Thursday, May 19, 2011

Self Affirmations


My therapy homework the past week includes one of those annoying self affirmations. Ten times a day I am to write “I am enough for myself today.”

I have always hated self affirmations because when I’m in a funk they only magnify the great disparity between who I feel I am and who I believe I should be. My depression brain will twist something “positive” into proof that I am worthless. The statement “I am enough for myself today,” instead of staring me in the soul and insisting on my goodness, will mock me: “Enough? You’re not enough. You are less than. You are inherently flawed, unredeemably messed up, in your core. You will never be enough.”

I have been mildly hypomanic this week so the affirmations have not been difficult. But this morning I woke up with my familiar friend caressing my soul with its whispers of hopelessness, futility, and self hate. I have faithfully lugged my friend around today because he will not detach his talons from me. And an odd thing has occurred. Several times today when my friend has spun my thoughts into the familiar unrelenting vortex of self destruction, the path of the rampage was interrupted by a thought that spontaneously poked through my consciousness: “I am enough for myself today.”

You know what was so surprising about that? It actually calmed me down.

I guess I’ve gotten this whole self affirmation thing wrong all these years. I thought you had to repeat them to yourself when you felt like shit and then you were supposed to strain to believe them until finally your thoughts willed your emotions into place. And that never worked out too well for me. But maybe . . . as you repeat, drink in, soak up as much as possible these thoughts in those few moments of relative clear-mindedness, they settle into your heart bit by bit.

So when the cyclone is tearing across your brain down its familiar path, it might be destructive to shout self affirmations at it, which it will only contort like a mangled street lamp and then fling to the ground, mangled beyond purpose. But if, from some other part of your brain, this affirmation arises on its own, and speaks to the storm, it just might calm it down.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Mild Hypomania and Conscious Frogs

I have been mildly hypomanic for the last several days. I just have tons of IDEAS. And grand questions about life. About consciousness and God and evolution and faith and experience and purpose and epistomology and on and on and on. I am not going to get into any of that here, as it's not the focus of this blog. But I just want to run full steam ahead and research and ask and read and write and talk about the depth of life's meaning and how one can KNOW what is REAL.

Interestingly it is to these things that I have often gone when in a funk. Only then it is not exciting and full of possibilities, it is scary and dark and empty and alone. And there is still some of the terror of meaninglessness and unknowability that creeps in even now as I ponder these things.

But mostly I am just on edge, leaning forward, stomach clenched, eyes wide, jaw set, neck rigid, as I devour others' written thoughts, as I fiercely stare into my own mind, as the thoughts roll forth in unceasing rhythm, pounding away at the questions and whittling them into new ones, multiplying my thoughts on the shore of my consciousness.

It's exciting and annoying, this hypomanic state. It is creative, it is deep, it feels meaningful. For all its unproductive productivity, it is so much better than depression.

It's better for me anyway. But I keep pestering my poor scientist husband with questions like, "Do you think there are other sentient beings in the universe?" "Do you think it's morally wrong to eat animals?" "Do you believe God is relational?" "Do you believe that God exists?" "Do you think that frog stuck on our door has consciousness?"

He is a patient and long-suffering man.

Expanded Space

Kim’s comment on my mental illness and cholesterol windows post got me thinking. There is something significant that happens I think when you read someone’s words that seem to capture your own experience with such clarity. It loosens some of the weight, the oppressive heaviness that pushes in on every side. The experience of depression is like a compression in on yourself, dense like a black hole. When you hear someone else describe your experience, it’s almost like the space of your heaviness expands, you realize the room is larger than you thought, that it encompasses more than just yourself. The inward suction is disrupted by an awareness of someone outside yourself but within your same world.  

Monday, May 16, 2011

I wrote that last post a week ago but apparently didn't have the energy to even post it. I'm actually feeling better today. I spent about 3 hours on housework--have not been able to do that in months? Or longer?

I had to get my three-month shot for cancer prevention recurrence several weeks ago, and it left me exhausted, without energy or motivation. Boy if that doesn't play into depression. I spent that time being pretty hard on myself for being lazy. But just like a depression-only induced exhaustion, once I have pulled out of the medication exhaustion, I feel like a normal person (with an ever so slight tinge of hypomania). It is not just a different brain but a different body. I can move about, do things, and have inertia in a positive direction--that is, momentum to keep moving.

And to think, some people feel like this almost every day!

At times like this I feel I have clarity. And the state I'm in when exhausted is not lazy. But goodness knows I will blame myself when I'm back in the black hole. 

I slip into a funk


I slip into a funk
Become unwilling to act
Determined it is futile
Destructive thinking
Guilt self loathing at the forefront
(It’s always there but
Sometimes in the background
A constant muted melody)
And I only pull out when I get fed up
Tell myself to get with it
Stop wallowing
But I hate the act of standing up
I know I will wear out
And do so before I’ve barely moved
Three steps, when I need a mile
So I resist the getting up
But at least for those few steps
I might have hope
But the up and down exhausts
Hope raised and then descent
Tired tired
I’m always tired

Monday, May 9, 2011

Screen


I have been cheated out of life. I live behind a screen and watch others move about and work and build and live lives of activity and productivity and achievement and consistency and even happiness. I sit behind this screen alone and surrounded by piles of projects dreamed, wood rotted before the seed even produced a sapling.

The screen seems so fragile sometimes; it is semi-translucent so I think it is thin and flimsy and should shred at the slightest brushing of my hand. But it thick as life, the life I should be living, and even my words cannot penetrate the distance through.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Re-dreaming

Monday night I wrote a list of all my dreams. A list of all I wish had happened and would happen in my life. A list of who I wish I was.

The divide between that list and my reality is like a thick constrictor squeezing the fragile stem of potential until hope falls off petal by petal and all that's left is a torn and bleeding headless stick wallowing in the dirt.

I need to look at my list of dreams not for practical ways of how to achieve or replace them as the CBT-ers would have me do, but to meet them deep and raw; to grieve them so I can let them go; to mourn them so I can move to a new field and not feel like I'm settling.

And while I am running naked into the dreams, before the goodbyes, I must uncover where their roots lie; if there are wounds out of which they have grown, drawing their life from the raw pain and not allowing it to mend, then I must tenderly chop the trunks, and dig up all the roots, and pack up the hole; filled.

Then when the grass sprouts new there, the longing will have left, and I can move to other fields with hope, energized and motivated, and full,

Eager and smiling.