Do you journal?

The first Monday of the new year seems a good time to start with some journaling, I think. 

Part of being intentional in 2022 is a commitment to writing, whether it be journaling, poetry, or something else.  I ran across this image for journal prompts to overcome overwhelm. I suspect that many of us are dealing with a good deal of overwhelm right now.  This fresh new year sometimes brings with it a lot of fresh new drama (whether we want it or not).  One way to deal with overwhelm is to write it out.  Write it out on paper, like....really write it down.  Journals can be fabulous for clearing out the junk that sticks in our heads and hearts.  Also, if there is trauma with the drama, sometimes it's helpful to burn it after you write it out.  And when you burn it, #LetItGo. 

I'll start with the first question.  What does my overwhelm cycle look like?

My overwhelm shows itself as a never-ending, cyclical, spiral of words (sometimes just one word), thoughts, or images.  My brain won't slow down and it becomes more and more and more like a rat on a wheel.  What it looks like from the outside, I think, is me making obsessive lists, talking non-stop, shaking hands, bad (even worse) eye contact.  It comes up as me being unable to say no even though I am being swallowed whole by overwhelm already and can't possibly do one more thing.

10 Journal Prompts to Overcome Overwhelm 

• What does my overwhelm cycle look like? 

• What overwhelming thoughts do I choose to partake in? 

• What comforting things do I distract myself with when I'm overwhelmed?

• What do I want to feel instead of overwhelmed? 

• What thoughts or behaviors do I need/want to change to do this? 

• What trigger phrase will help me identify when I'm slipping into this pattern? 

• What am I going to do instead of my old overwhelm cycle?

• How can I simplify this process - can I re-arrange, remove or delegate?

• How can I support myself through this? 

• Are there any limiting beliefs I need to let go of in this situation (ex. Fear of failure, fear of disappointing someone, etc.)?

The Tincture of Time

Many years ago,  when I was probably 10 or 11 years old, I had a friend who lived across the street from me. We mostly only had boys around us, and most of them were my cousins so girlfriends were hard to find. 

One day, out of the blue, when I went to her house, she announced that she didn't want to be my friend any more. I was too fat. I was devastated but I left her house and stayed away from her.  Some time later, she came to me and informed me that she had decided to be my friend again. I happily accepted, much to the angry disapproval of my mother (my mother held a grudge even better than I do). 

Very recently, someone who was very important to me made the decision that we would no longer be friends. It hurt unbearably. I flashed back to the other times of betrayal and abandonment.  Turns out that those abandonment issues that I've dealt with for my entire life aren't unfounded, huh? 

Here is the thing, though...I can't judge other people on how I'd react and behave. It's time for me to let go of those resentments and expectations for what "the world should have given me." There is no "should" and life doesn't "give" us anything. We don't get what we deserve. We get what we manifest.  

But I'm really hurt. It's gonna take me some time to get to than place of zen. 

It Happened Last Night (tw)

 

tw{depression, violence, self-harm}

 

Last night, I had a symptom of my mental illness that I haven't had in a very long time. Nothing went right all day yesterday and I was tired and fed up. By the time I got home, I was furious. Enraged. Because the day sucked in a way that many people's days often suck. Minor irritations and aggravations. My mind turned to a very dark place. 

 

One symptom of my depression has always been a boiling, rolling, impotent rage. And I almost always turn it on myself rather than lash out at others (although, a few folks can attest to being a recipient of that anger). I'm not proud of that. I looked back on the times in the past when the anger won and I hurt people I love and I'm ashamed. Last night, that anger came up like a geyser.  I know you've all heard the expression, "My blood boiled" but I don't know if you've ever actually felt it boil.  It's a horrible feeling. 

 

Fortunately, the only thing I hurt was my hand and my pride when I punched my bathroom door. Immediately upon that act, I realized that I was de-evolving. I recognized every bit of that fury. My doctor recently increased the dosage of one of my meds because of my constant, paralyzing anxiety. It's a meditation I've taken before and didn't tolerate well...it made me mean. It's worked beautifully this time, though. Until we increased the dosage.  Once I realized what was happening (and took a couple of things for anxiety), I was able to control the anger.  I've never been able to do that before. 

The adrenaline dump left me with a massive headache this morning and I spent literally the entire day on the sofa, curled up with my dogs, watching my beautiful Christmas tree lights twinkling.

I tell this story because depression and mental illness is so misunderstood. It doesn't always present in the ways in which you are familiar. Please, don't judge people.  Please give people some space and compassion.  Especially right now. 

Friendship Down

I thought about you tonight. 

I prayed for you.

I missed you.

I thought about calling you. 

But in the end, I didn't.

I thought about you tonight.

But that's where it ended.

Being Poor Isn't a Character Flaw

An article to ponder on as you sit in your (presumably) warm house, surfing your interwebs, after you've had a good meal and a warm shower. Poor people can't just "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" without help and/or luck. Read on.

I grew up very poor. We had no central heat, only a small-ish propane heater in the kitchen/dining room. The pipes froze every single winter because we also had no underpinning (or tie-downs). We didn't have sewage or a septic tank (let that one percolate for a bit). We lived in a trailer that was 12 feet wide but at least we had a place to call home. We took a bath in the same water. If I was lucky, I got to take the second bath instead of the third.

It was the best my parents could do. Neither had even a high school diploma. My daddy was disabled and got less than $600 a month in Social Security. My mother made a pittance working her fingers to the bone at the glove mill--she left there after 20 years making $6.25 an hour and with no retirement. None at all. She got a whopping $600 a month in disability. Not enough to buy her medicine (she took a pill every other day so she'd have enough for the month) but too much to get food stamps for herself. 

There was absolutely no opportunity for my parents to save any money. They did what they could but they weren't lucky and we didn't have anywhere to turn for help.

At 23 years old, I was separated from my husband, I had no car, and I had a toddler to support with no job. I got $200 in AFDC and $187 food stamps for my mother, my child, and myself for a short while (try figuring out how to make that work) but I didn't have a car to get there for my appointments so I got terminated from the rolls and finally booted off. I had to ask friends to take me to get milk. I eventually had to file bankruptcy, primarily because I had co-signed for a car but didn't get to keep it and that person let it get repossessed. When the sheriff served me with the papers, I went downtown and filed Chapter 7. I didn't have any choice.

In the end, I was one of the lucky ones. At least I had a mother with a place for me to stay. I lucked into applying at a temp agency at the right time and ended up getting a foot in the door at the place which has become my career. Things could have been much worse for us. I'm eternally grateful for the blessings in our lives.

Now, I'd love for some of you folks out there who think that poor people deserve to be poor to proselytize on how folks who are poor are supposed to fix their problems without help. I'd love for you to tell me what church or charity is going to take care of families like those in our situation. I can promise you, no man of the cloth came to help us nor did any of our relatives who were somewhat (or much) better positioned in life.  Those of us who work in the community in this town know that the resources are few and the need is great, perhaps even moreso today than ever. Our safety net programs aren't perfect and they aren't without fraud but they are so needed to help raise folks out of poverty and give them a chance to share in the "good life." 

No child in this country deserves to be hungry, cold, or without health care.  Or to take the second or third bath.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/linda-tirado-on-the-realities-of-living-in-bootstrap-america-daily-annoyances-for-most-people-are-catastrophic-for-poor-people.html?fbclid=IwAR1jNqipVU_XbKdT0UEZZKukw7BXuuNKLknZ35ia3tv59t4suJRCEAmI89M

What Do You Do When Your Brain Turns Against You?

TRIGGER WARNING

For whatever reason, today has been a rough day for me.  Rougher than usual.  Today, in quiet moments, my mind kept whispering the same thing over and over.  "I wish I were dead." 

I've been depressed, quite literally, as long as I can remember. My mother always told me that I was "the most miserable child she ever saw."  She told me that I was meant to be sad.  I don't blame her for saying it, at least not now, because I know now that she was also severely, clinically depressed and was never treated.  All she could see in her only child was the lifetime of poverty, misery, and woe that she had endured.  And so the prophecy was foretold.

My doctor realized that I was depressed when I was about 25.  I'd been treated, grudgingly and lackadaisically by a couple of doctors since I had reached adulthood. I never had a doctor take me seriously and actually try to treat me until I went to Dr. Childs.  He recognized it for what it was....not a sad, poor, socially awkward fat girl (although I was all those things) but rather a severely depressed, non-functioning adult with a small person, husband, and mother who depended upon her.  We tried medicine after medicine.  Time after time.  Trip after trip.  I had almost full bottles of seemingly nearly every type of SSRI there was on the market back in the early-to-mid 90's. Prozac was ineffective.  Zoloft gave me the tremors.  Effexor was useless. Paxil helped for a while and leveled off.  Wellbutrin made me want to kill every breathing creature.  Slowly.

I'd get frustrated and just stop taking them.  Cold turkey.  Then I'd get severely depressed and start taking them again. We kept trying different dosages of different things and ended up with the most successful for most of the years--Paxil at 40 mg.  I still only took it sporadically.  Dr. Childs kept encouraging me to seek counseling but I couldn't see what good it would do.  I decided I could deal with this on my own. 

In case you don't know, SSRIs can markedly change a person.  The Paxil stopped my mind from running like a rat on a wheel but it made me a faded-out version of myself.  Terri Lynn cusses, pitches fits, throws things, sings out loud, laughs too loudly at things that are very inappropriate, and burps way too loudly.  On Paxil, I just stopped.  Tim said it was like looking a blank wall.  He didn't understand what I was dealing with but he knew that he wasn't familar with the new version of me and he didn't like it. Because of his constant opposition, and because of my broken brain, I stopped taking the meds for years.  I stopped living.  I existed and not very well, at that. I had massive panic attacks.  I couldn't walk in a restaurant alone.  I could not drive on Broad Street (as random as it was, it was a thing).  I stayed home more and more. I retreated more and more.

In 2011, I began to notice a difference in myself.  I couldn't then, and I still can't today, pinpoint what happened or exactly when.  But my brain began to change. I still don't know what happened.  But I started sticking my toes in the ocean of life.  I began to laugh more.  I was becoming more interested in politics and found like minds on Facebook. I reveled in a good political argument n(perhaps a bit too much at times).  I started going out more.  I started making friends.  I discovered that Rome is a pretty cool town with some really amazing people.  But, through all that, I was not medicated and sliding deeper into depression.  I guess, in hindsight, it could and should technically be called bi-polar behavior but without the very manic highs.

I started to self-injure.  I started to seriously have suicidal thoughts regularly.  Realizing that I had a real problem, I went back to Dr. C. and we tried Lexapro.  I believe that he'd given up on me ever finding a medicine that would help.  But Lexapro has been a lifesaver, quite literally.  It doesn't magically "fix" me.  I still feel suicidal.  I get depressed so deeply at times that I can't function. My heart literally hurts from a pain that isn't physical and that no doctor can treat.  My throat even aches with that same pain.  My stomach, too.  As Dr. C. often says, "It's the physical expression of your depression."  That doesn't mean the pain isn't real.  It just means that there is no bone, joint, or ligament that can be fixed or treated.  The broken part of me is in my brain (and possibly in my soul but that's another discussion). 

In the last couple of years, I've finally found a good therapist, I've taken my medicine a bit more appropriately although depression brain causes me to often forget or, worse, refuse to take it (It's not gonna help anyway.  Why bother?). More than those things, however, I've found meditation.  I've worked on my energy and my heart and my soul.  I've opened my mind to another realm of healing and it has been nothing short of amazing.  I'm a different person than I was even a year ago. I'm out and about and working in the community and sticking my nose in business that many would proclaim to be not my own.  I'm an advocate and a helper.

But....in the quiet moments, when I'm alone, my broken brain begins to whisper....

What do you do when your brain is out to get you?  What do you say when, sitting alone in your office, you notice that little thought, just under the surface.  Like a whisper of wind, "I wish I were dead."  Most of the time I just notice that little voice without giving it any attention.  But today, I really put some thought into it.  Why does your brain turn against you?  And what the hell are you supposed to do when your BRAIN turns against you?!  How can you possibly win that battle?

The answer is short and sweet.  "I dunno."  I also don't know why it's become important for me to "talk" about it.  Perhaps the Universe knows there is someone out there who needs to see and hear this--to know that they aren't alone.  Perhaps just by realizing that my thinking has gone beyond it's normal faulty thinking, I've made progress.  For whatever it's worth, I keep pushing back against that voice. I meditate.  I clear my energy.  I still argue about politics (and most anything, depending upon who you ask).  I still sing out loud and badly.  I still laugh at inappropriate things. To borrow a phrase, I'm not going gently into that good night.  I'm raging against the dying light.

But....still, in the quiet moments, the only voice I hear begs me to stop raging. 

The Time to Speak is NOW

Make no mistake, friends.  On Saturday, August 12th, this country experienced a terrorist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia.  I don’t know that because the President of the United States of America said it. Indeed, no, he hasn’t said it AT ALL.  He did not come out immediately in condemnation of the attack but rather spread the blame.  He did make a statement condemning the white supremacists later but then rolled it back AFTER David Duke, the grand poo-bah of the white sheets, got his white sheet in a knot and called him out on pandering to the left.  When questioned about his equivocations, he began to dither on about how many jobs he has created (BS) and how much better the stock market is now than ever before (more BS).  

A white supremacist DROVE HIS CAR into (here I’ll quote Indivisible directly because it can’t be said much better) “counter-protesters who had gathered in response to a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was an act of domestic terror, perpetrated by a white supremacist. One person is dead as a result of the attack.”

That attack was criticized across the board.  His own VP, daughter, and wife spoke out on the horror that took place in Charlottesville before the President of the greatest country in the free world did. When the one black member of his cabinet resigned, he went on a Twitter tirade slamming the man. He showed his true colors when this weekend, just in case there are a few of you who were still on the fence, wondering about his allegiances and alliances. Let me, again, quote from Indivisible for a moment.

“Donald Trump has encouraged violence, racism, and xenophobia from day one. It’s not surprising that Donald Trump refused to condemn the attack as an act of domestic terrorism. Throughout his candidacy, and through his actions as president, Trump has actively used fear to divide communities, encouraged violence against those who would disagree with him, and has advanced racist and xenophobic policies. Here are just a few examples:

*Picked Jeff Sessions to lead the Department of Justice, a man with a decades-long track record of advancing racist, anti-immigrant, and discriminatory policies (edited to add, now he says “we’ll see” about Bannon);

*Hired racists and nativists like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon to advise him on policy matters;

*Issued a Muslim and refugee ban as one of his first actions as president;

*Unleashed ICE officers across the country who continue to terrorize immigrant communities with near impunity;

*Insists on the construction of a useless and costly border wall and ramping up his mass deportation machine;

*Exploited the tragic death of Kate Steinle in order to go after sanctuary cities;

*Proposed focusing the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism program exclusively on Islamic sources—ignoring the dangerous threat posed by white nationalist organizations;

*Actively weakened and undermined Civil Rights offices within the federal government, which are charged with enforcing civil rights protections for Americans; and

*Has publicly encouraged police brutality and the use of more aggressive methods by law enforcement officers.”

Sadly, this list is not all inclusive.  As a matter of fact, if you still have any questions, I’d suggest you give a listen to Seth Myers' thoughts on whether the President is racist.  Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

I am very disappointed in my friends and family who still support this man and hold him up as a good and honorable person, an example of American exceptionalism.  He has shown, time after time, his real nature but the apologists and sycophants have made excuse after excuse for him.  It’s OK for you guys to admit that you were wrong.  Because you were.  It’s OK for you to say, “Hey, Terri.  I’m a fiscal conservative.  I don’t support same-sex marriage or abortion rights.  I believe in states’ rights. That’s why I’m a Republican.”  Those are real issues and I can respect political differences.  We may not agree but I can respect that.  What I can no longer respect is your continued support of a man who has insulted women (bragged about grabbing them by the privates, calling them ugly, fat, bleeding from their eyes, etc.); Hispanics (they’re all rapists and thugs); Muslims (all terrorists, of course), and, in fact, almost every group of people you can think of.  His response this weekend should not have been a surprise to anyone who has been paying any attention at all.

Silence is no longer an option for truly good, honorable people.  Call this man out for what he is:  a menace. Stick to your conservative values but STOP defending the indefensible.  

The time to speak is NOW. Will Republicans continue to hitch their wagons to this falling, corrupt, and irrevocably broken star?  Will Republicans have the mettle to call this man out for his behavior.  America, and the world, is watching you.