Don't Judge Me (POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING)

NOTICE: This post may be a trigger for you.

I think I manage the anxiety I experience rather well. Most days I can keep my darker emotions from ganging up on me and I've done a great job of successfully beating them off. There is a certain threshold, though. Somber turns to despair and I feel defeated, crushed beneath the weight of my own sick brain. Grumpy morphs into a full blown rage and the catalyst will be something ridiculous. Discomfort becomes humiliation and shame as my brain brings to the forefront of my conscious mind everything it believes I've ever done wrong. What happens beyond the threshold is not anything I'm proud of.

I scratch and cut myself. It makes sense to me in the moment. I've done it enough throughout my life that I no longer carry sharp things with me when I feel the stable ground beneath me tremble, a sign that a terrible fissure threatens to open under my feet. Leaving the pocket knife at home interferes with my attempts to cut myself. Most of the time, the appeal of cutting fades away before I can gain possession of an object capable of drawing blood. Sometimes cutting is so terribly seductive that, unable to access anything sharper, I resort to using my fingernails. They don't cut per se; they scratch well, though. They become claws that scrape at the skin of my thighs in moments of desperation.

I don't know if it's seeing the stripes or feeling the sting that helps me keep my demons at bay. I guess it's both. I make more cuts and scratches when my distress is more intense. The more my efforts fail to ease my anguish, the more ferocious my actions become. The physical pain is probably the larger part of it although the blushing lines swelling on my skin do create an odd feeling of satisfaction - gratification blended with disgrace.

Don't judge me for this behavior. I know it's messed up. I don't need to be reminded. I don't even want to talk about it most of the time because the people I confide in almost always focus on the action and make me feel even more ashamed which isn't helpful. The problem isn't the cutting or the scratching. They are symptoms, physical manifestations of the dark hurt and anxiety that have escalated beyond my ability to fend off in a manner deemed healthy by the normal people of the world. Let's deal with the emotions I can't handle and the scratching will go away.

Don't judge me for this behavior. Other peoples' actions are mesed up, too. Making an 11:00pm run to the stop-and-rob for a cheap six-pack of beer because you can't slow down your mind enough to go to sleep is damaging to the body, too. It's just not exposed. Is harming your liver somehow more nobel than injuring your skin? I'm not even referring to alcoholism, just the occassional "had a rough day" gin and tonic. What about smoking when stressed? Over-eating? Going on spending sprees? All of these have consequences.

Don't judge me for this behavior. We all have our coping methods and mine usually heal within a few days.

Silence

A few years ago I attended a women's retreat. I shared a little of that experience with you not too long ago. One of the "rules" (really more of a recommendation) was to spend a certain amount of time each day in silence. Attaining that goal meant more than not talking. That was the easy part. It required being alone and away from a million little things. Phone, TV, music, the obvious stuff. Once I eliminated those things I realized that my surroundings were far from silent. The ceiling fan and fridge whirred and, without other noises to conceal it, they seemed loud. I left my room expecting to find a quieter space outside, perhaps on one of the gentle trails or on a bench beneath the sprawling branches of an old tree. I had to share the trail with other people and, although they were quiet in the normal sense of the word, they still made noise that filled my ears. Even when I was alone on the trail, the gravel beneath my feet crunched with every single step I took. Silence, true silence, was eluding me. Eventually, I returned to my room and decided it was quiet enough. I was able to exist with my thoughts, my journal, and my pen.

Several years before that, I went on a spiritual journey of sorts. This was long before I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and I was desperately grasping for something, anything, that would give me some peace. Upon arriving at the spiritual retreat center the first evening, I was instructed to be silent until a specified time the following morning. No talking and no turning anything on to listen to. Being alone with myself like that was unnerving. I didn't much like myself at the time and I definitely did not respect myself. I was trapped in an illness I did not know I had and the silence outside my body made the noise inside by body seem that much louder. My thoughts jumped from one traumatic experience to another while my inner critic picked apart every little decision I had made, proving to me how bad my choices were and how terrible a person I was. My skin crawled with tension and my stomach hurt. I did the only thing I could think to do. I wrote. I had no watch or clock so I have no idea how long I scribbled in my journal. I continued until all the jumbled mess in my head was transferred to paper and until I had described all my emotions and body sensations as well as I could. Finally satisfied, I carefully closed my journal. I felt lighter. I still needed to deal with the awful things I had written but, for the night at least, they lived in the journal and not in me.

N is for Nature Deficit Disorder

The idea here is that if we don't have enough outdoors in our lives, then we aren't going to be as healthy as we could be. I wouldn't call it a disorder and I think Richard Louv used the term more as an attention-grabber than anything else. Maybe it's just me, but I consider this just plain old common sense.

Do a quick search for strategies for dealing with stress and mental health and you'll find a plethora of suggestions to go outside.

Spend time in the sunlight. ---- Breath in the air outside. ---- Walk. ---- Bike. ---- Run. ---- Stroll. ---- Lolly-gag. ---- Whatever, just do it outside. ---- Leave the concrete behind. ---- Go to the park. ---- Go to the river. ---- etc.

We know all these things.

I take a walk (or a run) around my neighborhood when I need to shed the stress and frustration of my day before engaging in anything with my family and friends. I love them and don't want my emotional sludge to poison their environment. I know the physical exercise helps but if that was all there was to it then I would just use a treadmill and stay in the A/C.

I dance in the rain. Yes, I really do. Something about being among the drops falling all around me is beautiful and moving. Sometimes I sway slowly with my head back and my face to the heavens. Sometimes I jump and splash like a child enjoying the sound and sensation and sheer joy of it all.

Poets forever have written about the way the leaves of our trees move and shimmy in the breeze. They've written of bare feet on grass, trails through woods, oceans, skies, caves, animals, and all manner of things provided by our planet.

It's instinct to connect with nature and human nature to crave that connection. Without it, we are incomplete.

photo (c) Jennifer Clark 2012

M is for Music

I think it's funny how often science lags behind the things that people already know. Did we really need a scientist to tell us that music helps us manage stress?

I have music that I like to play when I'm angry - something loud with drums and guitars that seems to growl.

I have dance music, romantic music, sleepy relaxing music. I have music that helps me keep an up-beat attitude and other music that, whether I like it or not, moves me to tears.

I play Patty Griffin's "Heavenly Day" when I need to be reminded that things are going to be okay. It's one of my favorite songs and has been for a number of years.


I'm sure there's more to the study than proving that music affects people's moods and can be used to help regulate moods. Considering that people have essentially been using music to self-medicate for as long as humans have existed, all I can say to this is, "Well, duh."

Like I said, there's more to the study. Here's the link to the article I read and it contains a link to the study for those of you who want to check out the other elements of the study. http://io9.com/can-music-be-more-effective-than-drugs-465249779

A is for Ativan

is for Ativan and Ativan is for anxiety. Anxiety is awful!

I know everyone experiences anxiety - it's part of the human condition. A certain amount of anxiety is to be expected and the level of anxiety is expected to correlate with whatever is going on in life. That's normal. I thought I experienced normal anxiety just like everyone else did. I was all grown up before I knew any different.

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Heat-Milk-Without-Scalding

When I was a little girl, I used to have a hard time getting to sleep and getting back to sleep if I woke up in the night. I was worried but I couldn't tell you what I was worried about. My mom was wonderfully patient with me, always climbing out of her own cozy bed and blissful sleep to help me with a feeling that I could no longer manage on my own. We walked back to the kitchen, lit only by the single, dim bulb over the kitchen sink. She warmed a few cups of milk in a small saucepan on the stove, stirring constantly. As an adult, I understand that she was keeping the milk from scalding. As a child, though, she was stirring in calm and love. Adding a teaspoon of sugar made it perfect. I sipped on warm milk until I was relaxed enough to climb back in bed.

The little ritual has served me well through the years.

For more information about the 2013 Blogging from A to Z Challenge see the website of the same name.

Reminders from a Tarot Card

10 of Cups; Spiral Tarot by Kay Steventon

I enjoy tarot cards. Whatever card I randomly pull from a deck gives me something to think about, something for my mind to focus on. It's been a strategy for slowing my thoughts for many years. The scenes and symbols on the cards have often been a reminder that amazing and wonderful things are around me and I find that I need those reminders because I so easily loose sight of that beauty and love in the messy challenges of life.

Today I needed to step out of my normal life and escape for a moment into myself. The picture to the left is the card that came out of the deck I shuffling. The following is what I saw and what I felt as I mulled over the imagery.

A woman, half solid and half ethereal, directs your attention to golden chalices emerging from a large vase. The chalices and other material from the vase remind me of a fire-works display, the vase looks like clay, and the entire scene looks beautiful, loving, and joyful.

What does this mean for me? It reminds me to take a look around. The universe is offering up many things to be joyful for. Love is falling all around me and all I need to do is look where the spirit, whatever you believe it to be, is pointing. The tens mark the end of a cycle, though; the ace is inevitable. This time of wishes granted and dreams come true will only last for so long. The woman will fade away and she will cease to pull gifts from the earth for me until the next cycle come around.

I hope you find the picture and my impression of it as helpful and hopeful as I have.