Everyday Triggers & Past Traumas 2.0

Very recently, I went to the hospital for two scheduled procedures.  One involving a probe to check out my heart function;  the other being a heart catherization.  Turns out I was told I had the arteries of a 15 year old, so no stents required.  However, the process of being hospitalized and treated on the day I was there ended up being extremely traumatizing.  Without getting into the gory details, let's just say that giving birth to our daughter was MUCH easier than getting a 20" sheath pulled from my groin for 20 minutes straight while in a completely sober state of mind.  I wouldn't wish what I went through on my worst enemy, but then again, I am not into pain unlike some....

As an aside, the most recent issue of Psychology Today magazine showed up on my doorstep this past week.  The cover story was about Everyday Triggers:  What Sets You Off and How to Get Past It.  What timing!  I even brought the magazine with me to the hospital to read, but never got to it irony of ironies.  All I know is that I've been pretty much living in a functional freeze state all weekend since returning home....with hopes of getting my mojo back sooner than later.  (Note to reader:  It's back since wrapping up this blog post a few days post return from the hospital!)

Everyday triggers indeed!  Gotta love them.  While I was in the hospital, I ran across a young nurse who was closely connected to someone I knew from my childhood growing up.  This person she is connected to...he was about 25 years old when I was a high school sophomore.  He didn't like me.  I can say that because my friend and I used to interrupt Friday night choir practice with our inside jokes about his authoritarian style of choir directing...and his change in speech patterns whenever he became frustrated or angry. He would stutter.  For a couple of high school sophomores, that was all we needed to start mimicking him when he got on our own last nerves.  

Meeting this nurse got me thinking about my history at the place of worship I attended as a kid/teenager...and how invalidated I felt there.  With the exception of a single older girl, I was persona non grata to the "it" crowd of parishoner families with peers near enough to my own age.  I could excuse the constant invalidation by stating it was probably because my family lived on the opposite side of town from the church and where most of the parishoners resided---but I knew even then that was too simple an excuse.  For whatever reasons, my family's presence within that particular "body" of believers was merely tolerated.  I, myself, was invisible.  I knew it.  The kids my age and older knew it.  Consistent rejection has a funny way of inspiring us who are being rejected to believe we ARE truly rejection-worthy.  However, I had too good of a life at my own public high school to believe that how I was being ignored at church had anything to do with "me" personally.  (I was Class President of my high school class, and I knew how to make friends and keep them oh by the way!)  

But I digress.  Those everyday triggers associated with my growing up in a church "family" that was no family to me personally taught me more good than bad ultimately.  I learned that being "woke" doesn't matter when enough others choose to remain unwoke and proud of it.  Nobody can solve the real problem of real prejudice and real polarization that has plagued humanity since the beginning of time.  If you aren't enough like me, I don't have to like or accept you.  Period.  In fact, I can persecute you in case you dare to believe yourself as being anywhere near "equal" to me as a person!  That's the ugly truth about human beings.  How do we wake up a person from that state of mind?  There have been many attempts over many centuries to do so, and still we remain fools as people.  We traumatize and trigger each other constantly.  Our nature is to be more bad than good.  Face it.  It takes real work to be open, willing, and kind-hearted to those who we personally feel "repel" us.  Once I left that church and became involved with others over these many decades since...the same ugly truths remained.  When we don't want to welcome those who are different from ourselves, we are experts at it!

In the end, everyone is seeking unconditional love and acceptance.  Haven't we learned that yet?  When will we stop being so nasty and so unkind to those we don't understand---and have zero desire to understand?

Moving past our everyday triggers and traumas starts with ourselves.  Peace begins with me, just as peace begins with you.  In spite of whatever it is that we have been through, hanging onto our past traumas, disappointments, anger, and resentments will only lead us to live in a bitter state of mind.  Towards life and the universe, towards God if we still believe in One, and towards other people.  When we get to functioning in this way, no One and nothing can help us.  We have lost all hope and whatever light was shining within us, has been extinguished.

Don't let your own inner light go out.  You are worth saving.  It starts with you.  Don't give up on yourself.  Seek the right kind of help that is out there for you to obtain.  It won't come in the form of the vices you have become comfortable with pursuing as your treatment of choice.  Treating yourself with respect may be the first lesson to learn as you begin to look upward from the pit you have inhabited for so long.  

Until next post....

 

Paying Better Attention: Cultivating Mindfulness

We would all like to think that we pay good enough attention to our own life and reality on a daily basis.  Yet, we do not.  Why don't we?  Well, for one thing,  there are many of us who tend to pay attention to way too much that really doesn't legitimately matter in the bigger picture of our own lives. As a result, we miss a lot of what we SHOULD be paying fuller attention to during each 24 hour cycle of our own lives.  Then you have those of us who pay super attention to that which only personally interests us;  everything else is pretty much ignored or avoided.  Third, we who are stuck in survival mode as our default way of functioning, we do not pay appropriate attention to much of anything outside of what we need to survive "today" or "this week" or "this month".  It's just not on our radar. Lastly, we who find the stresses and strains of daily life too overwhelming, who needs to pay attention to anything other than our own need for a desired altered state of consciousness on demand?  

Needless to say, the practice of cultivating mindfulness is not so easy and doesn't come so naturally to most of us.  Today's blog post is about why mindfulness matters and why it works so well in teaching us how to function DAILY as our own best friend instead of our own worst enemy.  Taken a step further, mindfulness teaches us how to collapse down our fear(s) to much smaller and more palatable pieces.

So how does becoming more mindful begin?  The one way I like to explain it is by turning off your own autopilot-driven, checked-out, and/or avoidance-based methods of pursuing your own daily life.  Instead, we need to practice STOP! RELAX! (which means regulating our nervous system on demand when we need to!) and then THINK! both before and during the time we choose to ACT (take action!) regarding whatever it is we are choosing to say and/or do.  (Even the "act" of brushing your own teeth can be an exercise in mindfulness when you allow it to be!)  Slowing yourself down to stop, relax, and think is it's own cultivated practice.  It takes time to master.  Speaking of teeth brushing, if you have ever "accidently" picked up the wrong tube off your bathroom shelf and used it's contents to brush your teeth---then you definitely are a candidate for learning how to practice mindfulness!  :-P

Mindfulness isn't limited, however, to helping undiagnosed and untreated ADHDers to pick up the toothpaste instead of the Preparation H off their bathroom shelf.  Without cultivating mindfulness, we can morph into highly dysfunctional human beings without any self-awareness as to how we got there...

Here's an example of that:  Bud and Roxanne met playing pickleball.  Bud was clearly taken with and interested in dating Roxanne after their first encounter.  Roxanne was not adverse to seeing Bud socially since he appeared quick witted, funny, and self-confident.  Since they began meeting up socially, however, Bud's behavior has mystified Roxanne.  "He can be very nice and appropriate, but then he can also be extremely emotional and rude", states Roxanne.  It all came to a head when Bud recently told Roxanne about a difficult past personal relationship which mattered a lot to him---and that involved a significant amount of intense trauma.  Roxanne was confused by Bud's decision to share what he did as it was completely unsolicited...and it occurred while the two were driving back home together after a concert.  "Once finished, Bud pressed Roxanne for her "opinion" about what he had shared.  Beyond being extremely uncomfortable and upset by what Bud had shared...Roxanne managed to comment about the other person's need for intense psychiatric intervention and treatment.  Instead of receiving Roxanne's comments graciously enough, Bud "blew up" as Roxanne put it.  "He started yelling and telling me I didn't understand what he was talking about!"  After the shock of watching Bud over react so strongly to her, Roxanne decided then and there she had enough.  "I felt set up.  I don't know if this was his own weird way of trying to reprocess his own traumatic past, but it sure wasn't o.k. to do it at my expense as a targeted and innocent bystander!"  Roxanne was/is correct.  Bud was clueless as to the dysfunctional pattern of behavior he had already established when sharing disturbing personal information about his history regarding people from his past.  "As I was sitting watching him go red in the face as he was yelling at me, all I could think of was how badly HE needed intense psychiatric intervention and treatment."  After that incident, Roxanne maintained her literal and figurative distance from Bud and found another spot to go play pickleball...

Needless to say, Bud has an issue with mindfulness.  He lacks it.  As in really truly and deeply lacks the ability to Stop! Relax! and Think! before he Acts!  Roxanne and Bud are obviously no more, but Roxanne hopes Bud will think twice before he pulls a similar stunt on another unsuspecting target.  "Before that incident about his past, he made it clear he preferred the company of women who agreed with him given the things he would say and do in a joking way", states Roxanne.  "I gave him the benefit of the doubt thinking he was just literally joking around with me, but I learned the hard way that he wasn't."  Right.  A life without the practice of mindfulness is a life unexamined and that remains blissfully unaware (of reality!).

For all the talk about breathing better as an initial first act of intentional mindfulness and central nervous system regulation, how about this?  How can you learn to breathe more deeply and more slowly if you are going 90 miles an hour every day and all day long for the past several years?  That would be like trying to stop a train going full speed ahead on the track by holding up a sign which implores it to "Please slow down!"  Not going to happen.  Even though it is true that breathing more deeply and more slowly does help to regulate our own nervous system quickly enough...too many people claim they just can't do it.  For those folks, I suggest that you go outside for at least 30 minutes each day (in decent enough weather of course!) and walk 15 minutes in one direction before turning around and walking 15 minutes back to where you started.  Instead of listening to music or being on your phone as you walk, I suggest to just observe what you see, listen to what you hear, inhale what you smell, and feel whatever you feel.  That's all.  You will find that your breathing does slow down as you practice this and you do really start to breathe in and out more deeply.  Funny how that works eh?  Well...if you want to be mindful about it, before you start walking, figure out a spot where you want to walk and drive to it, park your car, and start your walk from there.  I mean I'd much rather walk in a park than along a busy road.  How about you?  

If the walking appears to be "too much" as a start, then get a blanket, some sunscreen, your water bottle, and a book, to drive over to a local park or park land area...and lie on the blanket as you read for 30 minutes.  Either way, being in nature and listening to its sounds for at least 30 minutes is the equivalent of taking an antidepressant medication.  

When we STOP to RELAX and THINK about what it is we are planning or wanting to do and get done in any given day, week, or month....we begin the process of becoming more mindful.  Do you really need to wait until you are starving in order to justify driving over to the nearest gas station or McDonald's in order to feed yourself?  Stop!  Yeah, like that!  Be more mindful.  Pay attention to what's best for you in any given day or moment of any given day.  That's how you start.

Until next post....

  

Letting Go of E-GO!

David Richo is an amazing clinician and author. In Richo's classic "How to be an Adult in Relationships:  The Five Keys to Mindful Loving", Richo talks quite a bit about the importance of letting go of one's ego so as to cultivate a compassionate life where, as adults, we can function as stewards for each other in a mutually-satisfying enough manner.  

When it comes to our closest personal relationships, we have no hope of changing ourselves for the better if we are mainly concerned with proving ourselves right (about most anything!).  When we are most invested in being right, our ego rules the relationship.  When our egos become wonky like that, we are allowing our own pride and arrogance to motivate our decision making for us---as we simultaneously lose more and more our empathy and compassion towards others.  

Think about that.  You can't get what you want from whomever and whenever if you keep forgetting/dismissing/minimizing the other person's reality.  Over time, it is very easy to become hard-hearted towards anybody who stands in your way of getting your own needs satisfied as often as possible.  

Understanding the importance of this issue reminds me of an old riddle to do with a huge table filled bowls of delicious food in front of each place setting.  A group of starving people were brought in and seated accordingly around the table.  Unfortunately, there were no forks, knives or spoons with which to eat the bounty...and no way for each seated person to "reach" over to the food in front of them.  All that appeared on the table within each person's reach were extremely long ladles, which no one could make heads or tails of.  As a result, some of the people at the table began to cry, for they knew that eating the food they so desperately wanted would never be possible.  Others became very excited and started to pick up the ladles before them because they knew they would eat as much as they wanted that very same night.  How was this possible?  Solve the riddle.... (Solution at the end of this post!)  

Today's blog post serves to wake us up to the impact an over-inflated ego has on destroying that which we hold most precious:  the love we believe we share with those we care about the most....

As Richo states, our ego works and is functional when it helps us to achieve our important goals in life.  A healthy ego is what drives you to stay home and do your homework during high school instead of sneaking out to party with that new kid you met at school the other day.  It is our healthy ego that "lets us be fair and alert witnesses" to our own life without the "interference of meddling mindsets".  

Translated that means we don't let other people corrupt us from the inside out as what typically happens when we lack a deep sense of who we actually are---and are not.  Think about all the parents who "told" their children what they would be doing when they grew up into adulthood.  Of course it still goes on today.  "You WILL be a doctor!"  "You are going to law school and that's that!" "You're taking over our family business because that's what you were born for and to do with your life!"

It is the healthy ego that makes the choices which allow us to remain compatible with our own deepest values, needs, and hope for our own future.  A healthy ego whispers to us "In spite of all this external noise I am hearing, I know my path!"  A wonky ego, on the other hand, screams at us "I'll show him/her/them!"  Show him/her/them what?  Well, that depends on the person and how angry, resentful, and bitter they have actually become over time....

When our ego is tilted towards the wonky, our relationship life pays the price.  The anatomy of the arrogant and pride-filled ego hates change.  I am reminded in this moment of "Master Bob" (Bashara) who had his wife murdered in 2012 by his cognitively-impaired "handyman" Joseph Gentz.  "Master Bob" created quite the stand-up-business-man image for himself in Grosse Pointe Park, MI where he resided with his wife Jane.  Involved in his church and local area charitable organizations, Bashara was the son of an appellate court judge.  Bashara was also heavily involved in the "fet life" (fetish lifestyle) having transformed the basement underneath a local bar he owned into a dungeon master's chamber (of horrors).  Denying that his lifestyle had anything to do with the motivation behind his wife's murder, Bashara ended up convicted along with Gentz for conspiring to kill her as and when they did.  Bashara was probably the best and worst example of malignant narcissism on blast with major sociopathy attached.  His wife Jane was the genuine model citizen;  she had amassed a nearly one million dollar fortune as a result of her hard work and desire to provide a decent nest egg for her family.  What she didn't realize was the malignant nature of her husband's own ego---and the price she would end up paying by remaining married to him.  

In the Bashara case, "Master Bob" was incapable of any kind of positive change.  He was typical of what drives such a person to remain as sick as their ego allows:  F.A.C.E. is the acronym Richo uses to describe what motivates such individuals:  F = Fear.  A = Attachment.  C = Control. and E = Entitlement.  When a person is most motivated by "FACE", their ego runs their life and their life's choices.  Bashara's never-ending need to contain and manage his fears, while at the same time being so dysfunctionally attached to needing to control any and all outcomes, is what fed the beast of his entitled attitude and persona.  He was not unlike a hungry wolf constantly on the prowl seeking what he could devour...

There is a special place in Hell for people like Bob Bashara and his ilk.  When our ego is running our life and relationships, there is nowhere else to go but down...and into the abyss.

Next time, how cultivating mindfulness helps us to be and do better in our own healing and recovery journey...

Until next post...

(Solution to the riddle:  Each person was able to reach the food using his own long ladle...and then present the filled ladle to the person across from him at the table to eat from.  The same practice, in turn, from the person seated across using his ladle to feed the other opposite himself.  In this way, focusing on satisfying the other instead of the self resolved the initial problem presented here...)