Archives for posts with tag: practicing the practices
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Sooner or Later

October 28, 2015 //
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I am cooking dinner. I will treat myself gently tonight. My appointments with my therapist are not about ‘easy’. Today’s visit was… productive. I’m tired. I have a terrible headache. I am… thought-provoked. (There’s surely a less awkward word for that…) It’s okay; I’ve the quiet in which to relax, thoughtful or fretful, and the time left in the solitary evening to consider what I need from all this, as I sort things out and let other things sink in. Wednesday evenings are good for meditation, for long soaks in hot baths, for favorite music or interesting documentaries, and for taking care of this fragile vessel as well as I can.

It doesn’t really matter much what specifically I am working on just at the moment; very little of it feels ‘easy’, some of it doesn’t even feel worthwhile until long past when it is completely behind me… every bit of it matters, and there are verbs involved. Right now the verb is ‘cooking’. I wonder quietly if there will ever be a time that I don’t rely on reminders, ‘to do’ lists, alarms, and cheat sheets? Quite possibly not. I feel a moment of surprise that this does not distress me, and frustrated that I can’t quite recall with certainty whether it ever did.

It’s a quiet evening, suitable to taking care of me. I’ll have a healthy bite of dinner, a leisurely shower, and relax over a book… perhaps. I find myself rethinking that almost immediately; I need to let my brain rest, too. I consider an evening of music, and feel vaguely irritated. Just stillness, then? Sure. Dinner, a shower – and then chill time, sitting quietly with a cup of tea, probably chamomile, or maybe a hot cider… It’s the stillness itself that matters most.

 

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Epsom salts, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Small Differences Matter

October 25, 2015 //
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I feel anxious. Well, no…actually, I don’t feel anxious at all from the perspective of emotion. What I feel feels like the emotion I call anxiety (and maybe it is, in some fashion), but there is nothing in my experience of the day to support such a feeling – or to cause it. What there is, though, is noise.

I woke up in tremendous pain this morning, and feeling quite stiff. I did all the usual things to cope with that physical experience, and looked forward to a relaxed day, contentedly doing laundry and watching the rain fall.  I’ve had that, so in that sense the day delivered well on its promise; the chainsaws were unnecessary, and unexpected. Yep. Chainsaws. Chainsaws and a pneumatic log splitter and an air compressor. It is not anything like a quiet Sunday, now. Today the landlady and her husband are cutting the lumber from the recently felled trees down to size and stacking it. I am unfortunate that the wood was piled directly in front of my apartment when the trees came down. The woodpile on which the newly cut wood is being stacked is on the other side of my apartment. The split logs are being carried via wheel barrow – quite possibly the noisiest one ever – around my apartment, along the sidewalk just outside the long west wall, currently strewn with small gravel rocks and mud, so making a rather horrible grinding noise as the wheelbarrow is dragged along on what sound like triangular wheels. I am surrounded by the sounds of work on a fucking Sunday. I don’t know how to communicate to people that getting some quiet actually matters for my physical health as well as my emotional health. There just isn’t any way for someone to understand what they don’t understand. It is unlikely that my landlady has any real awareness of what the persisting noise does to my consciousness; saying that it ‘affects my mood’ doesn’t adequately explain things – it would affect anyone’s ‘mood’. It does.

I wait it out. It will be over sooner or later. I can’t meditate. I can’t focus to read. I can’t write with any ease – even masking the noise with other noise isn’t helpful, I feel cross and aggressive. I certainly wouldn’t be able to nap, and I’d very much like to. I can’t paint or draw. I feel frustrated and on the edge of anger – and I know that it isn’t really about any of these emotions; this is a physical reaction to very irritating stimuli. I go through the steps of meditation even though my consciousness feels raw and irritated; I breathe, and I breathe again. I let go of the aggravation and relax – and I do it again. I just keep repeating gentle practices and processes. I find myself frustrated and help myself over it. I start feeling angry and aggressive, and I take a few more deep breaths, and remember the landlady’s face; she wasn’t enjoying doing this work on a Sunday, herself – it certainly wasn’t ever ‘about’ me. That small moment of compassion and sympathy matters, too; taking the time to view another person as fundamentally human also, and equal in the value of their experience compared to mine makes me far less likely to be inclined to place blame, make demands, or lash out in anger. It’s a worthwhile pause for consideration.

The way ahead is sometimes obscured with fallen leaves.

The way ahead may sometimes be obscured with fallen leaves.

Eventually the laundry is done, and a nice casserole for supper (and tomorrow’s lunch) is made. The house is generally tidy, and the bed remade with fresh linens. I see the sun peek through gray skies for the first time today. It’s finally quiet, too. A lovely hot cup of tea might be nice… or a bubble bath… a short nap might be quite pleasant… I breathe in the quiet, and feel myself relax as the quiet becomes more real minute by minute. I am pleased that I didn’t let the noise get to me, today; there’s still so much of the day left to enjoy. 🙂

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Another Word for ‘Now’

October 20, 2015 //
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I am enjoying a quiet evening. It isn’t a spectacular evening in any noteworthy way, but it is quiet, and relaxed, and satisfying; I am content with… ‘now’? Something more than that, but I lack concise straightforward language to describe it. Maybe I will stumble upon just the right word that means “I’m okay, by my own will and effort, the nourishment of love, and a future lifetime of healthy practices, and this is a damned fine cup of decaf on a chilly autumn evening and everything is just fine”… that’s the word I am looking for. 🙂

I could just enjoy this lovely moment.

I could just enjoy this lovely moment.

I have been in pain all day. I walked home slowly, more of a stroll, phone put away in my handbag, enjoying the geese and squirrels at play, and the autumn leaves fluttering to the ground. I got home, and did some yoga, and had a light dinner. I enjoyed a long soak in a hot bath, after meditating for some while. It was lovely. I’m still in pain. Doesn’t really matter that much right now.

I don’t find myself moved to poke and prod at my consciousness, or over-explain life’s endlessly mystifying curriculum to myself. This feels like an evening to relax, and to ‘reap what I have sown’ – there has to be room to appreciate progress, to enjoy moments, to be grateful for growth, for beginnings, for love… It’s a nice evening for all of that, and pain seems somewhat irrelevant for the moment.

I am relaxing here, sipping my coffee and listening to jazz. I am in the middle of a number of books – I nearly always am – and this sweet gentle evening is progressing such that it seems very much inevitable that I’ll be reading one of them in some imminent future moment, legs folded beneath me, coffee cup carefully perched on my knee, or cradled in my lap, lost in someone else’s words.

This is quite lovely. Isn’t that enough? I very much think it is. (Your results may vary; there are verbs involved.)

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Epsom salts, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Shadows, Nightmares, Twists of Fate

October 19, 2015 //
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It’s a quiet evening, and I am alone with my headache and my arthritis, by choice. By mid-afternoon, my pain was just too much to find the thought of spending time with anyone else particularly enticing, and I asked my traveling partner for a rain check – as eager as we are to see each other, to cuddle, to laugh together, I am sometimes a bit of a lost soul when I hurt this much. Spreading that poison around is not a gesture of love.

Be love.

Be love.

I walked home thinking about the many ways that lovers communicate, and wondering how it is than anyone can ever justify being vile and inconsiderate to someone they love. Think it over for a moment – and just about at that moment when you’re at the edge of excusing some bit of heinous nastiness you may have recently visited upon someone you love by saying you didn’t mean to, or couldn’t help it – think about how many times you’ve shown greater self-restraint and not said something you felt was justified… because it could cost you your job. A job. I walked and wondered. How often have I – even with the little self-restraint as I can sometimes muster at all – how often have I held myself back from some angry remark  for a fucking job – but shown so little courtesy to a lover, or partner, that I would allow myself to say something that might be intentionally hurtful, diminish their value to me, or threaten their security in the relationship itself? Even once is too often! Even once is entirely incomprehensibly inappropriate between lovers. Seriously. Those sorts of words, those sorts of moments of unrestrained hostility are not love. Not only are they not love – they are not even adult. The anger of hurt children. Well…yeah. I do have this injury…  but… I don’t really find that my injury excuses treating someone I love worse than I treat my coworkers –  and I can do so much better, I mean, this is love we’re talking about! If I can generally and with exceptional reliability refrain from most bad behavior at work – how can I ever ever say to someone I love that I couldn’t do better in the way I treat them at home? It does take practice, but how is that not entirely acceptable, and needful? Isn’t love of far greater value than a job? Isn’t love worth practicing?

We choose our path, our words, our actions.

We choose our path, our words, our actions.

I’m not sure why I was thinking about all that, specifically, as I walked home. It’s been a very long time since I have had to deal with any of that. Shadows of old baggage. Remnants of nightmares. Maybe some relief that I’m not still ‘there, then’ with relationships that were a profound source of new pain. Relief that I am so much less heavily invested in old pain, too. Tonight I hurt – but it is only the more manageable hurt of headaches and back pain. Feeling my heart break hearing angry words is on an entirely other level of hurting, and there are no pills or prescriptions for heart breaks – and I am grateful to love and be loved by someone who recognizes the value of being love.

Perspective. What matters most?

Perspective. What matters most?

Attachment is a funny thing; I get so hung up on some detail that I earnestly want to be very real, and find myself unable to have the beautiful thing that is, or I fail to recognize what works for me because I am too busy struggling with what I’ve lost or can’t have. We are such complicated fucking monkeys. lol

Undisturbed by solitude.

Undisturbed by solitude.

I am enjoying the evening with myself. Listening to music I love. Feeling valued and respected by a man I value and respect in turn. Feeling valued and respected by the woman in the mirror. Content and unshaken. It has taken some hours to write even 683 words, and I wonder about that, too; I seem to write using fewer words when I write in the evenings, but it generally takes me much longer – and I’m not as certain that I’ve said what I thought I meant to… or anything worth reading significant, or insightful. I’m not bitching. I’m not feeling particularly critical on any point. It’s more the emotion that goes along with the funny face, head cocked to the side, of something I can’t quite fathom… “quizzical” is a word that comes to mind…only…it’s the wrong word for the moment. lol (…And here we quite possibly see the effect of fatigue on my injury as I begin to struggle to find words. Often. It is a source of ongoing frustration for me, but I don’t gloss over it anymore, or try to fake my way out of it; vulnerable frankness is a better fit for me. Your results may vary.)

I am tired. I still hurt. I am happily grooving to favorite tunes I’ve never heard before as I write. Think. Write some more. This is my life…at least…this is part of it, and it’s a really good part that I enjoy find meaningful. In this moment I can comfortably say ‘this is a really good part of my experience’ and it feels secure, safe, and comfortable; unthreatened. I don’t need this moment to also be the next moment. I am not regretting some other moment. No forever. No expectations of some moment beyond this one; I am so much more comfortable enjoying this one right now, just as it is. I have a slow back and forth conversation with my partner in the background while I write. It’s not an interruption; the conversation is paced to the things we are each doing, where we are.

Just in time to sit, quietly, to be still, and to listen...

Just in time to sit, quietly, to be still, and to listen…

The evening winds down slowly. Tomorrow I can begin again. 🙂

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Things That are Hard

October 14, 2015 //
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I woke feeling well-rested and content, and  I got a great start to my day – even on the professional side, or so it seemed, initially.

Like most people, I am not universally skilled at all things – personal or professional. It’s been pretty well confirmed over time that if my symptoms flare up (PTSD), or my brain injury gets in the way of getting things done, like dominoes falling in sequence more challenges begin to pile up, emotionally, cognitively, and socially. This morning, a ‘what the fuck?’ moment of frustration quickly developed into the sort of challenges I can’t easily manage in the office, and I made the choice to get out of the challenging environment, head for home and take care of me. I knew as I walked home in the chilly autumn sunshine that I would be more easily able to support myself in the quiet safety of my wee place, surrounded by green and contentment.

Home.

Home.

There’s been some construction in the community. My windows were recently replaced. Then a tree was removed – part of a ‘drainage improvement’ project. Not easy experiences – but I got over it, and the overall look of things has remained substantially unchanged… (You know where this is going, right?)

Today, when I get home, things are very different indeed.

Today, when I get home, things are very different indeed.

Speechless. Also just at the edge of becoming enraged by frustration, and a feeling of being actively undermined – professionally and personally – at every turn, if not by the willful intent of human beings, certainly by circumstances. This is hard. Frustration is my kryptonite, and I’m not even super.

Now I’m home… my feeling of safety is destroyed by the continuous sound of the voices of strangers shouting over machinery – on all three sides of my apartment (3 different work crews: painters, a pipe crew with a ditch witch, and a crew of…well…carpenters on the roof, or roofers doing carpentry). My sound sensitivity increasing rapidly to the point where sounds will actually seem… psychologically painful. (Is that the right phrase for this experience, I wonder?) My ability to sooth myself is shattered by the combination, and the tears I will no doubt cry sometime soon are beginning to queue up waiting for the next thing I can’t take more of. Just fucking great, right? I come home to take care of me… and… now what? Please tell me – now what? I’m even completely alone, no reassuring hug from my traveling partner, or anyone else, unless I want to step outside and start randomly asking construction guys for hugs. There is no human comfort to be had until I have to force myself into the world to get to my therapy appointment on the other side of town – using mass transit – at which point I can pay another human being a lot of money to spend an hour with me at arm’s length.

Sorry. You’re ‘seeing me’ at what is my current near-worst. I hope you understand that, for the moment, being heard is the best thing I can do for myself – even if it is the being-heard-at-a-distance of writing words that someone else will read from far away. It actually counts for a lot, so… thank you for being here. So…what else can I – what else will I do? Things. There are things to do that will help – the harder part is accepting that each thing may only help some tiny tiny seemingly insignificant amount, and that it is critically important to go ahead and do each and every one to get to the best possible self-supporting outcome. It’s harder than I’d like it to be in the moment.

  1. I’m going to put on some music to mask some of the background noise; I choose Squarepusher, and turn it up louder than I might ordinarily, because some of the noise of the machinery will tend to blend in and fool me into perceiving more music than noise.
  2. I make a soothing hot beverage (no stimulants, though); the heat of the cup in my hands is comforting, and enjoying a cup of tea requires me to slow things down and take a minute for me.
  3. I make a point of alerting the construction crews politely that I am at home, and ask that they be courteous about the noise as much as possible; given a chance, people are frequently fairly kind and accommodating when they are aware that a veteran with PTSD is struggling nearby.
  4. I sit down to write about my experience, without determining in advance whether this will be ‘for publication’ or not, freeing myself to ‘get it all out there’, and leave spelling, grammar, syntax, tone, clarity, and intent to be reviewed afterward. No self-censorship. No self-criticism. Just words.
  5. I review my self-care checklist and verify that meds and basics are handled, making any adjustments needed.
  6. I put the writing on hold for some little while, to meditate if I can (it’s really really noisy around her today), but that may have to wait for the work crews to go to lunch at noon.
  7. Yoga helps me relax my body – and right now every small bit of ease I can provide to myself is going to have value.

I’ve done what I can for now. Soon I’ll be leaving for my appointment, anyway. So far, step by step, practice by practice, I have dialed down my stress enough to feel calm and mostly okay. I am okay right now; it’s important to notice and reinforce the awareness to help build more positive implicit emotional memory, and emotional self-sufficiency.

Today is a good day to be a student. Today is a good day to practice the practices. Today I’m okay right now.

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words
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