mental health

Transcendence

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Today’s meditation was twelve minutes and ten seconds, and focused on intruding thoughts during meditation and one’s reactions to them.

In this meditation you’re encouraged to notice the thoughts as they meander in and acknowledge them without reacting to them.

In my acknowledgment of my thoughts that wander into my brain while I’m in the middle of meditation, I notice that most of them are neutral daydream-type thoughts. Things like a mental image of the metal foot of a park bench resting against its concrete slab. Or a smiling face of someone I don’t recognize. They are nearly always visual in some way.

You are then encouraged to return your focus to the breath once you’ve acknowledged that the thought is there and set it aside.

Today’s meditation reminds me that this should be an accepted part of meditation. A part of the process. In the beginning, when I first started meditating, I used to get really frustrated with those thoughts that came in while I was trying to find my moment of peace. Sometimes, I still do. The subject of today’s meditation is a good reminder to look at these thoughts not as intrusions, but simply as a normal part of the experience.

Today’s draw is the Ten of Cups, which I find interesting because I’m drawing a lot of cups lately. Not just in my morning meditations, but also in my personal readings. This is fitting though, since I’m dealing with emotional issues and the suit of Cups is all about emotions, relationships, and creativity. The tenth card is a representation of endings, transcendence, or excess.

This card is telling me that I’m at the end, and that it’s time to rise above. It’s time to transcend back to the norm of every day life rather than clinging to the cloying tendrils of the depression.

I think sometimes I do that. Cling to the end as if somehow there is some sort of a surety there. A comfort there in the misery. Perhaps that is my self-destructive urges whispering in my ear? I’m not sure.

The Ten of Cups is telling me that I should not cling to those last subtle yet present vestiges, but instead let them go.

As is the nature of all endings, this card is also an indication that the promise of a new beginning is at hand just at the tips of my toes and waiting for my next step. I believe that with depression at my back that the new beginning is almost guaranteed to be brighter than where I am coming from.

Wrapping Things Up

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Today’s meditation was 13 minutes and 53 seconds, and it focused on dealing with sounds during one’s meditation.

As you know, my crossed wires due to synesthesia often turn sounds into other sensations. This actually made today’s meditation quite interesting, because in meditation how do you focusing on the sounds around you. Not to judge them, or figure out what they are, or any of that. But rather, just to experience them and accept them as a part of your environment.

I enjoyed the experience. Like putting my earphones in and listening to music, It is like going on a journey of the senses filled with rich scents, flavors, and sensations without taking a single step.

That said, I’m not sure that it was really the meditation focused that I needed today. I woke up with a bit of anxiety, as I have for the past three days now. It’s this tight knot under my diaphragm that I can’t quite breathe away. Granted the last two days of meditation hadn’t really helped it either, so I don’t think trying something different really hurts anything.

Today’s draw is the Nine of Swords, which represents culmination, end results, and consequences in the area of thoughts, logic, communication, and challenges.

This card feels like it arrived a little early, and yet perhaps that’s why it’s here. It commiserate with the fact that I’ve been through the ringer, and tells me that things are starting to wrap up. It tells me that it’s time to take a deep breath and let the dust settle.

Sometimes things can’t end until you look through them one more time to learn lessons you would otherwise leave behind. It feels like this card is telling me it’s time to end my negative and self depreciating thoughts, and look back at my depression with compassion and acceptance. It’s time to prepare for stepping forward and past it.

So, perhaps this card is right on time after all. I am at the cusp of that deep dark hole and climbing out into the light. I can smell the fresh air. I can feel the light on my face.

I’m almost there and it’s time to be kind to myself, stop my self-recriminations, and set my mind to getting things back on track.

Gideon’s Challenge

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Aghast

Because how the hell could anyone think putting two toddlers in an oven and turning it on would be a good idea.

Washington Post Article

I’m sorry, but mental health issues can only go so far to explain away people’s behavior.   To me, this is far and beyond fucked up.

Gideon’s Challenge

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Down

Broken Leaf

It is not the ache upon the solar plexus or sinking of the heart, but the silent creep of tiredness and, concealed within that tiredness shadow…. apathy.

The interest in food dissolves, as does the drive toward self care.   I focus on work so that I do not fall behind, but there is little joy, only process.  Mindless process where by I go through the motions that move me along one step at a time.

I try to push back, but there is nothing to push against, and nothing to push with.  It is all shadow and mirror, no substance and thus nothing to grasp or defeat.  After all, how do you wage war a shadow?

Gideon’s Challenge

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Hypocritical 

September Clouds

Twice, today.   It’s an uncomfortable feeling and… unwarranted?   I don’t know why I’d feel that way but I did.

Both times, it was at EC, while answering questions on the forum.   The first was the thread I answered where someone was asking for help and advice considering long distance relationships.  The second was in a thread where someone asked advice on starting a home business from a hobby.

I know my advice in both cases was good, and I am speaking from a place of experience as well in both instances.  And yet…. somehow I feel hypocritical anyway.

I tell myself that I have a thriving online business, and thus I am in an excellent position to give advice on such things.  Yet…. oddly I feel a fraud spouting hypocrisy.   Same goes for the long distance relationship advice.  We’ve been in a long distance relationship for 9 years.  It’s had its ups and downs like all relationships do.   So why do I feel as if I have no room to speak on the topic of long distance relationships?

I don’t understand why I feel this way… and yet it came up twice today.

Gideon’s Challenge

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Gratitude

Mental health issues are not a joke.  Nor are they something you can ignore and hope will go away.  You cannot “wish” them away, nor can you force them better with positive thinking and “will power”.

Most of them also cannot be cured.  They can be managed to a point, both through therapy that can teach you coping skills and techniques as well as with medication… but for many, managing is the best you’re going to get.   Honestly?  That’s a hard one to swallow, even for the patients let alone those that have never experienced mental health issues, and yet… there it is.  The glaring truth is that like one’s physical health, those with mental health issues are required to do regular maintenance to keep things running somewhat smoothly.

  • Major Depressive Disorder  (Although, I have a feeling if I were to be re-diagnosed while on my medication it would be changed to Dysthymia with Major Depressive Episodes.)
  • General Anxiety (at times with social triggers and panic attacks)

These are the issues that trouble my mental health and have since I was a teen, as diagnosed by a psychiatrist and treated (on an ongoing basis) by a psychologist.  And possibly, more recently, a bit of undiagnosed PTSD.  Although, how do you know when you’re cured of that?  It IS curable, isn’t it?  I’m pretty sure it is… unlike the others listed above which require treatment to “manage” them, but cannot be “cured”.

In my life I have tried many different medications for my anxiety and depression.   Some worked.  Some sort of worked.  Others didn’t work at all.  These type of medications work differently on different people, and you don’t know how they’ll work or even IF they’ll work unless you try them. But even with the ones that seemed to work well on my depression or anxiety, there was one constant through them all.  What never changed and never faded was my suicidal thoughts and urges. (Yes, they are different; thoughts are just thoughts, whereas urges are a need to act on those thoughts.)

And then entered one wonderful, miraculous, magical (not in the metaphysical sense) pill.

10mg Prozac

I was so lucky.  And I am so grateful for that luck that inspired the doctor to prescribe me 10mg rather than the usual 20mg starter dose.   I was so lucky because it turns out 15mg is my “magic” number.  It’s a child’s dose, not even the starter dose for an adult.   And yet… it manages my depression and anxiety beautifully.

That’s not the most important part though. What is the really miraculous part is that with this medication my suicidal urges… disappeared.  The thoughts are so rare now, and passing at most.  The urges are completely gone.   Urges that were once my constant companion, with me when I went to bed and when I woke up in the morning.  With me every third minute of the day.   Constantly there, no matter how hard I tried to push them away or bury them.

And with a child’s dose of a pill that I avoided taking (due to reputation) for YEARS… suddenly, those thoughts are gone.

They come back when I’m bumped up to the 20mg dose.  As does the crippling, unmanageable depression.   And yet, 10mg isn’t quite enough to find a good balance.  I take 10mg a day alternating with 20mg…. averaging out to 15mg a day in my body’s system.

Is it perfect?   No.   I still have to go to therapy.   I still have anxiety and mood fluctuations that dip into clinical depression.  But, none of it is as severe in the years I’ve been taking Prozac.

And I am so very grateful.