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Merry Meet and Merry Part

May 15, 2015 //
0

Another lovely morning – I’ve had quite a string of them, and I’m enjoying it without expectations of future such lovely mornings. No dread, I just find it a poor choice to attempt to force the universe and circumstances to comply with my whims by assuming it will be so. It hasn’t worked out well in the past to take that approach. 🙂 I found myself beginning this blog post with such enthusiasm – yesterday – that I got to 5k words and didn’t finish. This morning is another lovely one, my Traveling Partner dozing near by, my coffee hot and tasty. I pare down the words a bit and wonder if I should publish this one at all… it seems to strike a fairly serious tone, which wasn’t my intent when I began it…still, there are some things worth saying about the recent string of ‘easy’ pleasant mornings… there are verbs involved. 🙂

Flowers are a lovely metaphor for growth over time.

Flowers are a lovely metaphor for growth over time.

I have been finding it easier of late to ‘merry meet’ when I interact with someone, and similarly easily ‘merry part’ when the time comes to walk away – even if that departure is heralded by some moment of stress or OPD in my vicinity. (If you are just joining us here, ‘OPD’ is ‘Other People’s Drama’.) My gentle mornings and evenings seem to cuddle busy productive work days that are, while not entirely stress free, quite enjoyable moment to moment. I am learning not to immerse myself in the difficulties of others. It’s a good time for me, and I am generally content.

Does any of this make it sound ‘easy’? I sure hope not. I mean well, and I benefit from my writing – which is why I do it, honestly – and some of you reading have shared that you find value in my words, or pictures. I sure don’t want to set expectations that these changes in experience and quality of life have been effortless to reach, however well received, however simple sounding; there are verbs involved. I am putting in a lot of time and practice to discover the difference between ‘wish’ and ‘will’. They are very different. 🙂

Imperfectly perfect is as perfect as perfect gets.

Imperfectly perfect is as perfect as perfect gets.

The changes in my experience, in my emotional resilience and self-sufficiency over time, and my enjoyment of life generally have not only not been ‘easy’ to reach – they are not promised even now. I know I am likely to have the occasional bad day. I’ll have difficult times and frustrating moments. I’m likely to struggle to be understood now and then, or to have an interaction with a loved one that leaves me feeling mistreated. Practice, in my experience so far, does not make ‘perfect’ – it just doesn’t, and I highly suggest letting that old trope fall by the wayside. Practice is practice; choosing good practices, and practicing them because the practices themselves add a positive quality to my experience has ‘moved the needle’ on my quality of life. I am experiencing an improvement over time – with continued practice. Your results may vary and there are verbs involved – and choices. The practices I choose for me are most effective when they are the most effective practices I can choose for myself – the ones that resonate with me, and meet my needs over time, providing me with the greatest value. I think that’s where I’ve ‘gone wrong’ in treatment before…trying to force practices to work for me that either didn’t address my needs well, or just weren’t the practices with the outcome I sought. The effort was wasted, not because it lacked value, but because it lacked the value I expected it to have. If I had been, then, more easily able to accept the value that any one practice or change in behavior or thinking actually offered, as it was, I might have gone farther, faster, sooner… I lacked the wisdom and experience to understand that good practices are not ‘One Size Fits All’. So. I try new ones, and share what I can of the experience. There’s a lot to learn in life’s curriculum.  And I sure hope this does not sound like a lecture. 🙂

Prescription strength mindfulness has been the best Rx for me...and it can be taken as part of any treatment plan!

Prescription strength mindfulness has been the best Rx for me…and it can be taken as part of any treatment plan! 

There’s a common and peculiar notion that a magic pill might save the day, spare the effort, provide a short-cut…and I think I got lost on that detour, too. For a long while I took powerful mind-altering prescription drugs on the recommendation of my clinician at the time, in a rather desperate willingness to ‘try anything’ that would ease my suffering, and balance my volatility… only… what I felt stated in a more honest way was a desperate willingness to try anything that did not require actual effort,  or an investment in will, practice, changing behaviors and thinking, investing in my time, or making a real commitment to the lengthy process that growth can be. That all sounds like real work…I wanted a magic pill, and no arguments. I wanted to be personally validated as being ‘the good guy’ and assured that because I had been victimized the world had an obligation to put things right somehow. I told countless therapists who asked me what I hoped to get out of treatment that what I wanted was ‘happily ever after’. I’ll tell you it’s worth saying so to a therapist at least once in one’s life – just to see the look on their face. It is not a reasonable goal. No magic pill. No short cuts. No happily ever after. I dutifully took my pills though…and then other pills to address symptoms those pills caused…and more therapy because the pills weren’t really fixing things, just muting them a bit…and then other different pills because the pills caused side effects…and more pills because those pills didn’t do quite what other pills did that I thought perhaps needed to be done… The pills were wrecking my health, and not doing my cognition or emotional balance any real good, either. Seeking a magic potion did not replace the effort required to learn to live and love skillfully, in the face of chaos and damage. (And the no short cuts rule seems pretty universal.)

I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. (Please don’t just wander off and stop taking your medication! Doing so over a blog post seems a poor approach to good self-care.)

I share what works for me because it was so hard for me to find, in the first place.

I share what works for me because it was so hard for me to find, in the first place.

Why am I on and on about how this is not easy, and that the journey requires taking steps, and that will requires action, and that there are verbs involved if I am enjoying my experience lately, with seemingly such ease day-to-day? Because I, myself, could be mislead by the ease in my experience lately, and find my way to problematic thinking and assumptions that could wreck my heart nearly instantly if something goes sideways unexpectedly.  I find it incredibly painful and discouraging to embrace expectations of ease and effortlessness, and have my contentment yoinked out from under me suddenly, not through any great tragedy, but simply because I lost sight of how much practice goes into living well, and how much time I invest in good self-care and taking care of me. “Easy” doesn’t describe it… and when it feels ‘easy’ I generally find that the sensation of ease is related more to developing skill over time, rather than to any lack of effort. I’m still practicing. There are still verbs involved. I am learning to undermine the demons of discouragement and futility lurking in the darkness by being accepting and aware of the commitment I make to practicing, and the necessity to continue. Doing so results in fewer of those terrible moments when it feels like it wasn’t worth trying at all; they are an illusion, and have no greater value than any other fleeting thought or emotion, and choosing differently is possible. You know I’m going to say it again… There are verbs involved. I also know there will be days when I struggle to understand why I have to practice so much or ‘work so hard’ at what seems so effortless on other days. Perspective will matter. Maybe on that day, these words will matter, too.

Each having our own experience, and all in this together; like flowers, we are also blooming in our own time.

Each having our own experience, and all in this together; like flowers, we are also blooming in our own time.

Today is apparently a good day for a lot of words. Today is a good day to practice good practices that are effective for me, personally. Today is a good day to try new practices with an open mind, and a will to explore what they may offer. Today is a good day to brush off discouragement with a smile and say “you’re not my supervisor!” Today is a good day to observe the suffering of others and choose differently myself, without being any less compassionate about their experience.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, Uncategorized

Basic Needs

May 8, 2015 //
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My coffee this morning is less appealing than most mornings. I slept poorly, when I slept last night, at all. I woke feeling groggy and stiff, and reaching for the alarm in slow motion. It seemed to beep an infernally long time. I started to fuss at myself about each detail that felt irksome, or disappointing, a choice that holds the potential to derail both the morning and the day, given an opportunity to do so.

I considered basic needs, instead, and the difference between wants and needs – real needs, basic needs. Is a bad cup of coffee actually such a big deal? Is having a really first-rate cup of coffee in the morning a ‘need’? I do enjoy it. It’s a high priority in the morning to have coffee, both for the ritual and routine of it, and for the pleasantness of the warmth of the cup in my hand. Does having that moment rise to the level of a ‘basic need’? Hardly. Does it, however, ‘meet needs’? Sure. Does my rather average, almost actually bad cup of coffee this morning meet my needs? It does.

If the need being gratified by my cup of coffee in the morning can be so easily gratified even by a bad cup of coffee, and if having a cup of coffee is not, itself, a ‘need’…what is the underlying need met by my cup of coffee in the morning?

The flowers may be lovely, but life's needs must be met before they blossom.

The flowers may be lovely, but life’s needs must be met before they blossom.

What is a ‘basic need’? Without checking references at all, I define ‘basic need’ myself as those needs that, left unmet, result in poor emotional or physical health, perhaps worsening until death may be an outcome. I mean…that’s the definition I tend to force myself to accept in difficult times, when a lot of other needs are unmet; it helps me get by until better times to tell myself I ‘have everything I really need to survive’. Is this extremely short list (food, water, sleep) really all there is to ‘basic needs’? I don’t really think so, myself, because those survival basics don’t do more than offer the most basic opportunity to wake up again to try another day. If I want to thrive, rather than simply survive, my list of ‘basic needs’ expands a bit to include things like shelter, appropriate clothing, sex, acknowledgment and internet connectivity (hey, it’s my list! lol). It gets complicated [for me] to understand, for example, that while I genuinely do see sex as a ‘basic need’ as an adult…my need doesn’t impose a demand on anyone else. That may be true of all needs, actually. My own individual needs do not constitute a demand or obligation on any one other human being, unless we share a specific contract – like the one human beings share with each other in marriage, or that we share as a society with our government. An interesting thought on a Friday that quickly takes me to the question ‘What do I feel obligated to do for my fellow human beings to ensure their basic needs are met, and what more can I do to build a world where we all see mere survival as an unacceptable minimum standard of life for humanity?”

Subjectively, I need this cup of coffee in the morning… It’s clearly not a ‘basic need’ in any sense. (I’m no expert, these are simply my own musings about needs, and your results – and opinion – may vary.) I go to great lengths to ensure I have it, however, and the feeling of having it satisfies in the way feeling a basic need met also satisfies. What’s up with that? I’m back to ‘what is the underlying need being met?’

We are connected, related, interdependent, and reliant upon each other for survival. How do I balance my needs, and wants, versus those of the world?

We are connected, related, interdependent, and reliant upon each other for survival. How do I balance my needs, and wants, versus those of the world?

Do you know what you really need in life? Are the most ‘important’ needs in life truly the basic survival needs? Once we’ve got survival going on…what then? What do I really need as a human primate, a creature of both emotion and reason, to thrive – to be the best of who I am, to become the woman I most want to be, to enjoy the many facets of living in a way that really satisfies?

What do I need to thrive?

What do I need to thrive?

Today is a good day for questions. Life’s curriculum doesn’t take a day off – and the quiz is always an ‘open book test’. Today is a good day to ask ‘what do I need from my life’? Today is a good day to find joy in whatever answers – or experiences – there may be.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, Words

Simple Mistakes

May 7, 2015 //
2

I woke gently to a lovely morning. It seems…unflawed. Being human, I enjoy the moment aware that even lovely moments pass. Savoring the pleasant ones is lovely…but sometimes leaves me wondering what to write about. I have a handy list of things I thought about writing at some other time, but didn’t…I check the list and the very first thing reads simply ‘spelling mistakes’.

Flowers. Sunshine. Light.

Flowers. Sunshine. Light.

I will admit I read my own writing. I don’t know whether that’s an odd thing. I review new writing for spelling mistakes, grammar, syntax, incomprehensible weirdness, an overabundance of commas, a surplus of poetry resulting in a shortage of coherence; these are basic editing steps and sure, I do them. I also read my own writing. I find it is an excellent reminder of how far I have come, how far there is yet to go, and also serves to bring me back to understandings and knowledge I’ve already got, that I may lose sight of now and then. Poetically speaking, sometimes my writing serves to communicate with me – getting ideas across to me, past my injury – like passing notes to myself.

I rarely catch all the spelling mistakes. (Let’s leave my grammar and punctuation out of this. There’s only so much the features in WordPress can do to fight me off!)

Obvious spelling mistakes are pretty easy, and of course the spell-checker handles most of them, but I routinely miss at least one that I catch later, when I am reading my own writing. Sometimes a lot later. Years. It messes with my head to catch a spelling error in an older blog post, months or years later, if I am reading on the train, or under circumstances when I would not be able to immediately fix it; I am not likely to remember quite where or what it was, just that it exists. Most of the spelling mistakes I don’t catch fall into one basic category: real words that don’t fit. ‘Form’ instead of ‘from’, for example, or ‘that’ instead of ‘than’, and of course these are mistakes a spell-checker doesn’t generally pick up – and they change the meaning of the sentence! My least favorite outcome of a spelling error is being misunderstood. I can so easily get past the part where you may think I’m an idiot, or just dreadful at writing things down. Being misunderstood feels frustrating, unsatisfying, and alienating, sometimes shameful, as though the entire burden of successful communication rests on me. (If I am writing, it sort of does…doesn’t it?)

(My brain throws a humorous, encouraging scene into my imagination to lighten the moment, my own voice as an authority figure, calm and firm, an airport baggage claim carousel nearby, “Ma’am, please set the baggage down and back away quietly, and no one will get hurt…”. I smile, and let perspective win.)

Beauty

Another perspective. Sunlight and flowers.

I guess what I’m on about is that practicing good practices – whatever they are – does not lead to ‘perfection’. It leads a lot of wonderful places, depending on what I am practicing, of course, but ‘perfect’ isn’t actually one of them. ‘Proficient’ seems achievable, perhaps even ‘masterful’, ‘skillful’, ‘growth’, or ‘change’ – there are a lot of different outcomes to practice that are powerful or positive (again, depending on what I am practicing; not all practices are created equal). Perfection is not even on the menu, unless I redefine ‘perfection’ to be something achievable in the first place – and such a definition of perfection would have to leave room for the occasional mistake.

I make spelling mistakes. More often because I type very fast, than because I don’t know the correct spelling of the word I wish to use, some of them are a result of damage…but however carefully I write, I manage to make the occasional spelling mistake. My mistakes sometimes frustrate me, but they also tie me to this very human experience in a very human way. I’m okay with that. I still like to be understood, and to present my writing with great care and consideration; it is ‘speaking for me’. I know that when I read an old post, a missed spelling mistake can be very jarring, halting the flow of my thoughts, like a scratch on a beautiful wood finish. What about you? Do they mess with your reading enjoyment? If they do, let’s use the opportunity to connect; reply with a comment to the post, and tell me what the spelling error is. I’ll fix it and say thank you. 🙂 We are each having our own experience – but we are also all in this together.

I make mistakes. We all do. This morning is a lovely morning, and so much so that contemplating life’s small missteps and making time for perspective about the small things that can go wrong feels safe and comfortable, not the least bit worrisome or stressful. Mistakes are pretty human. Letting them stress me out is pretty human, but not very useful. Finding perspective on the every day stresses in life – like the spelling mistakes in a blog post – is a simple practice that I find builds emotional resilience over time.

Today is a good day for perspective.

Today is a good day for perspective.

Today is a good day to practice good practices. Today is a good day to be so very human, with all the wonders and delights that are just beyond the suffering, when I practice good practices and make good choices to support my needs over time. Today is a good day to take next steps, to try new things, and enjoy moments. Today is a good day to enjoy the world.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, The Art of Being, Words

Frustration, Failure, and Free Will

May 4, 2015 //
0

I slept badly last night. My sleep was interrupted, restless, and featured bad dreams on old themes with new characters. I felt over-heated much of the night, which I noticed most often immediately before taking some action that subsequently found me feeling too cold. It was an uncomfortable sort of night. I could spend many hours and words looking for ‘why’; I don’t find that doing so is helpful, nor does it result in fewer such nights. I let it go and move on, feeling generally in good spirits this morning in spite of the difficult night.

I didn’t let the lack of good sleep frustrate me. It got me thinking, this morning, about frustration in general. Frustration is my kryptonite, emotionally. Something about my messed up wiring, and broken bits, allows even small moments of frustration to become a very big, very ugly, emotional mess in a small amount of time. Lately, I’ve been finding my way to using some common moments of frustration as simple practices for dealing more appropriately and comfortably with frustration itself. The value in these small practices has been almost immediate, but the value in any practice is the practicing, itself, and I still need quite a lot of it before I even approach a place in life where I may be able to say “I handle frustration well”. That’s the goal, though, ultimately.

The journey is not all blue skies and meadows...but there are some blue skies and meadows to enjoy along the way.

The journey is not all blue skies and meadows…but there are some blue skies and meadows to enjoy along the way.

It is no easy feat for me to choose to make use of some unpleasant moment or circumstance to willfully practice some better practice than my reactive impulse in the moment might direct me towards without any practice at all. Frustration is a free will killer. Frustration dissolves emotional resilience and mindfulness almost instantly, for me. Frustration is an emotion to which I reliably still react, rather than responding with mindfulness, will, consideration and good self-care.  Practicing useful practices has resulted in so many day-to-day improvements in my experience that it has been a source of some frustration that I hadn’t yet built a practice specific to mastering how I manage frustration, itself. Finding one or two in my everyday experience – built around the most common sources of frustration in my own life (like logging into apps using complicated passwords that easily fail, or the occasional odd screen-freeze on my device) – is allowing me to practice better behaviors in response to frustrating moments. The hope is that doing so with small things, harmless things, common things will insulate me from major freak outs and emotional disasters when bigger things frustrate me; practice may not make ‘perfect’, but it sure tends to solidify habits, and change specific reactions.

Taking time to appreciate pleasant moments gives them lasting impact on my day-to-day experience.

Taking time to appreciate pleasant moments gives them lasting impact on my day-to-day experience.

Celebrating progress, even small wins, has big value. Even something as small on the victory scale as a change in thinking, or a good idea, is worth a moment of my appreciation. This morning, I’m taking time to appreciate new practices that address a very old issue, for me, and feeling positive and supported. This, too, is a practice; the practice of celebrating small victories, and incremental progress over time, is a practice that builds more positive implicit memory, as well as providing myself with emotional support from within – which builds emotional self-sufficiency, and keeps me on the path of reaching that place where my close relationships with others are reliably chosen based on desire, and built on positive emotional values, rather than investing in habitual, self-defeating, or co-dependent behaviors, that over time become damaging.

Where does my path take me? How do I look beyond patterns to find change?

Where does my path take me? How do I look beyond patterns to find change?

 

Meeting most of my emotional needs, myself, isn’t an unreasonable goal, and getting there lifts the burden from loved ones to ‘make me happy’ – or ‘make me’ anything at all. I get to ‘make me’ in my own image. Powerful. I am eager to take that project to a new level by moving into creative live/work space and investing more of my time in me. The wait involved in ideal readiness – and an available unit – is another practice in managing frustration on a larger scale; my impatience lurks in the background, waiting for a moment to jump out and undermine my good time now. Mindfulness practices are one way to keep my Observer firmly in the driver’s seat for much of the journey. Another beneficial practice is to embrace the joy I find in planning the move; making a point of being very realistic, practical, and frugal builds useful skills for good self-care, and I feel engaged in imminent change in a positive way.  I’m still very much a beginner, practicing practices. I am still at risk of attacking myself, my will, my resolve, and my intention, from within on any point of vulnerability my demons can grab onto; it makes for some uncomfortable nights, but I am content to show myself some compassion, some acceptance, and some love, and move on from the difficult moments to continue the practicing of good practices. 🙂

It's worth it to take a look at my experience from another perspective...

It’s worth it to take a look at my experience from another perspective…

Today is a good day to practice good practices. Today is a good day to enjoy now, and celebrate small successes that matter to me, most. Today is a good day to enjoy each moment with a smile. Today is a good day to enjoy building my world.

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

My Will and My Won’t

April 30, 2015 //
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I woke this morning, too early, because biology said so; I had to pee. I wanted very much to go back to sleep, even though I knew the alarm would go off in less than an hour. It mattered less that I might not sleep more, than it did to honor my desire to do so. I snuggled up in the warmth of the blankets, and let myself drift off, favoring meditation if sleep didn’t come. Sleep didn’t come. Anxiety did, though. Like a blast through my relaxed near-dream consciousness, like a bucket of ice water on a challenge I didn’t volunteer for, like a pit in a pitted cherry in a particular good bite of pie, my anxiety surged very suddenly, and without obvious cause. Amusingly, I ‘heard’ a distant imagined voice, calm and professional, my own, in the background “please do not panic…” and smiled as I comfortably shifted my body to a more open position, and focused on my breathing. The anxiety quickly dissipated, lacking anything to feed on, and I continued to meditate until the alarm went off, and then for a couple of moments afterward; reacting to the alarm often starts my day badly, for some reason, perhaps some association with the word ‘alarm’, itself, and I often take a couple of minutes to breath and relax before I rise.

Like any muscle, my will becomes stronger (and healthier) the more I exercise it. Practicing good emotional and physical self-care pays off over time, although initially I wasn’t really  certain that such small changes would ‘matter’. Isn’t that the thing though? If I had insisted for myself that small changes, better practices, and that really committing to the practices that feel good to me were of no value – or no lasting value – or that I ‘won’t be able to make that work’, I most assuredly would have achieved what I was certain of – they wouldn’t have been of much value. Don’t get me wrong on this one, I am not decrying the value of empirical evidence, or sneezing on the standards of proof in science. I am suggesting that it is rather obvious, regardless what can be proven effective, that we have the power to render the most effective treatment worthless by undercutting our will, or by defining our successes as failure, or simply by choosing to identify the outcome as ‘not working’. This is not a matter of ‘faith’ – because the things I am practicing are not ‘faith-based’ practices. Like any practices, if I don’t actually practice them, they will not be effective – it is my choice to apply myself, to enact my will, to see change manifest because I choose it. There are verbs involved…but there is also acceptance, and awareness involved.

Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge... or just a tree? You choose.

Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge… or just a tree? You choose.

Why am I on about this today? For a friend, actually. It seems he has lost his will, and is surviving life on his ‘won’t’ instead. It sucks to see him suffer – worse still, it sucks to see him not only choose suffering, but to invest heavily in the continuation of suffering as though the suffering itself has great value, or is the desired outcome. Hell, maybe it is. He does get to choose. I feel both sympathy and compassion for his struggle; I have my own such moments. Maybe we all do, now and then. We each make our choices. There are verbs involved. Our results vary. We are each having our own experience. The map is not the world. The journey is the destination.

My friend has been exposed to all these ideas, himself. He has a lot of people who support and encourage him (although he often doesn’t recognize or acknowledge it). He very specifically enacts his ‘won’t’ at many decision-making points, and defines many moments as failures, accepting that there is no possible good outcome available to him. He often makes a point of limiting his perceived options, and holds onto life-goals that appear specifically chosen to be as far out of reach as possible, while firmly refusing himself any opportunity to see more of life’s potential. It makes my heart ache to see him suffer…and it confuses me to see that it is willful, and so carefully crafted. I am powerless to help – because these are his choices to make, and he makes them. Another lesson on attachment, perhaps, and a reminder that some of my own self-inflicted suffering is a matter of choosing (poorly) to find myself responsible for someone else’s self-inflicted suffering by assigning myself some portion of the task of alleviating that suffering. It doesn’t work that way with self-inflicted suffering; only the self can choose to let that one go.

The loveliness of life is not visible so easily if my eyes are closed; knowing this may not be enough to decide to open my eyes. That's how choice works.

The loveliness of life is not visible so easily if my eyes are closed; knowing this may not be enough to decide to open my eyes. That’s how choice works.

Today is a good day for good self-care, and for loving the being of light that inhabits this fragile vessel. Today is a good day to be compassionate. Today is a good day to consider more than the obvious options, and choices that didn’t make the first list. Today is a good day to be open to success, and to accept failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. Today is a good day to love, and to put myself at the top of my own agenda. Today is a good day to change the world within.

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Categories Anxiety, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words
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