Negotiating Anxiety

By admin on March 31, 2012

I am revisiting anxiety because, while normal, it can become intolerable. While it may not be possible to describe any particular threat feeling of anxiousness can override our coping mechanisms with a sense of impending danger. Neither our good outcomes or our safety is ever certain, that’s not the adventurous world we inhabit; the future is, almost by definition, uncertain. This article on anxiety, and the thoughts of 19th-century philosopher Kierkegaard on being anxious, explores just that.

Kierkegaard wrote that “All existence makes me anxious, from the smallest fly to the mysteries of the Incarnation; the whole thing is inexplicable, I most of all; to me all existence is infected, I most of all. My distress is enormous, boundless; no one knows it except God in heaven, and he will not console me….” He described anxiety as a simultaneous feeling of attraction and repulsion, and the dizziness of freedom.

I wish for the dizziness of freedom, just consider the alternative. Dizzy but not disabled by anxiety, a normal sort of instability and balanced by Kierkegaard’s belief, “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”

Posted in , Tagged Leave a Comment

Abnormal? grief!

By admin on November 6, 2011

I spoke with a friend, Shelley, recently. Actually Shelley is the sister-in-law of one of my friends, we’ve known each other for a long time as friends of friends. We enjoyed the catch to see each other and chatted, sharing and catching up. Shelle mentioned she was concerned about her Dad, his meds had been mixed up, not administered correctly and it had put him out kilter.

Shelley explained her Dad has been on anti-depressants since being diagnosed with complicated grief after her Mum, his wife of 50 or more years, died. Apparently he couldn’t stop crying. If I were he, I might have had the same reaction. If happiness is going along where life takes you with a particular special person, then grief on the death of that person might be vast and enduring.

Complicated grief is also known as abnormal grief. Shelle’s Dad’s reaction doesn’t sound all that abnormal to me, but I wasn’t there. I can’t really say how he experienced his loss, I can imagine it. I also can’t understand how 5 or so years later, well after he stopped weeping, he is still on anti-depressants.

Something in me is offended by the term abnormal grief. I know grief is complicated, almost by definition. The loss of someone close changes everything.

I believe we are more resilient than we think we are, I know that was true for me. I didn’t always feel resilient but there was something strong willed in me that helped me to cope and continue. Grief is a persistent state, there is something unyielding about being in the grip of grief. Grief can also be unknown and frightening, many confided to me that they did not know if they could make it through what I went through. That’s where resilience comes in, I kept going. Call it resilience, whatever I drew on it was my choice to navigate through grief and loss as best I could, I did not give myself other options. I did not believe I had a physiological disorder that could be treated with drugs, I didn’t even think to seek medical advice.

Another concern I harbour about Shelle’s Dad is about his ongoing medication, he has been taking medication for more than 5 years now for his complicated grief, or should I say his deep and enduring grief. I know that antidepressants can take time to take effect, it can take a month or more before receiving a therapeutic effect. Antidepressants alleviate symptoms but do not address underlying psychological causes for moods. I don’t know about the continuation of antidepressant medication, and how long you might expect take treatment for. My impression was even after years, this was ongoing medication. Is that how it goes? Can you not resume life without medication at some time?

I am troubled by Shelle’s Dad’s story for many reasons. The thing that occurs to me is that grief is a time when you should ask very little of yourself and when others should not ask too much.

Posted in , Tagged , , Leave a Comment

Contrary

By admin on October 18, 2011

I can be as contrary as any Mary, Mary, quite contrary… It was about six weeks ago that I pleaded to be regarded as normal in a blog post. Then in my previous post I took another position, delighting in not being regarded as normal.

Both are true, I am neither completely one nor the other. I am capable of both and I don’t want be labeled as either.

There is a meta-position too where I am neither normal, abnormal, sub-normal, paranormal, or un-normal, if you like but I am all of these. I don’t mean I am highly unusual in resisting being labelled as being one state or another but I think all are possible and almost simultaneously depending on who is making the observation about how I am.

If I am depressed, I am contrary enough to want to be considered as also having the potential for elation. This starts to explain my dislike of labeling. I don’t want to be only one of sick or well, for example. If others think I am unwell and in need of healing or repair it is more difficult for me to be judged as “very well thank you”.

While a diagnosis of a condition might be helpful, I do worry that others will see the condition first, recognising the label attached to it, and then the person – me – in the background. Being labeled can inhibit my experience from evolving moment to moment, from one state to another. I don’t like thought of being diagnosed as less than normal or in need of fixing. This is what normal looks like, colourful and multi-hued.

There is a freedom in being able to move between one state one of experience and the other and both, not perhaps in equal measures but sometimes I want to move between seemingly opposing states. I recall enjoying that freedom in grief. I know I am not the only contrary being to have been sad and solemn at a funeral and then found reason to laugh through the tears. I recently overheard that experience labeled as hysterical. I heard someone describing hysterical weeping interspersed with hysterical laughing. Hysterical is a word loaded with negative judgments implying a delirious state – but a state I’ve found natural at a funeral.

I am not sure (or maybe I am) that one thing can be posited without the other being right there, that’s polarities at play. Sometimes I am beside myself, and all the while completely myself, that’s the circus of my contrary nature. For me it is important to respect what I know and what I don’t know about myself or another person.

Posted in Tagged , Leave a Comment

Beating myself up

By admin on June 20, 2011

After somebody close to you dies by suicide there is a lot of guilt to deal with – that’s what I experienced. I have heard it talked about and I have read the same. Feelings about what I what did or didn’t say, what I knew and didn’t know, what I could have done or said and didn’t were haunting nightmares. In my case there were more questions than answers – and guilt.

I have a book called A Special Scar: The Experiences of People Bereaved by Suicide. I have it somewhere, but today I can’t locate it. I remember being dismayed at some of the words used by the author, Alison Wertheimer, around ‘victims’ and ‘survivors’. Is my distaste for those labels what has caused me to misplace the book? I know I can be that intolerant. Maybe it was not wanting others to see what I was reading…

I mention that book now because I remember reading that much of what I experienced was not only my experience but partly shared by others. I did suffer an obsessive sort of grief, it was good to be reminded…

The last couple of posts on this site were taken from a journal entry I wrote long ago. One long rambling piece, previously only read by me, that I’ve split into three postings- You Don’t Know Me, The Coroner’s Notice of Completion and this entry. This is how it was for me;

Still standing outside envelope and letter in hand…trembling and blinded by the implications of the revelation on the Coroners Notice of Completion, I felt betrayed and empty. I didn’t even know who might have disclosed a concern of hospitalisation to the Coroner. Who could have known it? I can only think it was his psychologist, was that who he confided in? Mottsu didn’t provide me with even a hint of that past episode, not in the sunrise moments of our new romance and not in all the following years.

Not having ever fainted I don’t know the pleasure of losing consciousness in order to block out reality and it didn’t happen on the October day the Coroner’s report arrived. What I did do was flip through my mind for the name of someone I could call for support. I was unable to call anyone, feeling I had already been too burdensome on the friends who comprised my support group. I didn’t know how to share the incomprehensible Corner’s finding and it was abundantly clear to me what the situation might say about me and my own insensitivity and lack of caring.

How little I knew of Mottsu, his background and history and how much I taken for granted. A prior hospitalisation was news to me and negated how much I thought I cared. I cried, big gulping ugly sobs escaped that day, as I tried to rationalise what happened to him and what was happening to me. I was struck by my insensitivity to Mottsu, to who he was and what he didn’t share about himself. What he might have suffered through and not confided, somehow not been able to share with anyone.

He’d always admired my caring qualities and the kind connections I had with others. Now the extent of my uncaring was revealed, held up to me in the Coroner’s Report, printed on the pages I have to re-read. Indisputable, and I concluded that Mottsu too had know this uncaring part of me. I acknowledge how little I really knew and understood of him/me. I wept for what I’d lost realising we may have had less than I thought. Everything was bought into question and although there were no answers I searched for them.

I readily owned the fault, the guilt, claimed it as my own. Haunted by the extent of my own uncaring and I was unable to disclose it to others. I tried to share but friends were quick to deny my fault wanting to reassure and protect me. I wasn’t reassured but I smiled and let them believe I was, not wanting disappoint. On the surface I was bright and hopeful but felt a more ugly reality was present. It is difficult to accept suicide with a no blame attitude, and not assign someone with ‘fault’…

Although I tend to confidently claim that each can never really know another, the truth of that statement was cruelly highlighted by the Coroner’s Report. In reconstructing his last days and reviewing our years together it’s now impossible that the final bout of depression was a one-off event. What didn’t I see that must have cried out for recognition? I can’t imagine ever being able to feel close to somebody else I don’t have enough trust left in me. With Mottsu my self-centred determination to create a perfect life in a beautiful world left part of his reality in the cold. Maybe I didn’t want to allow anything as bleak as the reality he lived in damage my world, my beautiful life.

How unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I think about how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in. However bad it is for me, it must have been worse for him.

That’s how it was for me, judge and jury rolled into one guilty grieving mess.

Posted in Tagged , , Leave a Comment

When you can’t do anything else…

By admin on March 19, 2011

I have been gripped by the extensive destruction wrought by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan this week, following on from an earthquake in Christchurch and unprecedented flooding across Australia.

A journalist on twitter commented that, “When you can’t do anything else, you can bear witness.” I am bearing witness to the events of the world and I’m giddy with stories of loss and devastation. I’m distressed and depleted. The aftermath of the disasters is heart-wrenching and I sit and watch and read.

Feeling.

The words of Joseph Campbell run through my head:
“You might ask yourself the question: if I were confronted with a situation of total
disaster, if everything I loved and thought I lived for were devastated, what would I
live for? If I were to come home and find my family murdered, my house burned up,
or my career wiped out by some disaster or another, what would sustain me? We read
about these thing every day and we think, well that only happens to other people. But
what if it happened to me? What would lead me to know that I could go on living and
not just crack up and quit?
Now what do you have in your life that would play this role for you? What is the…
great thing for which you would sacrifice your life? What makes you do what you do;
what is the call of your life to you – do you know it? ” Campbell, J. (2004). Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and personal transformation. Novato, CA: New World Library, pp 88.

My heart goes out to the people of Japan, New Zealand and Queensland. I am also finding the thread of my own hero-path and discovering just who I am. It’s important work for me, and for the world. When you can’t do anything else, that’s what you do. It’s good work.

Posted in Tagged , Leave a Comment

Happy Blue Year

By admin on December 31, 2010

2011 is starting and I want to wish everybody a happy blue year. I’d love a year free from pressure to be happy. I notice the quest for happiness is becoming a relentless push. If you’re not happy apparently you should make yourself happy. I couldn’t help noticing a row of ‘happiness’ books in a local store. A row of them? Pressure. The pursuit of happiness, the happiness project/workbook/trap, stumbling on happiness, the art of happiness, the how of happiness, the blah blah blah of happiness…

On Amazon books a search on ‘happiness’ returns 20,375 results. Me thinks that is too much self-help. ‘Sadness’, by the way, returns 979 results – an emotional state that is much less understood, less valued, less desired…

I am as happy as the next person, I think I am happy enough. Full. I’m blue too from time to time.

It’s a natural state not a fault that needs to be be happied over or happied up. Generally we think that happy = good and blue = bad, and that’s not really true, blue is not bad. Where one state is present the other must be too. Blue is rich for quiet, for contemplation and reflection and for feeling. It’s not that happiness is over-rated, happiness is fabulous but blue is fabulous too.

Blue is a state that’s under-rated, and in the words of Lennon/McCartney “Let it be”. That’s why I am wishing you a Happy Blue year in 2011. Instead of trying to change how you feel, just allow yourself to feel how you feel. Happy Blue Year.

“Perhaps the most indispensable thing we can do as human beings, everyday of our lives, is remind ourselves and others of our complexity, fragility, finiteness, and uniqueness.”

Damasio, A. (1994) Descartes’ Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, London: Vintage.

Posted in Tagged , Leave a Comment

Handle with care

By admin on December 28, 2010

There is trauma in my background and sometimes it is not as far in the past as I imagine. The trauma was Mottsu’s death by suicide, years later it affects me. The after-shocks sometimes sneak up and ambush me. Last week, for example, I discovered my own little stress disorder symptom; an inability to cope with ‘surprise’ events.

What was planned as a pleasant surprise work Christmas party, last week, caused me so much anxiety I had to decline the invitation for a fun mystery event at an unknown location.

The mystery party presented too much uncertainty, it has taken me a little while to put together the cause and effect of mystery leading to anxiety.

To understand my emotions, like the rising pre-party anxiety, I find it helpful to consider William Jame’s bear. Jame’s hypothesises that the physiological reaction occurs first and is interpreted by our conscious mind as an emotion. We don’t run from a bear because we are afraid our response to the bear is to run and then we notice our bodily responses, like sweaty palms and racing heartbeat. We are afraid because we run.

I noticed my anxiety when I was unable to accept the Christmas party invitation, rather than being unable to accept the party invitation because of my rising anxiety.

Maybe it is easier to think that rather than crying because I am sad, I am sad because I cry. The physiological tears come first closely followed by what you recognise as the emotion of sadness.

What I am starting to realise is our tendency to expect rational emotional responses to things and situations, is not rational. The best we can do is to rationalise emotional responses, and only after the fact. I suspect we are essentially emotional beings who think of ourselves as rational beings.

…and for people who have experienced trauma? Well, we’re even less rational and more emotional than others. Handle with care.

Posted in Tagged 1 Comment

It’s so utterly appalling

By admin on October 19, 2010

I was walking home from the city today, runners on my feet and ipod playing in my ears. It’s a good zone to travel in, and when Pink starts singing “Na na na na na na na na na na na na” I almost skip along. Walking, breathing, heading home, life is good.

Then a roadside sign, that stopped me in my tracks.

“You are now entering a 3 smiles per hour zone”

What? You’re kidding me. I don’t quite believe it.

Three smiles per hour?

Staring, I feel a thwack of emotions hit all at once.

I don’t know whether to puke, scoff, or shrug. My initial laugh of surprise dies down and anger rises, as do tears – rising to the brim but not spilling. I’m humiliated, the sign is so cheery and condescending, with it’s bright message. A lot of things all at once.

Someone must be kidding. What is the intent of this sign? To put smiles our cute little dials? Not one but three smiles an hour – and why stop at three? Am I accused of being too smiley in an hour?

What’s going on?

I want to click my heels together and be lifted up and whisked home. I want to hide for a while curled up in a blanket, safe, with my little dog, and hidden from the world. I feel I could simply bawl and bawl and bawl…

One of Michael Luenig’s poem rans through my head “They took him on a stretcher to the Home for the Appalled where he lay down in a corner and he bawled and bawled and bawled.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he wailed, when asked about his bawling, ‘It’s the world that need attention; It’s so utterly appalling. It’s so utterly appalling,’ he sobbed and cried and bawled, and the chorus rose to join him at the Home for the Appalled.” http://www.leunig.com.au/publications/

I was utterly appalled, and Michael Luenig’s wry take on the world allowed to clear my head with a dismissive snort and walk on. Pink singing “I’m alright, I’m just fine. I’m gonna show you tonight. I’m alright….“.

Posted in Tagged , Leave a Comment

Crushing lows, sadness and hopelessness

By admin on October 17, 2010

An article from the Vancouver Sun about Margaret Trudeau, the wife of the former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The story tells of her ups and down with bipolar depression*

I am struck by this episode described in the on-line news and taken from her book Changing My Mind “On a terrible evening of misery and rage I attacked a quilt by Joyce Wieland, a piece of art … that Pierre particularly loved…Stitched on the front, neatly and smugly (it seemed to me then) were his favourite words: “Reason over Passion.” Margaret apparently chopped out the words with scissors, rearranging them to read “Passion over Reason.”

If there’s a polarity, passion on one side and reason on the other, it seems a shame to deny one by choosing the other. Is that how it is?

Reading the short on-line newspaper version of Margaret Trudeau’s story is interesting and terrifying with her highs and lows. The article says that, “She’s willing to tell the stories in order to also have the opportunity to say this: That the mind is a wonderful, powerful and destructive thing. And that you can change your mind.”

Hmm an interesting twist, to think that, your mind can change you and you can change your mind. how to be mindful, and keep a beginner’s mind, minding and not minding. My thoughts on a weekend with the the weekend papers on-line.

*What I referred to as ‘bipolar depression’ is commonly referred to as ‘bipolar disorder’, I struggle with the classification of ones way of being labelled as a disorder. Maybe bipolar depression is something else entirely and I should just say ‘bipolar being’.

Posted in , Tagged , Leave a Comment

What to do if a friend is in crisis

By admin on October 15, 2010

It’s hard when a friend asks for support. That situation has brought me to my knees numbed with panic, crippled with the responsibility of being able to help. That’s not the way to help a friend in crisis. There are much more constructive actions to take:


– hold their hand knowing that unslumpling yourself is not easily done
– hold their hand knowing that less than half of us feel comfortable in the company of a depressed person
- by trying to understand you help

Sometimes the hardest thing in the world to do is live. You can extend help to a colleague. You can extend help to a friend:

– Ask, check-in
– Listen closely
– Believe and accept what you hear
– Look after yourself
– Seek help together
– Be a friend

Doing something is more difficult than the steps suggest and it is important to try something. Just being there for a friend in crisis is a gift, a fabulous gift for the world.

Posted in Tagged , Leave a Comment