Archives for posts with tag: bouncing back

Resilience In Practice

October 25, 2025 //
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I woke later than usual. It was almost 05:00 when I woke. I felt rested and positively merry. I dressed to head out for my morning trek down the marsh trail that circles the nature park.

As I checked the weather, and the time, I see I’ve got a message from my beloved Traveling Partner. The love and concern in his words is clear. He suggests I keep my walk short, maybe local, and proposes I maybe stay home entirely and get my miles on the elliptical, while watching a favorite show. He proposes that we could do something together, later, an idea that appeals to me. I feel loved. I sit with that feeling for a moment, letting it fill my consciousness.

The idea of a shorter walk and better self-care is a tempting idea, for sure, I admit. I really like being out on the trail, though, enjoying the short quiet interval of solitude… and my walks at the nature park put me nearby a favorite grocery store, and I generally stop there after my walk on a Saturday morning… The temperature is mild… I head out, remembering my commitment to one of the grocery checkers to share some items my Traveling Partner made, and deciding to keep my walk short, any way.

The drive to the nature park was quiet. No traffic. I enjoyed it, smiling to myself as I drove with my thoughts, grateful for my loving partner who cares about my well-being, and for the lovely morning. Before I reach the nature park, it begins to rain, first just a sprinkle, then as I reach the trailhead parking, a proper steady rain. I grimace, and laugh, betting my Traveling Partner had checked the weather report more closely than I had.

Now I sit, waiting for a break in the rain. I’m unbothered and relaxed. Hadn’t I already decided to make my walk a shorter one, anyway? No stress. No agitation. Just change. I breathe, exhale, and relax, listening to the rain on the roof of the car.

At its heart, resilience is simply that ability to bounce back in the face of change, uncertainty, emotional disregulation, or even trauma. Resilience needs development, as with things like muscular strength. Specific practices build resilience. Meditation, as a practice, helps build resilience. The practice of “taking in the good” is another that directly builds resilience. Forgiveness, as a practice, is another that contributes to resilience, by limiting how long our hurt feelings or injuries inflicted by another can dominate our thoughts. Practicing non-attachment and embracing related ideas such as impermanence, sufficiency, and building depth and breadth into our perspective on life, generally, are helpful for building resilience.

What’s it good for, though (resilience, I mean)? Why do I put so much value on it? Partly due to this; it improves pain management results.

Resilience let’s us bounce back and carry on, without becoming mired in our pain, sorrow, or anger. Resilience is that quality that gets us quickly past a difficult moment, and on to enjoying the next. Well-established resilience, over time, may become the difference between having some troubling mental health episode or meltdown, and simply acknowledging a difficult experience, dealing with it, and moving on with things calmly. I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty good to me.

…So I practice…

Sometimes, I fall short of my commitment to one practice or another, but that’s also why I see such things as practices in the first place, instead of tasks to be checked off as completed, or skills to be mastered. Mastery is inconsequential. Practice is ongoing. It is a doing that doesn’t really finish. Each practice with real world value in my lived experience becomes a lifestyle change, over time. Each practice becomes part of my routine, and part of who I am. The result? I am more resilient. It becomes a character trait, and in that regard, it also becomes easier to maintain. Such results don’t mean no practice is required, just that the effort and will involved in the practice itself is greatly reduced. Sometimes, though, I still find myself not practicing some practice or other, through circumstances or forgetting. I’m human.

… I just begin again, and get back to practicing…

The rain stops, but it’s not yet daylight, and I’m not in a hurry. There’s no need to rush my walk, or hurry home to barge in on my beloved’s quiet time over his coffee first thing. I sit quietly a little longer. Daybreak soon, and I’ll walk the short loop, and watch the sunrise – then, I’ll begin again.

…It is a good day for self-care.

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being

The Quiet and the Noise

November 17, 2016 //
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I spent yesterday tidying up at home, and waiting for my insurance company to send someone. Still needing to find serial numbers, receipts, and the sorts of documentation insurers may want on items that have been stolen, I spent the morning combining the search with the housekeeping. It’s been more than 24 hours since I came home to the chaos of the break-in; I still find myself checking all the doors and windows to be sure they are locked, as though that would have made a difference (it’s my default to keep them locked).

Most of the lingering anxiety and agita have diminished. Late in the afternoon, an actual detective stopped by, asked some additional questions, photographed muddy footprints under the window through which someone (or multiple someones) accessed the apartment on Tuesday late in the afternoon. His visit, encouragingly, came with the suggestion that it is possible they found one or more of my belongings in an area pawn shop (well, that’s where they would have been headed, sure).  I find myself hoping it is the laptop, willing to shrug off the rest as “excess baggage”. He seemed very pleased that I had the serial numbers, receipts, and invoices.

There’s one thing about this experience that I know the recovery of my stolen goods won’t restore, and no amount of investigating will resolve it; this place no longer feels safe. This place is no longer “home” – at least not now. Maybe that will change? I’m open to that – change is. I know my heart, pretty well actually, and I suspect this moment will continue to catalyze the search for a more permanent long-term residence on a mortgage instead of a lease. In the meantime, I suppose I won’t be too hard on myself for checking doors and windows, or waking up feeling wary in the darkness. Under the circumstances, those things are no longer a matter of “being silly” in a “perfectly safe place”, just a reaction to a demonstrated lack of security in an unsafe world. Wow. That sounds pretty grim.

A pause to appreciate something nice can be so helpful. :-)

A pause to appreciate something nice can be so helpful. 🙂

I take a few minutes to breathe deeply, to relax. I sip my coffee in the predawn quiet. I am at the dining table. The quiet here isn’t silence. The trickle of the aquarium, the noise of the refrigerator, the distant whine of a train idling at the platform, the tick of the clock, and my tinnitus, all remind me that quiet is not a volume setting, it tends rather to be a place I find within myself. I’m not there yet. It may be awhile. I nod knowingly, to myself, and correct my posture – as though that changes anything else, at all. Well, if nothing else, it feels correct (and therefore corrected), which also feels more comfortable – and more ordered – which tends to promote that sense of “things being okay”, that often precedes a sense of safety… all of which I need to feel “at home”. I’ll get there yet. It’s a journey, and I’ve had to begin again.

The panic and hysteria of Tuesday night are behind me. Now it’s tasks and processes, restoring order, finding a feeling of safety again, and recovering my quality of life along the way. The insurance company let me down and missed on their service level agreement, by failing to reach out to be before 5 pm last night. Humans being human, no doubt. I never found myself angry about it. I didn’t honestly want the face-to-face contact with strangers in my space to continue. The day spent alone, quietly, was good healing time spent tidying up, and meditating. It felt enough of a relief from distraction that I am now acutely aware that the TV – really, video media of many types – had overstayed its welcome, and exceeded whatever unstated ideal use standard I apparently do have. I’m not missing it.

I didn’t sleep much (or well) on Tuesday, and I was too fatigued to make much sense of things, yesterday. Most of the day I was fairly numb, and focused on practical tasks – the doing of which was keeping me awake for the expected arrival of the insurance person. Once 5 pm came and went, I began to wind down for the evening. I don’t recall if I had dinner… I remember having lunch (around 3 pm, I think). I crashed for the night very early – around 7:30 pm? I woke to the alarm. I smile, recognizing that I clearly did feel safe enough (and fatigued enough) to sleep deeply. I take a moment to sit with that awareness for some minutes. My conscious perception of safety is not a perfect match for my implicit awareness – and taking time to be aware that I feel safer that I may suggest to myself when I think about it seems worth doing. Thoughts and feelings are different elements of our consciousness, neither is the ideal leader (for me); I work toward balancing them. Being very human, I mostly practice. I often fail. I’m okay with the failures; I learn the most from those, and I can begin again (apparently) any number of times. 🙂

I notice the clock; it’s already time to get ready to head to the office. I go to the studio to grab my laptop bag to more comfortably return to the office with my work laptop (I brought it home from the office in a tote!! lol)… and discover that my laptop bag is… gone. Well, of course. They took the laptop, only makes sense that they’d have looked all around the place for the laptop bag that was carefully put away in the back of a closet. So weird. I’m guess I’m glad they took such care… I mean… if I get it back it will lovely if it isn’t scratched up or wrecked. I feel a wave of anxiety sweep over me. “What am I not noticing is missing??” I take another deep breath, and relax; if I haven’t noticed it is missing, how important to me is it really?

Today is a good day for perspective. Today is a good day to stay engaged in this present moment, right  here. I am okay right now. 🙂 Still takes practice. 😉

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being

Nightmares

September 18, 2015 //
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I woke during the night, in a panic. Drenched in sweat, shaking, heart pounding, sobbing – a nightmare. I still have them, although they are far less frequent. I am immobilized while I get my bearings; my bedroom is hung with paintings that remind me I am safe, and are characterized by the use of glow-in-the-dark paints, too, so that in the literal ‘darkest moment’, I am still illuminated softly by love, by hope, by inspiration, and all manner of gentle reminders that life is quite a separate experience happening outside The Nightmare City. I remember to take deep breaths, and fold myself into a comfortable cross-legged position (I can’t quite manage Lotus posture unless I have been doing yoga for some minutes). I meditate for a few minutes until my heart slows, and the trembling stops. I check the clock – I managed only about 90 minutes of sleep before the nightmares hit. It happens. It used to herald hours, or days of nightmares to come.

How will I

How will I “find my way home”?
“Daytime in The Nightmare City” 10″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas with glow, glitter and micaceous oxide. Indoor light, charged. 2014

I got up long enough to get a drink of water – a childhood ritual of wakefulness that still soothes me – and walk calmly through my small home; there are no places for monsters hide, here. I am quite safe, even within this fragile vessel if I allow myself to be aware of how much of content of my conscious mind is chosen, and created. I am not empowering my nightmares by considering them in detail after I wake, and they slowly dissipate. (Seriously, they do. It does require literally letting go of thinking ‘about’ them; thinking about them in the moments after waking only gives them significance and power.) I think of my traveling partner, sick at home, hopefully sleeping. This, too, helps calm me. I don’t focus on the distance, or that I can’t just crawl into his arms for comfort – I breathe, and consider him sleeping comfortably, himself, safe and undisturbed, and allow my own feeling of security and safety to continue to build on the awareness that much is right in the world, in the quiet of night, here, now. I am okay in this moment.

I stand in the twilight of my kitchen, lit by the walkway light just outside my window, filtered by the closed blinds, and finish a second glass of water and smiling, thinking it would be likely to wake me later needing to pee. I don’t give that another thought, instead feeling the cool water in my mouth, and enjoying the awareness of indoor plumbing and running water, and being in the moment. That’s another thing I find very calming after bad nightmares; savoring the awareness of the comforts of life, whatever they may be. Don’t they have more real substance than a nightmare? 🙂

I returned to bed, filling my thoughts with things that feel good, but perhaps not intensely so…things that would be gentle on my consciousness: clouds drifting across a blue sky, soft autumn breezes, the sound of peeping frogs, memories of fireflies… I woke at the sound of my alarm, feeling rested and undisturbed.

It has been rare for me to have just one nightmare, and follow that with restful sleep. Incremental change over time is a thing – and  yes, there are practices to practice and verbs involved. I expect my results will vary. Hey, my results do vary and there are verbs involved; living in the midst of stress, drama, and turmoil resulted in nightmares almost nightly, and weeks of disturbed sleep at a time, and terrifying isolation because there was no safe outlet for discussion, with no particular emotional support available, interrupted by just days of restful sleep. Yes, the choices matter – and they are not always easy ones. I now live alone, because at least for now even living with other people presents enough additional stress for me that I find managing my symptoms more challenging, and they are far more likely to flare up (much of my PTSD is related to trauma in the context of relationships, and domestic violence). (And no, I’m not saying everyone with PTSD should live alone – that’s ludicrous; I’m just one person, making my own choices, and following my own path. This is what I need for me. I don’t even know that this is what I will ‘always’ need – since ‘always’ is incredibly unlikely, ever.)

Even though I am having my own experience, I'm not really alone in this; music reminds me how much of this experience is really shared.

Even though I am having my own experience, I am not alone.

Turns out to be a lovely morning. I’ve got my favorite playlist on, because sometimes the demons need to be reminded that I’m going to bounce back, and I need to remind them they don’t tell me. lol Yep – the songs on my playlist aren’t just catchy tracks that I enjoy dancing to – they tell me stories, remind me of truths, and help me drive my demons back. Mornings after nightmares are best with music. 🙂 [Your results may vary.]

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War