Archives for category: Anxiety
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The Demon Chorus Laughs in the Background

April 2, 2019 //
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Things have been so peculiarly perfect in some regards, it’s been easy to become complacent about how good life is day-to-day, and how content I feel, generally. Tactical error, I agree.

I woke groggy this morning, head pounding from the headache I spent the night with (not a metaphor – I wish it were). I woke with Pink Floyd in my head. I don’t know what that says about anything. I also woke feeling vaguely embarrassed and slightly ashamed of myself. No point to any of that, it’s just my demons enjoying their moment to shine. I’m over it already. Drinking coffee, beginning again.

Frustration is my kryptonite. Last night, yet again, the closed captions on YouTube videos were on (I don’t use them, haven’t turned them on). This has come up before. It frustrates me, and creates some internal resistance to conversation, some irritability, and causes me to question my sanity – and to feel as if my partner questions my competence, every time he seeks to help with this. Hell, depending on which device I access, the closed captions are not even turned on, at all. Glitch? Bug? Well, maybe, maybe not, but it irritates the hell out of me, and leaves me feeling as if the fucking internet is gas lighting me.

…Do you see where this is headed?

So… yeah. My partner offers to help. I perceive “a tone” (doesn’t matter whether there was a tone, it’s the perception that triggers the reaction, and I explicitly understand this). I react, rather childishly, and although it wasn’t any sort of “thing” really, it created an uncomfortable moment rich with hurt feelings on both sides. I could almost hear my fucking demons laughing their asses off. We got past that; we’ve been together too long, and worked too hard on our own issues, to let something so ridiculous ruin a lovely evening. My headache wasn’t helping. Still, the evening ended on a good note, affectionate, connected, and real. It wasn’t left to chance. I made a firm point of very specifically letting all that bullshit go, even announcing that it was my intention to do so – which is probably a weird thing to say out loud, however effective it may be. It was still some minutes before my chemistry began to return to some sort of normal. (I find it helpful to remind myself that as with ingested substances, our chemistry can provoke “a high” specific to the chemical involved, and the “come down” – both in intensity, and in duration – varies with the circumstances and with the chemistry.) I still felt a bit distant when I finally called it a night and went to bed. I wasn’t sure I’d sleep with this headache…

…I guess my headache got some sleep too; it’s ready for a new day, today. lol (groan)

I drink my coffee. Reflect on my good fortune. Take time for a moment of gratitude, and to appreciate my Traveling Partner; he “gets me”, and understands my issues nearly as well as I do myself. We do okay. Last night fell short of supremely awesome, but it was still spent in the good company of this human being I love. That definitely matters more than a moment of stress. Life is filled with moments. A few of them are going to be more challenging than delightful. That’s just real. I’m okay. There’s no lingering ill effect, which is lovely. This moment, right here, is just fine – aside from the headache, which will hopefully pass. My coffee is warm, and delicious. The workday ahead should be a more or less routine one. I decide to ride the light rail again this morning, for ease, and laugh at myself because I said as much yesterday, ended up driving in and parking on the waterfront. (Yep. In the minutes between deciding to take the train, and getting the car onto the street to go to the park-n-ride, I entirely forgot that was my intention. lol) This morning, I think I’m firm on the decision-making… I’m probably not; I’ll know when I get in the car and “feel the day”. Maybe a lovely drive before dawn on a Spring morning is exactly what this headache needs?

I smile, thinking about my garden. There are flowers sprouting in big colorful pots, already. A couple of the roses have buds on them. I came home yesterday to an excellent new hose, and a new spray nozzle, which delighted me greatly. I sip my coffee reflecting on that moment, and enjoying how well-loved I am, and feeling an intoxicating mix of gratitude and love for this human being who loves me so. I notice the time, and instead of rushing off promptly, I remember that my day needs to end a bit later than usual, and so I have time to linger. Feels good. I hear my partner stirring in the other room. Coffee together, too? Maybe so… Great start to the day.

I begin again. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Are You Ready?

March 29, 2019 //
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I woke drenched in sweat. Unexpected. It was early. I got up and made coffee with shaking hands, disturbed by… what? Nothing much, I guess. Brain working over time. Short day in the office, today. It’s not really “time off”; I’ve got a medical appointment. Is that stressing me out? I sip my coffee and wonder. I take time for me.

It’s such a human experience being this creature of emotion and reason wrapped in this strangely fragile meat sack. lol My coffee tastes good. My body feels uncomfortable, otherwise. It is what it is. Fuck. At least I got some sleep.

I enjoy the companionship and presence of my Traveling Partner on a most peculiar level. Always have. He’s my friend. My love. My buddy. My partner. The one person I reliably enjoy being around, at my best, at my worst, when I’m ill, when I’m feeling restless; this is a human being with whom I fully enjoy living life. Perfection isn’t a thing – it’s more about how complementary our individual challenges are. We understand and respect each other. We have shared values. We lift each other up. We demand our best from each other – so gently and with such kindness that it doesn’t feel like a demand, at all. It’s nice. I sit and sip my coffee thinking about how fortunate I am to enjoy this relationship, with this person. No particular reason to mention any of it; I’m just sipping coffee and feeling loved. 🙂 It’s a pleasant start to the morning, after a rather emotionally rude awakening. 🙂

Working, living.

The work experience is interesting. I am an engine, firing on all cylinders, accelerating from a definite starting point, with a destination in mind. How long will that last? Sleep and self-care are important. So important. Sometimes love and life feel like a distraction from the energy needed to fuel the work. It’s odd that this is so; don’t I also need the sleep and the self-care? Rhetorical. I know I do.

We make strange mistakes in our thinking, as human creatures. We try to run from our emotions by taking drugs or practicing all many of escape tactics, even though our emotions indisputably go everywhere with us. We conflate satisfaction with our professional lives with enjoying our actual lives. We confuse marriage with love. We adopt convictions and beliefs without examining their basis in fact, then cling to them as if they are going to save us, even when we are shown clear evidence that they are bunk. What strange creatures we are!

I sip my coffee. I think about work. I think about love. I think about life. Then I notice I am thinking, and set my thinking aside to simply drink coffee for a moment, just being. The cup, mostly empty now, is still quite warm in my hands. I feel the subtle warmth rise from the contents within, though it has cooled too much for steam to rise. I taste the dark warm liquid; earthy, with hints of chocolate, of forest, of morning. I breathe. Relax.

My waking moment was difficult, and disorienting. In spite of that, the morning goes well. It feels like a gift to be so easily able to bounce back. It is, more accurately, the win that follows commitment to self-care, a reliable meditation practice, and the result of rather a lot of work specifically done to get this (or similar) result… and a lot of restarts, do-overs, and new beginnings. 🙂 Worth it.

My coffee is gone. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Down Time

March 11, 2019 //
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Sipping my coffee, scrolling through my feeds, reading the posts of friends dropped into this app or that one, during the night. There is content that troubles me, and I see a lot of it; people posting vague remarks that are self-critical, negative, and on a hopeless sort of downer that shrieks of depression, self-loathing, and… a regrettable lack of understanding that there are, still, and yes, even if they are deeply depressed, some choices involved. Harsh. Why the ever-loving-fuck would someone repeatedly post this sort of quagmire of terribly self-contempt-filled morsels on which to feed themselves? Horrifying.

I don’t have to look too far in the past to “get it”. I only “don’t get it”, now. It’s one major drawback, for me, of healing and forward momentum; it can be hard to understand, or identify with, those past challenges. I guess I’m grateful for that, generally, but when I want to offer comfort, or suggest there is another way, I wish I were more easily able to do so. How do I tell someone in such circumstances “that’s just your opinion of yourself, and only for right now, and holy crap – did you know you can change that??”… when it is their own heartfelt convictions, and deepest terror, about themselves, that I’d be seeking to challenge? I mean, I can say words. Words I’ve got – lots of them – but, generally, these friends are not listening to those words. They hear the words they say, themselves, about the self they so loathe. Anything I could (and often do) say is drowned out in the din.

…It can be heartbreaking to scroll past egregious thinking errors that recognizably mire dear ones in misery. We each can only do so much. If a feeding frenzy of corrections, positivity, love, and encouragement, in response to such posts does nothing to bandage a wounded heart… what can? Well… being present helps. Listening deeply helps. Constancy and steady patient friendship helps. Eventually, though, it’s down to that person and those feelings. …And the verbs…? Yep. No surprise; they’ve got to do the verbs, themselves. No one else can actually undertake to do the work to feel better, aside from the person having the shitty experience – particularly if that shitty experience is one they’ve willfully crafted for themselves and reinforced over time.

Well… shit. That sucks. I’d love to be able to reach out a hand to a friend and take their pain away. Generally, it does not work like that. If I cling to them, wrapping myself up in their pain, eventually some may even sap my strength for living my own life, and caring for my own heart – and not out of malice, just done in a way not so dissimilar to someone overboard grabbing for a life vest or flotation device and just holding on desperately. So, I focus on self-care, and listening deeply, and sharing the journey, and “being there” – but I also work to set skillful boundaries, to be there for my own self, reliably, and to avoid getting sucked into drama. I do what I can to encourage friends who are suffering to choose less suffering, if they are able to. I still feel sad when I watch them choose suffering again and again, in a way that appears crafted and willful. My heart aches for them; I’m pretty sure that if they were able to really understand how much suffering they specifically choose, foster, nurture, and feed, they would also understand they could choose differently.

…I couldn’t treat myself differently until I both understood that such a thing were possible, and – but? – also not until I was ready to see myself differently, and as worthy of better treatment from myself. Harsh – but the truth of it is that I can’t walk that mile for anyone else. I can only suggest that there is such a path available to be walked.

It was a lovely quiet weekend, spent in the gentle good company of my traveling partner. Some snow fell. Some rain fell. Movies were watched. Content was shared – as was contentment. It was warm and connected and close. It feels good to share the company of such good companions: my Traveling Partner… and the woman in the mirror. It feels good to be in a place in life where my own good company is precious to me. I finish my coffee, wondering what words it takes to suggest to the worn down, forlorn, depressed, or anxious, that they, too, have this amazing relationship near at hand…? That perhaps the answer to the question “when will I find someone?” could be found in their mirror, right now?

The coffee is finished. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Inner Demons? Me, too.

February 20, 2019 //
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“You’re not alone in this,” I whispered to myself when I woke a tad ahead of the alarm. Startled out of sleeping by a sensation of choking. Of being choked. That invisible hand wasn’t “real” – outside my nightmares. I made coffee. My coffee is good. Meditation calmed me quickly; there was a time it would have taken longer, and required more attempts. Progress.

…I sometimes find I need a… score. A theme song. A soundtrack. This morning I stride across a metaphysical battlefield, Monster Slayer, Demon Killer, just a general Wednesday-morning-got-a-job-to-do, bad ass. A theme song would be good here… something… Oh. This works nicely. Stand down, monsters, you have no power over me. Not today. 🙂

At this point, it’s an ordinary Wednesday morning. 😀

No kidding, though, giving my personal inner demons a face, and a way to constructively face them “outside myself” has been a helpful way to get a grip on some of my challenges in life. I’ve far fewer “inner demons” to deal with these days. (Maybe they don’t like the music I play? 😉 )

Every demon – every day – a new battle, a new battlefield. Still, as demons go, fighting the ones that are built purely on my subjective experience of life, and live entirely within my own head, are surely the easiest ones to slay with music? lol I enjoy the practice of imagining myself at my strongest, my most capable, of savoring my successes, of bringing my strengths into my self-awareness when I am feeling attacked from within. This morning, my inner bad ass has her combat boots on. “You ready, Battle?” I ask myself. The answer? “Fuck yeah. I got this!”

I’m ready to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Free Will, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, War and News of War

Fuck Your Bullshit, Damn

February 18, 2019 //
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Sipping coffee on a quiet President’s Day holiday morning, and contentedly relaxing, letting go of baggage and bullshit lingering from jobs past, preparing for a future that begins in earnest, tomorrow. (Doesn’t it always?) I breathe. Relax. “Fuck my bullshit,” I think, smiling.

This seems relevant today (and many other todays as well). Far more experienced and expert words than I could offer. 🙂

I’m comfortable telling my own bullshit to fuck right off. If I don’t, I’m sure someone else will, but… what would I learn from that besides rejection? It’s too easy to excuse bullshit because someone else called it out, and the resulting feelings of defensiveness, hurt, rejection, and possibly resentment and anger, will quite likely blot out my ability to easily recognize that there is real truth to it. It’s important, I find, to be awake to my own bullshit, as much as possible, and do that work myself. It’s peculiarly far less lonely. 🙂

While I’m on about it… fuck your bullshit, too, damn. Can you do a little something about that? (Yes, you can. Choices. Verbs. It’s a lot of work I know.) I’m being somewhat playful, but also quite serious and purposeful. When was the last time you did a serious self-inventory? Who are you? Where are you headed in life? Are you wasting your resources and potential as if there is no future? Are you playing a grand game of Let’s Pretend and failing to understand how very much control you actually do have? Are your thinking errors preventing you from being emotionally and physically well? Are your addictions degrading your quality of life in return for a few minutes of something like pleasure? (Fine, fine, you’re not addicted, it’s just something you do… whatever. Fuck your bullshit.)

Seriously. Fuck your bullshit. Let it go. Change something you don’t like about yourself – because you don’t like it. Change your circumstances, if they suck. Seriously. Make choices. Use verbs. Don’t just party through your heartache or the wreckage in your head that’s holding you back. Educate yourself. Read a fucking book. See a damned therapist. Make every possible effort to be the person you most want to be! This is your life. Live it well, for fucks’ sake – because it is yours.

Why? Well, damn – because it’s what you want. Did you not already catch on to the fact that when what you want (of yourself, and of your life) is very different than what you are providing yourself, a deep despairing unhappiness can set in, an ennui that can destroy your ability to act – or to care – leaving you vulnerable to yet another evening/weekend/week/month/year of going… nowhere. Stress that never ends because you never choose in favor of your own long term interests and needs. Are you on a path that leads somewhere? Are you “wandering purposefully” seeking a greater truth? Or are you sort of just… killing mortal time? You could likely do better, for yourself. Your will to do so will matter a great deal. There are verbs involved. It’s a lot of work, and at least initially (maybe always, just being real; there’s work to do), damn little in the way of obvious pay off. It takes time. Incremental change is slow.

Anyway. What I’m saying is; this is your mess, you clean it up.

…And also? Fuck your bullshit. Damn.

…And also?…

Begin again. ❤

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Categories anger, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, grief, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, weight loss secrets, Words
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