Is life about seeking happiness or embracing life's inevitable challenges?

Without a doubt, my life has procured an innumerable amount happy times. Times filled with smiles and giggles and the excited squeals of childhood birthday parties.  Times filled with warmth and nurture and the encouragement of educators and mentors. Times I lock away as if  precious jewels, in my vault of memory, so as never to lose them. Yet it is often very hard to find the key to this vault, and to the positive times I describe, when your mind is polluted by a haze of mental illness.

I earnestly try to recreate these happy times each and every day, only to become compounded with distress as my life fails to reproduce them, fails to provide the embrace of contentment they produce, leaving in their place an empty, hopeless void of distress.

Have I got it all wrong though? Am I chasing the wrong thing? Am I casting shadows on my immense intrinsic power by seeking to recreate happy times?

Tonight I am lying in my bed eating frozen blueberries to tolerate the distress I am experiencing. Savoring the bitter coldness in an attempt to survive the moment. I am not enjoying the warmth of those happier times. I am frozen in the chill of distress. I can't see where my life is leading or fathom as to why I should keep trying.  Something is not right about my pursuit of happiness, and I think I am beginning to understand why.

Implicit in the phrase of 'overcoming an adversity' such as mental illness is; that success or happiness is about emerging on the other side of a challenging experience unscathed, unmarked by the experience. As if successes in life have come about because of an ability to side step, or circumnavigate presumed pitfalls of a life with mental illness.

But I am marked, I am changed, of course, by a challenge. I am starting to think that adversity needn't be an obstacle I need to get over in order to resume living a happy life. It's part of our life, part of who I am as a holistic being. I tend to think of it as a shadow, sometimes I see a lot of it, sometimes there is very little, but it is always with us. 

Now, in no way am I trying to diminish the impact, the weight of a persons struggle. What I am trying to say is that there is always going to be adversity and challenge in life. Its very real and relative to every single person. The question is not whether you are going to meet adversity, but HOW you are going to meet it. 

So the responsibility is not simply to be shielded from the adversities and challenges we face, but to prepare us to meet it well. We do a disservice to each other when we make others feel like they are not equipped to adapt. There is an important difference and distinction between the objective medical fact of psychiatry and the subjective societal opinion of whether or not we are are mentally unwell. But in reality the only real and consistent adversity I face is the world ever thinking that I can be described as disabled or unable to contribute to society.

In our desire to protect those we care about by giving them the cold hard truth about their medical prognosis, or indeed the prognosis of the excepted quality of their life, we have to make sure we don't put the first brick in a wall that will actually disable someone. Perhaps the existing model of 'what is wrong with you and how do we fix it!' serves to be more disabling to the individual than the pathology itself. By not treating the wholeness of a person, by not acknowledging their potency, we are creating another 'illness' on top whatever natural struggle they might have. We are affectingly grading someones worth to our community. We need to see through the pathology and into the range of human capability. And most importantly, there is a partnership between those perceived deficiencies and the great human creative ability. 

So its not about devaluing or negating these trying times we want to avoid or sweep under the carpet, but instead to find those opportunities wrapped in the adversity. The idea I want to put out there is not so much overcoming adversity as it is opening ourselfs up to it, embracing it, grappling with it as Katie Taylor would do in the boxing ring, maybe even dancing with it. And perhaps if we see adversity as natural, consistent and useful, we are less burdened by the presence of it. 

In my own experience, adversity is simply change, to which I have not yet adapted, and the greatest adversity we have created for ourselfs is the idea of normalcy. I mean, who here believes them self to be normal? There is no normal. There is 'common' and typical, there is no normal.would you want to meet that poor beige person if they existed? I dont think so.

If we can change this para-dime of achieving normalcy, to one of possibility or potency, we can release the power of so many people and invite them to engage their rare and valuable assists with the community.   

Wherever You Go, There You Are

‘Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, “now what?” ‘

                                                                                                                                                                                       Jon Kabit-Zinn.

I spend so much time contemplating what I will do with my time and not enough time actually doing what I plan to do, living with my head in a tomorrow which never arrives because my incisive worry quells any chance of the present moment enjoyment.

My quandary is; that I allow my sentiment control my day. If I rouse full of wakeful slumber or drudgery, I permit the emotion I encounter in that sleepy moment dictate my plan for the day. ‘Oh it’s much too cold and wet to traipse all the way into town today…’ Ah sure I will stay home and write…’ (That’s a personal favourite of my morning lethargy, and of course nothing gets written!)

I guess the point I am trying to arrive at with this post is that I must tune my mind to the present moment, live in the day I am in and make full use of each precious hour it contains. My goal this week is to make a weekly plan of activity in which I embrace the wonder of each moment. Then I must actually DO what I have set out to do in a mindful manner, just experiencing, not judging. If I feel sad or lonely… so be it… just notice the emotion.

See, what I tend to do and can foresee happening this week is; me doing anything to escape experiencing the negative emotions that plague my daily existence. My favourite method at the moment is to blank out in front of Netflicks with my cat and a gallon of tea, oh I even found myself the full price section of a clothes store riffling through dresses I can’t afford, not to mention facebook…. As I say, I wonder aimlessly though my day and then get a shock to see the day is almost over. I tut to myself how unwonderful my day has been and make a wee vow to change my behaviour tomorrow only to experience an all too familiar sense of déjà vu come four o’clock the next day.

It must end. So I am off to experience the next moment as mindfully as I can and will be back to write soon. Adios amigos. 

Upgraded Armour. Reflection on The Center for Living

I abilities feel stronger, robust even. My suit of armour has been fixed and polished. Inside the suit I am vulnerable, full of emotions and open to triggers, but now that all the chinks and dents have been smoothed out, I am prepared for the onslaught of emotion, armed and ready with more skills. I feel humbled and so glad that the Centre for Living proved me wrong. It’s not easy for me to say that. I like to be right, but I was really mistaken about the programmes ability to help me evolve in my understanding of DBT.

The most valuable morsel of information I am leaving with today is that my life is never all-or-nothing. Just because I had a bad morning, say I eat more than I planned, it does not mean that I need to discredit all the other good things I achieved that day.

One particular therapist was really wonderful. It’s not that she thought me anything new; in fact at first I found it hard to participate in her sessions as I thought I had heard it all before! But the longer I sat there, the more everything just ‘fell’ into place. It’s about using the DBT skills together, in tangent with each other, it’s about weaving the mindfulness skills into everything I do, not just sitting quietly observing my thoughts for 10 minutes a day. It’s about noticing the grumbles of anxiety before the fear takes over and I loss control. It’s about catching the little niggles of frustration and quenching it with self soothing skills, so that intense anger stays at bay. It’s not about the food, or the behaviours. I need to be mindful long before I get to that stage. It’s always about the emotions. This therapist clawed me back to WISE MIND and is a perfect example of the therapy really working, of it making sense.

I found such great validation in the other service users I met over the last 2 weeks. We were all at different stages of our recovery journey. Most were at the beginning of treatment, just becoming accustomed to the structure of DBT, and still exploring the diagnosis. Some had accepted it, others were still fighting it. Some simply didn’t understand it and hence couldn’t make an informed decision either way! We were all sitting in that room because of a common link. We all in some shape or form lacked the ability and skills to deal with our emotions. I found comfort in being reminded that I was not alone, that there are other people out there going through this hell. 

Hot Cross Bun (CBT) Model of Thinking/Feeling/Behaving

Today we were asked in group to write down how an emotional crisis looks like and feels like to ‘us’. The worksheet was based on the well known CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) ‘Hot Cross Bun’ Model. Even though I have seen it a million and one times before, it really helped to revise it, and use it in relation to DBT skills. This is the model in a picture format.

I find retrospective thinking hard to do, as I find it difficult to sense any emotion other than the one I am experiencing at any one particular time, no doubt it’s a BPD thing. None-the-less I tried hard to imagine a scenario where I was overwhelmed by an unpleasant emotion. Here is some of the dialogue which helped me to complete the worksheet. I really found this particular therapist very helpful today, I guess it’s nice to have a change in health professionals every now and again to gain new perspective

.

My Reflection of Myself in a Crisis

Example: Getting letter to say that a course I have been waiting to attend for many months has lost its funding and has been cancelled.

·         How do I feel?

Me; “I feel as if everything is overwhelming.”

Therapist (T);”Can you identify the emotion behind this statement?”

Me; “Well, it’s like I become paralyzed by fear and anxiety or worry.”

T; “So, is it fair to say that anxiety related emotions would be your initial or strongest feeling?”

Me; “Yes, anxiety, fear and worry.”

·         What bodily sensations do you notice

Me; “My body can become very tense; I fold my arms and cross my legs and clench my jaw”

T; “Is this when you would notice you are in an emotional crisis?”

Me; “No, probably not to be honest, it’s more when I feel like I can’t catch my breath, am shaking or have a migraine. Sometimes I become very tearful.”

T; “Ok, it’s really skilful that you can realize that. It gives you scope to work at leaning to catch the anxiety at the earlier stages, rather than it escalating to a higher intensity.”

·         What Thoughts Come to your Mind?

Me; “This feeling will never go away.” “I can’t manage.” “I should be able to manage/cope better” “I need to do something to change/stop how I am feeling RIGHT now”

T; “Well done on identifying these thoughts. The way to help change them is to weigh up the evidence for and against them and challenge them by asking; ‘Are these thoughts rational?’ Can you come up with a fairer, more tangible thought which will be more solution focused?"

·         How Do You Act?

Me; “Well because I can’t think straight, I tend to resort to behaviours which, when in wise mind, I know are harmful in the long run”

T; “What kind of things?”

Me; “I have a list!, I will avoid any situation which feels overwhelming, even if I know it needs to be dealt with and will even avoid doing things I enjoy. I stay in bed, and isolate myself by not contacting anyone. This time I didn’t open any other letters, couldn’t respond to emails or texts.”

T; “That makes perfect sense to me, but as you said, it doesn’t really help solve the crisis at hand.

Me; “No it doesn’t help, even makes it worse. I become very emotionally deregulated and resort to old destructive behaviours such as binge eating/drinking, which leads to secondary emotions of shame and guilt  and then I feel I must punish myself by self-harming to make up for it. Then it basically starts the whole cycle off again doesn’t it!

T; “Exactly! Here is where you can intersect the cycle to change the emotional and behavioural outcome by noticing initial bodily sensations before the thoughts and behaviours take over.

We then went on to cover all the ACCPECTS and SELF SOOTHE skills which can be useful to change the intense emotion. I will be making a separate post about the ACCEPTS skills as I am still putting together what works for me.

I guess I just wanted to go over this exercise, and always find that here, on my blog, is a great way to reflect. The biggest lesson I learned today is that I can always learn something new, even if I think I know it all! It feels good to have bashed this out again. I hope it helped you to read it too.

I would love to hear if this model has ever helped you.

Black and white thoughts, searching for the grey!

Today I was faced with a stark reality check.  I do not have the objective ability to have a balanced view of situations and am thus ruled my my dichotomous thinking. 

Under extreme stress, I find it can be comforting to oversimplify.

I will eat, or I will not eat.

I will live, or I will die.

This rational streamlining allows a sense of peace in the midst of turbulence. Yes, there are plenty of things that are black an white. Simple things. Is the toaster plugged in? Is the door locked? 

But the reason we have words like maybe, probably, partial, more, less, etc. is the grey is all around us. Everything has details, data, different ways to present and interpret the details and data, these different ways of presentation and interpretation is what causes grey.

When the stakes are not quite so high, perhaps a little room for the middle ground would be advisable. There are more choices than you think.A little "wiggle room" goes a long way when navigating through people, events and circumstances. Very little in my own life has ever been distinctly good/bad or black/white in any way, shape or form. Most things are just a subtle shade of gray when examined closely.

So much of the world is best described in an analog way not a digital way and definitely not in the binary way. So much is best described as a continum: I will not eat, I will eat a tiny bit, Iwill eat a moderate amount, and so on with an infinite variety of amounts.

Either / or is just the easy way out. I must leave a little room for humanity to breathe. If the middle ground is removed, how many of us still stand? My life is too complex to be able to discount gray areas in order to accommodate absolutes built on foundations that aren't solid simply because I am are either too fixed in my ideologies to be able to critically assess a situation or too intellectually lazy to do the heavy lifting, so to speak, when it comes to handling difficult ethical dilemmas, I simply use a catch all.

Who am I?

I have no stock answer to offer about a life-changing experience or a moment of enlightenment, and it is hard for me to give a comprehensive proclamation of who I am, for my identity unfolds more every day as my experiences grow.

I dislike saying "I am trying to find myself" because my identity is not lost, it just needs more uncovering. Luckily for me, what I love to do and want to be helps me uncover more about myself. I want to be a writer. I may not end up a professional writer but I will always write, even if I am the only one interested in my work, because writing is my self-reflection.

When writing, I sometimes get worked up into such a fervor that I barely know what I am saying. I just let my fingers fly over the keyboard and the ideas pour from my head. When I go back through the jumble of unpunctuated ideas, I notice a theme running through the writing. I don't try to put a moral in the theme, but invariably it happens. Evaluating the theme and the rest of the writing helps me interpret my own character and decipher my at times bottled-up feelings.

Emotional Stability at Christmas

Christmas is a stressful time. Even those without a mental health problem find the holidays difficult to get through, so it goes with out saying that, when an eating disorder is thrown into the mix too, there are bound to be problems.

For me and many others, there is a sadness, grief and loneliness behind my Christmas cheer. My disordered family is thrown together and the intensity nearly always bubbles over into arguments and squabbles. I am deeply ashamed to admit that there is still a stain on my family home's sitting room wall, where I threw a glass of wine at my sister one Christmas, missed and instead imprinted a cherry red mark on the cream wall as a memento of my rage!  

Late nights, rich food, extra alcohol, traffic and crowds, shopping and finances, cooking and cleaning and all the other tasks of Christmas, all make this time of year a protracted emotional time.

There ARE a few things which DBT offers us for a successful way to ride the holiday wave. I personally am concentrating on  COPE AHEAD. The more I plan for and organize the less likely that something unformulated will shock me into an emotional backlash. All my clothes are washed and outfits put together. I have made plans for friends to ring me on Christmas eve, Day and Stephen's day as supports and handy excuses from the dinner table. 

I am putting together a wellness toolbox to bring with me as part of SELF SOOTHE. This box is a little like what you might bring to keep a child entertained on a long car journey. I have knitting, coloring pencils and paper, magazines and books. I also have my DBT notes and MINDFULNESS exercises. I have 6 reminders on my phone which simply say 'Check-In'. these are to remind me to recognize my anxiety and take regular MINDFUL breaks throughout the day. I find things always seem less overwhelming after a few deep breaths.

I will also be practicing RADICAL ACCEPTANCE. I need to have realistic expectations. My family will not suddenly change into the perfect Brady bunch overnight. And if I can ACCEPT that my family are not perfect I think I have more of a chance of dealing with the potential holiday fallout.

I plan on respecting my values. I do not want to compromise my recovery 'just because' its Christmas. I am going to eat intuitively. So if I am hungry and dinner is not ready yet... well sorry, but I will eat anyway! 

Christmas is supposed to be a happy period and therefore a perfect5 opportunity to make new better memories for future years, so ACCUMULATE POSITIVE EXPERIENCE is another skill. I am going to spend time at the end of the day to reflect on what things went well and add them to my positivity book.

Are there any other tips you guys have?

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE xxx

Mental Illness: My Gift

Today I attended a 'Wellness Workshop'. It was a day-long seminar run by a fantastic organisation here in Ireland called S.O.S. (Suicide or Survive). I really connected to the speakers and feel that it came at just the right time for me as I haven't been coping that well lately and needed a boost. 

I took so much out of the day, but what I found myself being drawn back to all day was quite a controversial topic. And that is; that my mental illness has been the greatest gift I have. I came to this conclusion because, I feel that BPD has gifted me the power of understanding, of empathy and hope, of motivation and passion for change and most importantly; a desire and a drive to help others, to care and to reach-out.

I really want to explain what I mean without sounding patronizing or Pollyanna-ish. I haven't gone into much detail about my personal story on this blog yet, and I am still working up the courage to post about it. But I will share with you a wee bit now for the purpose of explaining myself properly.

Two years ago, almost to the day, I suffered the loss of my twin babies during pregnancy. This loss was far from an easy blow to absorb. If you have not experienced grief or shock to that degree, let me tell you, it hurts. Emotionally obviously, but also physically. It's a pain deep in the pit of your stomach, in your core. Its a suffocating agony in your lungs and a sharp stab to your heart. It is not a feeling I would wish on anybody, not even my enemies. 

Here is where I could dwell on that awful chapter of my life, I could describe that horrible day to you, but I don't feel it would help you if I did, so I choose not to. Rather, I want to focus on how I feel this period has shaped me into who I am now, how I live and how I view the world I live in.

Without that perpetrating event two years ago, I would not have faced up to my problems. Some people call it their 'Rock-Bottom', or a breakdown, or their breaking point. It changed me from the person I was then to the person I was after. Without it, I would never have sought help and would still be using the extremely destructive coping mechanisms I had so successfully developed. I would go as far to say I mightn't be alive today, if I am being totally honest. 

The accessories to grief; shock, confusion, despair, anger, sadness, etc. are what saved me from myself. I FELT something finally. I was smacked in the face with emotion for the first time really, and I couldn't deal with it. I needed help. Since getting that help, I have questioned everything, I have left no rock in my life un-turned.  I have searched for answers and explanations and most importantly, I have never accepted 'no'.

You see, that blow of grief provided the foundations for my survival.  I learn't my hardest lessons from that period of my life.  I am now more mindful of my emotions and my triggers. I can recognize when I need help, and can actually ask for it. I am grateful for my blessings and have learnt who and what are the most important to me. I am not too sure I could have done all those things without the bitter foreknowledge of my grief.

I actively use RADICAL ACCEPTANCE here. Yes it was such a horrible thing to have happened to me. Nobody should experience the loss of their own children's lives. But oftentimes, we learn the most valuable lessons from our hardest and most devastating experiences. I still have not fully accepted the loss just yet, only yesterday I was sitting in Mass screaming at God 'WHY ME!!!!', I so often baulk in the injustice of it all. But I let myself feel that way sometimes, because that's OK too.

Back to the workshop, one of the facilitators coined a phrase 'Think in Ink'. I loved it. He made us put our biggest hopes and dreams and goals down on paper. In ink. Mine is to go back to University and get my degree in occupational therapy. When I wrote it down, I thought to myself; 'I am going to a damn good occupational therapist'. I haven't been that positive about myself in a very long time. And most importantly, I BELIEVE it. I am not just affirming to myself. I know I will be a great O.T. some day. My personal experience is going to help me to help others.

It excited me and motivated me to kick my disorder up the bum, to rid it from my life, to accept that these thing happened but to wave goodbye to them and look forward to what is around the next corner.