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It’s Not a “Cure”

May 8, 2018 //
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Yesterday was rough. Well… no. Sort of. Not really. Well… not entirely. Just there at the end.

It was a great Monday in most respects, actually, and I was looking forward to my afternoon appointment with my therapist (really just a “check-in & catch up” sort of thing, and very much worth looking forward to). Hell, I even got there without any real inconvenience, and found a great parking spot, right away, (in a terrible neighborhood for parking). So far so good.

We sat down together and I started talking. I talked until I was hoarse. The words just kept coming. The clock ran out on our time. (Those hours always seem so much shorter than any other hours on the clock. lol) I left my therapist’s office, and stepped out into the pleasant warmth of a sunny spring afternoon… and into a wall of anxiety. Fuuuuuuuuck. Breeeeathe. Breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe. Shit. Damn it. I sit for a moment in the car, but this doesn’t much help my anxiety, roasting myself in the heat of the sun-baked car interior, with cars turning the block at regular intervals, seeing me sitting there, and waiting for a moment, hopefully, then driving on looking aggravated. Nope. Not helpful.

I set my GPS to take me home. It wants me to take the freeway – it’s 2 minutes faster than not taking the fucking freeway. I don’t want to deal with rush hour traffic on the freeway, and I’m pretty certain my GPS is being rather optimistic about the drive-ability of that route. I attempt to set my GPS for “no highways” – and can’t find the options. Damn it. I’m started to feel frustrated and rage-y. I’m also already driving. I half follow/half fight my GPS, which is generally a poor choice. Being aware of this frustrates me further, and I finally just shut it off and begin following side streets in the general direction of “east” based on the compass display on the rear view mirror (true thing, works okay-ish-ly), until I reach a fairly direct, more or less major thoroughfare that isn’t a highway, that will also get me home. In fact, after about 20 minutes of struggling with the GPS, I am, actually, on my regular route, some distance down the road from my typical starting point. lol Because my GPS has a human voice, I lecture it sternly about how dissatisfied I am with the experience of the day, crossly noting “I can do a better job of finding my way, generally, without your fucking “help” you bullshit piece of machinery”. I even feel a moment of awkward disappointment with myself to find myself willing to be so callous and cruel-of-tone; it was probably doing its best, more or less.

I am irritated with devices and technology when I finally arrive home, a bit later than usual. I dither awhile, still awash in anxiety and frustration, and feeling also… incredibly tired.

“Baby Love”, a favorite rose in my garden, and a moment of contentment and joy.

Meditation doesn’t ease my anxiety much. Still tired, too. Some dinner? Still anxious. A pleasant, cooling shower? Still anxious. I start going down the list of good basic self-care practices… finally noticing it is 7:00 pm, or a little after. Fuck it. I decide to yield to fatigue and just go to bed, after spending a few minutes in the evening sunlight. Oregon’s winters are sort of long and drizzly and gray. So is Spring. So, too, is Autumn. Vitamin D, precious warming healthy sunlight is a treat in this climate; I linger on the deck, appreciating the first roses blooming, and enjoying the sun. It feels nice. I begin to really relax. My thoughts begin to untangle themselves from the anxiety. Anxiety is a liar. It teases and irritates my consciousness with a very hostile, fearful, view of what may be, and generally with no real basis in fact. It is a poor framework for thought. As the anxiety recedes, my thoughts become more ordered, more useful, and begin to the take the form of plans to get things done that were nagging at me in the background. There are dishes in my sink. Enough to stoke my anxiety by itself, easily remedied on the way to bed, so I am not bothered by them in the morning.

All these practices help. Therapy helps. Taking better care of myself helps. I still have a brain injury – and no amount of meditation changes that. My c-PTSD is still a very real thing – all the practicing of practices I can think to practice doesn’t change a traumatic, haunting, past. There is no “cure” – there is improvement over time. A lot of that. Enough of that to almost feel like… yeah. Hopeful. Positive. Whole. Strong. Contented. All of that and more. Still not a “cure”, and I still have to deal with some shit sometimes… but don’t we all? Incremental change over time is still a thing, and I can still count on it, and it’s still so much better now than it ever was before. Resilience is about bouncing back.

I knew this morning I could so easily begin again. 🙂 I think I’ll do that. It feels good to be so sure I can. 🙂

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

Shifting Gears

May 7, 2018 //
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Waking up this morning felt difficult, and required an effort. I really wanted to just go back to bed and sleep more, deeper, longer. It is Monday. A new work week begins. The weekend is over.

There’s no point grieving the weekend, now passed on; there’s work to do. Even if I weren’t working a regular job, there’d be work to do, no doubt. From my vantage point at my desk, I can easily see things that I’d prefer get done, to having them linger uncompleted. Some housekeeping tasks are always available for doing, being recurring and repetitive sorts of things. Hell, even if every scrap of every possible detail of all the available potential house-keeping tasks were indeed fully complete within the past hour, there would certainly be other things to do. It is Monday. It’s time to get started on that. It’s time to begin again.

I tend to view each day, and each week, as a sort of a “do over” – a genuine new beginning. This only works, I discovered for myself, if I am sincere about it, meaning that I treat myself that way. It’s not about other people’s thinking, or their perceptions of life (or me) – because really, considering we are each having our own experience, and each of us is on our own journey, and each of us is our own cartographer on that journey without a map, no opinion on the matter counts more than mine, where my own life is concerned. People who are that upset about it (or me, or something I have done) can make their own choices, and one of the options in front of them is to walk on. Yup. I’ve no obligation to make changes based on their opinions, not at all. If I choose to do so, ideally it is because I have reflected on their words of wisdom, found them wise, and truthfully prefer their thinking, and choose to embrace a course correction on my own path…but… I don’t have to. They have no power over me.

Even in matters of pure violent force; our assailant has no power over our thinking that we don’t choose to yield to them. That doesn’t mean that we are unassailable or beyond damage or hurt, just that our agency is not up for grabs unless we place it there with a “free” sign. It’s what makes agency so powerful, and it may be why undermining individual agency seems to be such a thing in a some contexts. It’s why living life with one’s agency undermined presents such challenges over time.

Take yours back. Seriously; do you. Own every inch of the real estate from the tips of the longest hairs at the top of your head to the extreme edge of the most durable callous at the edges of the sole of your feet. All that is yours, and the contents of your brain, too! Use it. Use it wisely – become the person you most want to be. Or… don’t. Your call. Either way; you pay the price for your choices, your actions, and your words. It just makes sense to me that since you’re going to pay the bills, you ought to live the life. Your life. Lived your way. (Make no mistake; you’ll bear the consequences of your actions, regardless. That’s just real.)

Anyway. Here it is Monday; a great time for new beginnings, and renewed commitment to self. What will you do with it?

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Worth Working Towards

May 6, 2018 //
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I can see, beyond my studio window, the thunderstorm I drove through earlier today. The same one that I lay awake listening to, smiling, as it rolled through a town further south, sometime around 3 a.m. … I hadn’t been sleeping, just laying quietly, resting in the darkness, smiling, and letting random memories live again, for just a moment. It was a busy, adventurous weekend, and wrapping up the whirlwind of activity, connection, and fun on a quiet restful sort of moment was a lovely way handle things. I certainly needed to rest. I’m still… so tired. 🙂

This weekend was not, in any reasonable fashion, as I’d planned it. I’m okay with that. I had to be quite spontaneous, for days and days, and while that presents me with some challenges, I also got the quiet time to reflect and process things, which I need in order to manage it. I’d still rather have executed to skillful plan… lol I’m still myself. I wouldn’t have swapped one moment of this adventurous weekend for any other; where it wasn’t entirely delightful, it was at least educational, and often humorous. I have grown. 🙂

A memory. A moment. A flower.

8 years with my Traveling Partner, now thoroughly celebrated, cherished, savored, and acknowledged with shared joy and love. That, at least, was wonderfully well done in every possible respect. I still feel wrapped in love, as I sit here sipping water, rehydrating, and contemplating next steps for the day, and how best to get the new week started. I’m so tired. lol I could quite happily just go right the fuck to bed, right now, at 2:54 in the afternoon, and figure as long as my alarm was set for tomorrow morning, all is well. I just don’t have to force myself to work harder, right now.

There is value – so much value – in lingering over pleasant experiences.

There is a dog barking. I only sort of notice it today, and it is less than typically annoying. The breeze picks up, and the leaves seem suddenly a stranger brighter green against the storm-cloud backdrop of imminent rain. The hallway is obstructed with partially unpacked weekend details. I stalled between inspecting, repacking and putting away all the actual camping gear, and unpacking and putting away everything else; I’d gone away this weekend prepared to paint, prepared for evenings out (one never knows what the occasion may require…), prepared to camp – or not camp, prepared to read awhile, prepared to take photographs… all of which have their own “gear” requirements. I really only put away the camping stuff. There’s… so much more. My aching feet, my bad ankle, my tired back… all say “just chill”. My headache says “drink more water”. My fatigue says “take a nap”. It’s not actually possible to do all of those things at the same time. lol The sweat that cooled me while I worked in the sun on a warm afternoon has now cooled to chill me, and I run my fingers through my hair, and realize a hot shower would feel… so nice. I breathe, relax, and finish this glass of water right here, with a promise to myself to refill it and have another, on my way to the shower.

This moment right here, so human, so entirely ordinary, and in every way unremarkable, fills my senses quite pleasantly. I feel content. I feel a soft surprise to realize how unremarkable it has become to feel contentment, and sit with the moment awhile, listening to the breeze rustle the leaves beyond the deck, and feeling the sweat cool on my skin. Is this happiness? I’m not sure. I’m not even sure it matters; it’s enough.

I smile when my mind responds “this too shall pass”. Yes, yes, of course, it likely will. It is the way of things. All things. That’s okay. I can begin again, any time.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Every Damned One of All the Things

May 3, 2018 //
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Which matters more, skillful self-care or following through on plans? Or, how about this one, is keeping regular hours more important than “being there” for a friend? Or, what about “work life balance” – is the work more important than the life? Is the income more important than the quality of the experience? Is it more necessary to be a skillful emotionally self-sufficient adult, or to hold on to a child-like sense of wonder, whimsy, and joy?

Here’s a thought; maybe stop trying to divide every damned thing neatly into two clear choices? Life does not actually exist in that form in any common way. We have immense power over our own experience, through our choices, and life’s menu is far more vast than any one false dichotomy.

Yes – good self-care really matters. When I don’t care for myself skillfully (nutrition meals, appropriate caloric intake, good sleep hygiene, getting enough exercise, taking prescribed medication on time as directed, following a strict meditation practice, and generally treating myself as someone who matters to me), my world and my experience of life slowly begins to degrade over time, until my quality of life overall suffers, and I am not the person I most want to be.

Yes – following through on commitments matter. We count on each other as a community. Our shared strength far exceeds our individual strengths. Planning and following through allows us all to level up based on shared strengths.

Yes – work/life balance matters; when we work for pay, what we “earn” is a direct conversion of our life force into spendable currency that we need to meet other obligations and care for ourselves, but it also comes at the cost of giving up precious limited life time, life force, and individual resources. Clearly, there needs to be a balance, and most likely that balance should favor us as individuals, rather than our employers, generally. Or so it seems to me. We are not machinery.

Yes – learning to adult skillfully takes a lot of the strain out of adulting at all. If we can’t adult for ourselves, more than likely we’ve pushed that burden off onto someone else, who is now having to be the grown up in the room for more than one person. Be your own boss. Be your own grown up. Be the person you most want to be.

Yes – child-like wonder, a sense of whimsy and fun, a playful nature, and the willingness to let go a little, and to enjoy life, are delicious additions to a generally adult experience of life. I highly recommend it – but perhaps not the expense of the adulting basics necessary to keep one’s shit together appropriately day-to-day. <shrugs> I don’t know. Do you.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s not a choice between two things. That’s a gross over-simplification of how real life works for real people in a real world; it’s so much more complicated than that, so much richer. Choices. Subtlety. Nuance. All the things.

I know. It sounds like a lot to deal with, and it is so easy to become overwhelmed. Narrowing things down to two clear choices seems so much easier – but that’s an illusion. It’s a game we made up that doesn’t really work very well, due to overlooking all the many other choices beyond just whatever to we’ve decided to admit exist in the moment. Mix and match. Choose your adventure. Allow yourself the freedom to look at the whole menu, don’t just sit down to life’s table and fall back on some shortcut for efficiency’s sake – this is your fucking life!! Live it.

Should I go to the store for windshield washer fluid at the end of a long work day – because I do need it – or should I “just skip it” because I am tired? Well, come on now, there are clearly more choices, right? I could… pick it up on the morning from the gas station down the street on my way. I could order it online and have it delivered, and hope that I don’t really need it sooner than that. I could make some homemade from ingredients on hand. So… yeah. More than two choices, by far. This is true of most experiences. Give yourself a chance to consider more than two choices. Yes, and even consider choices that you, perhaps, see as “not really an option”; you may be filtering out more than you realize.

False dichotomies are everywhere in our thinking. Advertising is practically built on them. Politics, too. It’s a lot of bullshit, frankly, and we can do better. That is also a choice. Are you ready to choose differently? Are you ready to begin again?

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

Some of It Is In Your Head

May 2, 2018 //
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I had a wee moment yesterday, that teetered on the edge of the day going very wrong. It didn’t. I managed a step back, and some perspective, long enough for things to sort themselves out well. It’s really enough that things worked out, and not at all necessary to live life without such, or disappointing to have experienced it. In fact, because I didn’t become emotionally invested in the moment itself, or build it up to become a mountain of circumstantial anguish. It was more illuminating of my self and values, than at all disturbing. I didn’t know I would “get here”… hell, years ago, I did not even understand that “here” existed to arrive at. lol

We make up most of what causes our worst suffering, in our own heads. It’s ours. It’s hand-crafted painful narrative, and we often rely upon it a great deal to illustrate points, prove we’re “right”, and show “who we are”, to gain sympathy, or justify refusing to change, or to reinforce our insistence that we have no choices – without much attention to how entirely made up that bullshit really is. It sucks. It sucks to suffer in the first place, but oh does suck to understand we’ve done it to ourselves. Still – once I knew, I could stop fucking doing that!!

Life has been much better – easier, rich in cherished moments, low in drama, characterized generally by contentment – since I stopped putting myself through all that. It was not, unfortunately, something with an easy set of steps to follow, or something anyone could help me with.  I can try:

  1. Don’t be so down on yourself; you’re human.
  2. Don’t be so full of shit all the time; other people see through that crap, so can you.
  3. Do your best to be the person you most want to be, moment to moment.
  4. Repeat

No super helpful, I get it. It may be worth noting that, most commonly, I see the mostly likely point at which I am most prone to stepping from “what clearly actually is” to “I made this shit up myself, see?!” follows the word “because”. Maybe just… don’t do that. “I feel hurt” is honest, and clear, and fairly to the point. “I feel hurt because…” holds so much potential for magical thinking, disorder, lost reason, and lashing out at someone, that we often quickly stop sharing information that is legitimately provable true in real life, and start… making shit up. We often can’t tell we’ve done so, either. We believe our thoughts, and in this era of people behaving as if their opinion is every bit as worthy as actual truth, it can be hard to pull ourselves out of the slime long enough for honest self-reflection, and anything so wholesome as “truth”. “Because” is actually a pretty useful word, but fuck; fact check yourself.

Truth exists. It’s just sort of hard to stand firm to the process of telling it, honestly, particularly about ourselves, and especially when we may be quite definitely “in the wrong”. That’s right, I said it; we err. We make mistakes in reasoning. We excuse of ourselves things we do not excuse in others. We justify our bad acts. We’re “only human” – while we make that other person out to be a villain. It’s not actually okay. Here’s the thing that’s weird about it; it’s hard to call each other out for those lies (yes, they are) – we don’t want to be called out, ourselves, and… what if that person is “well-meaning”, or… they clearly believe what they’re saying? (Reminder: that we “believe” something is not in any way connected to the truth of it.) Yeah. I admit it – standing next to a friend telling me (or others) a tale that they clearly believe about “who they are” (or what actually happened) that I know, for a fact, is not true (from my perspective) – because I was there – is uncomfortable. I have nothing to say here about what to do about it or say to someone else who may be spinning up a bullshit narrative about themselves. I do make a point of trying not to be the person causing that specific category of discomfort, or indulging the particularly human quality of “making shit up”… unless I am literally writing fiction; it would be appropriate, then. lol

The way out of our pain in life is through it. Excusing it, camouflaging it, transforming it through skillful use of internal narrative – none of that “fixes” anything. We’ve all got to walk our own hard mile, deal with our own vast Augean stables, and become the person we, ourselves, most want to be, as honestly as we are able. (And, yeah, there are verbs involved – so many!)(Yep. Your results may vary, too.)

Why am I thinking about all of this, anyway? Life and the world, really, nothing fancier than that. The White House Correspondent’s Dinner got me thinking about it (Michelle Wolf’s comedy was brilliant and edgy). A moment I had yesterday seemed relevant. too. I woke feeling thoughtful, and I just went with it. lol

…I’m still out of coffee, but I remembered to start packing for the weekend. LOL

So how about today? New day, new beginning – are you ready to be who you are, as a starting point to becoming the person you most want to be? You can. You have choices. You can begin again. ❤

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Categories Brain Injury, Fiction, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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