Archives for category: Anxiety

Practicing on Paper

September 16, 2016 //

No witty words today. No observations of particular note. No emotional salve. No imagery. Today, I practice. I haven’t yet found my social security card, which I didn’t realize I’d misplaced until I happened on it some weeks ago. It was conveniently already in a place “that makes sense”, where I “couldn’t possibly lose it”, and which I had already forgotten, previously. It wasn’t my best decision-making to leave it in that location trusting that I wouldn’t forget it, yet again.

Well, damn… Where did I put that?

This morning I am made entirely of human, and the practicing with be all of those that help me ‘keep myself together’ in the face of potentially an entire day of small frustrations while I hunt down this worthless 2″ x 3″ piece of paper no one gives two shits about until it’s time to fill out an I-9 for employment. I’m somewhat amused to live in a state without reciprocity between the DMV and Social Security Administration, because I’d have been able to order a replacement online to be mailed to me if they did, and I’m mostly pretty done with being angry about it; amusement is what’s left over. Suffice it to say my in-person visit with the SSA was not ideally successful; I feel victorious over my issues to struggle with public tears on the phone with my traveling partner and nothing worse.

It’s just a piece of paper. It is not “who I am”.

So. The practicing. Today I’ll both look for the card (again), and maintain positive self-soothing practices hoping to keep my experience of frustration very minimal. That sounds so… easy…

I can't help think there's got to be a better way... it's the number that matters.

I think there’s got to be a better way… it’s the number that matters. (Hello? 21st century? Can we get an upgrade here, please?)

“Easy” doesn’t describe my experience of frustration very often. Frustration is my kryptonite. My results may vary. There are a quantity of verbs involved. Taking care of the woman in the mirror such that she is efficient, focused, committed – but not a frantic madwoman tearing the house apart enraged or hysterical – is one of the more major challenges I deal with when faced with frustration. That’d be quite the tight-rope act 3-4 years ago, or more. Today it feels like an exam. A test. Well… sure, okay. I’m being tested. Good test results may rely on good general self-care… it’s at least somewhere to start. So. Coffee. Yoga. Meditation. A nutritious balanced breakfast between 200-350 calories. Exercise. And the cherry on top; time spent considering how very often I do find things, lost things, misplaced things, things that have been moved in a thoughtless moment. I find things. It’s here somewhere. 🙂

Helpfully, it’s quite unique in appearance.

Sometimes the practices I need most turn out to have benefits I didn’t consider before. For me, the opposite of frustration is not “gratification”, it is “emotional ease”. The last time I misplaced something dear to me, that remained lost, unfound, perhaps “gone forever”, I lost myself in hysterics for hours and felt low and rather lost, myself, for many days. I grieved. It seems excessive, generally, for lost stuff. Today is a good day to treat myself better than that. 🙂

It’s just a bit of paper.

Somewhere in my mind’s eye, I imagine an orderly school room of children, a teach or test proctor at the front… “Pencils up! And begin.” Today is a good day to begin again. It’s enough.

Tags be here now, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, breathe, choose wisely, cognitive ease, cognitive strain, emotional self sufficiency, frustration is my kryptonite, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, it's just a silly bit of paper, MBSR, meditation, mindfulness matters, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, reactivity, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, what matters most?

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

The Brain Attacks! Again.

September 9, 2016 //

It could be that some of my challenges will be part of my experience for as long as I’m experiencing things. It sucks more than a little bit to dwell on that, so I move on with my thinking as quickly as I can, but without cruelty or dismissiveness. I am human, after all. This morning I woke, and quickly found myself reduced to tears…over… nothing. Nothing whatsoever that has any substance in this moment, I mean. Emotions. Dreams? Maybe.

“The Nightmare City” 8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas w/glow

I woke feeling angry with my traveling partner, which is odd; one of my challenges is feeling safe about, and comfortably expressing, anger in my closest relationships. (It’s baggage that isn’t about my traveling partner, but he’s had to endure me lugging it around all this time.) I woke feeling angry that in our first years married, illness held him back from doing a lot of cool things; we stayed home, a lot. Now he’s well, and feeling fully himself, and he lives a busy life of adventure, going, doing, experiencing new things… and we no longer live together, and these are not our shared experiences. The anger I woke with quickly threatened to become a tantrum, a storm of unrelenting strong emotion knocking me off-balance with hurt feelings, and regrets. The anger became grief and sadness as soon as I let myself feel my feelings with compassion, and recognized the simultaneous feelings of resentment, sadness, and insecurity. My heart cried out “what do we have that is ours?” and I couldn’t answer it – not because there is nothing with which to answer, but because I can’t easily find the answer (through tears, through heartache, through the fog of just waking up, before my coffee…) without considerable thought. I let the tears come; it would be a genuinely sad thing to share nothing with one’s lover, and were that the case, there would be no failure in these honest tears.

It’s okay to put some of that down, for now.

Later, I sip my coffee aware of the authentic feelings at the root of my difficult waking moments. I’m deeply in love with this particular human being I call my traveling partner, and at least for now we live very separate lives. Sometimes that is a painful experience. Sometimes it holds some relief that this human being so dear to me doesn’t have to struggle under the weight of my chaos and damage full-time. Right now, in this moment, I just miss him and find myself wondering rather hormonally what value I have… (Fuck you, Menopause, I’m supposed to be past having to deal with hormonal bullshit!) It’s rather foolish. It’s very human.

Love matters most.

Seasons change. Over the long summer I’ve come to miss him greatly, after enjoying living with him through the winter. I’m eager to enjoy the autumn and winter months together, celebrating holidays, enjoying the company of friends… but… there is something real here that may want my attention, and getting past the tears I’m aware that most his “go” and “do” activities in the past 2 years have developed in other relationships than ours. We spend very little time together; he’s busy elsewhere. (It’s quite possible the time we do spend together fully meets his needs. I’m not sure I’m ready to ask that question…) I woke up hurting over it and wondering what value “we” have for him. It’s not something to stew over – that’s a fast track to misery. I’ll just ask when I see him again, and he will tell me, and then I’ll know. I’ll be back to work soon… there won’t be time for fussing about how little time we spend together, then; there won’t be time left in the days for it. The time we spend together will be limited to the time we have.

My calendar is very full for the next several days. Appointments. Brunch with a friend over the weekend. Friday night with the guys from my previous work team. My last week of leisure will probably be filled with “getting ready to go back to work” activities. It’s not likely that these will be days filled with sadness or passing emotional storms, there’s too much to do, and life to be lived. I feel some regret that my traveling partner wasn’t available to enjoy more of this time away from work with me… but it was time I took for me, as it was, and it has been well-spent on healing, growing, and practicing good self-care. Worthy endeavors, good outcomes. (So, hey, Brain, stop being such a bitch to me, please?)

A gray dawn greeted me so gently I barely noticed it had become day time while I wrote. I’m not crying now, or even sad really. I’m sipping my coffee, listening to music, and feeling a contented smile tug at the corners of my mouth. I think about other friends. Other loves. Other moments of great joy – or great sorrow. Impermanence is a very real thing, and change is, too. I smile thinking about my traveling partner’s good times to come, and his journey here and there. I’m already eager to hear about it – and he hasn’t even departed. lol He’ll take approximately no pictures at all, but my imagination will fill in all the details in the telling. 🙂

Today I don’t opt into loneliness, and once my tears have dried it’s another lovely morning, heading into another day of living a life built mostly on contentment (and bits and pieces of chaos and damage). Today is a good day to begin again. 🙂

Tags be here now, be love, begin again, being and becoming, breathe, emotional self sufficiency, honest tears, impermanence, love and lovers, meditation, menopause, mindful loving, mindfulness matters, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, spilled milk, sufficiency, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, what matters most?

Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, Words

And Again

August 31, 2016 //

Here it is, another morning. I’ve an on site job interview for a promising position firmly within my area of expertise. I remind myself to let go of clinging to an outcome, and trust myself to do well, without fear or self-criticism.

Life has so much to offer, no one moment carries the weight of a lifetime… unless of course, I were to choose that it would, and invest my will in it. I’m a human primate. I tend towards making “Moments” out of moments. I breathe, and let go the meta-anxiety developing around the very mild, rather inconsequential background tension so common to an imminent interview. There’s no need for it to become more than that.

Begin again. Again.

It’s a cool, gray morning. The clouds overhead are those that look rather like some distracted artists smudged them in place with charcoal, then tried to wipe them away after a change of heart. No sunshine this morning, and the forecast suggests that rain would not be entirely unexpected. I think over my interview clothes, and sip my coffee, staring out over the meadow to the treeline beyond.

I think about life in the context of giving up 40 hours a week of precious lifetime for someone else’s agenda; it sits uneasily in my awareness, but without the agita, stress, and feeling of violation that had accompanied it for so long. I suppose there may be people who don’t find themselves with anything to do in life besides be employed at a job somewhere, or embracing some potentially lucrative career of some sort… that isn’t me. I definitely have more than enough to do, for me, myself, to occupy fully all of my time. I include among those desirable endeavors the time and opportunity to sit quietly, enjoying the stillness within. 🙂

I find myself becoming emotionally involved with the idea of working, and not in a positive way. I breathe. Relax. Let it go. (Again.) I suspect I’ll be doing this a lot, this morning. That’s okay, too; it’s a practice. 🙂

So…here I go. Dipping a toe in the icy water of returning to “gainful employment”. Quite properly “grown up”, I suppose. Today is a good day to make choices that meet my needs over time. 🙂

Tags be here now, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, breathe, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, experience, help wanted, I am my own cartographer, listening deeply, MBSR, meditation, mindful living, one moment at a time, perspective, practicing the practices, The Art of Being, the right fit, there are verbs involved, what matters most?

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, The Art of Being

Present, Tense

August 23, 2016 //

This morning I woke contented and relaxed at a very ordinary 5:00 am. An hour later, sipping my coffee, innocently enjoying a lovely quiet moment, I recall that my visiting friend leaves today, and feel the excitement of my traveling partner having returned…and realize I have a job interview this afternoon, too… oh, and the housekeeping needs some attention… and I need to do laundry… crap! I haven’t yet checked the weather! Is it going to be very hot today? It didn’t take long for my sweet moment of contentment to expire, and for anxiety and tension to wash over me.

One new day, approximately infinite possibilities.

Initially, I blamed my sudden tension on the irritating sound of a freight train idling on the track, not too far away (near enough to be annoying). It wasn’t honestly that at all. I had drifted from now into the future – a place where anything can happen – because nothing has happened there yet.

I breathe. Relax. I inhale deeply, feeling my chest tighten as it expands. I exhale fully, feeling my body relax, my shoulders ease themselves back down where they belong. I am okay right now. There is literally nothing wrong (right here, right now, in my own experience). It wasn’t even a bunch of scary details that got me, which frustrates me some; it was all utterly commonplace, and pleasant or neutral in emotional content.

My visit with my dear friend has been lovely. It’s time for him to return home, to his life, his family; he misses his love, and his children. There’s nothing about that which is either noteworthy or stressful for me. My traveling partner’s safe return home is a matter of pure joy and great delight; I’ll see him soon, before he departs again, for new adventures elsewhere. The job interview? Okay, there’s some small amount of natural (healthy?) stress to that; it’s time to get back to work, and it matters to me to do my best. Still, hardly the sort of thing that should be permitted to blow the morning.

I wonder if I could get through life without using the word “should”? I smile to myself, aware that as words go, “should” has far too much power over my experience. “Should” is a word that signals an assumption, or an expectation, potentially one that defies reality entirely – and still guides my thinking or behavior. Powerful – and generally not in positive way. “Should” holds me back, keeps me down, causes me to keep doing something that doesn’t work at all, prevents me from walking away from bad situations… I’m trying to think of a situation in which “should” has served me well, in some positive way… I struggle to do so. “Should” is often the word I turn to specifically when life is not cooperating with my thinking. (I wrote more about this, but it got twisty and confusing. Perhaps another time. I don’t like “should”.)

The cool morning has my attention once again. Birdsong, the sounds of traffic nearby; it’s a noisy morning. Tuesday? The community landscapers will be working, so I try to appreciate what quiet there is now; it’ll be noisier later on.

Strange morning. I feel a little sad to say good-bye to my dear friend – and eager to have my routine back. I feel eager and joyful to welcome my traveling partner home – and a little “pressed for time” knowing he will leave again fairly soon. I feel hopeful and self-assured about the interview this afternoon – and a little anxious about the outcome, in spite of myself. The complex back and forth of my emotions will benefit from more time meditating, today, and taking especially good care of myself.

One day of many. The plan is not the experience. The map is not the world. Today is a good day for moments, for kindness – and for changing how often I use the word “should”. 🙂

Tags be here now, be kind, be love, be the change, be you, being and becoming, breathe, carpe momentum, don't should on me, just be, one day of many, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, state of being, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Keep Practicing!

August 21, 2016 //

We become what we practice. I still suck at listening, by the way; it takes more than a day with a friend to gain, hone, refine, and maintain a new skill. It would be quite silly to expect things to be easier, faster, or simpler; practice is a verb, sometimes of the sort that must be used daily. So… I keep practicing.

Practicing on Paper

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The Brain Attacks! Again.

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And Again

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Present, Tense

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Keep Practicing!

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