Archives for category: Anxiety
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It’s That Time

January 6, 2015 //
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As arbitrary as our measurements of time can seem to me…it’s still time. It, like most things, passes. This experience of mortal life, of growth, of change, of aging isn’t a static thing, however much I want to find balance synonymous with ‘stability’. Change is. Time passes. I am a mortal creature (at least, as far as I know).

What lies beyond now?

What lies beyond now?

Yesterday was hard. I managed the work day without anyone but my closest coworker being aware that I spent much of the day weeping quietly for no apparent reason I could ever pin down, besides the simple sorrow of aging, the passage of time, and the frailty of what is dearest to us in our experience. Change is.  Heading home, I contemplated withdrawing to my own space and taking a quiet night of contemplation, and most probably additional weeping. I couldn’t bear the thought of inflicting what I could not fathom – or control – on those dearest to me. I got a lucky break – my traveling partner ‘gets it’ more often than most people around me do, and had put on The Voice for evening entertainment. How is that helpful? We don’t really watch much television, as a family, so it remains a very engaging ‘treat’, and the show he chose to share is one with a great many emotional moments in it; great camouflage for weeping. He simultaneously freed me to cry comfortably in the warmth of companionship without also having to feel I was imposing my emotions on others…and spared my dignity; there was no need for questions about my tears, and we could just let time pass in contentment and warmth. He could enjoy me without having to take the dive off the deep end with me. Easy. I like easy. It astonishes me how meaningful and relevant love songs, or moody ballads, can be when one is already weeping.

After a quiet evening, I crashed hard. Well, sort of. I fell asleep, deeply and immediately, and woke regularly to a half-waking surreal state that was not dreaming, and not waking, and not afraid – just floating in the sea of my consciousness, waiting for sleep to return. I woke ahead of the alarm, feeling a bit panicked for no particular reason; it receded with some minutes of meditation, and conscious breathing. I needed the rest, badly. This morning – no tears. What I do still have is this weird state of almost continuous back-to-back hot flashes that I’ve been having for about 3 days now, a handful of health and emotional concerns that I am fretting over…and an appointment tomorrow for a biopsy. That’s pretty scary. At 52, it’s just that time. I can pretend I don’t have this knot in my stomach when I think about it…but I don’t find that very effective. Instead, I take another breath, and a moment to appreciate love, and presence, and now, and the many people who matter to me, and to whom I matter, as well. Still anxious, but somehow, anxious in context doesn’t feel so scary.

What remains, for the moment, is figuring out whether I want my traveling partner to go with me. Is it weak that I might want someone strong to hold my hand? Am I less a feminist to want my partner by my side for such an intimate procedure? Is it fair to inflict these powerful emotions on someone else? What does ‘taking care of me’ really require? Are these questions I can answer fearlessly, honestly, and without shame?

Today is a good day to enjoy life, and let the sweet moments count as much as the every day doubts. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, women

Love’s Best Magic Trick

January 4, 2015 //
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I was standing in the shower tonight, feeling the hot water slide over me, following gravity to the drain. My thoughts slipped gently through my awareness in much the same way, sensuous, ephemeral, fleeting. Thoughts about love, and loving, about life, and the ceaseless passage of time, and whether time actually affects love, really… It’s the sort of thing I think about in the shower, I admit it; I’m at an emotional place in life, and love is The Big Deal among emotions. I’m fortunate to experience the wonder of love, and specifically, adult, romantic, sexual love.

The shower filled with a fog of steam, and transported me to another moment, a distant time, and I paused there, recalling it with great clarity. It had been a nasty several days; I was exhausted, stressed out, and feeling bereft of comfort or affection from my then-partner. We’d been fighting like a seashore – the sort of experience where one issue is put to rest, and another surges, as if the emotions beneath the whole mess could not be defeated, solved, or turned for the better. Through out the difficult week, I’d worked, too. I came home, one evening later in the week, committed to ‘making things right’ and hopefully making amends and communicating support, comfort, and love enough to hold each other, maybe even have sex. Not only did the evening not turn out so pleasantly, it went from bad to worse and before dawn we were done. Finished. Over with.

Sometime out in the middle of all that, there were a couple of hours – after he stormed off, and before he returned – that I might have spent in solitary misery, if a dear friend hadn’t stopped by to check on me, worried and wanting to be sure I was okay. I clearly wasn’t ‘okay’, and he stayed awhile. It is this interlude, with that friend, on the described night, about which I was thinking in the shower, tonight. He had asked me a question, you see, and it is one that has stuck with me like an echo. I heard that question in my thoughts tonight, and let it rest there to be considered… “When was the last time you’ve been made love to?” he had asked me. I remember, also, being puzzled by the question at the time, how it could be relevant in the moment, what he might mean by asking it just then, and honestly – what he meant by it, at all. I replied with something to that effect, something more or less “How is that any different from any other sex?”  Even so many years later, I remember the compassionate and saddened look in his eyes – I remember that look, that expression, more clearly that most other details of that precise moment, though I know he responded to my reply. I remember my heart pounding, my mouth dry, and the sudden panic that there was some quality, or characteristic, or technique that lovers might be expecting that I just didn’t ‘get’… could they tell? Is it a character flaw? We probably talked longer, and knowing him as I do, I know the transition from conversation to contact was natural; I only remember his eyes, his touch, and being in his arms. I remember the lovemaking that followed. I remember the connection, and the intimacy, and the puzzled laughter when we realized together that this magical few moments had been unexpectedly snatched from the middle of a break up… it seemed incongruous, possibly inappropriate – and such a relief to be held, cared for, comforted, and…something more, something I didn’t have words for.  We talked more; I felt stronger when he departed.  I felt loved.  The sex actually was different that evening… and that is what I was thinking about, in the shower. (Oh! Hey, not ‘those’ sorts of thoughts, just thoughts. lol)

"You Always Have My Heart" 8" x 10" acrylic on canvas with glow.

“You Always Have My Heart” 8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas with glow.

Comedians often make jokes about the phrase ‘making love’, or the term ‘love-making’; it seems generally considered to be ‘verbal slight of hand’ – a convincing way of talking a woman into sex, or a way of thinking about sex that is ‘for women only’ in some way. Sex is sex, after all, isn’t it? I thought so, too, for a long long time. My thinking on the topic changed that evening. Love-making is perhaps Love’s best magic trick – it has the potential to literally create love between beings. Think that over – we can actually make love. Wow. Powerful. I stood there in the shower, wrapped in mist and warmth, pondering the nature of love… and trying to cleverly capture it in a succinct phrase or two, or some brief explanation of how it could be that way at all… (I watch way too much Science Show, apparently).

So…Really…What’s the deal with ‘making love’? How is it different from ‘sex’, if it is, at all? I gave the matter a great deal of consideration, comparing and contrasting my own experiences, thinking over conversations with past lovers, and things I read in studies of various sorts. I could only identify [in the shower, no notes or references] one characteristic, in the context of my own limited – and highly subjective – experience with such things, that differs between sex and ‘love-making’ (which doesn’t require love to exist in advance, but can result in love as an outcome); it’s something to do with connection, intimacy, awareness…mindfulness. (It’s in the way we touch, but not the technique, and it is the level of awareness of each other, but not a particular act, or script, and it is that we matter to each other, in the moment.) Mindfulness? No kidding? Huh.

I’ve been struggling with understanding mindfulness in the context of sex for some time, and not finding my way with any ease (mostly just feeling ludicrously self-conscious, clumsy, and awkward)…and standing there in the shower thinking about love, a puzzled piece snapped into place quite neatly. There’s likely a lot more that could be said about this, and certainly I think about sex a great deal (being among the many people who generally would like to have much more of it than circumstances provide), but I’m so not an expert on intimacy, or love, or sex…I’m a student of love, as much as a student of life, and here too, I am more about questions than answers.  I feel like I’ve taken a step forward on an important part of my journey, though, or perhaps I’ve at least correctly oriented my map. I find myself feeling encouraged by this new understanding of how love-making differs from sex, and I’ll make a point of telling you why; if making love is about the mindful nature of a romantic connection, or moment… then it isn’t ‘about’ the physical act. If love-making isn’t actually ‘about’ sex, then the sometime lack of sex that life sometimes throws my way is no impediment to love, loving, or love-making! I don’t mind going without sex now and then, sometimes we must – but I don’t want to go without love. I feel a bit like I’ve been ‘doing it wrong’. There’s so much more to learn – starting with learning to make love – without sex.

It’s just past midnight…it’s a good night for love. I have a lot to learn, and this is a very exciting bit of curriculum with which to start the new year.

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Love, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, Words

On The Other Side of The Door

January 2, 2015 //
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My day is a bit like ‘Schrödinger’s Day’, today… I am in my own space, behind a closed door. Events on the other side of the door exist, but exist without context or definition; I just don’t know what’s on the other side of that door. Once I open the door, the day is what it is. Having not yet opened the door (well, since my last interaction with my traveling partner, who made this tasty latte in front of me) the day remains all potential, and unanswered questions.

I could make assumptions about what is on the other side of the door. Assumptions of any sort I might make would give me something on which to anchor decision-making about whether to open the door, certainly. There’s no reason to further assume that any such assumptions would be accurate. They’d be entirely made up within my own thinking, based on what I know historically about my experience, and then filtered through my baggage. Perhaps not ideal decision-making material?

I could eschew further in-the-moment assumption making, and go with ‘expectations’ of what is on the other side of the door. Expectations are assumptions I’ve made in advance, and planned around…not really any more useful for decision-making about whether to open the door. The outcome could be more stressful, too; assumptions that fail the test of reality can be frustrating, and cause me confusion and stress, but not on the same order of magnitude as when reality doesn’t ‘measure up’ to expectations. The disappointment that can carry with it sucks, and I’m not a fan of creating disappointment for myself. As experiences go, I prefer disappointment be a rarity, and that I not inflict it upon myself needlessly.

Being present in this simple uncomplicated moment gives me a chance to really consider that closed door, and what may be beyond it, and to practice some fundamentals of awareness, observation, and presence. It’s a closed door, nothing more. I am here, now, in this safe and quiet space, quite solitary, content, and safe. The specific experience I am having now is quite calm, relaxed, and pleasant; things on the other side of a closed door may not be relevant to me, at all.

It's worth taking a few moments to pause and reflect on a change in perspective, or a moment of growth. I am learning to spend more time on the good stuff.

It’s worth taking a few moments to pause and reflect on a change in perspective, or a moment of growth. I am learning to spend more time on the good stuff.

This may not seem like a big deal for many people, and quite naturally so, I’m sure. As a survivor of domestic violence, emotional abuse, and trauma, that closed door has often felt dangerous, threatening, limiting, frightening, powerful – and I cowered in fear behind the limited safety it offered from whatever was on the other side. Raised voices, angry yelling, slamming things, stomping (pretty much all the sounds of intense negative emotions) are fairly easily able to trigger symptoms of post-traumatic stress, for me. Reaching a place where that closed door is neither an enemy nor an ally, and is simply a closed door is a pretty big deal… I can open a closed door…or not. That’s simple stuff, as decision-making goes.

Today is a good day to make simple decisions to take care of me. Today is a good day to consider the hearts of others. Today is a good day to live well, to love freely, and to be kind. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, Words

Time, Space, and Distance

December 21, 2014 //
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Learned helplessness sucks. It’s a common enough byproduct of surviving certain sorts of trauma. The frustration that can surge to the forefront of my experience due to complications of struggling with learned helplessness is akin to the nuclear blast of emotional weaponry; sudden, unreasonably forceful, and laying waste to the pleasant now that might have been. When I am simply doing my best to manage, day-to-day, and doing so with some measure of success, other things that need to be attended to may fall by the wayside; I can only do so much, moment to moment. My will falls short in the struggling, you see. I give up. Learned helplessness is a very real thing.

I wrote some days ago about my environment degrading, and that being a sign of ongoing stress, and a need to take care of me, more skillfully. I spent yesterday restoring order to the chaos of my environment. It feels very nice to handle that bit of business, and my surroundings are orderly, clean, tidy, and quite to my taste, generally. What I need is at hand. What I don’t need, has been put away. The effort to restore order in my environment results in renewed enthusiasm to keep it so, as well as ‘clearing my head’ for a whole host of other things that would benefit from being handled sooner than later.

I woke later than usual this morning, and took my medication later as a result. I am now taking care of me – and my loved ones – by taking sufficient time solo for my medication to kick in, and to wake up, and find my voice before I impose myself on their experience. Yes, that level of consideration matters to me; some women don’t leave the house before they ‘put their face on’, I avoid interacting with people before my brain has entirely come back online, and my level of pain is as addressed by medication as it will be, for the day. Taking the time I need really matters to me, and failing to do so changes my experience in a reliably unpleasant way.

The only snowflake I'm likely to see this holiday season.

Let it snow…

I recently got an email from an ex. A large measure of my PTSD is related to relationship trauma, and domestic violence, and I don’t have a comfortable experience of exes reaching out from the past, generally. I felt very anxious reading the email, and feel anxious considering it after the fact, too. This ex, this time, reached out to inquire – 4 years after the break up – whether I have any of her antique holiday ornaments. I was filled with complicated emotions that began with irritation and anger; when we divided our property I had specifically asked what holiday ornaments she wanted and was firmly and specifically told that the holidays would no longer have any meaning, and that she wanted no part of them. The anger became mixed with some measure of humor, and bewilderment; we’d never owned any antique ornaments together, at all. She had a few small handmade figurines, made by her Mother, and those were so clearly hers that taking them with me wasn’t even something I considered. I had a small number of handcrafted ornaments my own Mother made, and had given to me. The rest of our ornaments were common enough glass ornaments, some traditional sorts that I purchased my first holiday alone after I left my first husband, few of which actually remain, and some interestingly non-traditional sorts that continue to delight and amuse me with their whimsy. Still, I carefully checked the tree, decked out for the holidays, to see if ornaments dear to her had remained with me. I didn’t find any, and my journal entries of the time indicate that I had taken pains to carefully box the ornaments that were peculiarly ‘hers’ and left them behind for her when I moved out. I replied kindly that I didn’t have the ornaments she was looking for, and reminded her that we hadn’t had any antiques that I could recall. I made an effort not to read subtext into her reply, and have since tried to let it go. You can see the effort to do so has been only marginally successful; I feel angry that she even asked, and helpless to act on that in a way that is appropriate, effective, and needful. My logical brain tells me that I already have – so let it go, already. My heart says ‘this was so not cool!!’ and wants to do/say more. That was probably the point in the first place, making it even more wise to just let it drop without another word.

My level of physical pain the past couple of days has been very high. I hurt enough to affect my experience moment to moment, and although the effort to be compassionate and kind to others nonetheless is entirely worth it, I also find myself struggling not to resent how clueless people around me seem to be about the fact that I am indeed in that much pain. Sometimes I just want to lay down and weep, I hurt that much. It doesn’t help, though. I sometimes want to plead with people around me “please just be patient with me, please be kind to me – I just hurt, is all!”, but it hasn’t been my experience that it makes much difference; they are having their own experience.

Time to get the day started…laundry, putting away things that were relocated out of my personal space during yesterday’s cleaning, writing holiday letters…all the makings of a fulfilling quiet day. Today is a good day to take care of me, on my own terms. Today is a good day to change how I feel in the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, winter, women, Words

Real, and…Really?

December 18, 2014 //
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The morning is quiet. I sit here content, quiet, calm, and aware of the small knot of distant anxiety nestled just below my diaphragm. The last couple pleasant mornings have skidded sideways like a luxury car speeding down an icy highway; feeling good right until it was out of control, leaving me shaking and confused although things turned out well enough in the end. I’m not wishing the anxiety away, or fighting it; it simply is, there in the background, and I am aware of the potential it holds. Still, I am content now, and I feel still and calm now, and now is okay with me. I am enjoying the moment.

Between the cold weather, the rainy weather, and being bundled up and warm in the face of either or both, I haven’t taken many new pictures lately. I’m not sure whether that choice is about taking care with my camera (phone) or that I just don’t want to be colder or wetter. There’s a nice byproduct to that choice, though. I see so much as I walk, undistracted by the eagerness to capture some one thing I am seeing. I see more. Walking meditation suits me well, too, and is more difficult if constantly interrupted with photography. There’s something to think about buried in these observations…something about mindfully enjoying what I enjoy and being fully present…and the power of interruptions, that are also things I enjoy. I’m not sure where to take it, but I bet I would do well to consider this one further…

The lack of predictable, lasting calm in my experience concerns me. I have come so far that I can fairly easily see an Achilles heel I missed before; I am easily provoked by someone else’s intense emotional experience, however calm and content I am in the moment. It’s problematic for me – I’m human, and I live with other human beings. Intense emotions are part of that experience. However calmly I may be enjoying the day, the potential remains for someone to provoke me into reacting to their experience with such immediacy, and emotional force, that I lose my way, lose my moment, lose my joy… and suffer.  This seems like something worth addressing… I would like to reach a point where the irritation experienced by someone else does not put me on the defensive, frighten me, or cause me to try to ‘fix things’. I’d like to reach a point where another person’s anger isn’t terrifying, or able to override my own decision-making about what is good for me, or what action I take. I would like to reach a point where I can comfortably provide emotional support to someone in the face of their rage, hysteria, irritability, sorrow, or despair, without feeling sucked in, blamed, or thrown off course, myself. I’m not there, yet. This is not a journey that reaches a resting point with a sign ‘You Are Here’ to conveniently identify that I have reached my destination. It’s more like a walk in a strange wood – beautiful, sometimes, and other times feeling peculiarly endless, and a bit scary. I walk on.

Taking my journey on my own terms, making my own way.

Taking my journey on my own terms, making my own way.

Today is a good day to blaze a trail through the unknown. Today is a good day to fearlessly explore the world within – a world that is largely of my own making, under my own control (where’s that damn manual…map…user’s guide…?). Today is a good day to be kind to myself, and to others, however little appreciation there is for the effort – not because anyone ‘deserves’ it, not because it is their ‘due’, and not because I am obligated to do so, but because this is who I am. (How do I know that? Because I choose to be.) Today is a good day to choose to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, winter, Words
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