Archives for category: Sleepless Nights
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Incoming!

December 15, 2014 //
2

Wow. What a shitty morning. I woke too early because other members of the household manhandle doors without giving people sleeping much thought. My first association with anyone else in the house went awry very quickly. I feel mistreated. I feel disrespected and hurt. I’m angry. The time I made to enjoy the company of someone dear to me – by choice – was treated as without value. I haven’t been awake even two hours and I’m in tears, feeling hurt, feeling pissed off, boundaries violated, explicitly stated needs utterly disregarded, and reeling from the powerful emotional punch that is having ones security threatened, emotional security that is. There was a time in my life when I did not understand that these experiences are not ‘love’ – they don’t define the wonder and joy of Love and loving – these kinds of experiences suck, and hold no pleasure, no value, no joy. I find them unpleasant, and unworthy of being called ‘love’.  Experiences like these still happen in the context of relationships I have with people I love…which doesn’t stop the experiences from sucking, actually, I think it makes them suck that much more. Love, in its wonder and joy and delight, isn’t defined by our challenges – that’s just human beings, being human. Hopefully, when I cool off, there will be a lesson to learn.

I feel sad. I feel pissed off. I feel blamed. I feel cheated of a quiet pleasant morning in the good company of someone dear to me. I feel ashamed that I let someone else’s shitty mood provoke me, too. No one needed that.

Searching for the positive, finding stickers and thorns.

Searching for the positive, finding stickers and thorns.

We’re all so very human, aren’t we? Each with our own baggage, our own experience, our own perspective…the context of our unique perspective, that is so ‘us’, can so easily find us out of step with those who matter most to us… assumptions… expectations… the narrative we accept as ‘true’ or ‘real’… the stories we tell ourselves… Right this very moment, more than anything, I would like to be laughing and sipping coffee with this fantastic guy I love… right now, I can’t stand the thought of being in the presence of his right-now experience; as much as it appears to suck from my perspective, I imagine it must feel pretty awful from within, too. Certainly, it’s not what I expect from love.

I don’t know why I’m bothering to write about this… we all have these experiences, though, don’t we? Moments of anger. Moments of hurt. Moments of frustration. Moments that suck. They are, however, just moments.

Today is a good day for perspective…I hope to find some, soon. Today is a good day to treat people well – myself, included. Today is a good day to change the world… I’d be content to change the moment. Today is a good day to remember to dress for the weather, and to remember that this too shall pass*.

*Indeed, it did pass…with some practicing of practices that work to move my heart in a more positive direction, like ‘taking in the good’ and savoring small pleasures as I walked to the light rail station, and taking on a healthy challenge that distracted my focus, in general, and also had the benefit of giving me some needed exercise – I walked to a much more distant light rail station than I usually do, and enjoyed the bracing winter air, the feel of taking on a challenge and meeting a goal. More pleasant, nurturing, words were exchanged along the way, and I took a moment to be grateful for the technology that makes it so easy to do so, without stewing in my own emotional bullshit all day long before getting to that opportunity. Kind words were shared. Encouragement and apology were offered, and accepted… the day moves on. Humans, being human. Lovers, loving. Today? Yeah, as human as I am, today is a good day.

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Categories Love, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, women, Words

Possessed

December 13, 2014 //
0

Possession is an interesting idea, with some nuance in its meaning. I mention it because I can often use the state of disarray among my possessions as a barometer of my emotional well-being. Bottom-line, the less tidy and organized my personal space is, the more likely I am feeling anxious, overwhelmed, unhappy, disordered, or just losing my grip on my affairs somewhat; it’s utterly reliable. I keep very orderly surroundings for myself when I feel balanced, content, and well. When my room is a mess, untidy, or ‘stuff’ is piling up (however neatly), I am likely also feeling ‘possessed’ – overcome and controlled by my experience, my possessions, my ‘to do list’, my calendar, and losing my sense of perspective and order. The choices I make with regard to my surroundings tend to reflect the conditions of my inner experience.

Morning coffee...contemplating order and disorder.

Morning coffee…contemplating order and disorder.

My room is a mess. I noticed days ago that ‘things are getting out of hand’. Clean laundry hasn’t been put away; it was neatly folded in the basket at the start of the week, but days of rummaging through it for something to wear has resulted in chaos. Paperwork is stacking in less-than-neat piles of this and that, once organized based on urgency, type of action needed, or some other shared characteristic; it’s not especially orderly now. My bookshelf tends to be very neat, and limited to things I’m likely to really want to ‘live with’ and have at hand; it’s now packed with the miscellany of everyday life, with no particular semblance of order, or aesthetic sense of perspective. My bed is usually carefully made up, sometime shortly after I’m up, dressed, and getting on with the day; lately, the bed-clothes remain in disarray long after I’m dressed, and often remaining so until nightfall returns for another bit of sleep.  I’m aware of these things, and dissatisfied with the lack of order, which compounds the anxiety and sense of being out of control. The solution is easy, and readily at hand any time – I can clean this shit up. It’s not a difficult thing, and if I were to tackle the project this weekend, it would not take very long; it’s not that bad, yet. The things that are the source of the disorder externally, are the also the source of the malaise, ennui, and lack of attention to details that are generally important to me, and I am stalled until I take care of me.

Another moment, some other coffee...

Another moment, some other coffee…

That’s the thing, isn’t it? Taking care of me is important…only…I’m not sure where to begin, since I’m not sure what’s up – or don’t want to face it. It could just be hormones. That always feels like something to face, something ‘wrong’, something that needs to be fixed – and it really isn’t. It’s just hormones and waiting it out until they change course is generally the simplest action, most reliably effective. Self-compassion becomes more effective than troubleshooting things in a more active way. If something more significant were amiss, I could expect it would reveal itself more honestly, I think. So, I wait it out, take care of me on other fronts, and hope that doing so will see enough energy restored, and will, and heart, and focus to want to tidy things up. I could use a good night’s sleep, too. It’s been weeks since even one weekend day found me sleeping in. I do well with 7 hours of sleep…I enjoy 8 very much, although I rarely sleep that long…lately I’m averaging just 5 hours a night, and often interrupted. I don’t feel sleep deprived quite yet, generally, but I yearn for a long night of deep recuperative sleep, and count on weekend days to be able to sleep as long as I care to, and wake when I wake. The world doesn’t help out much; I am too noise sensitive to easily sleep through common sounds of morning, and I’m often awakened by car doors, cupboards, footsteps, conversation in the hallway…all manner of small things that are too every day to avoid. It sucks. I sometimes find myself feeling angry, and wishing the world would do what I do, when people are sleeping nearby: nothing, and that done very quietly indeed. My behavior when other members of the household are sleeping is actually disordered, itself, and I don’t much talk about it – I definitely don’t insist other people do as I do. It’s a remnant of living with domestic violence; when someone else is sleeping, I find something very quiet and still to do, and do only that until they wake. I stopped wondering why no one else seems ‘willing’ to do that for me when I realized I wasn’t doing it to be considerate – I was doing it out of fear of waking someone scary. Baggage. Chaos and damage. Ancient pain.

Each time for the first time, each moment, the only moment...

Each time for the first time, each moment, the only moment…

I’m feeling cross and emotional today. Hormones. I’m also finding myself wasting bandwidth feeling resentful of having to deal with it at this point in my life experience – ‘menopause’ gave me hope that this bullshit would be finite, and have an end point. I’ve little tolerance for the frustrations of others today, and I don’t feel very social. Experience and intellect tell me these are very human experiences pretty common to the ebb and flow of hormones. The feeling of disconnection, too, and the anger about feeling that – all part of the hormone thing. I yearn for connection – and trying to get that feeling back mostly results in small moments of discord, emotional volatility, and exposure of communication challenges I am presently fairly helpless to resolve. It’s easier to keep to myself…maybe if I sit here long enough looking mad my face will stick this way? Is that where ‘resting bitch face’ comes from? Maybe if I sit here long enough I’ll want to make my bed, put away my clean laundry, and tidy up? That would be a nice change… right now I mostly want to hit things with a stick, or shout angry words, or throw stuff. I don’t permit myself behaviors of that sort – and yes, sometimes it requires will, alone. I’m very human.

I found myself wondering this morning if tales of demonic possession of old are nothing more than someone trying to make sense of some woman’s hormones…

A different coffee, on a different day, in another place; memories of love are sometimes captured in pictures of coffee.

A different coffee, on a different day, in another place; memories of love are sometimes captured in pictures of coffee.

Today is a good day to behave well, and treat others with great kindness. Today is a good day to keep my worst bits in check to improve my own experience, and to care for others. Today is a good day to linger on the pleasant moments, and accept that some of the bad bits aren’t ‘because of’ anything significant beyond my subjective experience. Today is a good day to recognize the subtle boundary between my own experience, and the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, women, Words

Weird and Distracted

December 12, 2014 //
0

I didn’t sleep well. I’m struggling to write; my typing is a travesty of spelling errors, and incorrect suffixes. My thinking feels fractured and chaotic, disorganized. My grammar probably isn’t. I regret the challenges it may cause you, reading this.

The wind last night knocked power out all over the place, and even the light rail was affected. I took a taxi home and enjoyed the longer than desirable ride with a relaxed, funny driver named Ben. All the signal lights were out for a large area of town, and the traffic was surreal; for some reason, the lack of signal lights was causing people to ignore the lines on the road, and the lanes as we neared each intersection multiplied well beyond whatever city plan existed unseen in the darkness. I was glad to get home after spending only 2 hours making the journey that typically takes just one. I take a moment to really appreciate the good decision-making that stopped me lingering for an hour or more at the train station, just waiting.

I also take a moment to contemplate what feels like a major dick move yesterday, and I’m not sure how I feel about the choice I made. When I went to get into the taxi, I recognized a friend from work, standing back where he could smoke a cigarette, also waiting for a train. He seemed eager and relieved to see me, and did his very best to inquire gently and with great civility if I would share my cab – and let me know where he was going, also heading west, sort of toward my home. I stalled and my words were not fluid, and I think I ended up sounding like a jerk saying no, instead of finding a kind way to indicate I wasn’t planning to take a route through that area of town – because the signal lights were out, traffic was going to be ugly, and the freeway would get me home much sooner. Maybe that’s still a dick move? At the time, I wanted to say “Hop in!”, and find a way to make it a good fit…if I had, it would have been a boon to my friend, and my journey home, myself would have been much much longer…and in good company… This is one I’ll be thinking over for a long time to come.

Hot flashes, night sweats, poor quality sleep…Hormone Hell, menopause or not. This too shall pass.

One more work day to get through. I’m not really thinking about the weekend. I am thinking about sleep. LOL

My holiday wish list includes good sleep this year...

My holiday wish list includes good sleep this year…

Today is a good day to be content that when I am doing my best, it is the best I can do. Today is a good day to choose to nurture the best in myself, and in others. Today is a good day to honor good decision-making. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Brain Injury, Hormone Hell, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, winter

The Will to Practice

December 6, 2014 //
0

I woke earlier than I wanted to this morning. I fell asleep later than I wanted to last night. The sleep in between those points was filled with distressing dreams that were neither pleasant, nor were they nightmares; they were instead rich in content, symbolism, and implication without being over-obvious, as if daring me to overlook what matters most in the storm of surrealism. I woke feeling stiff and twisted, with a headache that sources down low in my spine, and makes it way to my skull, a dull unrelenting ache that pulsates when I walk. It’s about as dreadful as it sounds…only…I also woke warm and dry, safe from physical harm, indoor plumbing near at hand, and clean drinking water besides. I woke to birdsong outside my window and a not-too-very-rainy morning, and the sound of Dave Matthews Band on the stereo; my traveling partner already awake, playing chess quietly. I woke to an offer of a hot latte made just the way I like it. I woke to a warm hug, and a loving smile. This is my very human experience; it’s not good sometimes and bad other times as much as it is generally a mix of details of a variety of sorts.

Over the past two years I’ve read a lot of words written by several people whose working lives are spent studying the neuroscience of emotion and consciousness. I’ve read about negativity bias, and have a very elementary understanding that the most intense experiences tend to be most memorable, and that we tend to prioritize negative experiences more highly on an implicit level as a survival trait. Sounds damning, sometimes. I’ve also read more than a little bit about a number of practices that can be put to use to minimize or mitigate our negativity bias – resulting in a more implicitly pleasant experience overall; they do work, I’ve tried them. I’ve read about (and tried) practices for calming my storming heart when my PTSD catches me unawares, or I find myself so fatigued that I am unexpectedly volatile. I have explored practices that have tended to take me from a very negative, bitter, chronically irritated and dissatisfied state of being, to a day-to-day state sense of self that tends to be rather calm, generally content, and mostly pretty joyful.

I hope I’ve never led you to believe it’s “easy” every day. I work at ‘happy’ and ‘content’ by practicing an assortment of practices that tend to take me that direction over time. There are verbs involved. A commitment to wake up every day and actually practice them – because they are only effective when I do them. Thinking about them doesn’t quite change anything. When I consider moments over the past two years when things just didn’t seem quite as good as they could be – speaking just of my own experience, subjectively – it seems significant that there’s often some days preceding during which I was less committed than usual to some key practice or another. (That’s often how I figure out which ones are ‘key’ for me personally! lol) I don’t feel any shame over that, and I don’t feel like a failure. (I hear my traveling partner’s voice in my thoughts asking in a humorous tone “Well, how do you feel?”) I do feel very human; encouraged by the bits that go well, and a little beat down by the things that don’t.

Like it or not, there are verbs involved. Real actions to take, that require some small effort of will – a decision, a choice, an intention followed through on with a behavior of some appropriate sort. There’s just no getting out from under the action-reaction thing. The actions I choose aren’t always ideal; that’s the next challenge, isn’t it? Once my will is firmly in place, and I’ve made a choice, and taken an action, then experience unfolds the next lesson like a map, and I see where my choices take me. Then the whole thing again, for some other circumstance. Life. I am learning to be more aware of the puzzle pieces themselves in this jigsaw puzzle, rather than straining to see the finished picture while I piece it together.

It’s hard to overstate the value I’ve been finding in the ‘taking in the good’ exercises in Hardwiring Happiness. I haven’t ‘finished’ the book yet, because I keep re-reading it, and meditating on pieces of the content that are most relevant to my own experience. The practice, particularly, of lingering over pleasant moments for a considerable time rather than allowing them to be so fleeting, and also of refraining from lingering over unpleasant moments and treating them fairly casually after-the-fact, is a current favorite; it really does seem to be altering my implicit emotional bias for the better. I recently started a simple practice for improving my perspective with regard to positive and negative interactions, intended to prevent me from taking such things personally, particularly when they are not (and they mostly aren’t). It’s a simple reality-check; if I am feeling very picked on and emotionally beat down, I make a list of the specific complaints, or negative feedback, directed specifically to me, about my actions – no other negative content is listed, because it ‘isn’t about me’. The first time I did it, I quickly recognized that I’d only actually been offered a single point of negative feedback – and the rest of the discussion wasn’t about me at all, however negative it sounded in my thoughts. A negative bias functions on a lot of levels, it seems. This simple practice has seriously improved my relationships with other people; in one case I was able to recognize that new boundaries needed to be explicitly set in a work relationship, without things blowing up, when my list made it clear that 1. the relationship was profoundly negative and critical, and 2. there was a legitimate issue surfacing as a theme that could be easily addressed.

Illumination, or artificial lighting?

Illumination, or artificial lighting?

Meditation does take a commitment. Practicing is action. Choices are necessary. Verbs are involved. The results, for me, so far, are entirely worth it. I sure don’t have ‘the answers’. I am finding it worthwhile to consider some of the questions carefully. Will… that’s the thing, isn’t it? The Will to Practice. How do I build Will? Practicing.

Today is a good day to experience the birdsong, the music, the laughter, and the love. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, women, Words

An Entirely Other Moment

November 20, 2014 //
1

I woke with a headache this morning, and I woke several times during the night, returning to sleep with relative ease. The headache matters, and it is necessary to maintain awareness of the impact of disrupted sleep over time; my reactivity tends to increase over days and weeks of disrupted sleep. The headache, like much of my day-to-day pain, also doesn’t ‘matter’ in the sense that I make an effort not to be limited by it or allow it to call my shots, this can also put me on the path of lost balance, and lost perspective; I try so hard my own frustration becomes the bigger issue. Menopause or not, it seems I am lingering at the gates of Hormone Hell, too – or at least driving around that neighborhood in circles, lost. Night sweats. Hot flashes. Irritability. Difficulty maintaining a comfortable emotional connection to another.

Today is still an entirely new day, all potential, choices not yet made, reality not yet fully determined… I will do my best with it. Making the best choices in each moment is not the easy thing it sounds like it could be; I observe that whether something ‘sounds easy’ sometimes depends as much on the words as their meanings, which can be misleading. (Is there anything at all in my experience that has no potential whatsoever to be misleading?)

My coffee is good – and it was easy. I find myself being critical with myself, momentarily, for ‘not drinking it fast enough’ as I yawn through the morning, thus far. Day-to-day I can be ludicrously hard on myself, demanding far more of me than makes sense, or is even needed. The damage I’ve done to myself with the constant internal bullying, berating, and lack of satisfaction or encouragement has piled up over the years, and become part of the chaos and damage I fight now. I take a moment to adjust, to back up off of pressuring myself to drink coffee faster, and remind myself how lovely a leisurely morning, unhurried, unpressured, really feels.

Yesterday was challenging, not horrible, and had some wonderful moments to it. The finish was difficult; I was volatile after therapy and tired, and that can make me pretty unapproachable. People who like and love me still make the attempt and while I love that people are willing, and value me that much, it comes with risks and I ended up in tears over something fairly mundane, and feeling hurt and angry on a level that far exceeded what the event could possibly require. I took a walk in the night, enjoying the feeling of the icy rain pelting me for a couple of miles, and filling my lungs with the fresh cold air. Self-soothing, for me, often requires a combination of exercise, distraction, meditation, and distance that a long walk really captures; I sometimes feel as if I am ‘walking away from what is hurting me’. I contemplated how difficult it must be for my traveling partner to discover through the outcome alone that I am sometimes not as strong as I appear. It is one of the peculiar challenges of pursuing change and healing; change happens fast, but I am making active choices and using verbs, and my demeanor and affect do not always give away the contents of this fragile vessel, or the effort involved in being the change.

I made the wise choice to take a sick day yesterday, with some urging from my partner. I’m glad I did – and I think it sucks that the world, in general, benefited thereby, and he still ended up dealing with the grief and bullshit, himself. That seems particularly unfair. (I keep ‘checking the contract’ for life and living – there’s nothing at all about things being fair; this, too, seems unfair. lol)

Today’s okay so far. I’m tired. I have a headache. The increase in my Rx pain medication has been helping, but doesn’t really kick in for about an hour after I wake. I hurt, and I am patient with myself about that, at least so far.

Today is a good day to be less hard on myself. Today is a good day to remember that acknowledging where I am is necessary to get somewhere better. Today is a good day for good choices, and mindfulness that the good choices themselves have value, whatever the outcome. Today is a good day to remember free will is shared equally; we are each having our own experience…

Love in the World

Love in the World

…I wrote those words as the yelling started in another room, not even 6:00 am. OPD. (For the unfamiliar, that’s ‘other people’s drama’ – but often those ‘other people’ are those dearest to me). It wasn’t the raised voices of anger as much as the raised voices of frustration, hurt, and confusion, and it conveyed powerful stress in seconds. I add to my own stress and anxiety my concerns about the safety of the household in my absence while I am at work; today suddenly feels less safe, and less secure. I haven’t seen physical violence directed at people by anyone living here, but one member of the household is a destructive force to be reckoned with when upset nonetheless – and I do mean seriously destructive. The destruction of several door frames, doors, drawers, dishes, and a 25 year-old mahogany sideboard I lovingly hauled around the world for years testify to that. Many of my paintings can’t be hung because falling to the floor would damage them, and the risk is too high; doors have been slammed so hard here that paintings popped right off the walls and crashed to the floor. I don’t like discussing it, but it is real, and it is part of my experience; these are, in fact, experiences I promised myself I would not endure again. It’s wanton destruction of an utterly inappropriate nature (from my perspective), and it’s hard to determine whether anything at all is sacred; setting explicit boundaries about what is sacred to me hasn’t been effective. The sudden lack of household calm says a lot, and for me at least it amounts to a substantial loss of quality of life because it recurs with regularity. I dislike emotional weaponry; it tends to be both imprecise and very damaging, regardless who it is pointed at, everyone in the vicinity is feels the impact. This morning it’s my traveling partner who is ‘down range’, but we’re both stressed and concerned, and we’re both affected. I will go to work anxious and trembling, and my traveling partner will be working at home, dealing with his stress and trying to remain calm and productive after the difficulties of the morning. Doubtless it will continue to stress and trouble everyone involved for some hours, and my writing feels constrained and self-conscious as I struggle with my words. I know from experience that secrecy begets continued problem behavior, as well as isolating me from support and the comfort of being heard; I struggle on, hoping to say only enough to feel heard, and to be accurate about my own experience of the moment.

This moment is harder than others. I don’t know what’s next, at all. Also hard. This too shall pass.  I will continue to do my best, practice my Big 5, take care of me, treat others well, make the best choices I can, and hope that these are ‘enough’, somehow.

Today is still a good day to be less hard on myself. It’s still a good day to do my best. Today is still a good day to take care of me, and make good choices – hard choices, too, some days. We are each having our own experience, sure, but we’re all in this together. Treating each other well may be the one thing we can all easily do to save the world from our own destructive power.

What do you see when you look at the patterns in your life; your choices, or circumstance?

What do you see when you look at the patterns in your life; your choices, or  your circumstances?

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