Archives for posts with tag: ptsd
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That’s Neither Here, Nor Hair

March 7, 2013 //
1

I’d like to have a caution sign for the inside of my bedroom door. One of the safety yellow ones seen at the roadside for any number of upcoming hazards, and I want it to have one of those crazy squiggly road symbols for dangerous curves, and a falling rock symbol, and also a symbol for potholes. At the top, I’d expect it to say ‘Caution’, as most of them do, and perhaps at the bottom ‘Life Ahead’. Frankly, I could probably use a quick reminder every day before I head out into the world and get hung up on some ‘obstacle’ that isn’t actually an obstacle at all, but more of a lesson. 🙂

Short night last night, and a good morning anyway. Stayed up a bit past my ‘bell-curve bedtime’ watching a movie with my partners. Totally worth it. Lost a little more sleep to the happy sounds of life and Love, before my awareness distilled to a few moments of self, then dissipated to dreaming. Also, totally worth it.

This morning I am still turning over the Conundrum of Hair. I put it in capital letters to highlight the experience that this relatively simple question has come to serve as an interesting life lesson about decision-making and taking care of me. I mean, seriously? I’m talking about whether or not to get a hair cut – not exactly life-changing stuff, as changes go. I keep turning it over in my mind, trying to figure out not only what I want (for an outcome) but also learn more about my decision-making challenges in general.

I grew up hearing ‘Do something, even if it isn’t right!’ as an oft-repeated instructional slogan intended, I think, to foster a high level of productivity, initiative, motivation, and, oddly, effective decision-making (defined only as ‘making a quick decision and acting on it).  I learned it, and became an adult quite capable of making very bad decisions very quickly, and firmly, and taking prompt action on them – but I did not also learn to make the best possible decisions, only quick ones. lol. Life needs a bit of both, I’ve learned.  Often the decisions I’ve made quite slowly, over time, with a lot of consideration, and some false starts and mind-changing, plan-changing, or self-changing have been more worthwhile. I was taught a lot of disrespect for ‘dithering’, ‘vacillating’, and ‘being indecisive’. Funny how complicated these things have made deciding whether or not to cut my hair! Watching the process unfold both as an observer and as a participant is interesting, itself, and I’m finding value in taking a step back and asking myself some new questions.

I asked myself why am I considering getting my hair cut short right now? Why is the idea of getting my hair cut short – very short – scary? (I’ve had very long hair all my adult life) What does having all this long hair mean to me? What does the hair itself represent in my experience? Does the experience of having long hair have any intrinsic value? What about the experience of having long hair do I value? Am I willing to give that up to experience having short hair? Do I actually want to do this? Is there any other reason to cut my hair short besides ‘because I want this’? I’ve been turning these questions over in my mind a lot. “Long hair is sexy.” Yep, sure is – but so is short hair, because ‘sexy’ isn’t a hair style.  “I like the feel of my lover’s hands in my hair.” Mmm, yes, yes I do.  Does sensuality end with a hair cut?  That’s clearly not the case, since tons of men have short hair and don’t seem to lack for sensuality. “I won’t look like me.” Um…I am not a hair style. lol. “You can’t tell me what to do!” Somewhere inside I still feel the helpless anger and resentment of being controlled, in the memory of having to get a short hair cut because it was too much work to keep long hair neat when I was a child – it’s way past time to let that baggage go. lol.  I have a memory of crying to my father about a short hair cut I didn’t like…I must have been quite young…I remember mostly the feeling of hot tears spilling down and wailing “Daddy, I’m so ugly! I won’t be sexy – I look like a boy!!” and my father’s amused reply “Baby, there’s nothing about you that looks like a boy.” Well, at 49 and with the curves I’ve got, there’s sure no way to mistake me for a boy! lol “My partners like my long hair.” Ouch, that’s more difficult than I want it to be…sure, some people really like long hair, find it sexy, enjoy seeing it, touching it, and it may be part of how they see someone they love…but it’s just hair; it is not identity.  One of my partners is presently letting his hair grow longer after years of wearing it short. It’s sexy both ways – because he’s sexy; it’s not the hair. He looks different than he did with the shorter style; he is still himself. AND, although when he considered growing out his hair, he did mention it, and discuss it, and ask me what I thought, he did not ask for my permission, or make it about my needs or desires when he made a choice to change-up his look. Oh, ok, so that wasn’t really that difficult, after all. LOL 😀

Every internal objection, each moment of resistance, all the arguments from any angle are so easily knocked down when I am calm, centered, and willing to be compassionate with myself about old hurts, baggage, and internal weirdness.  So, now it comes down to what it really comes down to – is this what I want? Does it meet my needs over time? I still have not decided…and there’s no need to rush.  Now it is just a hair cut.  😀

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, women, Words

News, Truth, and Meaning

March 6, 2013 //
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‘News’ is a funny word.  It could seem to be a plural of ‘new’, but ‘new’ isn’t a noun.  There seems to be a tendency, too, to make assumptions about the noteworthiness of an event based on whether we characterize it as ‘news’, to the point of having an entire separate word to describe those as ‘newsworthy’. There are cultural expectations that adults will have some basic familiarity with ‘current events’, with the implication that failing to follow ‘the news’ results in being somehow less relevant, well-informed, or professionally viable.

It’s a trap.

Think it over with me for a moment…periodicals and televised programming centered around journalism and reporting of selected current events or culturally relevant topics are often looked upon with a higher than average level of credibility. Why is that? I mean…they are producing a product for profit, are they not? The truthfulness of the material they offer is not actually regulated or accredited, and the goal of gaining or maintaining viewership, ratings, or sales numbers is not at all the same as a goal of ‘providing factually accurate information’ – is it? What would ‘news’ look like if all the inflammatory language, the color, and the spin were removed? If unbiased, unemotional language were used to present facts simply, we would probably be less compelled to read or watch it. Words, once again, being used to control us. Words being used to persuade us to spend our time receiving input that may not have lasting value, but will assuredly rob us of our time, and potentially our comfort, peace of mind, and ability to manage stress. No one news ‘source’ (they are not sources, they are brokers at best. lol) has a monopoly on manipulating the public, because they all have the same actual goal – gain viewers/readers, gain ratings, make sales for advertisers.  Is there an untapped segment of the public out there? (Angry women? Single mothers? Those on the right? Those on the left?) The media will identify it, and someone will begin creating content to appeal to that group of people – to acquire them as regular consumers.  It’s not about information, and it is not about truth. It is about ‘the business win’.

Why do I care? Pretty simple – I’m working on learning to take care of me; to manage my stress level, treat myself well, and live a good life that has meaning and in which I can thrive as a being. As the 2012 US presidential election approached last year, I found myself regularly in a state of stress and near-panic over news articles. Unacceptable.  I wasn’t sure how to deal with it – some of the events in the news were even triggering my PTSD, resulting in lost sleep, panic, emotional volatility, nightmares, and a near-continuous state of severe stress that was making me ill, and severely unhappy.  I gotta admit, it gets depressing really quickly to read some heinous news report about a gang rape a world away, and find no comfort at all in local or regional reporting right here at home – because so many of the voices in the news sound suspiciously anti-woman to the point of being ‘pro rape’.  It was an ugly election, and I have a long list of human beings of both genders that I not only won’t ever vote for (no matter what their future achievements or stated values may be), I feel rather as if I can’t actually count on the culture I live in to value and support women, or treat them compassionately and fairly under any circumstances.  It became a very scary world to live in, pretty quickly.  Someone, somewhere, must think it is OK to deliver ‘news’ content that willfully and deliberately selects verbiage that stokes emotional turmoil, triggers anxiety, depression, and anger, and may be not only hurtful and confrontational, but also may not be true…just to get it seen, just to make money. Ick.  The horrors of reported news from December through January was enough for me. I don’t need to complicate things that are already hard on me by allowing content providers to manipulate my emotions.

I turned off the news.  I gave it a break, skimming only what I had to, avoiding the rest. I turned off feeds. I uninstalled applications from my devices. I started logging off and exiting and shutting down things I am not actively using at any given moment.  I feel better. lol. Every day that I don’t read a story where some over privileged idiot with too much power and not enough wisdom says something stupidly offensive and hurtful, I have done myself a favor. I made some choices about content, too. I revisited my settings on the two content providers I choose to continue with regularly – and discontinued all the political and business ‘news’, entertainment ‘news’, and any category that had become a regular source of stress. I am keeping content relating to mindfulness practices, health and fitness, food, and ‘good news’ where that is available. I skim the front page quickly – subject lines only – and move along.  (It may be relevant to something that Hugo Chavez died, that seems historical I suppose, but I am also quite certain that not one detail about that actually matters to me in my here and now.) Going any deeper seems to require, at some point, suspending any skepticism and ‘trusting’ news content providers to be truthful – and to trust that their sources have been similarly truthful.  I’m not actually willing to indulge in that level of trust, when it has become pretty clear that The Daily Show can be relied on more easily to be accurate than mainstream ‘news’ content providers. lol.

Are you taking a moment to feel some sympathy? Are you also taking a moment to feel a little smug that you are not so helplessly enthralled by ‘the media’? Before you go too far down that road, please just take a moment to think back on your past 6 months or so – did you make even one decision to take an action, or engage in a behavior, because of something you read/heard on the news? Did you repeat to someone else even one ‘fact’ that you read/heard on the news, without independently verifying it yourself? I don’t think saying more is necessary, and your choices are your own. 😉

I also don’t want to waste my time reading what someone else wrote about what they think about what someone even further removed experienced, or base all of my thinking and decision making on things I read or heard somewhere.  I want to have my own experiences, and I want to have time to do that.  I gained hours of time back by discontinuing the habit of reading the news, or Reddit, or forums about this or that topic of interest. Now I have time to talk. Time to feel. Time to touch and be touched. Time to explore my life and my choices for the future. Time to consider what matters to me. Time to treat myself well and heal old hurts.

I discovered I do not know how to read the news mindfully.  So…I stopped reading the news.  I haven’t missed it.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, women, Words

Things, and Other Things

March 5, 2013 //
1

As days go, so far, today is neither here nor there, in the sense that I am calm, and feel balanced, and my emotions are just not stirred right now, one way or the other. The rainy morning pleases me, by wrapping me in a certain sentimental something that I feel on rainy days. I don’t know where it comes from. I feel it on rainy days. It’s not a good feeling or a bad feeling. It’s not an emotion I know how to name, but it is a comfortable fit, inasmuch as it feels very familiar and relaxed and centered.  It is an experience I enjoy, although I have never examined it very closely.  It was raining hard enough to decide to ride the bus to work. The rain spattering the bus windows, and the filtered gray light gave me a strange sense of emotional safety and this morning I had a Dave Matthews song stuck in my head, which sort of encouraged my thinking in the direction of mindfulness, emotions, and change.

I started thinking about ‘anger’. I regularly avoid the word, hoping to avoid the experience. I’ve had very bad experiences with anger, both other people’s anger and my own. I feel overwhelmed by anger, even to the point of frankly finding it hard to write about with candor. Fear of feeling it, fear of failing at it, fear of facing it, fear of being unable to contain it…anger is powerful stuff. I’d like to be more easily able to accept that I can and do feel angry sometimes, and just move on from it or let it go.  I’d also like to be able to observe someone else’s anger without taking it personally, feeling defensive or blamed, or feeling responsible for ‘fixing’ it. (Seeing it in text, I see that some of those are choices I can make, and other bits seem relevant to mindfulness practices I am cultivating.) I focused on ‘going easy on myself’ for past anger, so I could more easily examine anger in general. Big Anger associated with ancient hurts and long-carried baggage is a wound I know I’m not quite ready to tackle, but I got to wondering if every day anger could be ‘practiced’ for skill building so that I could be ready to tackle it some other time? So… I considered something small I was angry about recently that I didn’t act on or attempt to resolve at that time, and allowed myself to acknowledge and feel being angry about it.  Then one by one I put some of the specific mindfulness practices I am learning into action.  I didn’t make assumptions about whether any one thing would or would not work.  I just did steps, followed processes, pursued practices. I practiced. I practiced being angry without escalating. I practiced accepting the feeling of anger without acting out. I practiced allowing myself to ‘consider other sides’ of an issue in spite of an emotion of anger. I practiced letting anger go without compromising my values, or depriving myself of personal understanding or validation of my experience.  I repeated the exercise with a number of small things I was angry about in a small way.  I didn’t panic, have a fit, escalate, or feel hurt or damaged, and the anger itself didn’t do anything at all.  Actually – I still feel good; calm and balanced.  I even found myself understanding one or two small things differently, over which I had been harboring some resentment.  The anger really just evaporated when I gained a somewhat different understanding of the circumstances through calm consideration of what I did and did not know, instead of struggling with the anger itself.

Anger is nasty stuff. I’d like to master it. Looks like I would do well to really understand what I mean by that, too, because apparently ‘mastery’ of anger is not about ‘making it go away’.

Mindfulness and emotion is more intense than I expected and less scary than I feared.  Pleasant emotions, the ‘good stuff’, are actually very rich experiences, and I am learning to really savor them and take my time with life on a different level. Emotions that are often experienced as ‘bad’ or negative emotions are intense too, incredibly intense, and I am hoping to continue to learn not to be wounded by those experiences. I feel hopeful – and supported.  It is easier to write about some of these things than to talk about them in real life with people I love and make my life with – because the conversation itself is so personal, so emotional, and so ‘right now’, for  me; I easily lose sight of boundaries or limits.  I sometimes cry when I’m trying to talk about things that are emotional.  I’m learning to be ok with that, and to understand it more as an expression of intensity rather than an expression of a particular emotion.  Adjusting my understanding of that experience has seemed, so far, to result in fewer tears.  I wish I understood that.

So…Tuesday. It is a good one, so far. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women

Anxiety, Assumptions, and Answers

March 2, 2013 //
1

Before I take another step, I’ll just say “Wow, what a good week”. Credit where credit is due; mindfulness practices, careful choices, and a will to avoid misunderstandings and assumptions are all making a huge difference, or so it seems so far this week, and the vibe at home is very supportive and inclusive much of the time, which fosters growth and change.

This morning I woke anxious after a good night’s sleep. It wasn’t the sort of major panic that brings me to my feet in alarm and puts me in motion before I can think things over, but it was there and my attention was on it when I woke. A glance at the clock and I was relieved that it was definitely to early to bother get up – it’s a Saturday – so attempt 1 to deal with it was somewhat dismissive and irritated, and of the ‘roll over and go back to sleep’ variety.  ( If you have an anxiety issue, yourself, you likely know how that went – the derisive hoots of laughter can be halted any time. lol.) Yeah, so I dozed a few minutes, woke up again – still anxious. ‘F*ck it’, I thought, I am so not getting up early today. Attempt 2 was a trip down the hall for an old school fix ‘get a drink of water and go back to bed’. Right, right. Sometimes it takes me a while to learn new things.  After another few minutes of napping, I was awake again, and this time the clock was pretty near to meeting my morning’s internal ‘suggested waking time’ for the day… damn it.  That‘s when I re-engaged my actual brain, and went through some basic breathing and mindfulness exercises I’ve been practicing all week… and my heart rate started to slow down, my breathing became deeper and more relaxed, my jaw unclenched…and the feeling of anxiety subsided. I was just about to get up when…I realized I’d fallen back to sleep! After my unexpected nap, I woke in a much better place, feeling gently aligned inside myself and pretty calm and centered.  I’m not sure what else to say about this morning…somewhere there’s a hippie thinking ‘I told you so’? lol. Damn it. Nothing to do now but have a quad latte and do some yoga. 😀

So, here it is, Saturday at the tail end of a good week. I think I’ll leave the ‘why am I anxious’ questions off my To Do list completely – because I don’t think ‘why’ actually matters right now. I think I will also refrain from making any assumptions about the feeling itself, as it comes and goes unexpectedly, today. I’m not going looking for answers about anxiety this morning – it’s a lovely easy Saturday, and I will enjoy that about my experience and continue to practice letting small things go, and not taking other people’s experience personally. So, maybe a walk later, and an opportunity to snap some close ups of small things, and a couple errands, and later some plotting and scheming…er… ‘planning’… Sunday dinner. (One of my most fun things every week is cooking Sunday dinner for all of us, and this week I don’t yet have even a notion what I might like to do.)

I hope the Saturday ahead of you is wide open with possibilities and that your choices bring you only the best outcomes. If it gets weird or scary for you, hang on for the ride, and take a minute to just chill and breathe.  It’s been working for me, pretty well.  🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Art, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50

Second Chances, Second Helpings, Second Times

March 1, 2013 //
3

A second post; it seems less rare these days to find myself writing more words…a second thought, second look… wait a second…(now I’m just having some fun). The thing is, I just feel good today – even playful. Free. As if Life took a deep breath and relaxed. I suspect that it was actually me. 🙂

So, that TED talk on vulnerability really dovetails with other things I am reading, practicing, thinking, doing – and sharing it is just the only decent thing.   Seriously, I’m probably solo for a couple of hours this evening and if so, I am watching it again – with my whole being.

I had a pretty spectacularly ordinary very good day – it has been pleasantly orderly, and interestingly spontaneous, and all without being overwhelming.  I got some shopping done and found my way to some good places: a market, an art supply store, and an art community.  Painting is very much on my mind, and I took the opportunity to round out my watercolor supplies today, and enjoyed a few moments of fun playing with those and getting organized.  It’s actually a little strange to find myself so excited about painting in watercolor again – when I easily could have been doing so at any point I cared to, all along.  How did I miss that I wanted this?

Now day begins to turn to evening under a cottony gray sky with only a threat of rain, and I have satisfied my initial urgent need to see new work with an unimpressive but pleasing sketch of a crumpled receipt in India ink and graphite.  It was a short night, and as my excitement begins to wane I recognize fatigue, and the calm of utter contentment.  (49 years old and I’ll probably be asleep by 9pm! I certainly didn’t envision this when I stared hungrily at the horizon of impending adulthood as a ‘tween. lol) …But…this feels good…really good.  Have I misunderstood what ‘happy’ actually is, all this time?  A thought for another day, another post, another moment to consider what’s going well, and what is working in some other time and space – for now, this right here is enough.

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Categories Anxiety, Art, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50
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