Archives for category: Sleepless Nights

Bringing Me Closer

March 13, 2015 //

Ooh…Now that’s a pretty self-focused title on a Friday morning. It’s just a snip of a larger bit of stray thinking; time is bringing me closer and closer to my spring camping trip.

Whatever else may be true, we each walk our own path, and we choose it.

Taking things out of context can really change their potential meanings. Putting myself on ‘pause’ for a moment to take something random out of context and reconsidering it from other perspectives, looking for potentially reasonable alternate meanings that are in no way related to whatever it is when taken in context is a simple way to dial down anxiety; it forces me to fully reconsider my perspective and acknowledge untested assumptions. I sometimes find that I’ve made an erroneous assumption, and having done so my thinking is no longer resulting in the best practical choices. Being aware of the error makes it possible to ask the appropriate clarifying questions, fill in the gaps on missing information, and re-calibrate.

I am, indeed, looking forward to my camping trip. I hope I am over this cold by then. I suspect camping with a head cold is a lot less fun than camping in good health. It isn’t really relevant to my thinking this morning, it’s simply awareness of moments to come, and happy anticipation. If I ramble this morning, it’s probably just the head cold. 🙂

Time is a powerful driver of change, and one we don’t have any particular control over. We have to just ‘go with it’ and let time flow past us, or push us forward, or drag us along…or whatever it is that time is actually doing, if in fact is does anything active at all. There’s little to do about time, and it will keep bringing me closer to the thing I’ve planned in the future without any interference from me at all. Love, on the other hand, is not like time at all in that respect – if you want to bring love closer, there are most assuredly quite a lot of things that must actively be done, choices to make, relationships to build, and there are most definitely verbs involved.

We are each having our own experience, and each as individual as snow flakes or grains of sand… If bringing me closer is the goal, the differences between us are as significant as the difference between time and love. I’m sure that were my goal bringing you closer to me, it would be the same; considering who you are as an individual would matter greatly in that endeavor. This morning I am contemplating how easily I lead myself astray with that puzzle…treating others well is about delivering to them the treatment they, themselves, define as good treatment much more than it is about what I think is good treatment – and their efforts to treat me well will fall flat if what they find to be ‘good treatment’ feels brutally punishing to me. Perspective becomes a very big deal; I know to be gracious when someone is treating me well by a cultural standard I don’t share, or don’t understand. I am learning to communicate clearly when my needs can easily be met in some other way, and to set boundaries when I feel mistreated. It’s pretty easy most days, most situations… but what of love?

I suspect a lot of time is wasted in life haplessly expecting that other people already understand us, already know what we want or need, and anticipating that there exists some implicit agreement to provide for our needs, particularly in the context of family or love. It’s a poor assumption to make (most are). There’s no ‘instant baking mix’ for love*, and because we are indeed each having our own experience, not only do we want different things than our lovers may want, but we understand what our lovers say to us, and how they treat us, differently than they may understand it from their perspective. How frustrating, to love fervently and recognize that the message isn’t getting through! It happens a lot, and it happens more with implicit communication than with explicit communication.

Bringing me closer is going to take different things than bringing some other person closer. This morning I am asking myself – knowing that bringing me closer takes different things than it may take to bring someone else closer…do I know what my partners, lovers, friends, and family members need as individuals to feel closer to me? Do we each adequately communicate those needs? Do we invest similar effort in the relationship? Is our experience reciprocal? If our relationship values are not an exact match, do those values support shared goals, compliment each other, and nurture individual needs on an equal basis?

One step after another.

Really that’s it this morning. Some good questions, no answers, a pleasant Friday, a head cold. I don’t have easy answers to these questions; I wouldn’t expect me to, I’m sick and foggy and probably fortunate to be able to assemble sentences in the first place. 🙂 I hope wherever time brings me today, there’s also plenty of love. Today is a good day to bring love closer.

*This may not be a true statement. This article lays out a specific technique for building love, more or less instantly. There are still verbs involved, and your results may vary.

Tags a time for us, best practices, bringing you closer, camping trip, do you feel like I do?, do you have the time?, invest some time, it's business time, love and lovers, quality time, share some time, time enough for love

Categories Brain Injury, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, Words

Another One of Many

March 3, 2015 //

This is a lovely gentle moment. Last evening was also very nice. In between these moments, ideally, would be several hours of sleep. I am content with the handful of hours of sleep I got, and a couple more of rest and meditation, and I woke to my alarm feeling comfortable. My arthritis is felt as a distant thing, this morning, managed and of no real consequence. My coffee is very welcome. My jeans, a size smaller than I’ve been wearing, feel comfortable, relaxed, and soft against my skin, like very old broken in favorite jeans – a very nice way for a new pair of jeans to feel. There is a lot to smile about, this morning (and even most mornings).

I will take today as it comes, practicing good practices, shoring up practices that I know work that I may not be fully committed to, practicing not practicing practices that don’t work as well…and treating others well.

One spring moment of many, with all the possibility and potential of any new moment.

This is a lovely moment. Many of them are, actually, even in the face of my own chaos and damage; so often it is embracing the fundamental loveliness of some ‘now’ moment or another that calms my storms, and helps me ‘find my way home’ to a gentler heart. A few deep breaths, a moment or two of real stillness, the solitude to find calm; these are so essential to maintaining balance and building resilience. Learning to allow myself to meet those needs has been challenging, and totally worth the time and effort to learn, and to practice.

However loving the lover, however caring the caregiver, however tender the heart of someone who wants to support me, first and perhaps of greatest importance has been learning to love and care for myself, my own heart, my own life – and not because there’s no one else out there, or because others cannot be relied upon, or because the world is in any way ‘unworthy’ – but because it is my own ability, and will, to care for myself well that shows everyone else ways to love and care for me, too. Besides, who else would be a better fit as ‘lifelong super best friend’ for me than me?

Does it seem odd to bother with writing such a simple post, on such a slim bit of an idea? I find that some of life’s best bits are painted across my experience with a very delicate brush – it’s not all drama, big deals, or epiphanies. Some of the stuff that has mattered most to me is pretty simple, basic, every day living. I’m okay with that; simple is easier to practice. 🙂

Today feels full of possibilities. Today is a good day to embrace the moment with wonder and enthusiasm. Today is a good day to connect, and to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Today is a good day to change the world.

Tags a few deep breaths, doing my best, good self-care practices, I like sleep, I'm easy, investing in the good stuff, love and lovers, mindfulness matters, practicing the practices, ptsd, sleep disturbances, spring, taking care of me, TBI, this fragile vessel

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5

Executive Level Management Principles

February 23, 2015 //

Yeah…this is not about ‘management’ as in ‘leadership’, and it’s not about improving one’s resume for a better paying job with keys to the executive washroom. Nope. It’s another sort of ‘executive’ ‘management’ altogether. The ‘executive functions‘ of the brain manage cognitive processes, such as (and likely not limited to) working memory, reasoning, task flexibility, problem solving, planning, impulse control, and in specific areas like the ‘orbitofrontal cortex’, things like evaluating subjective emotional experiences (and so much more). All very interesting, no doubt, but for me it’s a little more personal, and relevant…my TBI is a frontal lobe injury. The lingering impairments are mostly executive function sorts of things, and as with so many other people, and other TBIs, very interestingly individual – the brain is fancy, and the outcome of any given injury is equally individual. A whole new world of potential to heal and move on opened up when I started learning more about how these injuries work (don’t work?), and why, and how it changes my experience… and in so many moments, the experience of those who make their lives (or work) with me.

It is what it is, at least the piece where I look in the mirror every morning and I am… me. It’s not all bad. It’s better, actually, than it once was. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve grown. I’ve become more skillful at caring for this broken vessel, and at sorting out some of the chaos and damage that lingers. It is, sometimes, a shit experience and I struggle. Very human.

How about this one for a great practical joke on one human primate by the universe… one of my ‘favorites’… my PTSD causes serious sleep disturbances, nightmares, sometimes insomnia, and diminishes the hours of restful deep sleep I can get; I’m easily awakened by the littlest noises, or novelty, in my nighttime surroundings… (waaaait for it…) and my executive function impairments are much more pronounced – to the point of being quite obvious – if I don’t get good rest, reliably, pretty nearly every night. So… yeah. A night or two of poor sleep, for whatever reason, and I start… declining. My temper is often the first obvious sign that ‘things are not right’ – I become irritable, and easily angered, and feel less positive, generally, when my sleep is of poor quality. Next up, I start struggling with emotional balance, and lose ’emotional regulation’ characteristics in my day-to-day experience most adults don’t even realize they have going on in the background; I feel them most particularly when they slip away unexpectedly. The more tired I become, the more fatigued over time, the more prone to real tantrums, crying jags, and irrational mood swings I become – and (waaaait for it…) less able to sleep; my brain won’t shut down. When I do find sleep, I sometimes dream that I’m awake in such detail I wake exhausted to the point of tears. Yep. Pretty god damned funny. (Not)

Most of the time, these days, I still manage decently well overall…enough to pass as a grown up most of the time. There’s no real way to share what the subjective experience is like (you sort of have to be there). Every one of the many calming practices I’ve learned matters a great deal. Every choice counts. Every effort is meaningful. Every success – however fleeting, however limited the benefit, however difficult it is to recognize in the moment – every success builds the foundation for successes to come. My hope is that over time, that foundation grows substantial enough to bear the burden of the entirety of the chaos and damage…strong enough to hoist me above the pain, long enough to really see the view from a radically different perspective somehow ‘above it’… I would very much like to keep working at life and love to find that I have transcended what has hurt me most and become that woman – or more – that I might have been without the chaos and damage.

Please don’t tell me that’s wishful thinking. Tonight I couldn’t bear to lose the crutch of some shred of positivity to lean on. I’m tired. I know I am. My brain is buzzing like it’s noon on a sunny summer day; I’m not sleepy…but if I can practice good practices (meditation, and yoga are both very calming), and avoid becoming negative, or caught up in some random moment of weirdness, or a sneak attack by my own brain, I might sleep – or at least rest. Rest is okay. Rest is enough.

Enough is okay with me. Hell, I’m not even having to ‘do it alone’, really; my traveling partner checks in now and again. I welcome the closeness, the touches, the tenderness. The reassurance that love is, helps me find my way in the darkest darkness.

Wrapping this one up on a positive note; perspective matters, too.

Tags enough, executive function, executive function impairment, experience, frontal lobe injury, loss of executive function, meditation, mindfulness is a powerful Rx, ptsd, take your medicine, TBI, yoga

Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Words

Thoughts and Moments

January 26, 2015 //

I spent the weekend in pursuit of real downtime, and somewhat ironically putting effort into relaxing. It was somewhat successful, but perhaps not so much as I really needed. I’ll keep working on that. Life is not a competition, and no prize at the end of whatever ‘rat race’ this may be is likely to be worth missing out on the things I truly love while I chased something that didn’t matter so much to me personally. 🙂

I had quite a bit of solo time yesterday, and spent it wisely on moments, rather than on thoughts. Thoughts can quickly fuck me up completely… you, too? I can count on a moment to be what it is, to feel what I feel, to enjoy – or not – that experience. It is. Thoughts are less reliable in that respect; they lack substance, and have only what reality I choose to give them. It’s the choosing that’s tricky… at 2:30 am, half-sleeping, half-waking, a troubling thought can quickly take on life, importance, significance, magnitude, trending, relevance…and somehow become quite real… or… seemingly so. That some stray thought dredged from troubled dreams seems real at 2:30 am – or more precisely, at 3:02 am, after it has stewed in my consciousness for some period of time, doesn’t change something that is quite true; it’s still only a thought, without form or substance. It exists only in my mind, as images, words, or emotions.

In the wee hours…

This morning I woke, around 2:30 am. I know it was earlier than 2:43 am – when I finally looked at the clock – because I was awake for some minutes before making the effort to check the time. I don’t know what woke me. I know that I still felt sleepy, and wanted to slip gently back into the world of dreams. At 3:02 am, I sat up, frustrated with the direction my thoughts were taking, and considering getting up rather than passively enduring an attack on my well-being by my own brain, in the wee hours. I sat up, and my ‘sense of space’ still seemed consistent with sleep and sleeping and being horizontal. I tried again to sleep. I tossed and turned, finding wonderful comfortable positions that seemed sure to be fit for sleeping… only to restlessly re-situate myself again and again. Finally, I got up, went through a relaxing yoga sequence that highlighted how stiff I actually felt, even as that stiffness eased a bit. I checked the clock, resigned to the dawn. 4:54 am.

Some thoughts stuck with me from the restless night. They have some value for later consideration, and I make notes, and then move on; the time for that is not now.

There was a time when I had very little, and the dominant struggles day-to-day were practical logistical struggles, the financial and qualify of life challenges that accompany poverty. I often blamed my unhappiness on those circumstances. I thought surely, if I had more I would be happier…or more easily find my way to that place. I definitely have sufficient proof now to understand that this is not ‘true’; happiness and financial means may sometimes correlate, but money is not a cause of happiness. Neither is a big house in a safe suburb. Nor is a degree from a respected university. Feelings are not material goods, they are not things, there is no ‘market value’ which one can pay to obtain the happiness they seek…unless that happiness is quite specifically and clearly the purchased thing, itself… which is probably rarer than true love. Emotions operate in their own reality, and most definitely outside the national economy. In the wee hours, I contemplated how little of my resources I really invest in the ‘economy’ of my emotions…there is more to understand.

That wasn’t what kept me awake, though… what kept me awake was a nebulous fragile connection to a completely different thought that wanted to jump into the mix on the same grammatical structure (thanks, Brain)… I kept coming back to that stray thought, as irrelevant as it was; however many words I use… I can’t ‘purchase’ the understanding of what I am trying to say. Language as currency has limitations. Sometimes, silence has more to offer to communicate well… to ‘be heard’, there has to be some listening. There is an exchange. I don’t know that this has real value, or whether there is an underlying truth to consider. I do know it kept me quite awake, until I finally rose to greet the day, feeling somewhat irked by my wakefulness, and disappointed that my thoughts didn’t really take me anywhere new. There’s probably a lesson there.

Today is a good day to take care of me, and to treat others well. Today is a good day to be mindful that thoughts are not moments, and being in the moment is not about thinking. Today is a good day to be present in every interaction, without scripting, and without expectations. Today is a good day to be open to success, and willing to learn from failure. Today is a good day to recognize change.

Tags can you hear me now?, dream a little dream, feel like making love, in the still of the night, in the wee hours, it's about breathing, let's make this easy, love and lovers, meditation, mindfulness matters, no market value on love, sleepless, talk to me, that's why I'm easy, thoughts and moments, words and music, yoga in the morning

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Words

Dominoes and Endless Vistas

January 23, 2015 //

Sometimes growth and progress feel a bit like a fancy pattern of dominoes lined up carefully in a row, standing, waiting…for one small push, and having received it, they topple one into the next, as necessary as breathing, to a conclusion that sometimes both surprises, and also seems rather obvious.

Yesterday was a good day. It was not without emotion, but emotions were not overwhelming or disabling me. Work was work. Home was home. I was feeling a tad on the practical and ‘no nonsense’ side by the time I got home. Still, it was a pleasant evening of hanging out. Uneventful. Calm.

I felt inspired off and on, and excited to explore new thinking on old pain…and took notes all day. Looking those notes over this morning, there is an evident thread of hurt and frustration woven through the narrative of the day that only shows up in the brief, sometimes terse, observations that although significant seeming, were a distraction from the workload facing me. I look back on them and wonder how much of it is truly relevant; damn little of it is at all inspiring now. I am at a place in life where it would certainly be a goodness to give up day-to-day employment to focus on my own needs and agenda…but our society isn’t really set up that way, and the financial obligations of adulthood find me continuing to maintain employment.

I’m committed to slowing things down a bit, and taking care of me. The timing is right for planning the upcoming hiking/camping for the year, and I enjoy the planning and anticipation, itself. I’m eager to be out among the trees, in the stillness, just being. Quiet and content, and able to hear my own thoughts for more than 5 minutes at a time…trees rustling in breezes…small creatures approaching with cautious curiosity…home. This week I think I made a small breakthrough with regard to emotional self-sufficiency, love, lust, and sexual needs. Explaining it well would require words I have not yet mastered, but I feel more connected within myself, which has apparently been holding me back of late. There’s some other stuff, important on the inside… perspective… identity… self… other… (and much, much more!)

I didn’t sleep well last night. Meditation sort of… consumed a bunch of time unexpectedly. Then there were some lovely minutes of cuddling. Then… I was awake. Awhile. A long while. No fussing or anxiety to it, I just wasn’t sleeping. I went back to meditating at a number of points, which I have been finding definitely keeps the anxiety at bay. I feel okay this morning. I know I’ll be tired tonight. Managing good self-care throughout the day will be critical, and I make a point of taking note of that need for attentive self-care, and set a small number of extra reminders for today; later on I may not be my sharpest.

Here it is another day. Will I learn something new? Will I make good choices and treat others well? Will love find me in some unexpected moment? Will sorrow? I hear the espresso machine in the background and I think of love… and coffee. Today is a good day to make good choices. Today is a good day to take the time to take care of me. Today is a good day to slow down for a moment, and really just savor it. Today is a good day to change my experience.

Taking the journey with my eyes open, and walking a mindful path… what will I see?

Tags giving it some thought, going solo, good self-care, love me do, meditation is a powerful Rx, practicing the practices, ptsd, sleepless nights, slow things down, taking care of me, TBI

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, Turning 50

Bringing Me Closer

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Another One of Many

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Executive Level Management Principles

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Thoughts and Moments

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Dominoes and Endless Vistas

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