A Mindful Writer (Part 3 of 3)

Process, process, process….

In short – I know, bit late – a writer needs to find his or her process and stick with it. Whatever it is that helps the writer produce writing that satisfies them is valid to be be called The Right Way, and the only modifications needed are ones that lead to increased satisfaction.

My process is open and entwined with the jumble called the human world. It is whimsical and I am free to tolerate dry spells as well as monsoons.  It is not tied up with units moved or sales promotions right now, because publishing a book isn’t on my agenda at the moment. When that does become my focus, then I will adjust my process accordingly to achieve my goals to the best of my ability.

What’s the mindful aspect to all this?

Simply put, everyone must walk his or her own path in their own way, because they have to use their own figurative feet to do it.

There will always be people who insist the way I walk isn’t right, because my path doesn’t match theirs. They can’t accept that my path doesn’t move towards the same goals as theirs, so they don’t grasp how I could be so ignorant or wasteful as to pursue my goals through my process.

Acceptance means that I will know my goal and walk my path in the way my heart and intuition dictate. I am free to adjust my process because it will bring me closer to my goals, and I will not be coerced into embracing someone else’s process simply because it works for them or it landed them a billion-dollar advance. I promise that many people will embrace that process for exactly that reason…. and then fail. Why? There may be many explanations, but my best guess is that it’s because they were trying too hard to walk someone else’s path rather than their own.

I also accept writer’s block when it happens, simply because it happens. Getting frustrated over it is natural, and it happens, but by accepting it rather than judging it, I can overcome it by doing or writing something else. It’s like when I’m trying to remember someone’s name and the harder I try the farther away it gets. Fighting it is usually futile, while moving on often frees my mind of the block and the name (or the words) shows up.

I need to be non-judgmental about days of writing. They aren’t necessarily good or bad. They are just days. I often fail at this, of course, but that’s usually because a writing day either exceeded or failed to match my expectations for it. It would be a shame to miss the fact that a wonderful day full of value just passed me, declared to be a rotten day just because I wrote 3000 words that might never see the light of day. Shoot, how many best-selling authors had weeks like that? Bunches.

I gotta have faith (there’s that song again!) that my writing will achieve my goal of touching people. Even without very much feedback or comments on my blog, I am confident that I’m hitting my target more than I’m missing it. Writers and guitarists with certain bands simply adore feedback (well, with some writers it has to be positive to be appreciated. Lol). Yet I have faith in what I’m writing whether I hear a word back or not.

Presence? That’s all about being content with being right here, right now. Whatever success I have, whatever status I have as a writer, is where I am. I always have room to improve, and there are always more horizons to aim for. But I should never be dissatisfied with 50 readers because I should have 100; that would rob me of my joy and be a discredit to the 50 readers. I can be present with 50 readers, and at the same time work towards 100. I can let go of yesterday’s day of writing and wait for tomorrow’s; all I have right now is right now.

And right now I’m thankful that the words are flowing. It’s a good writing day!

Oops. Rats!

A Mindful Writer (Part 2 of 3)

Where do I write?

I am not a solitary writer. Sitting on a balcony overlooking the sea ain’t gonna get my fingers moving towards a draft of anything. I’d sit and watch the waves until I dozed off and started work on my 2^nd degree sunburn.

I don’t like writing in my bedroom, my study, my living room, or in secluded places. There are plenty of exceptions, and I’ve written many things in all of those places, but they aren’t my preference.

I am a social writer. I like to write (as I am right now) at a fast food joint where there is a constant swirl of human energy. I enjoy the sounds and sights and pure dynamics of the variety of humanity.

Sometimes that stilts my writing. Some environments are too chaotic and distracting. But the ebb and flow of humanity is by itself a wonderful distraction. They just can’t be people I know, or I’ll stop writing and visit. J

I know some professional writers who basically lock their study door and demand solitude and quiet from the rest of the household. If that’s what they need to do, then by al means I wish them success and productivity. It just isn’t my way.

How do I write?

As I’ve mentioned, I’ll write on just about anything in a pinch. But I’ve somewhat turned away from my love of pen and paper and embraced the flow of my computer. I use my laptop which is connected to a USB keyboard for easier typing.

What happens when the words stop coming?

Hey, it happens sometimes. It can be frustrating as all get out, but I know that the words are just ocean tides. Some of the waves wash up way down there and never really get to me. Sometimes the waves are brief. Sometimes I get a tsunami.

If the tide is high, I write with the waves. If the tide is low, I find something else to do until the tide rolls in again.

Yes, I’ve felt the drive to write when nothing pans out. I have spent hours and written thousands of words, and none of them combine into anything satisfactory. It’s cool; I wanted or needed to write, so I did, whether or not it resulted in anything that could be measured as productive or usable. I save everything anyway, in case the words become useful later down the road.

Sometimes the words I want to write are non-fiction, and the topic just isn’t happening. If I still need to write and I’m getting too frustrated with my current topic, I’ll switch topics. Or maybe I’ll write some verse, or a short story, or some ramble about the fact that nothing I’m writing is working out (yes, I’ve done that; ironically that is often the only thing that actually works out that session).

So, what if too many words come?

That also happens. If I need to sleep or attend to other matters, I will stop writing if possible (and it’s almost always possible). I just make sure that I jot notes at the end of what I’ve written to act as road signs for the next time I sit down to write.

I know that some folks insist on riding that creative wave as long as they can, even into the wee hours. That’s excellent for them, and they need to do that.

For me, I’ve never lost my inertia by setting out pointers for the next day and then getting necessary rest. In fact, as mindful experience attests, without proper rest my mind will start to lose its way. Focus drifts, frustration comes more often, and burnout can become a danger for me.

A Mindful Writer (Part 1 of 3)

I enjoy writing, and at times I feel this driving need to write.

Unfortunately, as I experienced recently, the words don’t want to come. Or the words show up, and they’re the wrong words for what I’m trying to say. It’s not the words’ fault; sometimes I just need to write but what I want to write isn’t working.

I’ve developed a few strategies for handling this, but first: a few thoughts on being a writer from my perspective. (If you are a writer, you might not agree with more than 10% of my opinions here. That’s cool – your mileage may vary.)

Why do I write?

Here’s where I will diverge from most writers: I don’t do it to become a well-known or well-purchased author. Those would be nice, but they aren’t my goal.

I am not out to become a professional writer to make a living. I have a day job to pay the bills and buy Writer’s Digest books. So I’m not struggling with many of the concerns professional full-time writers deal with because it isn’t my goal to be in that occupation.

My goal is to write what I want to write. Sure I’ll work on trying to edit it, polish it up, and shape it for public consumption. But in the end, it’s for me because I want and need to.

I then post or publish my writing to various outlets so that they might touch someone. It doesn’t matter if it’s not 20,000 people; if one person benefits from something I’ve written, then I’m a successful writer. Of course I’ll never have 50,000 copies of my book sold with that attitude. See above.

What do I write?

My writing is primarily non-fiction. I love reading fiction, but I’m not really moved to write it.

Of course, when the muse slaps me upside the head and points at some fiction idea that refuses to leave my brain, I’ll probably go ahead and write it. It’s just that it may never meet another eye than mine.

I’m working on my blog about Mindfulness. This blog is essentially my Journey Journal as I take control of my life thanks to Mindfulness therapy. I’ve expanded a bit since its start to chronicle how mindful attitudes and behaviors continue to affect and benefit my life in various ways.

I have a separate blog for miscellaneous writings such as poetry, short stories, and so on. I write occasional articles for Yahoo Contributor Network, and submit the occasional item to magazines (such as a recent submission to Weird Tales Magazine).

I’m also working on my second draft of my book examining the accounts of Lot in Sodom and the Levite priest in Gibeah based on the foundational Hebrew and Greek texts rather than English translations. It’s truly a labor of love, and one which refused to let me abandon it after the first draft was completed (granted it was completed in 2004, so I was able to put it away for awhile, but not forever).

When do I write?

Oh, here we go.

I write when I can, which often means jotting notes on napkins or typing out texts to myself on my phone for later development. I have notebooks galore full of bits.

But seriously? I write when I want or need to. If I don’t want to, or don’t feel the drive, then I don’t worry about it.

(Sound of me being pelted with rotten tomatoes by traditional and professional writers)

I know I’m supposed to write x number of words or pages every day according to standard writing advice. But if I don’t feel like doing that, then I don’t. I’m not going to sell 50,000 copies of my book with that attitude, but…. Well, you know the rest.

A Mindful Guy Mourns

November 18, 1937 – my mom was born. Today she would have turned 76.

I miss her, more than simply because she was my mom. She helped shape my mind, my core values, my work ethic, my sense of self. When I see myself, I see a lot of her.

She was always proud of me, even when I did things she didn’t approve of. Not during my childhood; I had a pretty down-to-earth childhood. I didn’t get into much trouble, I got good grades, and I wasn’t out partying or hanging with a rough crowd.

No, I mean later in life. She didn’t approve of some of my childish choices, mostly because if a guy made a childish choice it only reminded her of my dad. And when I became one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, she had a real struggle with that. But in time, she saw that I hadn’t really changed a lot. I was still her son.

It’s quite coincidental that the year which marked my last talk with my mom was also the year marking the last time I stepped into a Kingdom Hall. She had watched me grow as a public speaker, and was so proud of me. She got all the attention after any talk she came to hear; people from across the congregation just gushed over her.

Don’t tell anyone: she really got a kick out of that.

You may not see the most amazing aspect of this, but it stands out to me very strongly: she came to a Kingdom Hall to watch me give some of my talks. It was quite against her non-denominational church views to go there, and she would hear things which didn’t ring true to her believing ears, but she went anyway. Just to see and hear her son do something he was good at and enjoyed doing. To see her son, and be proud.

When 2008 was progressing, she had a tough time health-wise. She always had her oxygen tank in tow, she couldn’t sleep much with all the prednisone she had to be on, and her hospital stays were becoming more frequent. She had significant arterial blockage, and even with it cleared out her body was not really recovering. She struggled to spend time with her grandsons whom she adored beyond words, simply because their energy and enthusiasm to see grandma was exhausting. Yet it never stopped her, because she was able to see them, and be proud.

We had some very in-depth talks as 2008 progressed. Somehow all the joking and light-hearted nature of our previous chats about mortality changed. We were serious about the matter. We said all the things we wanted to say, the things we needed to say. When my mom passed away, there was never a moment where I thought, “I wish I had taken the chance to tell her….” We both had the chance, and we both took it.

So I wonder, here on her birthday in 2013, why I feel that I should have done more to mourn the passing of my mother.

I think it may be cultural, as I discussed with a friend of mine recently. It’s like I should have done more. I should have lost control and crumpled in a heap and wailed non-stop for days. Sat in shadows dressed in sackcloth and rubbed ashes on my forehead. Society expects huge displays of grief, and although I cried and struggled, I did not fall apart except in my dreams. (To this day, if my mom appears in my dream, we invariably sit and talk until I crumble into inconsolable wailing and I wake up due to the intensity of it all.)

I cried loudly over my dad’s passing in 2011, falling in a gradual slide over the edge of grief. I had little relationship with my dad except at a distance, simply because his own guilt in life was enveloping and I would soon be overwhelmed by his desire for forgiveness, all from a son who never held his sins against him.

Yet I grieved far less publicly over my mom. Indeed, I mourned far less intensely for her than the man I had little to do with.

Folks will have their theories, and I know the next time I see my therapist I’ll mention all this, but I have a personal realization:

What if I have grieved exactly the right amount for my mom, and I merely think I should have done more? Could I be beating myself up because I didn’t do as much as I thought I was supposed to do?

I think so. I’m often angry for not meeting my own self-held expectations.

My mother did not leave according to my schedule, nor according to hers. But we both saw the departure at hand. We both gained the closure so many never achieve. She certainly wouldn’t want me to be unable to let go. She wouldn’t want the son she loved and was so proud of suffer so.

I believe I have mourned the correct amount, neither too much or too little. Even as I try to finish writing this while crying loudly, I realize it’s time to forgive myself and admit that I have done what I needed to.

I miss you, mom, but I think I’m going to be okay.

And, in a closing that only you and I would get: I hope the Perry Como album sounds good on the bus trip to who-knows-where.

A Mindful Fed (Part 4)

Keep a life!

One of the most amazing things to me is how entwined our jobs are with our lives. It seems that things went sideways almost the moment our routine was disrupted.

I remember my mom thinking that retirement would be so awesome. No more deadlines, no more daily grind, no more fussing with a boss and demands of the job. But it soon became obvious that without a daily routine, a focus for one’s energy, and a direction to travel from day to day, life became a great desert with her wandering for the proverbial 40 years. That’s a shame too. She worked hard and deserved to enjoy that time. Don’t misunderstand, she did enjoy parts of it and was grateful to be away from that particular grind. But with no direction to move in, she found at times she was just spinning in circles.

The best way to face the lack of job-based direction seems to be to maintain some other semblance of direction. Without having a job to go to, we often need to replace it with activities and people so that we don’t feel we are lost, at sea all alone and without any sight of shore.

I try to spend time most every day around people, writing. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, joy, and much-needed practice. I have the ability to get my thoughts out, hopefully make some dent in peoples’ lives, and maybe even help someone along the way.

The love of my life is working on her future as an entrepreneur. A good friend is increasing his future in the music biz. Friends are spending time with loved ones, focusing on rallies or other means of calling attention to the crisis we share, and sadly a few may be drawing inward and experiencing a different kind of shut down. We are all dealing with this in the best ways we know how.

So for everyone reading this, I encourage you to reach out and make a difference in the life of a Federal employee. Not some politician, but a member of your family, your friend, your neighbor. Offer a little help if you can.

That doesn’t have to be money, or food, or a place to stay. It could be as simple as empathy, support, a hug, a text urging the person to keep going despite these hard times. Let them know they are appreciated, that they have value and dignity and above all hope despite circumstances. Shine a little light into their life to help lift a shadow or two.

In all, we are all as a nation suffering in some way with this. How will we make it through?

United. Determined. Focused on good, with love and peace.

Huh. I suddenly feel like listening to the Beatles.

A Mindful Fed (Part 3)

Facing forward, staying present

There are certain things that really sting about all this. Many of my friends and co-workers face:

·         No income, but no vacation from obligations.

·         Limited short-term options.

·         Uncertainty.

·         Bad news from the media every few minutes.

·         Lack of sympathy or support from family, friends, acquaintances, or strangers.

·         Negativity from all the political rhetoric surrounding us and the event.

Mindfully, there are some things I can do to make it through this crisis:

·         Find some income where possible. It will take some mix of ingenuity and chance, but there may be ways to cobble together enough to stay afloat.

·         Accept that there are parts of this crisis which are simply beyond my ability to do anything about. That’s refreshing, because it frees me from the anxiety over those things. I only need to be concerned with things I have some control over.

·         Stay away from negativity as much as possible. The more negativity I allow in, the more it becomes a part of me. It saps my positive energy, like electrons neutralizing protons.

·         Encourage others. As much positivity as I allow to flow into others, that’s just a little more strength they gain to deal with this mess. The more positive attitudes I encourage, the less negative ones gain strength.

·         Stay neutral. There are many views as to who is to blame in this crisis. Blame is just a way people have of focusing their negative energy and attitudes in a particular direction. It’s an effort to relieve them of the negative pressure created from anxiety and the unknown. But blame never solves a bloody thing. It doesn’t matter what one person or another did to lead us to this point. Even if someone did have all the responsibility, it wouldn’t mean a darned thing: we’d still be in this mess. Might as well not worry about pointing fingers.

·         Stay non-judgmental. Neutrality is great, but not practicable for a lot of folks. They have very firm views, and they are personally invested in matters. As things stand they can’t remain neutral. But there’s no value in judging those who have different views than I do. They have their views, I have mine. One of us may be right, maybe the other, maybe neither of us, maybe both of us a little bit. People deserve respect and we deserve peace no matter the positions we take.

·         Stay present. No matter what has happened, it’s unchangeably done and over. Unless someone has a time machine, it’s staying that way. Leave the past in the past or it will just make a muddle of your present. Likewise, the future is unknown, and people hate that. But seriously, since it’s pages in the book of life that haven’t been written yet, the most we can do is make the best decisions with all the wisdom, integrity, and intuition we can manage so that the future pages are the brightest we personally can make them.

·         Face forward. It’s tempting to look back wishfully, or get distracted by the wrangling going on around us. It’s going to be more efficient to face forward and stay the course. A ship at sea will turn into large waves to avoid being tipped over and scuttled. We need to turn into the waves of life to avoid being tipped over and perhaps sinking beneath the waves.

·         Deal with anxiety triggers. I’ve had to do breathing exercises and maintain something resembling a routine to stop or prevent intrusive negative thoughts. Since the anxiety of others can increase mine, the more I can help relieve theirs where possible, the easier we all breathe.

A Mindful Fed (Part 2)

A Federal Myth, a Federal Reality

For years I’ve worked on assignments at home for free, because things need to be done but there’s not enough time for them to be accomplished during the regular 8 hour day. I’ve helped co-workers, members of the public, and the occasional headquarters staff person in keeping processes and instructions consistent, understandable, and applied. I’ve trouble-shot systemic and procedural issues. I’ve enjoyed the job.

Nowadays, with all the negativity around the Federal workplace, there’s not much joy for me in my job. A lot of folks who aren’t government workers assume I have a cushy job, great pay, huge benefits, and lots of ego. Instead, after 25 years I have an uncertain future, casual acquaintances sneering disdainfully at me in misunderstanding, fewer benefits that cost more than ever…

…and less than $33,000 per year to show for it. Not exactly what the media portrays, is it?

I’m maxed out at my income level, and unless I get another job (hard to do with a hiring freeze all over), I will stay at this income for a long time. We haven’t even had a minimum cost-of-living increase for years. There are many reports of government spending and high incomes floating around the ether. Well, I can promise that most of us who work for the government stare in shocked amazement at those reports right along with most of the public.

While depression and anxiety descends on my Federal family, I’m struggling to deal with my own realities and there isn’t a lot of sympathy out there. So many around me focus on the negative, the news reports of a broken government and selfish political maneuvering, that I fall through the cracks with my employer and my neighbors at the same time.

How do I deal with this?

Mindfully, if at all possible.

A Mindful Fed (Part 1)

Hey, did ya hear? The Federal government shut down. Yeah, no really. Just up and shut the doors.

And right now it’s really starting to pinch.

In March 2013 I received my 25 year award. I didn’t get money. I didn’t get time off. I didn’t get a party.

I did get a plaque, a certificate, and an e-mail congratulating me on being a dedicated and faithful employee for the last quarter or a century. A co-worker got her 40 year award at the same time. We've spent some time serving our nation and its people.

The award came right up against the news that we were going to start having furlough days: for one or two days per month we would be ordered to stay away from the workplace and forbidden to engage in any official duties or act in any official capacity.

We tightened our belts and made adjustments, but no matter how many concessions we made locally, we were only able to limit the number of furlough days. Then October 1 came along. As of this writing, I’ve been off work for 2 weeks without any income. And there is very little good news on the horizon.

Sure, we’ve been told we’ll get paid for this time once the budget gets put in place. But that will be a lump sum check, and until then we have bills to pay, groceries to buy, roofs to keep over our heads. Our children need school lunch money. Our family members need medicines. Our loved ones need us to provide security and we just don’t have very much of that at the moment.

What about those who applied for unemployment? Well around these parts, as soon as we get our Federal paycheck, those folks will have to pay all of that back right away. After taxes are taken out, of course.

Perhaps we could just get a part-time job. We have guidelines about that too. We can’t just take any old job opportunity while we’re still technically employed by the Federal government, and in many cases we need to fill out a form to request permission to get outside employment before we can get that job.

Then there are the poor folks who are ordered to report to work almost daily without getting a cent for gas to drive to the campus (particularly rough for folks who live 30 or more minutes away). I know of at least one instance where an employee drove to work, was told to do something, and then told to go home 15 minutes later. Those deemed “Essential” occasionally feel worse than those who just stay in bed without pay.

In many ways, it’s like I’ve been in a relationship for 25 years, and even though things have been rocky lately, I took it in stride. What relationship doesn’t have troubles sometimes?

Well I’ve discovered that while my “partner” of 25 years has been telling me how much they love me, when the chips are down it turns out I’m really just a guy they know. And that kinda stings.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 7 (Time to get help?)

Should I get help?

The real problems come when the episodes go beyond Acute or Chronic to being Severe or Non-stop. At that point, the human mind will often have that Fight or Flight response kick in.

In Flight, the person may try to run from the experience. Maybe they stay away from all people for unreasonable lengths of time. Perhaps their moods just drop into the darkest regions and refuse to budge. They may try alcohol, drugs, anything to distract themselves from the sudden feelings of isolation, fear, unrealness, disconnection, hopelessness, emptiness.

In Fight, the person may take it upon themselves to force a connection. Violent outbursts to provoke reactions from others might prove the connection is still there because "I did something that had a demonstrable effect on the people or world around me." Violence against myself might be an effort to seek connection through pain.

Or in the ultimate Fight AND Flight reaction, a person might decide to choose the Great Beyond as their new environment. If my reaction to the episode is so titanic, I might become the Titanic and slip permanently under the waves of hopelessness.

If you start having episodes like these, where you find yourself losing that connection to yourself or the rest of creation, a professional evaluation might be the ticket you need to come to grips with them. I shy away from simple on-line questionnaires because they are often skewed towards one interpretation of symptoms or another. A trained person can include more data than what you click Yes or No for.

If your episodes are getting debilitating, or your reactions are getting more extreme, I beg you to seek help. In many parts of the USA (especially my region of the Midwest), there is huge cultural resistance to getting psychological help. It is met with derision and negativity, as is the person seeking the help. Shoot, folks have been known to suffer alone simply because the pain and fear of being stigmatized as “crazy” is too much for them.

What you decide is your business, of course. But let me say in conclusion how I feel about it:

I’ve been called many things in my life designed to hurt me. People have formed opinions about me that were not based on how I really am. I have been threatened and bullied, emotionally abused and mentally manipulated. Screw ‘em.

My brain, my life. I don’t care whether others like it or not, I’ve got some issues and I’m going to get better. I’m not going to hide them under a rug or in a back room behind a locked door. I’m going to be better. I’m going to be okay. They won’t, because they enjoy judging and ridiculing others. I’m going to be the master of my issues; those folks who choose to ostracize me will remain the slaves of theirs.

Conclusion

I hope this helps folks understand my battle with the 4 Ds. No doubt other folks have different experiences with these mental and emotional nuisances.

If you know someone who struggles with these things, don’t worry. They aren’t contagious, and there’s no need to avoid them during their struggles. Maybe by reaching out to them you can help them retain a sense of connection. No need to remind them simply that they are merely having a Perception issue; that probably wouldn’t help. Dismissing what another person is experiencing may help you feel less uncomfortable but it doesn’t do a thing for them.

If you’re struggling with these things, please be honest about it. Just as with other folks dismissing your struggle, your dismissal won’t really help you find resolution. If it gets bad enough, consider a course of therapy (whether guided or on your own). If reaching out to a professional is the best course, whatever embarrassment you feel about it will soon be overshadowed by the pride you have in advocating for your own peace, your own wellness.

And try to remember that episodes come and go. Just when you think it’s all gone and will never come back, something might happen and it comes knocking on your door. But that’s okay. It’s just another life cycle, even as it’s frustrating and scary. As it starts, it will stop. As it stops, it will start. But in time, you too might get to that glorious point where you feel a sudden disconnection, shrug your shoulders, and go watch TV or go hang out with friends anyway. You’re going to be okay.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 6 (Gauging an episode)

How to gauge the phenomenon

I am overcoming this stuff gradually.

First, it helped that I got properly diagnosed. My psychologist listened to me explain the symptoms (not as symptoms, but as just a stream of feelings and thoughts about them), then began to rule things out. My family has a notable incidence of schizophrenia and dementia, so let’s just say that anytime I started feeling the connection slip I was 100 times worse off because I feared I was on a one-way trip down a long and unhappy slope.

Second, I am a Virgo. That means I need to understand the crap out of things. So I spent awhile researching these issues. Of course, since the primary issue I was fighting was anxiety-induced depression, these little disorders got put on the backburner for awhile. Not to mention that I had trouble keeping the differences between all the Ds straight for a long time.

Third, I am becoming more and more Mindful. That’s been such a blessing, but I will not proclaim it as a perfect path for everyone. All people have their own path to walk, and when problems arise they need to find the solutions for them. Mine may not work for you, and that’s cool. Try things, get help if you actually could use it, and I wish you peace.

As I’ve been more aware and informed, I’ve realized that I hardly notice the episodes anymore. I am aware they happen, but without the cascading distress they aren’t the paralyzing, maddening events they used to be.

Sometimes my music just doesn’t sound right (yes, my headphones are on correctly – I checked!), so I stop listening to music for a little while. Maybe I have trouble focusing on reading because I am suddenly aware that they are merely patterns of black ink on white paper instead of words with meaning. That’s cool; I’ll go play a video game.

And sometimes I get overwhelmed by sadness at being the last of my alien kind on this God-forsaken ball of rock. Then I text my beloved and let her know I’m feeling totally disconnected from the world (in this case, that means the universe of humanity) and am significantly bumming, at which point she texts back a kiss or a hug or an I Love You, and soon it matters less. No matter how disconnected I feel from my fellow humans, I know they are ready to help me remember: we’re still united.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 5 (Dealing with an episode)

What to do when I drop a connection?

An important thing I do is let folks who are close to me know when I’m having an episode. It helps me not feel like I am going through the experience alone, even if it feels like it. It also alerts them to help me out if I start really suffering through one. Even if the universe seems unreal, the loving hug and kiss from my dearest can work wonders.

I have to keep in mind that all Dissociative episodes, whether they are perception problems about me or everything else, are temporary. If I was cruising along unaware of the disconnected feeling, the moment I start having one is proof that an episode has begun; therefore it will also end.

My biggest strategy is to ride it out until the episode passes. This means I need to employ many tools in my Mindfulness toolkit:

Faith – it started, and it will stop. It will start again sometime, and it will stop in that case too. I am okay regardless.

Acceptance – yeah, it’s happening. Face forward and deal. How I’m feeling about myself or my surroundings doesn’t change their reality or mine; it merely colors my own perception of my reality. If the world doesn’t seem quite right, it’s okay. If I don’t feel quite connected to humanity at the moment, it’s okay.

Be Present – especially when the universe doesn’t feel quite real. I can re-establish my connection to the universe through focus and awareness if I patiently choose to. See, my awareness has shifted without my say so: it’s up to me to get it back. If it’s an internalized thing, then I can be an alien all I need to be, but I’m Here and Now regardless of my perception of self.

Rest – man, I can’t emphasize this enough. Whatever issue a person faces, it’s a tougher slog if they’re worn out.

Take action – one common strategy for coping is to immerse oneself with sensory input that reconnects us with the world around us.  Engage the universe perceptually through the senses. When we perceive the universe it becomes real to us. The more we perceive it, the more real it becomes. Therefore as we engage the universe with our senses mindfully, consciously, reality reasserts itself in our minds.

Engage – by staying social and involved in routine and life, the episodes are likely to pass more quickly and cause less anxiety. Let the people closest to you know you’re struggling if that would help them not feel so shut out all of a sudden or distressed as you seem to be very distracted. Sure, you might need to limit your social activity at times, but make sure you are just visiting the cave and not moving into it.

Be aware – view it realistically and gauge how “bad’ the situation really is. The earliest episodes seem horrible, because you suddenly feel like everything you believed (that is, took for granted) about the real world is turned on its ear. But if you can understand just how relative the issue actually is, you can adjust your response mindfully.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 4 (Derealization)

Derealization: De-reality check

Imagine you’re paying for your groceries, when all of a sudden you are yanked into a state of awareness that all is not what it seems. It sounds paranoid, but paranoia is more about totally believing it. With derealization, I don’t think I ever was convinced that the life I was living wasn’t real. I was, however, convinced that I had been yanked out of connection with this reality, and it was not a pleasant experience.

Probably the reason I hate déjà vu is because it is a sudden slip out of the flow of the Here and Now, shaking me momentarily out of connection with the universe. It makes sense why I struggle to discern the pattern of Past-Intrusive Sensitivity so that I can break it: I’m trying to break the sense of reliving a pattern and get back to my connection with the standard flow of time and experience. I need to break with the alternate universe so I can get back to this one.

This one is tough to grasp, because life flows around us in a way that we take for granted. Or at least life flows in a way that we do not see each drop of water in the river flowing around us. Derealization grabs us by the shirt collar and yells in our face that none of the drops of water in that river are real, or right, or whatever.

Have you ever had your ears pop because of a sudden pressure change? For a moment, the sensation is all you can think about. It totally captures your attention as your brain says, “Crud! Something just changed!” Then it goes on a little checklist of how different you now feel. How has your hearing changed for the moment? Is there pain or discomfort? Did both ears pop or just one? That sort of thing, going on under the hood, usually beyond your conscious mind.

Sudden shifts in perceptual reality are just as jarring. But as the brain tries to process just what’s different, it gets stymied by the fact that everything seems to be just the same, you sense – get an impression – that nothing is the same. Everything was real a second ago, and now nothing is real.

If a Derealization episode passes quickly, you’re left with a vague “What in the heck was that?” feeling. But if your episode seems to go on and on, it gets frustrating. Now you are not only hyper-focused on what feels or seems wrong, your poor brain is also hollering “Why hasn’t it gone away yet? How long is this going to last?”

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 3 (Depersonalization)

Depersonalization: Who am I again?

This is generally called an identity disorder, because it plays with your sense of who you are.

Some folks say they feel unreal, or like they don’t recognize themselves.

I’ve often said I feel like an alien and not totally related to the human race.

For me it really isn’t about losing my identity, or thinking I’m not really a human being. It has to do with the perception of the Self. Instead of feeling associated – connected – to humanity, I feel set apart from the people in my life. I don’t feel like they’re odd or unreal; it’s all a perception of me.

For me that’s the difference between Depersonalization and Derealization: Depersonalization is me; Derealization is everything else.

What happens is at some point a perception shift occurs. I go from experiencing “David” as a regular Joe who I hardly notice to experiencing “David” as a being totally alone, totally removed from “his kind,” or people like him. I become hyper-aware and hyper-focused on my uniqueness, and that only amplifies my sense of detachment from humanity.

Sometimes I like the notion that I’m significantly different from what I perceive as patterns in humanity at a particular moment. But honestly, sometimes I wish I had someone just like me to talk to about how I see and feel things, someone who “really gets it.”

Since it’s a perspective thing, I feel a bit better when I really wrap my focus around a few facts that I forget in those moments:

·         We are all unique, and in that sense there is no one “like” us. Even twins and clones will have differences in time.

·         People may never totally get what it’s like in my head, but there are many folks in my life who love me unconditionally anyway. They will do their best to listen and be there for me. Just as I don’t have to totally understand everything they go through in order to be there for them, they can be there for me regardless.

·         There actually are a bunch of folks around the world who are also feeling disjointed, disconnected, alien. It turns out that I’m not as unusual as I feel.

·         A bit ago, I felt fine and connected, which means that if this thing has a start point, it will also have an end point.

A Depersonalization episode can be very distracting, not to mention scary. Few people like to focus on themselves at vulnerable moments, but suddenly you have no choice. You are grabbed by the shirt collar and forced to look at the image in the funhouse mirror. What you see is distorted and you just can’t imagine what you see is actually you.

Having a disconnection from yourself can lead to a person being so distracted by the sensation that they start removing themselves from active involvement in things, whether just at the moment or perhaps entirely. How you feel about you affects how you interact with others and the world, so by thinking there’s something so wrong with you it can’t help but filter out into everything else.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 2 (Dissociative Disorder)

Dissociative Disorder: Sorry, your connection was lost

Here is my flawed understanding of what these Dissociative Disorders are all about for me.

My more-or-less literal translation of the 4 Ds is that my Connection has been lost along with my mind’s sense of Order, whether the lost connection is with Myself or Everything Else.

Everything you think and feel is based on associations. That’s why some folks can love things you can’t stand: they have a different association with that thing. Or why you really love someone who your parents can’t stand. These associations are developed by experiencing the universe through your senses and making connections; thoughts and emotions are connected to experiences and people.

These connections – these associations – we usually take for granted; except when someone tells us they enjoy mayonnaise in their chili or having spiders crawl on their face, and then we look at them as if they’ve lost their minds for having such warped views.

Mindfulness in particular teaches us to stop hurrying from point A to point B all the time at the expense of feeling and experiencing the Here and Now of the many steps in the journey. It teaches us that we are all connected to the people and universe around us, and that it is very grounding to get consciously in touch with that connection.

Now imagine you’re talking to your best friend, and suddenly your words sound hollow in your ears. Sounds almost seem to drop from “normal” to “flat.” Or maybe I just suddenly become hyper-aware of how uniquely different I am from this friend. It’s disorienting to suddenly be so completely robbed of your connection even as the words leave your mouth, especially when the friend just converses on, oblivious that a huge shift has occurred.

Now imagine you’re in the middle of a conversation with your boss about why his new budget initiative will bankrupt the company within the hour, and BAM! Just like that you are ripped away from the Here and Now and plunged into another universe that looks and feels and sounds and tastes and smells just like the one you’re from, but you know in your bones that it isn’t the real world.

Sights and sounds seem flat, like you’re watching a closed circuit TV transmission of your interactions with the world, real-time but not really here. Now you’re in the ultimate interactive video game, one where the main character does everything you do, but it isn’t really you: it’s the character you’re controlling in the game you’re playing.

We’re talking about a sudden dissociation, the opposite of association; a loss of connection rather than the achievement or maintaining of connection. Connection to what, you ask? Oh man. Everything.

So this is a perception issue. I’m not really being yanked into a parallel earth, although that might actually make me feel better about the episode: it would at least make sense then. This sudden event makes no sense to me from the moment it happens.

My subconscious awareness of connection to the grand world around me is suddenly shaken, and all I’m left with is an overwhelming, undeniable, conscious sensation that I’ve just lost that connection.

From there, it varies based on what suddenly doesn’t seem right anymore.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 1 (What are the 4 Ds?)

My life has a 4D quality:

Dissociative Disorder – Depersonalization and Derealization.

This is a tricky bunch, because I gather from reading about them that there are some standard definitions but a certain amount of leeway has to be granted. Not everyone has exactly the same experience or symptomology.

I understand that the DSM exists to standardize psychological symptoms into categories for ease of treatment (and probably insurance coverage. But I digress.). But often it seems to try and pigeonhole folks into vague or general categories without being able to properly account for the colors and textures that vary from one patient to the next.

So I will do my best and explain my flavor of this package disorder. When I say it’s a package, it is for me. I can’t comment on what other folks experience.

Here is the basic issue: sometimes I feel like an alien only roughly related to humanity, and other times I feel normal but I perceive the world around me as kind of unreal.

I’m not saying I’m ET, nor am I suggesting that I’m trying to escape the Matrix. Just that I have episodes where reality… well, ain’t quite real.

Most of the stress and anxiety from a dissociative episode stems from a few things: it’s jarring, it’s unpredictable, and it hijacks your conscious awareness. But most of all, for me, it’s because of my instant judgment of the episode: it’s a Bad Thing.

Anxiety ramps up when we stop seeing certain events of our lives as Things that are happening and start seeing them as Bad Things that are happening. If they make us uncomfortable, or aren’t what we want, we’re quick to slap a judgment label on them. Once we focus on how Bad these events are our Contentment Tank gets a huge leak and will run dry if we don’t get in there and do something about it.

I start making a huge deal about it in my mind using circular logic and assertions of how things ought to be.

Obsessive Self: “This shouldn’t be happening.”

Mindful Self: “But it is.”

“Yeah, but it shouldn’t be! Don’t you get it?”

“Yes, I get it. Regardless, it’s happening.”

“Yeah but it shouldn’t be! It’s really wrong!”

“It isn’t wrong, it is what it is. It is, however, hijacking your awareness.”

“I know! And that’s BAD!”

It sounds funny in writing, but trust me, that’s pretty much how the process snowballs in my mind within seconds.

Since it’s perceptions that are impacted, that’s where I concentrate my efforts to deal with depersonalization and derealization episodes.

If I had to choose, I’d rather experience derealization over depersonalization.  Going to sleep can remove you from the universe in a way, so it doesn’t matter if the world seems off at that point: you’re leaving it anyway. But if I feel off, it intrudes on my very sense of self, and I’m not comfortable or at ease anywhere doing anything.

Now this has nothing to do with brain-altering substances; I don’t drink alcohol or partake of anything more than temazepam certain nights. No, this was probably brought on by a number of issues growing up, which I won’t bore anyone with here, although I’ll bet I do before this series is over.

Suffice it to say, my sense of identity and place in the universe is a little odd at times.

I’ve often spoke of myself as an alien, as if I wasn’t human. I based that on how I perceived “normal people” behaved, and realized how WAY DIFFERENT I was. This got worse in time, simply because I found myself meeting lots of folks from many different walks of life, and I still never felt that I was quite like them. I felt like I was Different.

Eventually this was joined with a sense at times that what I was experiencing around me wasn’t quite real. I’ve read that some compare it to the sensation of watching the world around them as if it were a movie or a television program. Some describe it as a hazy, gauzy, dreamlike state. For me it was not really like that. I won’t say it was more profoundly disturbing than how other people perceive it, because everyone’s experience disturbs them. But I will say that, to me, my experience is supremely freaky.

Let’s look a little deeper, shall we?

Allergic to Anxiety?

When you have allergies, certain foods or times of the year can make you miserable. It isn’t so much the things or the times, but the fact that your body’s immune system overreacts to certain things, and you have a reaction to coming into contact with them.

If you go to an allergy doctor, they can identify your allergic triggers by watching how you react when brought into contact with certain known triggers. Then a strategy is devised, often a mix of medicines that help suppress the body’s immune overreaction coupled with removing the triggers from your environment (or removing yourself from triggering environments where possible).

Anxiety works a lot the same way.

Things trigger your anxiety reaction in a mental cascade effect similar to how the body reacts to allergens. And your strategy for handling it looks very similar as well.

Medications

For example, Xanax is prescribed for many sufferers of anxiety reactions. Xanax has become the mental/emotional equivalent of an allergy patient’s Benadryl. It’s almost a standard for treating mild to moderate cases of anxiety.

Many in the world don’t like the fact that Xanax exists, seeing it as a crutch. However like anything in the world that relieves anything unpleasant, it is not a crutch out of the box but can become one if the person begins to rely on it to escape regularly rather than deal with the things causing the anxious reaction.

There are other, more intense medications for severe anxiety, but they should not be taken lightly or often. Like an allergy patient’s epinephrine injection, these medications act like flipping an electric breaker closed in a house. In an extreme case it is necessary to shut the whole mechanism down to prevent catastrophe. Just as epinephrine can shut down much of the immune reaction process, these medicines can shut down much of the associative reaction process. Good for emergencies, but not to become a common tool.

Get away from them triggers!

If you are allergic to nuts, you learn to read ingredients and avoid nuts.

But if you have environmental allergies, it can be a little trickier.

Let’s say you are allergic to cats. You can find ways to live with it, such as keeping your kitty clean, reducing shed hair all over the house, and so on. But if that doesn’t work, you may have to make a decision: have cats and get used to sneezing, or learn to live without cats.

If you have huge allergy problems with spring, you might have a tough life for part of each year. Pollen from a hundred different sources can help you break world records for sneezing. While certain medicines can help, the strategy tends to be “Stay indoors when possible, and use filtered air conditioning to help alleviate symptoms.”

Environmental triggers are similar with anxiety.

If you are particularly bugged by a co-worker or a classmate, you can try and adjust environmental factors related to that person. Sometimes they are having a tough life themselves, and your unilateral kindness might be just the thing that helps you both. Learning what sets them off can help you mitigate their reactions, which in turn will alleviate yours.

Unfortunately it may be necessary to just stay away from them. Some folks are too toxic when combined with you, and they will never be safe in your world.

Likewise, if the home or workplace is the source of the anxiety, a hundred different triggers might be slamming into you from all directions. In cases like that you may have some hard decisions to make. Moving to another job or home might help, but often we move only to find ourselves besieged again by the same triggers that only look different.

Often it takes the same adjustments we make for allergy season: you can’t entirely avoid the triggers by staying isolated, but you can spend far more time in an “air conditioned environment” by removing as many triggers as possible from the other places you spend time in, or varying the places you spend your other time in.

If your workplace just crushes you with anxiety but you can’t reasonably just quit or change duties, maybe you can employ strategies for making it through so that you can go home and leave that junk behind. You may have to get home and figuratively “decontaminate.”

If home is where the triggers are heaviest, the workplace can become a haven. But rather than try and spend more and more time at work, maybe spending time going for walks, shopping, hobbies, or other diversions can help reduce our contact with our triggers.

De-sensitizing treatment strategy

When you want to really work on overcoming allergies, there are therapies for that, often in the form of allergy shots or other methods.

For example, a shot can be formulated to introduce very small amounts of allergen triggers into your system. This trains the immune system to not totally freak out every time it encounters these things.

The immune system sees the pollen come along one spring and suddenly it’s saying, “Oh, white oak pollen, huh? Yeah, I found out that stuff isn’t as dangerous as I thought.” It reacts less over time until it hardly reacts at all and you stop dreading springtime.

Anxiety triggers can be dealt with the same way. Through mindful acceptance you can co-exist with the triggers by training your mind to have less of a reaction to the stimuli. Small exposures to a trigger can help you see them as being less dangerous as previously thought. Gradually-increased contact with the trigger can help you gauge your reaction improvement.

In the case of both the physical allergy and the mental/emotional anxiety response, we gradually desensitize our systems to the triggers. The less sensitive we are to the things that cause that heartbeat to turn into a gallop or start us sweating even if we aren’t warm, the less anxious our overall lives will be.

The Benefit of Nightmares

As a Dreamwalker, I can control my dreams. Sometimes that means maneuvering a bad dream into better waters. Other times it means stopping a nightmare dead in its tracks.

But mindfully? It often means choosing intentionally to face into the darkness and deal with what’s there. Because there is a tremendous benefit in having nightmares.

It shows you where your weak spots are.

Nightmares: some mechanics

Fears, attitudes, and most every anxiety trigger you have will likely show up at some point in your dreams. When they do it’s no different in the Dreamlands than it is in the waking world. You have the exact same reactions based on the same mental and emotional conditioning.

So why are the nightmares so doggone intense?

Your fears and other triggers are under the jurisdiction of your subconscious mind. That mind has full expression in your dreams. So the trigger is amplified to cause the biggest response in you. You are on its turf.

Afraid of spiders? Suddenly you’re in a room full of them. Scared of falling from heights? You’re at the top of the Eiffel Tower and it’s stupid windy. Don’t like being humiliated? Probably should’ve got dressed before giving that big speech at work; oh that’s right, you didn’t get that luxury: this is a dream.

Whatever your anxiety trigger is, it will be given the overblown IMAX 3D THX sound Director’s Cut treatment in a nightmare. (By the way, IMAX 3D and THX are trademarked brands that I do not in any way claim or own, but are super awesome.)

So we experience that anxiety or panic or anger or whatever, and we wake up wishing we hadn’t eaten that jalapeno ice cream so close to bedtime. The next day we can feel drained or even have lingering flashbacks that re-trigger the emotional responses.

This is good stuff. No it doesn’t feel good. You’d pay to have the effects and the dreams that cause them go away.

But you may not need to pay anyone. This is a fantastic Do It Yourself project.

Get the hammer and caulking gun honey!

By hurling disturbance at you while you sleep, your subconscious mind is hoping you’ll take charge and help. Your mind doesn’t want to torture you with nightmares: shoot, it suffers right along with the rest of you. All those brain chemicals and stress reactions don’t do it any favors. It doesn’t want you to hurt; it’s asking for your help.

Whatever is causing you anxiety, you may be in Avoidance Mode while you’re awake. Hey, that’s not always a bad thing: sometimes just doing your best to stay out of triggering situations or environments is your best strategy. But if your mind won’t let the matter drop and brings it up in casual dreamtime conversation, it’s probably time to square your shoulders and face the challenge.

Will it be easy? Not usually, no. It may take many tries, most of which will probably be unsuccessful. But so much of what you accomplish in life rarely takes only one try unless you have done a lot of preparation beforehand. Like fixing something in your home, it might take hammering on this, caulking that, and generally troubleshooting the problem until you find it and make sure it's really fixed.

Dream Control (called Lucid Dreaming by some) just means that you get to make conscious decisions and take an active role in your dreams. Your subconscious mind gets to intrude on your conscious thoughts all the time. Why not return the favor and consciously, intentionally dream?

However you get to that point, you will notice the need to really apply Mindful techniques. (I know these strategies have different names in different philosophical and psychological realms. I’m just sticking with Mindfulness because she’s the one that brung me to the dance.)

Acceptance comes into play because much of the anxiety you’re feeling has to do with struggle. As you struggle to avoid the feelings or the triggers, you develop an anxious response that can take on a life of its own. So learning to accept that the trigger will occur no matter what you do will free you to choose a healthier response.

So you struggle not to get too close to the edge of the cliff, then you struggle to maintain your footing, then you struggle to not fall over the edge, then you struggle to hang on to the thin thread of hope that keeps you from dropping. Motion pictures use this kind of tension builder so often I’ve started laughing at some of them. Filmmakers know that people have an anxiety reaction to this kind of inexorable edging towards disaster, so they use it to get you on the edge of your seats.

Of course, like any tool, it gets overused. And if a filmmaker turns the screws too tightly, it crosses the line from tense to ridiculous, and I laugh. (Hey Hollywood: if you don’t want me laughing at crucial tension-filled moments, get a clue and stop tightening it beyond that point. Thank you.)

Accept and dare

So if I’m struggling so hard to not fall over the edge and it seems that no matter what I do I get closer to the edge, there’s my first moment of enlightenment. By accepting I am going over the edge regardless, I stop the unwinnable struggle. You can’t prevent it, so trying to do so will deplete your mental energy and deprive you of rest and peace. You’re going to plunge; as comedian Christopher Titus said once, if you keep struggling “you’re just gonna die tired.”

Now that you’ve accepted you can’t change the situation, develop a strategy to face the inevitable and unavoidable. “Man up,” as a certain generation says. “Grow a set,” as another generation is fond of saying. Or “Put your big girl panties on”: same generation, slightly different gender.

The point is to know the difference between what you can change and what you can’t. Once you recognize you can’t do anything about a situation, you are free to not keep wasting resources struggling and save them for dealing with the consequences. Not only will you have more rest and peace, you will be in a way better frame of mind to deal with what comes next. The best news: the consequences are often way less horrible than our imagination led us to believe.

Dare yourself to confront your fears and doubts. Identify your triggers and figure ways to accept and deal with them, whatever that will mean. Have faith that you can do this.

And remember the value of the nightmare. It may have scared you and woke you up at 2:30 in the morning in a sweat, but it was also a cry for your assistance. Be a superhero and answer this distress call from your subconscious mind. When you do, you will learn more about yourself, along with practical strategies for reducing your anxiety reactions to certain triggers.

And that particular nightmare will probably be gone for good.

Now to tackle the one about being lost and late for an appointment.