Archives for category: pain
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Headaches and Nightmares

March 12, 2014 //
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Just before dawn.

Just before dawn.

I woke from nightmares with a headache. I felt dried out like a husk of a person, a vessel, a shell, a pottery shard. Thirsty. Confused as I realized that my intensely emotional nightmare of being unable to return my lovers phone call – when he had so kindly given me his phone to do so. I experienced a level of frustration that woke me anxiously, overheated but not sweating, and feeling incredible pressure to perform. Quite unpleasant. Oddly, as I woke I was arguing with a man who was reassuring me that he could drive me there, no need to be frustrated…and it was nearly half an hour before I realized 1. I couldn’t have completed that call to my lover; I had his phone and 2. it was he who was offering me the reassuring ride to meet him. Dreams.

Today I take the car to work. Today I go to an appointment I don’t really want to deal with – my VA mental health care provider is retiring and handing me off to the next. This makes… 4? 5? Has it been 6? There’s no way to get there but by taking the highways, too. It all sucks a great deal.

I will endeavor to do it mindfully, nonetheless, and gently on the hearts of others.

…And, from the other side of the morning commute, the morning seems quite lovely so far. Being gentle with myself, and the world, and treating myself well by taking my time and letting go of any sense of urgency is serving me well, so far.  Morning coffee with a partner, pleasant conversation, a sense of support and encouragement, an affectionate and loving start to the day was quite nice. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights

Strange Days

March 5, 2014 //
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Restless agitated nights, strange dreams that are not quite nightmares…stiff sore joints, fatigue, unimaginably intense emotions…impatient with drama, but removed; more uninterested than unable…and so few words. I’m not feeling moved to write, much, and even talking feels a bit forced and ‘necessary’ more than pleasant. Strange quiet days. I want to spend more time meditating; real life isn’t leaving much room for it in my days.

Things aren’t bad, I simply don’t have much bandwidth for more than being, right now. Work is good. Relationships take more work than I’d like – or expect. I still work on letting go of expectations; they are a big driver of discontent and drama.

Spring is coming. Soon I’ll be 51. A year, already? Wow. So little time to enjoy the many enjoyable things, so little time to sit on mistakes and watch them fester into hurt and resentment, so little time to overlook the small gestures that really mean ‘love’, so little time to pause in stillness and observe… so many things to choose, because they have value, and so many things that can be chosen that provide nothing of value…I hope I choose wisely.

…I’ve got to be getting back to that.

Spring in my garden.

Spring in my garden.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, Turning 50, Words

Remember The Big 5?

February 28, 2014 //
1

My commute home last night got me thinking about The Big 5 again: Respect, Reciprocity, Consideration, Compassion, and Openness, but last night, mostly Consideration.

Every open door is another opportunity to choose well.

Every open door is another opportunity to choose well.

I was struck first by how tired everyone looked. Well, sure, end of the work day, that makes sense; we’re all tired and eager to go home. What I saw next in so many faces was the sheer force of will it took to refuse to consider others.  A lot of faces, a lot of commuters, each actively engaging in processes of mind intended to sooth themselves and justify decisions to hang on to their seat, their spot by the door, the empty seat next to them, or whatever ‘win’ they scored on that trip that evening on that crowded commute. I saw a well-dressed business man, younger than me – late thirties, perhaps – steadfastly refusing to make eye-contact, or even look toward, the pregnant woman standing in the aisle next to his seated self. She was obviously very uncomfortable, and not quite tall enough to easily reach the dangling handles. In fact, not one of the healthy fit adults in the train car offered her a seat. Nor did they offer one to the elderly woman a few steps further down the car. They didn’t offer a seat to the harried mother of many little ones trying to keep assorted toddlers and a tween in check on her journey. Some of the seated commuters are ‘regulars’. I see them each day. They occupy their seats with a certain firmness, as if to say “this is my train, my journey, I do this daily and I have earned this seat.” There was also an assortment of woefully inconsiderate teens, just out of school activities for the day, and while I don’t excuse their callousness, their age makes it less mysterious, and less offensive. Yes. I am offended by the invested disregard for others that so many of us fall into as adults. I’m not judging, as much as observing with a certain sadness, and empathy. I used to be that entitled, self-satisfied, resentful, callous adult grabbing a seat on the train with a certain smug determination, and a sense of possession, and boundary setting.  My stomach churns bitterly and becomes a tight lump of something unpleasant settled inside myself when I acknowledge it honestly. It sure isn’t the best I have to offer as a human being. It definitely is not considerate.

What about last night? I stood for the commute. Why not? I’m not the strongest, youngest, fittest, or healthiest commuter along the route on most evenings, but I get by, and the courtesy shown when I can offer my seat to someone who needs it more than I do is an enormous investment in a very different feeling about life, about people, about the value in our shared experience. It matters.  I reflected on simple courtesy, and my Big 5, all the way home. There will be other commutes, and new opportunities to reflect on The Big 5. Consideration is a tough one to define, and might be the most important one, when I view ‘Considerate’ as ‘consider it’… isn’t that what it comes down to? Considering things fully? Taking a moment to consider that the woman or man standing nearby may have needs? May be in pain? May be suffering a moment of great sorrow? May need to get off their feet for even a minute or two on a rainy night? May feel alone, burdened, and unsupported? How many of my own worst moments of behavior come down to simple lack of consideration? What about yours?

I’m also keenly aware of ‘bystander effect‘. Last night I wrestled with understanding where the line between ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘meddling’ really is. If I ask someone else to give up their seat for someone who clearly needs it, am I ‘meddling’? Am I diminishing the personal authority of the person I intervene for? Am I being inappropriately critical or judgmental of the individual of whom I make the request? Are the answers to these questions easy for you? (I find them a challenging puzzle.) Culture changes over time. It once seemed a little silly that the buses and trains have signs and announcements reminding people to give up their seats for the elderly or disabled. It now seems obvious and necessary to make such reminders; we are not a considerate culture.

Today I will explore ‘consideration’ all day long. I will pause to ‘consider’ my actions and choices as often as I can remember to do so, and really consider the indirect outcome of my actions, not just the planned or desired outcome. Kindness is a free service. Compassion presents no inconvenience – and can as easily be learned.  What about you? Feel like helping me out with making the world a friendlier, easier place to enjoy life? Will you take a few moments, an opportunity or two, to be more than usually considerate? If you do, I’d love to hear how it goes!

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, women, Words

Birdsong and Smiles

February 17, 2014 //
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No pictures today. I wish I could photograph the sounds of the song birds outside my window happily aware of being safe from the cat (mostly because of the rain), and enjoying the morning. Perhaps they are commenting, too, on the shitty service around here? I need to refill the feeders today. The rain falls. I sip my coffee, catch up on my email, eye my plan for the day and the gray rainy skies.

On a morning like this, the tragedies in the news reflected in the dismay of FB friends seem farther away from the moment I am in, right here, right now; this is a precious moment of chill and calm and peace. Something more than a quiet morning, or an extra day off. I’ve no reason to celebrate the existence of presidents, really, so… I celebrate the morning.

A good night’s sleep matters so much. Starting my day with what has become a stabilizing routine of meditation-yoga-meditation, generally followed by coffee, and email or a few minutes of writing, feels very natural and unforced. The day that follows a morning like this may not always be without challenges, or without stress, but whatever challenges and stress I do find myself facing are more easily managed. It’s lovely and feels rather grown up.  Progress. Growth. Change. It actually does ‘work’ to change ones practices to support desired experiences. When life sucks and experiences all feel pretty bleak, undesirable, challenging, stressful, frustrating, disappointing, and lacking in fulfillment or satisfaction, it can be incredibly hard to believe that our choices and practices have so much to say about it. I’m convinced.

So…back to the birdsong, back to the morning. I hope you find every reason to enjoy the day, to grab your moment and make the most of it, and to practice what feels good to you and builds a good foundation for the future you desire. I’m sure going to! 🙂  Today I will change the world.

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

Life Needs a Caution Sign

January 30, 2014 //
4

Or two, or three, or hell – let’s just pave it into something comfortable, predictable, and mapped, settle into easy contentment, and call it a day?

I had a great day at work, yesterday. Sometimes I have the strange sensation that ‘work life balance’ may actually mean that when things at work suck, things at home are lovely, and of course…the inverse of that would then be true as well. That, thankfully, is fanciful bitterness with struggle, and with the simple ups and downs of life.  We’re each having our own experience. The experiences we have are not all uniformly pleasant, or comfortable. I guess I’ll keep practicing the practices that seem to build a life that is more up than down, more content than not, easier than hard, more pleasant than unpleasant, and see where all that goes.

This morning isn’t my best morning. I woke crying from dreams that contained content ripped from the most difficult moments of the prior evening. It was nearly an hour before my brain would even acknowledge that the evening had ended on a relatively positive note – or at least finished somewhat supportively. My heart feels heavy, and tears are queued up waiting for a reason to spill over. This is one of my least favorite emotional states.

The bottom-line is that I want more than I have in life, in love, emotionally, sexually, even financially (although that one is very low on my list, and exists more to bolster the likelihood of other things I value being attainable).  I think wanting is probably pretty commonplace.  It takes wanting to reach a sense of being without, after all.  I even understand the connection between craving and discontent, and how difficult life can become when we desire only those things that are out of reach, or when we lose sight of the wonders we already have in our life.  I started 2014 knowing that ‘sufficiency’ is a big deal for me, and that ‘contentment’ is an emotional experience I enjoy, and a quality I would like to develop and support.  What I don’t know is where the subtle distinction between genuine contentment and ‘settling’ for something is, and how to recognize it. Is there a difference?

I struggle to communicate with the people nearest to me. Setting boundaries, sharing needs, speaking calmly and explicitly about what I want, what supports my needs over time, being honest about how I feel in the moment, or in general, these are all very difficult for me to begin with. Doing them well is something I find myself working so hard at, and still not succeeding with any reliability. At least, if I am succeeding, the outcome is incredibly unpleasant much of the time. This morning I woke wishing I could just stop talking at all. No more words. No speaking. No writing. No.More.Words.  I seem to have a gift for saying too much, or phrasing something in the worst possible way.  I rarely feel actually understood, or even heard. (It makes it so much ‘worse’ that there was a time and a relationship in which I did feel understood and heard, making it something possible in life that I just don’t have now.)

This morning I have a lingering feeling that the things that matter most to me are simply things I can’t have, or will experience only very rarely. I want very much for that to just be okay, if it is true. If it isn’t true, I’d like that emotional cocktail to just go away. I would like to have a better understanding of ‘sufficiency’. Enough. What is ‘enough’. How to I get that? I have the nagging suspicion that even intimacy is easier/better when approached mindfully… but I’m not sure I ‘get’ how to approach it at all. I suspect I may not have correctly labeled whatever the hell I think the experience of intimacy feels like, and am chasing an unknown experience, or ‘shooting at the wrong target’.

I am grouchy and things suck this morning. I am very human, and even though my intellect politely reminds me that ‘this is a construct of your own thinking and you can choose differently’ and my recently-more-mindful-and-learning-more-all-the-time heart tells me ‘this too shall pass’, I’m hurting now, and it is hard to stop picking at it. Soon I’ll head to work, and the process of getting there will distract me for a time, and maybe it will be forgotten when I head home tonight?

Right now is right now. Right now I feel like giving up. I’m frustrated, hormonal, and cross. I spent the night with my fears and nightmares and woke feeling sad, tired, and crying. Right now is harder than it has to be, and right now I’m struggling. This too – quite inevitably – shall pass. Time runs out, moves on, and brings change. So. Yeah. (I hear myself laugh out loud, it sounds a little worn down and bitter, and I think about how lovely yesterday was – that passed, didn’t it? Yep. So…this will as well.)

Some lovely pictures from yesterday…

We can build serenity.

We can build serenity.

No matter how much I am hurting in the moment, there is more to life and the world than my pain.

No matter how much I am hurting in the moment, there is more to life and the world than my pain.

Things can seem so complicated and overwhelming...

Things can seem so complicated and overwhelming…

Getting right up close doesn't always simplify our view of things.

Getting right up close doesn’t always simplify our view of things.

I am grateful that my experience this morning is largely subjective and a construct of my brain. I can find my way to something different. Compassion first, then, this morning? I pause with a certain surprise to realize that as I typed those words, my internal critic was hurling invective at me, launching emotional weaponry, and rallying my demons… I’m not always fully aware of the nasty bits and pieces of old hurts and old programming ‘going live’ to defend themselves in the background. Grim. Definitely compassion first…well… sort of first. Okay, not even a little bit first – that would have been a more positive start. Still human. I tested me. lol

Compassion, then, this morning – now that I see how much I need it.

Today, I am human. Today I face my hurts with self-compassion, and my certainty that emotional states rely on choices, too, however inevitable or permanent they feel in the moment. Today I change the world.

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Love, Menopause, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, women, Words
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