Archives for category: Post Traumatic Stress
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Yesterday and Today

April 22, 2017 //
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Yesterday quickly descended into further emotional distance, and definite anhedonia. I found myself asking “the” question, too: “Am I depressed?” It had crept over me fairly slowly, then finished with a slam – the house I was going to go see, out in the countryside, went pending right about when I got in to the office. I was bummed.

There are sunny mornings.

This particular source of frustration comes up pretty regularly, and house-hunting is becoming a big downer, mostly because frustration is my kryptonite, and also because the process itself brings me into regular contact with an industry built on corruption, with little in the way of healthy pro-consumer regulation. (Seriously, I’d be pretty appalled to walk into, say, Ross and pick out a pair of jeans, carry those to the register, and have some other customer take them out of my hand, step in front of me in line, and firmly tell the cashier “I’m willing to pay more than you are charging for these, so they’re mine.” That’s hard to deal with over and over again.) I just want to go home. No, I mean, seriously, for me the entire process of house-hunting is 100% only intended to let me “go home” – to a home that is mine, that I can count on, that I can make my own and improve or change, and make more secure and comfy and safe. Having to throw regular exposure to frustration into my day-to-day experience by choice (particularly over something so heartfelt) is … yeah. Hard. Icky. Discouraging.

There are mornings that seem strangely gray.

I reached out to my Traveling Partner and let him know my weekend was upended and as a result quite unplanned. I was mostly venting, and not reaching out to change his plans. He understood – and we miss each other regardless of our plans. He suggested coming to hang out, if that sounded good to me. I was still struggling with anhedonia; nothing sounded good at all.  He helpfully prompted me to consider my experience through another perspective; my physical health. Recognizing my pain management challenges, my poor quality sleep, and the basic frustration of  house-hunting and how that affects my mood, generally, put me in a better place for the day, and I even found my to making new plans that really suited where my heart is, combining some hang out time with scouting other areas for livability, that might be good choices for future house-hunting.

Each moment, however similar seeming in some detail or another is entirely its own experience.

I committed to sleeping in today, and I did – I woke at 6:30 am feeling fairly rested. A leisurely shower felt delightful. My coffee is hot, and I feel fairly chill and merry this morning. Sleep is a very big deal.

Yesterday’s sunshine has given way to today’s steady drizzle. Fuck I hate driving in the rain. LOL Still… lovely day to enjoy a drive in the countryside, in no hurry to get to the end of the day.

A different morning, a different place, another moment to begin again.

…I guess I’ll begin again. There are verbs involved. 🙂

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Categories anger, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, health, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Dishes in the Sink

April 21, 2017 //
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I am fairly certain I don’t actually “feel like” writing this morning. I’m not sure I really have anything much to say, but making that observation only causes me to wonder when I ever really do. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel down or blue, not even a little bit, just… distant? Removed? Dis-engaged? Remote. Not for any obvious reason… I’m just… coasting… on a level surface. lol

A hint of slow creeping disarray in my environment nags at me to do… something. To at least do something about the disarray itself, which is aggravating me this morning. There’s this flutter, more a deluge really, of loose papers left not-quite-piled (definitely not neatly stacked) messily on the floor near the closet – the file cabinet in which they belong is in that closet. The papers are not in that file cabinet. I have trouble tearing my eye away from them, as though drawn to a crime scene unexpectedly encountered along a walk. I don’t realize I am still staring at it… and then repeat that experience again and again. The untidy bit of paperwork is left out from filing my taxes. lol I could put that shit away. I’d simultaneously both really like to do that, and also really feel inclined to continue to ignore it in favor of doing many other things. It’s just one detail… well… no. It isn’t. There’s the mysterious stack of books… my sketchbook, some seed catalogs, garden books, a letter I’ve started to someone written on a yellow legal pad… This stack of things was on the dining table. I moved it “out of the way” a number of times; now it sits rather awkwardly on the living room floor in front of the bookcases, between the speakers… just… there. No point to it. It makes no damned sense.

There are dishes in my damned sink this morning. 😦 In fact, the dinner dishes have been in the sink each morning for days now. I start the dishes on my way out each morning, but fail to empty the dishwasher each evening, and repeat the tedious irksome cycle again the next day.

I could less this go on awhile longer without bothering to sort it out… “It isn’t that bad.” Sure. Whatever. It’s not about the magnitude of disorder, though – it is about disorder creeping in and gaining a foothold.

I find myself shaking it off, aware that there are verbs involved. I recognize as I sort through my thoughts that my lack of interest in writing is largely due to my greater urge to tidy up and put my world right. It’s just me here, so there’s no one else to blame or bitch at… and I really do enjoy a tidy living space. Making excuses about letting things go only tends to let things go longer, and make room for more excuses, and accommodate more small disorderly inconsequential messes… and eventually those grow enough to begin to connect to each other, and over time a small mess, a bit of untidiness, becomes a bigger deal, and evidence of truly disordered thinking (at least for me). Time to get a grip; summer is coming, and living beautifully feels ever so much better on terrible hot sweltering days, than being surrounded by disorder. Although, it’s not the seasons, nor the weather, that have anything to do with it at all; I’m a human primate, and I’ll make patterns, draw connections, see correlations in all manner of things that have no relationship whatsoever outside pure coincidence. lol I’m just saying, it’s time to tidy things up again – it is, in fact, clearly overdue.

Does my untidy living space negatively affect the quality of my emotional life? Or does my mental health drive the untidiness to taking over my space? Does it matter, if the quality of my life and experience improves when I tidy things up? There are, of course, still verbs involved. 🙂

Looks like it’ll be a weekend of housekeeping and tidying up. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Spring, The Art of Being

Anxiety or Pain?

April 20, 2017 //
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Last night I dealt with my anxiety, and comfortably resolved that. Win! Progress. Practice. It wasn’t any sort of trophy-winning event, and my “victory lap” will be just this handful of words, a later reminder for another day, perhaps, that it does pass, and it can be eased. It wasn’t over anything consequential, but it was very real, very visceral, the sort of mind-binding gut-punch of stress and fearfulness that anxiety is so famed for. Meditation still works. It still wasn’t “easy” – and I’m honestly not even sure I would call it meditation, considering the challenge I had calming my monkey-mind even long enough to take a few breaths…but…I went easy on myself in the moment, emotionally, understanding that the anxiety itself promotes a certain restlessness. I patiently returned my consciousness to the moment, to my breath, to a timeless mental space in which anxiety cannot thrive. No tv. No music. Just practice. It was, after a time, highly effective. There were indeed verbs involved, and even moment by moment my results varied. There’s no fighting it, though; we become what we practice, and continued practicing of calm… I became calm.

I slept poorly last night, although I did sleep more or less sort of through the night (my sleep tracker notes periods of wakefulness, and very little deep sleep, but I have no clear recollection of waking so often). I woke with the alarm, head stuffy, eyes watery… back aching. It’ll be a good day for physical therapy. I hurt. I manage my pain in a similar way as with anxiety; practices that tend to offer relief, practiced routinely, and given still more attention when I hurt more than usual. In this case, appropriate medication, yoga, yes meditation for this too, and a little later, dancing (to sort of force those stiff joints into a state that accommodates movement). I also spend more time considering things that don’t hurt than things that do, and once my symptoms are properly treated, I move on to distraction; shifting my attention to something else quite engaging, and letting the awareness of my pain recede into the background.

It’s a pretty ordinary work morning. Nothing fancy. Nothing noteworthy, really. Ordinary stuff right here. If I let myself get all worked up over a moment of anxiety, or a painful morning, I have the power to amplify both. If I take care of the woman in the mirror in the best way I know how, I have a shot at easing both. So many choices, so many verbs, so many results vary; it’s a very human experience.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, medical marijuana, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Big 5

Into the Trees

April 18, 2017 //
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It’s been awhile since I’ve gone camping. I can’t recall now why that is. I remember what sweet relief being camped out under the stars can be… So… Why has it been, seriously? More than a year? My gear stands packed and ready, and my Traveling Partner will be off on his summer travels soon, and this year leaving the car with me looks like a thing. 🙂 Convenient for so many reasons! Heading into the trees and reaching distant trailheads, are surely among those reasons.

It’s been nagging at me since yesterday; June is near at hand. The weather will be lovely for camping, most likely, and summer just beginning. This morning I sit down purposefully and make reservations, securing a favorite tent site. When I get into the office, I’ll request the time off. 🙂

A favorite spot waits for me.

My “last” camping trip was cut short by my lack of preparedness and the fairly irksome discovery that I had forgotten both my bee sting kit, and any coffee at all, proved to be too much for me. (I’m very human!) I went home feeling vaguely, somewhat playfully, “disgraced”. I can do better, and knowing that I can, and didn’t, continued to bite at my consciousness like a stinging insect for some time after that. I did actually go camping last year (that other wasn’t really the most recent trip, at all) though it doesn’t linger in my memory with so much clarity, it too is a recollection tinged with “failure”. I went to a distant trailhead, camped under the stars during a meteor shower, but struggled to enjoy it because it was one of those super popular locations that everyone thinks is their own secret find, and it was over-crowded, swarming with hikers, picnickers, rowdy party folks hollering from camp to camp through the night, and headlights sweeping through the trees all night long, as weary travelers arrived, discovered there was no room, and turned around to drive on. Not really a pleasant trip as much as checking a trail off a list, and doing so rather half-heartedly, once it proved to be – for now – beyond my abilities to get to the summit. I could go there, and try that again, except that the crowds were just not my thing at all. I head to the trees to be alone without all that. lol

I have everything I need to just go camping on a moment’s notice. It came in handy during the recent power outage; I simply lit candles, started a fire in the fire-place, and invited friends over to chill. No panic. Camping generally feels easy like that, too, these days. I quickly get set up, and then quickly shift gears to slow things down, stretch time, and soak in the sounds, scents, and sights of the forest. I spend most of my time hiking, reading, writing, and meditating. I take pictures. I sit quietly. I sit quietly a lot. I could do all these things at home. I do all these things at home. Camping takes them to another level of inner stillness, and turns my attention more fully inward; there are no escapes from self out among the trees.

I’m eager to go. Eager to begin again. 🙂

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

The Monday After the Saturday Night

April 17, 2017 //
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I spent yesterday gently. I’m glad I did. A night out dancing finds me, on a Monday morning, feeling like I worked out hard, or took a beating, or both. I slept well, last night, and managed sufficient rest in both quality and duration, and had a great weekend, so… I’m not really complaining about sore muscles or arthritis pain, just noticing they exist this morning.

This morning I refrain from reading the news, at all. It’s Monday. I see no legitimate reason to fill my consciousness at the start of both day and week with all the crazed cruel bullshit going on in Washington, or the strange eruptions of bad behavior by previously normal-enough-seeming human beings reaching some unplanned breaking point. I am already aware it’s out there. I don’t honestly need more detail about it on any sort of daily basis.

How odd. This morning I find myself… well, “bored” is not quite the right word, and “speechless” gives a different impression that I mean, also, but… I’m done with this, here, right now – the writing thing, I mean. I just don’t have more to say this morning, right now, about… anything, really. The morning starts differently, and I decide to take my coffee to my meditation cushion, by the patio door, and watch the sun rise, instead. 🙂 Even on a Monday, I can choose to slow the morning down, and take an alternate path to the start of the day.

It’s only a Monday. I’ll just begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Spring, The Art of Being
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