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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496955159 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 12/26/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 112 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Collision with Self, a Remedy
A Guide to Mental Wellness
By Janice E. Daler
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Janice E. DalerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4969-5516-6
CHAPTER 1
The Collision
My collision was years in the making before the ultimate crash. Like I mentioned before, it was nothing traumatic, just a mix of the usual stuff that is so prevalent in the world today: climbing the ladder at work, staying too late at the office, taking classes on top of working long hours, running the household, paying the bills, tending to family and friends, planning a wedding, losing time to take care of myself, losing track of just how unhealthy I had become, hitting middle age, and so on and so on. It was pile upon pile of too many things to do, and too little time to do them each and every day.
Add on top of the "usual stuff" some of the unique things personal to the timing of my situation and you've got a real collision course formula for disaster: I was an investment manager during the financial crash of 2008 and recently read a white paper regarding advisors suffering posttraumatic stress disorder as a result of that prolonged experience. My (now) husband and I had just purchased a new home at the peak of the real estate market and simultaneously could not sell the old one because of the subsequent crash in the housing market. My father was enduring multiple back-to-back surgeries. Then there was the news – the constant stream of negative headline news forthcoming every single day: Bear Sterns, the Lehman event, the market crash, the threat of a run on the banks, the announcement of economic stimulus, the imminent end of one US presidential term, the muckraking of election season, the election itself, unemployment figures, multiple wars, the economy, more stimulus, the Euro zone crisis, a US presidential term re-election, tsunamis, earthquakes, shootings, hurricanes, more shootings, the Mayan end of the world, the economy, the economy, the economy! The sheer amount of information, and the constant and various sources of it, was (and remains) utterly insane.
In addition to this global news was the constant flow of personal stories of distress: friends and family losing jobs, losing homes, losing life savings, losing husbands to deployment, losing health, everyone generally losing faith. If I wanted some good news I was going to have to turn over rocks and search for it, because none was coming my way during this time.
I started feeling affected by the constant flow of negative news and my all-consuming hours at the office in many insidious ways. It began with poor eating and exercise habits, which opened the door for more bad habits like too much drinking. My body started misbehaving in steady and compounding ways: stomach issues, jaws sore from teeth clenching, hair loss, and sleepless nights full of worry. I was consumed by anxiety in the form of a tight chest, getting out of bed at night to leave myself voice messages at the office, bouts of sudden and uncontrollable crying. I started to experience multiple injuries to an already-weakened body: a torn calf muscle, a "locked" muscle in my shoulder, a burning pain in the muscles of my forearm—on and on it went, including other physical issues too sensitive to mention here. The final piece, moderate depression, was different from the physical ailments, and something that I didn't recognize until it had been underway for a couple of months.
This realization came about by experiencing "flashes" of happiness from earlier times in my life, and noticing the stark contrast to my present state of mind. On the heels of that personal realization came four different people who felt the need to touch base with me and say, "You don't seem yourself," and to ask if everything was alright. Almost simultaneous with that experience was an emotional confrontation with my boss that was highly uncharacteristic of me.
It was the culmination of all of these "signals" that made me turn to my husband one Friday night and make the statement that signified my crash had come. We were walking down the main street of town together at the end of a grueling work week. As we passed the movie theatre marquee I had one of my flashbacks of a happier time in our life and relationship. The memory consisted of a summertime scene when we'd first met, and we were walking past that same marquee holding hands, laughing, and looking decidedly more happy and free than in the present moment. It was that flash of "how things once had been" interrupting my dire case of "how things are now" that caused me to suddenly stop, turn to my husband and say:
"I don't think I'm okay."
CHAPTER 2Baby Steps
The first thing I did following that personal statement of recognition was call my doctor to secure her next available appointment. She was amazing that day, while I was quite simply a mess. The uncontrollable tears were commonplace for me now and were on display in her office. I was falling apart in front of her, both figuratively and literally. Some descriptors I remember using with her to describe the current state of my life—or rather, my relationship to my life—included feeling as if I were "floating off into the distance like a helium balloon." I remember that image coming to me often during this depressed time, and I believe it was the visual representation of me not being in control of the direction of my life. Instead, the days and weeks were coming and going in haphazard fashion and I felt helpless to do anything other than watch myself float in whatever direction each daily set of demands would take me.
Another distinct perception was feeling on the outside looking in on my day-to-day actions. I was no longer connected to what I was doing; instead I was just going through the motions. I believe this was a direct reaction to how intense the demands had become on my emotional self so that a passive, stand-by attitude was all I could muster. I learned during this time how good an actress I can be for those around me (particularly colleagues and clients). I could outwardly say and do the right things on cue, even though internally I was standing on the precipice. I remember describing that lack of connectedness, for my doctor, as "a crack right down the center of my being." It was like I had been split open so that the soul of me (the joy of living) had somewhere along the way slipped out and disappeared.
She had known me for seventeen years and could easily tell that this "wasn't me," and that I was in a state of duress. She offered some sound advice that day that I will share here in two short but important statements:
• Number one: depression should be treated in a multi-faceted way as there can be many things contributing to it such as vitamin deficiencies, medications you are taking, hormonal imbalances, external forces, and more.
• Number two: important decisions are not to be made at your low and confused point (e.g., leaving your job, leaving your marriage). They are best made from a position of strength and clarity.
These were the two most meaningful pieces of advice I could have asked for, and they set the groundwork for me and my course for the many months to come. I left her office that day with a short-term and mid-term plan for getting myself back to a position of health, strength, and clarity from a physical standpoint, including a blood work series and follow-up, super doses of particular vitamins, a serotonin neurotransmitter booster, and more.
My doctor's recommendations also included ways to address the mental aspect of my need for strength and clarity. These included a leave of absence from work, counseling sessions, and a visit to see my family. My response to these recommendations was that I would call on her for that leave of absence letter, but that I was not prepared to leave her office with it in hand. I believe I needed it "dangling" out there as an absolute last resort in case I couldn't get clear and strong with the plan we just put into place. I wanted to give the physical measures a chance to work.
However, I did take her advice and immediately booked a trip home to see my family. They are my foundation and my counsel in life, and I enjoy and am comforted by my family relationships. I have always felt solidly "grounded" around them, something I was desperately in need of at this point.
As for professional counseling, I had done that before at various points in my life and know it to be an incredible help. I have often said to friends considering counseling that it's something everyone should do when they attain the age of thirty. It can help to sort through that first set of "growing-up years" and collecting experience, so that one can recognize what is not working (and get rid of it), and can understand what is working (and capitalize upon it). So, I certainly didn't set that recommendation aside that day because I don't believe in it. Rather, I vaguely knew that I had started to connect to that counseling need in myself and was working on it in my own way.
CHAPTER 3A Meditation on Words
Somewhere along the way to my crashing point I randomly pulled out and dusted off a sketch pad and drawing pencils from my college days. I hadn't touched these items in years. But when I stumbled upon them I decided to keep them downstairs by the television where my husband and I were spending too much time at night, after coming home from work and feeling "fried." At this point in the crash I needed the mindless escape of the TV to dull my troubled mind. But the commercials had become incessant and annoying, so I wanted something to do to avoid them altogether. During each commercial, I would pick up the sketch book and draw.
At first it started with simply putting colors and shapes on the page, not unlike creating a mandala which is a focused mini-meditation in itself. I could immediately tell that this new habit was beneficial for my depressed mind.
This practice was giving me a concentrated focus on something other than the worries I had accumulated and was obsessing about – not in the brainless escape of TV, but instead with a specific intent. The intent was simple but positive: choosing colors and shapes that were pleasing to me.
After a time I started adding words to the colors and shapes on the page: simple, positive words that I would have to intently concentrate on during the course of coloring them onto the page. I could tell this additional level of focus was even better for my troubled, negative mind.
As I engaged in this habit I became increasingly aware that it was helping me to get out of my head by intercepting my constant stream of depression. Like the flashes of happiness mentioned earlier, drawing also made me aware of how my mind had been carrying on before I interrupted it. My highly negative, depressed thoughts were the main source of perspective and energy coursing through me, and they clearly needed to change. My mindset was affecting everything. I soon moved from awareness to true understanding that I needed to continue and expand upon this exercise for my brain. The drawings and words were going to be the way I'd now send messages to myself to change my state of mind ... to slowly and habitually turn it around from the incessantly negative back to the positive. I dubbed this new practice a "Meditation on Words."
As the impact of this Meditation on Words became clearer to me, my next level of comprehension was that the pages needed to come out of the sketch pad and onto some surface where I would read them every day, multiple times per day. By doing this I would accomplish two things: 1) repeatedly arrest the current, negative thoughts and habits of my brain and 2) immediately replace that arrested space with new, positive thoughts for my brain.
In our home that location could only be one place: the refrigerator doors. In my upbringing they are the "command central" of households across the nation: peppered with save-the-date info, notes, schedules, shopping lists, and more. Many people now use their phone for these types of reminders, but in our home the fridge still has its place. It is the first destination I stumble to every morning for juice; the last stop every night for a drink before bed; and about fifty times in between ... every single day. This was precisely the kind of repetition I was seeking and so it is where my sketch pad drawings started to live.
The interesting thing about command central in our home is that it had already been serving as what I'd call "communication central" for my husband and me. We had previously established the habit of leaving notes and phrases on the fridge to communicate with each other. This is because (for my husband in particular) notes take away the intimidating edge of confrontation in face-to-face discussions that all married couples need to have when working through the business of life. So now he, too, was regularly seeing my sketch pad images of positive thinking. These images eventually became more broadly focused on depicting the life imagined for the both of us. The effect was both interesting and powerful. I was too bogged down in my own woes to see that the negative energy I was bringing into our household was infectious, and having an impact on my husband's days as well. Likewise, the images of positive thinking I was posting onto command central were equally infectious. The positive reinforcement that I was seeing fifty times per day was also turning my husband's underlying mind toward the positive as well. Importantly, we were now being reminded of the same ideas for our life together at the same time. This brought us onto the same page with our day-to-day decision-making processes.
As an example, one of the determinations necessary to get myself back on track physically was to eat healthier. I had depleted my body of basic nutrients and minerals through years of very poor eating habits. Late nights and long hours at the office made it not at all uncommon for a bag of chips and a few beers to be our evening meal. That, coupled with some of our personal uncertainties about the food industry in general, led to the following Meditation on Words: "Real Food, Locally Grown." Within this newly stated agreement we were equally conscious to grab a bag of organic carrots and some hummus instead of chips and beer, after a late night at the office.
Another reinforcement came from a year-end Meditation on Words that we did together in 2012. In preparation for the New Year and what we intended to be a new era, we came up with a whole series of Meditations on Words to guide us, and hung it on the refrigerator. It's like a poster, full of more than a dozen phrases, one of which is "More Outdoors, Less Indoors." He and I originally moved to Colorado with intent, because we both love the outdoors. In my husband's case, I would go so far as to say he needs the outdoors to maintain his sanity. The unbalanced life we had worked ourselves into—with far too much time spent sitting in the controlled, false environment of our offices—was literally killing us. That statement is not to be taken lightly. We were indisputably becoming the poster children for a heart attack at middle age: weight gain, high stress, high cholesterol, prescribed to Lipitor, no exercise, too much drinking, unhealthy eating, bad sleeping habits, and so on.
With the daily presence of that new reminder "talking" to us from command central we were prompted to seek and accept every outdoor opportunity that came our way, even though we had grown ridiculously out of shape. Amazingly, the more opportunities we took the more that came our way. As an example, after years of not going on hut trips (which is skiing to a cabin in the woods for an overnight stay) we had two back-to-back, completely random offers in one month from people we hardly knew ... and we took them both! This started to change our identities from "couch potatoes" back to active outdoor people, and our decisions and expectations of ourselves (and each other) followed suit.
One addition to our year-end meditation that was suggested by my husband was "More Romance." He was much more specific in how he originally phrased this, but I toned it down a little since command central would be seen by all who entered our home. I mention it here for the masses because the business of life can turn your marriage into feeling exactly like that: all business. The meaning of "romance" can span a wide spectrum of what you want that to be (more intimacy, more travel, more spontaneity, more one-on-one time, etc.). So a little reminder from one partner to another of how you can and should still have fun together is an important thing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Collision with Self, a Remedy by Janice E. Daler. Copyright © 2015 Janice E. Daler. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Prologue, ix,Introduction, xi,
Chapter One, The Collision, 1,
Chapter Two, Baby Steps, 3,
Chapter Three, A Meditation on Words, 6,
Chapter Four, The Lesson, 12,
Chapter Five, Images to Get You Started, 17,
Chapter Six, Why Stop There?, 53,
Chapter Seven, The Quick List, 71,
Chapter Eight, The Ultimate Practice, "Second Best", 74,
Chapter Nine, Conclusion – Back to Reality, 78,
Appendix, 81,