command the muscles

Very early on in my episode it was as much as I could do to get out of bed and sit in front of the tv all day.  I watched quite alot of rubbish, but I also saw some interesting programmes.  On one of the morning shows there was a woman describing exactly how I was feeling, particularly the anxiety.  I listened to her as she described a method she used to overcome the anxiety.  It was the Recovery Inc. method based on the work of Dr. Low.  It was like a miracle as she described how you command your muscles to act.  When you are stuck you need to change your thoughts to change your actions and vica versa.  I had heard that so many times but it was by connecting with my feelings, and by seeing someone who shared that feeling, and more importantly by seeing them on tv dealing with their very real anxiety that I understood what it meant.  So I tried it .  I closed my eyes and said move your hand, I moved my hand.  It became slightly more complicated the following day as I tried to get out of bed.  Who knew there are so many ways of getting out of bed.  I recommend you start by wriggling your toes.  Then stretch out your arms. Rotate your wrists.  Slowly sit up.  A few rotations of the neck.  The swing your legs to the side. Wriggle your bum over to the edge.  The the final push push against the bed with your arms and push against the ground with your feet.  There you go you are out of bed, was it so hard??

So from the small beginning of commanding my muscles to get out of bed I ventured further.  I started to make my bed every day.  When I was a child I loved to help my mother make the beds, especially on the bright sunny mornings when the dust flew up into he air and caught the light.  Again it looked like magical glitter to a 3 year old.  By making the happy association between the magical glitter, the happy feeling and making the bed i was able to turn a chore into an opportunity to feel better.  By commanding the muscle, by doing things in part acts I was able to piece myself together again and out of the blackness my soul reemerged.  It had not been fed for so long that it had withered.  Your soul needs to be nourished with joy and happiness, other wise  it will wither and hide.  Nourish your soul and life will be less bleak.

Happy Thursday.

building my happy place and other projects

I am a very visual person.  I think in images.  I find words hard to use to describe unless it is in a series of visual metaphors so when I initially started to move beyond the awful despair and crying associated with the early days of my episode I looked to pictures to try to understand what was happening to me.  The first image I worked with was a black well surrounded by grey stones in a dark place, without light , without colour.  I tried in so many ways to colour the picture but each time I closed my eyes all I could see was the bottomless pit.  I was now fortunately kneeling at the top of the pit looking in, previously I have been hanging on by my fingernails trying to claw myself out.  Thankfully the help of family and a very good doctor pulled me out of the pit.  Time and counselling have turned the bottomless dark well into a very pleasant place.  Now it is a lovely stone labyrinth that I can journey through to an inner sanctuary of calm, the pit is now a beautiful still pool in the middle of the labyrinth .  It is surrounded by a wild flower meadow.  In my new found sanctuary it is always summer.  Not the sweltering heat of mid summer rather the beautiful early summer weather in May , just hot enough to lie out in the sun.  Where the ground is warm but still sit has the slight springyness of the damp winter rain.  I have added it to my projects: to build that beautiful sanctuary in real life so that other troubled minds can find a place to revive and renew themselves.
I started this post in order to describe how I started to overcome the despair.  Essentially I sought to visualise a happy place to counter-act the dark pit I felt I was in.  I tried to find images on the internet, then I tried to take photos and piece them together, I tried to draw it.  Eventually I started to collect images from books magazines and the internet.  It lead me back to my love of art.  I found that I have sky arts on my tv and started to watch art programmes.  I was inspired by the film The gates.  I had forgotten how much I loved Christo's work as a teenager, his wrapped landscape was so different from my previous view of art it was inspiring.  What drew me to the film was the total vision he had and his inspirational self belief.  This film should be compulsory viewing for the depressed.  Pure joy was what he created.  How long had I lived a life without joy, where I sought pleasure rather than joy and happiness.  I did not even recognise the difference until last week while reading the art of happiness.  Pleasure is fleeting but happiness comes from within and does not depend on pleasure for its existence.  So I started to compile a list of projects that I would like to complete.
The first was a collage of Gustav Klimt: The kiss.  I spent days and days looking and examining the image.  For me it represented the pureness of female submission, something I had explored last year.  I was still at odds with my desire to be submissive and could not reconcile it with my intellectual belief that I was equal with men.  Who knows where this exploration will end up but for now I am working on the collage.  at present I am collecting things to use in it.  I examine the image form books and from the Internet.  I have plans to go view it.  Next year or later this year is a significant anniversary of his birth, 150 years and there are a number of exhibitions planned so I hope to travel to see them in reality, possibly by train but who knows yet.

The second project is a bubble machine.  I love bubbles.  As I looked out into the garden while washing up I thought how lovely it would be if there were bubbles blowing around in the garden.  At the time I was reconnecting with my interest in kinetic art so I made the connection that I could make a wind powered bubble machine to blow bubbles for me.  I have an endless permutation of possibilities.  So far I am collecting different shaped bubble wands and drinks cans to make the anemometer-like windmill to power the fan to blow the bubbles.  I decided to make it out of objects I find or that I have lying around so it could also even be from parts of old bikes , I love bikes and the rotation of the wheel on the bearings is so pure.

my bubble farm created by the organic bubble machines(children).

  Again a work in progress but such fun to think about.  I love the concept phase of a project where different ideas are considered.  I love the initial creation stage and also the construction bit.  work projects are just no fun for me anymore since it became all about money and paperwork.  I miss the early days of my career where the creation of the project was the aim, not the keeping the stakeholder happy, not the balancing of the books but the essence of taking an idea and bringing it to its conclusion, then admiring the achievement.  Hopefully my art projects will bring me the pleasure I lost in my work.  Perhaps they might bring me the happiness of expressing myself through the creation of things.  Or is that even possible.  


The most important project is to start a business so that I can use my talents to create an income for myself that does not rely on paid work.  I dont want to be defined by what I do for a living anymore.  I invested too much of my time and effort doing things for others now it is time to do things for myself.  Finally I know what I want in my life.  I want a simple happy life, one that I can look back on without regret, one in which I create things of beauty, the life I have always wanted but put aside as I did all the things that I thought I should.  The only should I need to keep in my life is I should take care of myself.  


While writing I always listen to music.  This post was accompanied by Leonard Cohen.  I am off to read my book of Leonard Cohens poetry now.  


Happy Wednesday 

time to get me a pogo stick and other thoughts

Yesterday I felt the familiar feelings of despair and anger   I began to wonder if I had really  made any progress at all.  I started to feel sorry for myself.  Then in the course of conversation with a friend later in the day I realised I had made progress.  I realised my thinking had changed.  As I listened to him talk about how fixed things were and how we cannot really change. I realised that perhaps he was right maybe we dont really change but I also realised that we can change how we think about things.  I had changed how I think.  I also have self belief so when someone makes a statesment I disagree with I dont need to argue with them to prove I am right.  When I believe in myself I dont need to constantly prove myself to anyone.  I see so many people arguing about small irrelevant things.  I see their need to be right.   It used to really really annoy me. I examined that trait in myself.  If I know I am right does it matter if everyone else thinks so also.  I think the main cause of my episode was when I lost my self belief.  Up until that time I was stressed but I coped relatively well.  It was when I lost hope and my senses of who I was that I went down.  I focused too much on the bad stuff.  It was only the time away from the world that allowed me to heal all the past hurts I never acknowledged.  I focused on keeping going and staying strong, but it is ok to show that you are hurt, it is ok to admit that you cant do everything, it is ok to ask for help, it is ok to be vulnerable and unsure.

So what else have I learned.  I suppose the importance of rest and recuperation after any event that is taxing.  To recognise my energy levels and not to force myself to do things when I feel low energy but to rest a little to let my energy levels rise.  I have learned to speak out about how I feel. I have learned to stay with myself and not be blown around by the whims of others.  I have learned to show my vulnerability.  I think that is the most important lesson.  No-one expects me to be perfect so why should I expect me to be perfect.  We all have flaws but being depressed is not a flaw it is an illness.  It can be healed with the correct medical and psychological attention.  Once our mind, soul and memory heal we can then address the stressors in our lives from a place of power rather than fear.  Addressing our negative thinking frees us from that awful downward spiral of what if, what will happen if, if that happens i wont cope, etc etc, .

What will make me more resiliant to stress?  I really dont know.   The scientific explanation of stress is force divided by area.  How much stress is caused depends on the amount of force and also the area on which its acting.  Reducing stress means reducing either the force or increasing the area.  How can I increase that area on which the force acts??  What does that mean for me, I think perhaps it is all about sharing the burden more, asking for more pillars to hold up that force, finding a shield to protect me from the force, maybe covering myself with something springy so that the force bounces off, I think perhaps I have found what I need to meditate on today.  I need to look at ways of reducing the force, ie the demands on me, and also on ways of increasing the area,  my resilance.   I need to be more elastic and get some bounce back, think its time to get me a pogo stick. :-)

Happy Tuesday.

sherkin

The friary

Everything finds its niche.

Horseshoe bay

The signal tower hiding in the mist.

resolution of reoccurring dream

I have had a reoccurring dream for as long as I can remember.  I am in a house and part of it is familiar.  I am searching for something, or trying to hide from someone.  Most of the house is familiar to me and although the rooms are slightly different, they are generally some form of a place I have lived.  The common theme is that I discover many hidden rooms, mostly the room is rather tiny or huge, inaccessible or decaying.  Sometimes the roof is off, frequently I find a room with lots of beautiful furniture but the room is behind glass and I cannot get in.  Last week I had the dream again.  This time there was no light in the room.  I lay in the dark all night.  As the morning dawned I looked up at the ceiling and saw that all the wiring was in place I just needed to put in a socket for a light bulb.  Then as I got put of bed to do so my grandmother came over and took me into another room.  It was my current bedroom.  She opened the press and inside was so many things.  Beautiful fabrics, tools, boxes of books, so much stuff that I could not take it all in.  As I woke up I realised that everything I needed to fix the house was there already in the cupboard.

Before I went to sleep I had been thinking about my emotional tool kit.  I had imagined my toolkit was a back pack with a few tools in it unfortunately it was so filled with rocks that I could never find the tool.  I visualised taking out the rocks but nothing was working for me.  My dream made me realise that I have all the tools to have a happy life. I could cast away the bag of rocks because it was not really my toolkit.  It was that godforsaken burden that I continually pick up.  I have everything I need.  I dont have just a tool kit I have a room full of resources, all carefully boxed and organised.  They were there all along.  I just needed to be shown where to look.  

I saw this beautiful piece of junk art on a recent trip to Sherkin Island, there is beauty to be created from things we overlook. 

the day it glittered

We all remember days when the world seemed perfect, the perfect man, the perfect cup of tea, the perfect temperature of the sea when you go swimming.  The day started very cold.  I was successful in getting out of bed that day.  I had stopped the endless crying associated with the awful episode.  I felt my spirits lifting.  The weather was beautiful.  As I still had no real depth perception I was still too scared to drive so we walked.  That was the start of the road to recovery, one of many small steps.  That day was the only time in my life I saw the kind of frost we all are programmed to envisage as the crisp frost of Christmas.  The night before a rapid frost had coated all the trees.  As the sun rose it started to glitter.  Slivery specks of glitter started to fall from the sky. Oh dear I thought those damn hallucinations have finally moved out of the house.  (As an aside, perhaps the language was a little more colourful and my vision was a bit shaky at the start of the episode.  I would sometimes think I could see black dots moving on the floor, they were of course just the marks on the floor boards shaking because of my very very jittery nerves.) Anyway to make a short story long it really was glittering.  As the air heated up the lumps of frost were falling from the trees.  It looked like someone was shaking silver glitter from the trees like in a glitter globe.  the angel of the sun was so low that it made each speck of frost shimmer all silvery and pink. I was not hallucinating I was seeing the beauty of the world.  There are so many beautiful things to see.  That day I took out my camera and walked to the beach and wondered at the beauty of the world.  Had I been well and able to drive I would never have experienced the day it glittered.  How many other things do we all miss.  

Be still and notice the beauty of the world.

Happy Saturday.

symbiosis or co-dependency ; the search for completeness

As I left the doctors the other day with my daughter she commented how handy it was that the chemist is so close to the doctors and as I explained what symbiosis was to my daughter I started to think about how it differs from co-dependency.  Lichens are the classic biological example of symbiosis but when does symbiosis cross the line into co-dependency.  To the best of my recollection symbiosis is when two organisms coexist and each one contributes to the well being of the other; mutual benefits.  Co-dependency is a relationship in which that benefit is replaced by dependency.  Perhaps what at first seemed like the perfect balancing of our flaws by the strengths of another and vica versa in what seems a symbiotic relationship is in fact codependency.  Perhaps it was my inability to distinguish codependency from symbiosis that has scared me.  In symbiosis each organism must exist in its own right.  Each person must compliment the other not seek to complete the other.   I shall aim for one and one making two rather than a half and a half making one.  I am no longer looking for the other half of me.  I am whole.  

Happy Friday 

unloading my brain

I decided to compile a list of things I want to think about so that I can make some space for my poor frozen brain to thaw further.

does this make me happy
the steps on the path to recovery
beating depresion through self expression
how finding the things that made you feel good as a child helps
one step at a time
command the muscles
a list of everything i read and encountered so that I have a reference if the darkness seeks me out again
my to stop list
fun things to do that are healthy
why does that persons behavior annoy me so much
identifiing emotions
affirmations , chakras, and omg mammy please done mention the bubble macine, how to connect with your inner hippy and when to hide her
bubblemachine designs and other useful metaphors
creating the your vision of yourself
why cant we do this, and other unanswered childhood questions
how to say yes and when to say no
why i cant take out the rubbish
when i win the lottery I will .... and whats stopping me doing it nmow
weaning gradually with love and other lessons from a former amazon, reconnecting with my past self
birdwatching and the joys for stillness
what to do when the sun stops shining
what to do when the floods wont stop
opening your door, showing your imperfections, your humanity and flaws but not wearing them as a badge
an integrated life
how to learn to swim and other strange lessons
my labrinth
geurilla art projects
remember to rechage and rest
places that would be fun to visit
the pleasure of origami

power exchange-conditioning or natural response

The concept of power exchange is well know in the certain circles.  There you are defined or labeled by you power preference.  If you are aware of your preference you can find people who are compatible and great fun is had by all, or so I am told.  But what creates our preferences, is it our true nature or is it our conditioning.  I have long believed that it was our true nature but a startling realisation of another of my beliefs changed that.  I had found that my private submissive preferences were at odds with my public persona.  But as I sank deep into the dark place I realised that I had separated out all the different parts of me.  When they started to compete for space in my soul and my mind my brain froze and I could no longer carry on being the person I was, doing all the things I thought that I was juggling so easily.  I dropped all those chainsaws I had been juggling.  They all fell from the air and cut me totally into the different parts of me that wanted to be free of the conflict they had with each other.  My recovery has been largely about the joining up those parts of me.

What seemed to be at the core of all this was a power struggle.  I was so lost and all that was left of me was a breathing corpse.  The deepest layer of power that caused me to struggle with all others, was my deeply buried, and up until now unconscious, belief that it was the role of a woman to serve a man.  I thought I was open minded, I thought I was a feminist, I thought that I thought I was equal.  But buried under all the layers of other stuff was the core belief that I am there to serve men.  While I was fully aware of it on a sexual level, I have now identified it in so many other areas of my life.  Now that I recognise, it I can find it.  Have I been conditioned by my childhood experiences of what a womans role was, or is it my natural state?  I need to examine my responses, to recognise when I am doing the "I am your maid how may I serve you thing".  How many other complex power-exchanges are there for me to encounter.  Is all life about the struggle for power? And how do I recognise and hold onto my own power.  How do I know if it is nurture or nature? Well I shall meditate on this and when I have answered these questions that seem to be at the core of the human existence forever I shall write a book and make loads of money. :-)  

Sometimes it is just enough to know the questions because you need to have a question to find an answer. 

Believe in yourself.
Happy Thursday  

what i saw on the road to recovery

The first snow of winter

More winter snow , a rare sight here.

The most amazing carbonara sauce cooked by a 10 year old

Bubbles created by several organic bubble machines.

young love and an origami elephant

Something very strange at the Viceral exhibition

A swing

 Is it just me of does that look like eyes?

Eyes and a mouth?

wierd monster face or tree?

Adam and eve are in there somewhere, Why did he blame eve????

If you can't be yourself who can you be

Imagine every day was filled with happiness.  Imagine that everything you wanted just happened.  Image perfect peace and tranquility.  Are you finding it hard or easy to imagine these things.  If you are finding it easy give yourself a pat on the back, if you are finding it hard then imagine you are someone who finds it easy to imagine these things.  When I want to change, or when I see someone who has a trait I admire,  I imagine myself to be that person.  I ask myself what would x do, how would y solve that, if only I was a brave as z what would I do.  We all have the answers and solutions to our problems if only we are able to open our minds and let our inner self guide us.  If we stay true to ourselves, trust ourselves, believe in ourselves then we can be ourselves.  If you cant be yourself who can you be?  Sometimes by imagining ourselves as another person our true nature comes out.  By noticing what we like and dislike in others we can get to know our long suppressed self.

So be mindful of how you are reacting to others as they are all part of you.
Be yourself and be happy.

Happy Wednesday.

if waterslides are this much fun why did i wait so long to try one

If water-slides are this much fun why did i wait so long to try one???????????????????

This question is the basic question I need to ask myself when I start to slip away into the dark place again.  I have put my duty, moreover my perceived duty, before my enjoyment of life for so long.  I forgot what fun was, well good clean fun anyway.  Sex and drugs, and sausage rolls well perhaps they are fun but they can be emotionally damaging if used in the wrong way. 

Yesterday i went down a water-slide for the first time.  I learned many lessons.

1)  I admitted I had not experience of how to do something and did not know how to do it i.e. go down a waterslide- overcoming the belief that I must have all the answers.

2)  Ask for help or clarification if you need to :such as could I get stuck- Here the lesson is to admit my fears, I am a size 16 I think that I am quite fat and this stops me doing things for fear that people will laugh at me, I did genuinely think I might get stuck, I know many people would think that was really silly but now I know that would be impossible.  By asking you are inviting others to help, and the nice helpful life guard explained to me on my second go just how much more fun it could be if I went really fast and showed me how to hold my body to do that. wow fantastic.

3) Let go of fear: I started to panic a little when I gathered extreme speed, yes I did follow the instructions on how to go really really fast and I managed to zoom down - but having learned to let go I let go of my fear and enjoyed the ride.

4) The best lesson of all was you are never too old to have fun- the sight of an overweight middle aged woman screaming her head off with pleasure in public half naked is an image of myself I had not considered never mind been comfortable with.  Its important to consider:  Do I want to have fun or conform to an image I imagine other people expect of me. Maybe I can learn to project better expectations onto others and maybe they might just want me to live up to those new images: of slightly overweight odd woman likely to so something fun.  That is a better image to me rather than serious career woman with no sense of humour. 

5) We all can choose to change when we are ready to do so.  I spent an hour under the water jets massaging every single knot of tension out of every single bit of my body.  So when my daughter asked me to go down the water slide, normally I would refuse as I would be afraid of pulling something or putting my back out, I could find no reason to refuse as my body was so relaxed and felt so good. I was ready to go down the slide and have fun. 

So give up your oul limiting images of yourself and have some good clean old fashioned fun. 

Happy St Patrick's Day

i could not live up to the expectation of my curtains

My curtains are gone,

I gave them away,

For days I looked longingly at them

They hung in the shop

silently calling to me

"See how beautiful we are

So pale and beautiful

WE will make you feel good

We will cure your ills

we Will match your stuff, dont

WE look like we will€€€€"

But they didn't

They made me feel bad

I could not live up to the expectations of my curtains

I tried; I    t r i e d    t o 

I searched for colours to make them

happy, for other shades of grey,

not the black and white I 

had to offer them

They wanted more

They knew what they wanted

I did not

but one day, i not longer wanted 

to please my gloomy and 

demanding curtains.

they cast their spell on another

Now they reside there

casting their spell on another

now they reside there 

casting their malevolent jellyfishey 

stings of faux-beauty

there.  But in that house there is a small boy and a dog.

Strength and love in the bond.

those haughty curtains

will be put in their place by 

the repeated pawing of grubby feet and hands by 

the barking and climbing upon by the boy

and the dog.  their haughtiness ignored and disregarded

So my dear haughty ones

you Scorned my tender ministrations

you Scorned my black and whiteness

you Scorned my efforts

But i, the Scorned one,

has now cast you out

begone you vile evil curtains

Glare down from your high moral ground at me 

no more

Now when I visit you

I might come say hi, you might still

Scorn me. Eventually you will

learn to live with Jacks 

earth shattering bark and 

Johnnys loving hugs. you will become what you

are, pieces of fabric

with no soul you are just

curtains and once more i 

am free

This poem is best enjoyed eating chilli listening to Doc Watsons , blues stay away from me, sung by the notting hill billies lying on a bright red rug in the sunshine without grey cream and black striped curtains.  That is a well know cure for Mondays. Happy Monday . 

small steps to success-letting go

For the last 4 months I have searched for myself.  

Last week I stopped looking. 

As is the case once you stop looking you often find the thing you lost. 

It happened when I stopped forcing myself to reappear and just let go.  I read about letting go, I tried to let go, I tried to force myself to let go, and finally when I had exhausted every method I could think of I gave up trying.  LOL , that is what letting go is all about.  It is like flinging yourself off a great height and not thinking about what the landing will be like, or where you will end up, or if someone will be there to catch you, or if you will crash onto the rocks and smash, or a million other things that come into the exhausted brain.  

For me letting go was like flopping backwards into an abyss and discovering that, instead of being crushed on the rocks, I was being cradled gently in a soft fluffy feather and floating on a warm gentle breeze. I had forgotten about all the feathers I had laid out to catch myself when I fell, about all the feathers others had sent to catch me, about all the good things in the world, about all the kindness and compassion out in the world.  It is there for everyone when they are open to it.  I had heard and read that so often, I never understood it on an emotional level.  I read so much, too much, I tried to understand it , instead I needed to feel it.  So often that wonderful brain of ours tries so hard to understand that it shuts off our emotions as they are so painful.  It is only trying to protect us.  But its ok to feel even if those feelings are painful, because we can let go of the feelings, just like we can let go of the baggage, fling it off train, out of the window, into the sea, anywhere where we want. 

So I let go, I gave myself permission to let the tension go, forget about all the things I need to do, let go of my expectations, of the expectations of others, of all those limiting beliefs, of all the things that do not make me happy, of the grief for the past, of the broken relationships, of the unhealthy things that keep me down, of the limits others have set for me, of the guilt, the sadness, the failures, the success, the achievements, the shame, the embarrassment, the hope, the things that I thought defined me, the perfectionism, the need for approval, the worry about money, the worry about the children, the insanity of the stolen relationship, the waiting for that text, the stress of what other bad news is going to reveal itself next; all the things that weighed me down.  I threw away the baggage.  I laid down the burden.  It is my fervent wish that I never pick it up again. 

I came back to myself when I let go. 

So let go, float, be free, every day is a new day. 

Let go of yesterday and take another small step forward.  Another step to a successful recovery of yourself. Remember that when you stay with yourself you are never alone.

While I was writing this I listened to Cat Stephens Morning has Broken.  It is uplifting and soothing. If you are reading this try playing it now and float away.