard on people who love me, and who can’t see my internal experience, seeing  only reflections of it in my mood and demeanor, perhaps eventually manifesting in some horrific moment of emotional mistreatment that punishes all of us.

It’s hardest when PTSD intersects with hormonal changes (hello, menopause!), and the remaining consequences of a brain injury (good-bye childhood). Hard to know which element of my experience has it’s source with what particular challenge; is the moodiness of the moment my hormones, this time, or did that news article about that heinous rape set me on the path of a post traumatic stress freak out? Is my frustration and confusion the result of my PTSD being triggered by the neighbors yelling late at night, or the byproduct of cognitive limitations when I’m badly fatigued due to my brain injury? Do the answers to those questions matter? I know I sometimes feel like I’m juggling a number of heavy shards of glass, desperate to keep them all in the air without injury to myself or others, and it feels like more than I can bear.

Then I sleep. If I can manage my sleep in a reliably restful healthy way, everything else seems just a bit easier. The day starts better. My mood is calmer and more easily managed. I’m not overwhelmed by the little stuff.  Sleep is amazing.  (Note to Big Pharm: your pills and potions are of no value to me, the sleep they provide is not healthy, reliable or restful. Thanks, anyway, try again.)

I slept last night. Waking up was hard, but worthwhile, and the leisurely morning over a latte was a calm delight. The day feels good. The nightmares are gone in the chill gray winter morning. Over hours and days even the memories of the fear and pain will dissipate, and life will be joyful and pleasant for a while, until something else sets me off and I go through it all again. For now, I won’t think about it, until I see that fear, that panic, that fatigue in someone else’s eyes, out in the world… because one thing I do know is that I am not alone in this. There are a lot of people who hurt, who cry, who wake breathless and anxious in the night. I hope tonight they all get some sleep.

Tags
Categories Brain Injury, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights

Perspective

January 9, 2013 //
6

Perspective is a funny thing. I’ve got some extra words laying about on that topic…how about an example to work with?

A. My partner wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex every day.
B. I’m so lucky I get to have sex with my partner every day.
C. I hardly ever get to have sex with my partner. We only manage it about once a day.

The same ‘factual’ information – people who have sex daily – can be heard or understood very differently depending on the perspective of the person delivering the remark, and the person hearing it. The ensuing misunderstandings can create conflict, or rouse an emotional reaction that may not be relevant to the desired discussion. You may have already have reacted to a specific descriptive term, assumption, or implication of the sentences above. The meaning of each is relative to your experience, values, and knowledge.  ‘Right’, ‘wrong’, and ‘true’ get harder to define, for me, when I think about perspective.

Consider example A:
A. My partner wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex every day.
a. My wife wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex with her every day.
a. My husband wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex with him every day.
a. My landlord wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex to cover my rent every day.

More information can really change how that sentence feels, and what it means, but it also brings our biases into the mix.  I’m not sure that’s avoidable, because we each have our own ‘point of view’ that has a lot to say about how we see ‘reality’.

Maybe the sex imagery clouds thinking too easily? How about tailgating? This morning I saw a great illustration in commuter traffic.  A bus was pulling into traffic, and has the right of way to do so, locally. A car quickly pulled into the following distance between the bus and the car ahead of the bus in the lane the bus was entering, leaving no following distance, and ‘cutting off’ the bus.  Chances are good, the driver of the car chose to pull into that lane because the choice seemed safe, and necessary.  The bus driver, I can report first hand, did not see things that way at all based on the horn blowing, sudden breaking, and cursing. Traffic continued forward at the same relative average speed as prior to this event, and there was no accident. Is there a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ party? (note: I did not ask ‘Was one driver correct or incorrect according to the traffic laws?) I would be surprised if the motorist or bus driver have recollections that are even remotely similar, if they were asked to relate the morning commute, based on my own experiences with ‘eye witness’ event narratives, and they probably both think they are ‘right’.

…As an odd aside, it has been my experience that some people get agitated, even angry, at the suggestion that ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ could changed by perspective, or individual values and ethics. (It makes some conversations very challenging for me, since I’ve been unable to firmly ascertain a clear, fixed, unchanging system of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to rely on, myself.)  If you find yourself becoming angry with the suggestion that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ may not be concepts of a determinate and infallible nature, please take a minute to chill out and come back when you’ve calmed down; this blog post is not worth being angry about.

Back to the sex… the example sentence really sounds different to me when I take out descriptive or limiting terms.
a. My partner and I have sex daily.
From my perspective that seems the most clear statement inasmuch as it is least complicated, but there is a lot unsaid that would clearly change the meaning for someone hearing it. Definitions of terms become enormously important when descriptive words are removed – the definitions of ‘partner’, and ‘sex’ now become critical to understanding the sentence. Does the speaker mean business partner, romantic partner, or some other sort of partnership, for example? (‘Daily’ is probably pretty clear, but has some room for improvement; does it mean once every 24 hours, or once each calendar day?)

I’ve got perspective on my mind today, because acknowledging the impact of individual perspective and point of view is important to a lot of communication processes, and a lot of people who matter to me are struggling with challenging issues of our times, each sharing their thoughts, ideas, values. There is a lot of emotion involved. Hell, ‘point of view’ is such a big deal it has it’s own porn genre! I’d like to find my way through the turmoil to a better understanding of my life and my world, and my own position on the issues. Issues that confuse me due to failures to define terms and acknowledge perspective right now include:

  • gun control – or is that the issue of ‘our failed mental health system’, the issue of mass murders, or the issue of ‘personal freedoms’? (the perspective of a person who owns a firearm and fears the loss of it is quite different than the perspective of the parent of someone who is mentally ill and potentially violent, or the perspective of a victim of gun violence)
  • ‘the war on women’ – or is that the issue of pay inequity, or women’s health care, domestic violence, the culture of rape, work:life balance, or domestic spending? (the perspective of a woman making a lower hourly wage than her male colleagues is quite different than the perspective of a man who is the CEO of a thriving business, and the perspective of a woman being stalked by an ex is likely very different than the perspective of a lawmaker hoping to reduce domestic spending)
  • the use of drone strikes in military conflicts – or is that the issue of military spending, the issue of defining a ‘combatant’, the issue of expansionism, the issue of cultural freedom, or the issue of the depersonalization of killing? (the perspective of a parent grieving a noncombatant child killed in a drone strike, is different than the perspective of a general hoping to reduce troop casualties)
  • birth control – or is that the issue of sexual freedom, health care, family planning, personal freedom, religious freedom, or reproductive freedom? (the perspective of a person committed to an idealogy that opposes pre-marital sex is different than the perspective of someone who chooses to be sexually active and non-monogamous)

So…who gets to be ‘right’? How do you define ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘correct’, ‘inappropriate’ or ‘true’?

My thought regarding perspective is that we suffer as people, and as a culture, as soon as we commit ourselves to being – or needing to be – ‘right’. Arguing, seeking to persuade, or pressuring others to accept or acknowledge that we are ‘right’ about something that is not clearly defined nor utterly factual is a fast way to prevent personal growth or new understanding of the world around us. Sharing perspective, as well as ‘facts’ is something I’d like to see more of people doing – and accepting (admittedly the harder piece is really hearing what someone else says about their perspective, when it differs from our own). It sounds pretty simple until  I get hung up on something I think I’m ‘right’ about… and find out, again, how very human I am.

Why does it matter enough to me to write a blog post about it? Because understanding each other is very much about perspective, and I want to understand the things that are important to me, and behave in a way that respects the values and perspective of others, at least enough not to hurt people I care about through careless insensitivity.

Categories Logic & Reason, Perspective, Relationships, Words

A Toe in the Water

January 8, 2013 //
7

I turn 50 this year. It seems like one of those things that should be important, somehow, or an opportunity to do something grand. Considering the rather large number of blogs I found themed around, or referencing, turning 50, it seems to be a common notion that doing so is somehow significant.

It is half of 100… and seems like a good place to begin something, so here I am…beginning.

All my life I have heard observations about how much I talk (a lot) and how many words I use (more than necessary). This will be a place to park a few of those many words, to comment on the world, to contemplate who I am, and to work on the communication landmines that regularly wreak havoc on my relationships. (I’m suddenly wondering if it is as common as it seems, to follow the word ‘wreak’ with the word ‘havoc’…does anyone ever ‘wreak delight’?)

Categories Turning 50, Words
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