Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Is Mean Voice Better Than No Voice?

Still going through a tough period.  I am crying a lot and not wanting to talk much.  On the way home from the hospital today I suddenly had an idea for trying to control mean voice's capacity to torment and undermine my confidence.

I came straight in the door and went through to the sitting room and started work with the plasticine we have been using to create all sorts of designs for a cob house build.  I made a plasticine model of mean voice that looks like an obese Morph from Visiion On, a children's art show for deaf and deafened children in the 1960's and 70's.  She has one finger up in the air agressively showing me what she thinks of my creative efforts.  I squeezed her into an old pickle jar.  I'd have normally made the orchard apple jelly and chutney by now.  My partner found my little bag of Guatemalan Worry People and I dropped them all in on her back and then screwed the jar down tightly.  She can take the weight for a change.  I then made a label and didn't even bother to make it a pleasant label or amusing one and just stuck it on with sellotape. 

I felt better for doing it.  Shakey.  But I do know with some of myself at least that I have a choice about how I handle mean voice.  This urgent plasticine activity was an attempt to say I am trying hard not to let mean voice win.  Not win so much as take over.  I wish I had more emotional energy for the task and I dread these periods when I feel wretched and raw again.

Painting takes me to places I have never been within myself.  What I can't seem to do just now is make the connections I want to make between my emotional awareness at a non-verbal level which leave me sometimes astonishingly aware and most of the time feeling traumatised - and the practical day-to-day bits and pieces of  living. 

Thank you P for the parcel today.  I chose not to open it or read it - yes, the day has felt that desolate - but love oozed through the envelope.  My partner was thrilled when he opened it for me as you have included something edible which is one of his favourites - I can see I will have to hide them.

I have done my best to stay up and not retreat, literally, to bed on return from hospital.  West Wing was on but I wasn't really with the plot I have to say. Ridiculous as it sounds I was waiting for mean voice's retaliation.  I just kept saying I have a choice.  I don't really believe it yet - but it worked for maybe half an hour or so - which is better than mean voice taking over all day every day.  In the half an hour there was nothing as far as I am aware going on inside.  I had to force myself not to look at the mean voice in the jar as if I was checking on a live creature.  She (the mean voice in me) will sleep in the study tonight.

Agitated and dead inside I feel physically much as I do after a serious lung infection or Glandular Fever.  Everything needs to be checked and double-checked from have I cleaned my teeth to the gentle and very well meant enquiries about whether I am going to shower or get up etc...

Is mean voice better than no voice?  It was a close run thing.  When mean voice returned she had plenty to say about my attempts to "demean" her and "control" her.  She reminded me who was in charge.  I feel like taking anything to knock me out overnight so she can't get me at my most vulnerable in the early hours.

Good points today:

Hospital.

Seeing Joseph, our collie enjoy a quick sniff round the grass outside the hospital and do a perfect recall.

Bad points:

I have slipped back.

I accept choice but do not have the emotional energy at the moment to make safe and consistent choices regarding my own needs.

I am frightened that other people's help could have unbearable implications in the future.

Still have no idea who I am or who I want to be.

Going down feels precious/tortuous and very must.

BUT my only linkage at the moment is that the professionals must have some idea why I am getting stuck and how to give me the emotional equivalent of Epsom Salts.

Will The Real Jane Please Stand Up?

I have had a very dark couple of days. Yesterday and today have felt as though I am in an arm-lock with my mean inner voice.  Where have the really positive voices gone, just when I need them?  The work I am doing emotionally at the moment feels as though I am going really very deep - but I am so exhausted and upset with where I go when I do go this deep that I am emotionally tired and then I am back in the rabbit in the headlights mode and completely stuck.   

The deeper thoughts are helpful in as much as I am making connections and exploring ways of understanding myself in ways I have never done before.  I have touched so much within my psyche with my recent paintings and seeing more of my work now framed and up on the walls (spooky) - that I don't know what to do with the light or the dark, I have forgotten what I must have learnt as a magical child in those first years.  So I guess I choose the safest route of all which is self-sabotage.  Give up, I guess.  Or focus on how to block getting better because I don't know what I am getting better for.  Will the absolutely authentic Jane please stand up and take a bow.  I'd be delighted to see her again in full, turbo driven creative excellence. 

Back with dark thoughts; nothing new there - that none of this is really worth going on with; feeling that I have to somehow work out how to relieve the inner torment which makes me feel as though I want to blow my head off (not literally) just to stop the voice going on and on.  Days like the last couple I haven't got the energy to fight or offer any serious distractions to myself.  I think mentally I need to get up do my hygeine routine and just paint - but I have showered for the first time in three days and spent either thirty or thirty-two minutes sitting in the sitting room in the whole day yesterday at the request of the hospital, other than staying in bed.  My partner's watch reckoned it was only thirty.  We negotiated whether I should stay longer.  I think I was probably back in bed before the poor guy had a chance to finish the sentence.

Of course, mean voice has it all sussed, I am sabotaging because it's fun being ill;  I am not as ill as I think I am - just a lazy sloth.  I am chasing my own tail - yes - it is all my fault, of course it is.  I just dig deeper into the duvet - OK - I (mean voice) win - but I still can't shift this enormous sense of morbidity.

Last night I watched some late movie set in a psychiatric long stay establishemnt, although written and produced I would guess in the seventies, it had Whoopi Goldberg in who - when I am well - is a great role model and inspiration to me.  She can make me smile or cry in a second - her timing is incredible.  I love  Maya Angelou too.  They'd both be at my 'perfect' dinner party. 

It probably wasn't the most sensible movie to watch retrospectively but I am not making sensible choices right now - and although it explored the practice in asylums in The States, I guess a decade before the movie was made, it affected me deeply.  I had already felt so bad earlier in the day my partner had phoned the hospital.  Back to square one - at least that's how it feels.  I then watched this movie?  Why?  For goodness sake?!  I really am my own worst enemy.  Scenes of people wanting to kill themselves; living with bi-polar; working through addictions - Diaz - of course etc.  I even got the nail scissors out to see how difficult it is to actually just cut your skin - you know like self-harmers do to say - "Hey I can't do this anymore and everything hurts anyway so why not physically too?"  Then I understood for the first time ever, the attraction  for them - if they believe it would genuinely reduce the agony inside.  I didn't think it would work for me.  At least mean voice assured me I'm all talk and no action - a prize producer of larger amounts of do-dos; Tragedy Queen and not even gutsy enough to end my own drama.  So my mean voice has her uses.

Today I have finally got up and showered after The Paul O'Grady Show (I have a soft spot for Paul because he reminds me of Blackpool and my childhood).  I am blogging.  I slept for about 6 hours today - three hours this morning and a couple of hours this afternoon - which makes six on Diaz.  The Diaz is up again - hospital orders - and this calms the physical signs of the depression enormously - particularly the shakes - so typing is a lot easier- even picking up pills was tricky on Monday.

Friends continue to be long suffering and amazingly encouraging.  A beautiful angel arrived in the post this morning.  Thank you C and A.  I can't see hope just now - and she is an angel of hope - but I can read about it a little while back in the blogs and I did get better last time - even if I became ill again.

My own 'angels' have felt strangely absent in recent months.  I've realised that at the deepest level this is my stuff not theirs - no hiding behind insight and perceptiveness, or the magical mysteries of spirituality this time - this is the lonely descent to find out what is going on in and for me.  I am relying on my tenaciousness and utlimate resilience.  I have broken out in a sweat writing those words; it's as though I know I will be punished later by mean voice for daring to publicly suggest such a ridiculous thing.  But I'll risk it.  I can't love myself more fully, or be gentle until I have a sense of what pulls me off course so easily. I can feel my anxiety rising.

Good things today:

The angel - but I can't really see it yet.  I just know it is there.

Sleep.

Dreaming of speaking to someone I wanted to know was around and finding out after the call and I had woken up properly that I did speak to her.

Bad things:

Torment.

Anger at myself.

Anger at others.

Now limiting how much I speak because mean voice says I shouldn't say so much; I will get better if I say less.  So today I have counted my words - 182 so far.  Talking to dogs or cats does not count - but I don't talk much to them - it's more stroking and snuggling.

Teazle and Bertie sent me a card.  It's a cartoon of two cats sleeping in armchairs opposite each other:

I'd get so much more done if only I could get by on seventeen hours sleep.

Exploring Motherhood

Despite getting up late, I managed to finish the first of the mother archetype paintings.  I tried to take my time because I wanted to feel what the painting meant to me and just be with the feelings.  It was a letting go process, not a jumping through the hoop of let's get my hospital homework done and get back to sleep.  The hospital process has become very valuable and it feels painful to think it will end. 

I also did my exercise with the post this morning and it worked really well.  I felt rather bossy and in charge.  (Those who know me well, please don't groan too deeply.) 

The painting left me very high when I had completed it; a sort of adrenalin cum nervousness deal.  I had spent the day watching West Wing Series One as I painted - and as I didn't hook into the whole WW thing until about series four, this was a very enjoyable treat indeed.

As I couldn't bring myself down after painting the picture - I decided to prime - paint the background - for tomorrow's painting which should be less complex than this one.  Still shaking and not 'down' I then varnished two of last week's canvases which can now go for framing and then saw my tree painting which I had hurried a bit at the time and set to work on tidying it up and finishing it.  Again it can be varnished tomorrow and go for framing after they have all made their trip to the hospital later next week.

The tree has been.

I took half a Diaz to try and lose the shakes while I got started on my painting this afternoon and once I was absorbed I seem to have been able to keep the very mean-voice sub-personality under control.  But I have been physically pretty agitated.  Again with the Diaz I have to be strong - time to be weaned and it ain't easy.

I am amazed at how much I can feel and how deep I go without words.

I had a thought last night that I have so little time before I am discharged from the hospital (it's a fixed schedule of treatment) that I wonder if maybe I should discharge myself now so that I have time to put some emotional protection in place, not to mention physical, before the demands of the Christmas Holidays.  Christmas and New Year are tough times for our son.  It doesn't take much to knock me back at the moment - and we are still uncovering the layers  of impacted emotional gunk - we are putting things back together, but mostly practical stuff.

It would be horrible to plummet when I am still vulnerable.  I think I would potentially undo a lot of the so far, little short of, miraculous work the hospital has achieved, plus the constant encouragement of family and friends.  Gosh, you do find out who your friends are at times like this.  And I have.  I've always thought I am the sort of person who is rather tolerated or humoured;  I am beginning to have a deep sense of love from others - and from my perspective it is entirely reciprocated.

Tomorrow I am looking at what control and motherhood means.  Boundary-keeping; safeness and all that - but in extremis controlling and therefore diminishing the confidence of another and their capacity to realise their potential.  I hope the paints don't run out.

For now I just need a hot Chocolate and a back massage - and bed.

Fragile, but trying to move on with the tasks and the going deeper.  The self-sabotage and mean-voice stuff will start later when I return to why am I bothering... I'll only get depressed again... and yes, without the Diaz I am much more jittery.  But I am processing and that counts for something.

Good things today:

Cuth(bert) decided to sit and watch me paint.  Unusual for this particular cat.

Ordered treadmill (partner's order - it doesn't count as spending if he pays for it - just like food pilfered from another's plate has no calorific value.)

Sun was shining some of the time.

Partner could leave me long enough to mow.

Dido (Golden Retriever) brought me an egg cup she had found, thankfully not one of the ones decorated by C and H during Holy Week.  She was so proud.  She loves finding things that's why most of my knickers have no gusset (no comments please) and my socks have no toes.  Too much information - but she gets bored with all this painting stuff and her 'Mum' not wanting to go out much.

Thanks for reading.

Feeling

Another day, much of which has been spent mental processing (not always with accompanying snoring).  At the hospital this morning,  I am moving on to practical things which will help develop my confidence and sense  of returning to ordinary life.  My desk is piled high with unopened letters and parcels.  My first task - really thanks to C - is to try and work towards opening my mail.  To begin with I am allowed to decide what I open and leave the rest to my partner to sort out.  I am going to start slowly tomorrow by sorting through what I would like to open and what I can't face.  I love the sense of control and also freedom.  I am looking at how to lower my anxiety when I receive mail.  I suspect all those years of battles with Social Services, in particular, have left me with heightened anxiety when anything unexpected arrives, I think a swift churning of my stomach has now become a problem  and an untouchable - like a phobia - I can't do this - while my depression is in place.  I wish I had had such gifted and perceptive interventions years ago.

Slowly will do it.

I have some ideas for paintings around archetype mother figures and I will start painting tomorrow.

The greatest news today was to see my early paintings completed at the beginning of my depression now back from the framers.  It was like giving myself a hug - and I'm very grateful to my mum for paying for the framing which involved a second mortgage!  It was very generous and loving.  The frames maketh the paintings - no two ways about it.  We are now deciding where to hang them.  When my son is home it might be wise if they live in The Sanctuary as he may find them hard to have around - but - my partner and mum have, a bit to my surprise, decided they would like them hung up in the house until the Christmas holidays.  I was thinking of the loft. 

I see them as externalising my inner journey and process.  At the moment I don't really see the paintings - and therefore have no sense of their quality - they are the means to recovery alongside the skills of the professionals.

Everyone is very encouraging about them.  They are helping me get better, by helping me explore me - the real me - through the painting.

Had a little bit of a scare with my mum this morning - but all seems calmer now.  We swept home after her phone call to my partner at the hospital - but she was already on the mend.

Good things today:

The awe of seeing what a difference a frame makes - and feeling like a fraud - it makes me look as though I know a bit more about what I am doing than is actually the case.

I have not taken any Diazapam for over 24 hours - entirely my choice.  Good times and not so good as a consequence - but I am pleased I am doing as well off the Diaz as I am.  I am still very shaky - so I want to think again about anxiety when I meet for my hospital review.  My sense is I could try a higher dose of Citalopram - but I suspect lower doses and good coping mechanisms must always be the preferred long(ish) term option.  My antidepressant is supposed to be one of the best for anxiety related depression.

Have made two new friends who are moving up North and we have started a fun dialogue via e-mail.

Things to work on:

Sorting and possibly opening mail.

Staying safe.

Living with a peak under the cover at what I might love to do in the future.  Whatever, I can feel the enormous shifts in my psyche and I am painting as though it is going out of fashion.

My treat for a great week in my partner's view was - West Wing Third Series.  I am now complete  - I have all seven series.  I will start at the beginning of series one and watch them all through as I paint.  I am not up to visitors yet, if they want to talk to me.  (Don't mind sitting with them though) but I love the virtual family of West Wing.  Their vulnerability and their strength.  My role models are the President living with MS and his Press Officer - C.J.

Jo (collie) and Rainbow (guide dog) came to the hospital and behaved liked little canine gentlemen.  Jo is a gem.  Rainbow I just expect to be perfection - but Jo was a frightened, anxious, grumpy rescue dog found wandering in Caithness.  He is calm submissive - as The Dog Whisperer would say.  He is so loyal and even some of his bald patches have grown back.  He likes his own company but over the last couple of years has come for cuddles and loves games.

I walked to the car and into the centre without my partner and just with Rainbow.  That felt impressive.

I slept for about three hours this afternoon and I am continuing with the processing.  I am also making a pact with myself to keep some down time away from too much planning or beating up or trying new persona on for size.  Trash TV. Soppy movies.  Walk with dog - but with my partner.

Progress.  Definitely.  Hard to know where this will lead - but an hour at a time.  I am learning to juggle the plates of some aspects of my everyday life again and also discern as I face each new activity how much I need to do the juggling of that particular plate in the future, in other words is this a part of what has caused the depression - a trigger if you like - or will it facilitate a calmer, more transformed personality (and less ADHD amongst my negative sub-personalities). 

I have had some genuine surprises about my levels of anger around some of the plates - but I am being encouraged to acknowledge and stay with these feelings.  I can't answer certain e-mails just now.  I am scared to return to some tasks.  These are the things which in the weeks ahead I hope we will turn over and over in our heads and hearts and ask and answer the questions we need to ask of them and discern with them. 

Ironically after years of learning to detach emotionally in order to help our son remain calm and unpressured,  it is now turn and turn about.

I must return and go deeper into feelings I've had on ice for years.

L'haim.

Excavating Some More Sub-Personalities

The sadness continues to de-energise, but I was greatly encouraged by the hospital.  Hilarious really.  I spend a good portion of my life telling everyone I teach, and everyone who stays at The Sanctuary - to remember that almost always on retreat you may well feel exhausted as the days go by and find you need to sleep a lot more than usual because your spiritual, creative and healing self needs to work hard and has this 'chance' to speak to you from the heart.  Today I heard the message I have so often given.  I may not be doing very much yet, but the sleeping itself is productive. When I don't allow my mean-voice to take over describing me as some sort of self-pitying sloth; then I realise just how much the sleeping is a way of processing and when I don't wake up in a panic, sometimes I feel as though I have just been resting in a warm foam bath.

I am focusing my paintings this week on some sub-personalities.  I think I will look at the magical mother; the destructive mother and maybe the birth mother I wanted to be - a lot will depend on how much time I have with high enough energy levels.  But that's the grand plan.

I went shopping after my morning session.  This was a bold statement to celebrate a very valuable session which has thrown up some surprises about exactly what is important to me.  Don't know why yet - but we will get there.

Boots felt like entering an alternative reality.  I even went and picked up my own prescription - such is the power of Diazapam - while my partner picked up some Sandwiches and - now here's the real excitement - I chose some lavender shower gel.  Will my progress never end????

I shouldn't mock my own afflictions.  I should not minimise my progress.  I should not belittle myself.  Hard habits to change. 

Home, bed and asleep in seconds.  Lots to think about particularly around parenting - or really caring - or mother archetypes.  I can't wait to get going on the painting, but before then I need to buy another couple of canvases and some MORE paint.  I have a style which is not economical with acrylics and they are ten pounds a tube for the decent ones.

I have already found some powerful images - but I am thinking about painting all three at once rather than working a piece up to almost finished and then moving on to the next.  I want to see what happens; whether they mix , merge or even integrate at some level.

I am loving Vivienne Vyle on BBC 2 with Jennifer Saunders - probably wasted on you, unless you spend as much time as I do spaced out in front of daytime TV.

Loving too, the responses to the blogs which are so encouraging and affirming.  I always saw my depression as failure.  The love, encouragement of family and friends has helped me turn this vision of my condition around.

Being Who You Are is Better than Being a Cardboard Cut Out

I've just opened an e-card which has made me smile.  Really smile.  Feel Loved.  Appreciated.  I've needed a smile. I have had a really ify two days.  I slept in yesterday morning and woke from a nightmare where I was being strangled, in fact I thought I had died in the dream - I completely blacked out at the end of the dream but I woke up unable to catch my breath - I guess an anxiety attack.  I couldn't get my breath, I called my partner and the next thing I knew I had thrown up.  I was as scared as hell.

The dream had been so real.  The face I saw as I was being strangled was like a photofit - but I recognised some of the 'fits' - if you see what I mean.  It made me feel as though he was coming back for me.  I was jittery the rest of the day.  On the sofa; cocooned in a duvet.  I was shaking and kept remembering the strangulation.

At least I finished the rest of West Wing and slept.  I felt so sad for the rest of the day.  My partner interpreted the dream as I sign that I, deep down, have a huge energy and fight within me to claim life.  I am not so sure.

Today I have slept and slept.  I had a list of good intentions including going and buying some flowers to say thank you to a person who has helped me a lot, maybe even saved my life at one point.  I had also hoped to see my medical practice CPN to get the rest of the time I am with the hospital signed off.  I missed my appointment at the centre yesterday.  I am not back at square one but I am shaky.  There are some big questions entering our life decisions just now and I can't seem to get my head round them except by being very still and quiet and then the answers I get scare me.  Just how big are the changes I am prepared to make in my life - and how much have I the courage to change/transform?

I still feel founding a small religious community is in the plan and has never left, interestingly, although watching episodes of The Haven recorded at Findhorn some years ago is enough to put most people off community.

I am also nervous of making life-changing decisions when my mood swings can be hourly if not daily - and I am nervous that I have only another 7 weeks under the hospital.  Will I be well enough then?  I hope so.  I don't want any more co-dependency - I've enough to work through.

Good things today:

The sea and the sun.  I slept and slept and slept - and Mungo and Rainbow shared responsibility for when I needed a cuddle.  Even the cat took a shift.

Blue and white hat is on again, but I am determined to make my session at the hospital tomorrow.

I had a good dream this afternoon.  I arrived in the dream in a large hangar and I was welcomed with open arms by a staff who were busy unpacking and putting together flat-pack screens and desks etc...  In the centre of the hangar was a huge coach.  Apparently the reason everyone was so pleased to see me was that I was their new boss.  We had a short meeting - introductions - including some people I have worked with in the past - and then I said OK everyone is busy - what can I do to facilitate this opening this afternoon?  Could I start painting the coach - a forty-eight seater!  So I did.  Just before the opening, someone drove the coach into the playground place.  I went in and began supervising, supporting and moving from group to group.  The staff were interesting.  One was a guide dog user - with a collie.  My now dead Newfie was my guide dog and was playing with the children in the playground.  Another helper was a wheelchair user, and another was deafened.  Some had hidden disabilities.  The children were a rag, tag mix too - and the parents who had come for the grand opening.  One child appeared and flung his arms round me - about four I would guess - no clothes on - but had poured the chocolate fountain over himself.  I can remember being desperately alert to child protection and two of us covering him up and running a huge bubble bath for him.  The last smell before I woke up was the unusual mix of hot chocolate and Lavender bubble bath.

Tomorrow I take my paintings and collage in to the hospital and on we go.  I feel such a twit needing all this support and then stopping dead and getting stuck again - but at least I am staying with the sadness; the grief.

Asking and Letting Go

I am much less overtly physically agitated than I was - I have moved from the numb, disassociated, muted stage of a few weeks ago to a new state.  More physically relaxed, at least some of the time.  It was a massive breakthrough to realise the extent of my own self-sabotaging techniques - and that has lifted a weight off my mind and so I have had, literally, more time and mental space to play with.

Yesterday's lack of blog was because I went into an extreme of quite frenzied, excited, enthused, creative energy and spent the whole day working.  I felt turbo driven.  No I haven't fiddled with my medication.  So tired at the end  of the day that after a good cry at West Wing, I was out like a light.  I am trying to work creatively with the idea of destructiveness; destruction.  A lot of the pain of the day's work came later as I tried to sleep on and then woke. 

I thought I had sorted where I wanted to go creatively with this challenging theme when I spotted an In Loving Memory pot for flowers to put at a grave side, reduced to clear at the local Garden Centre.

I was caught and tickled by the idea that it was reduced to clear.  I wondered how I would feel if I'd walked past a week ago and bought it full price???  I guess there will always be people who will purchase a bargain and put it in the back of the cupboard for that special moment.  It also caught me that it was brittle plastic.  It reminded me of Barbie accessories.  I thought I could smash it up and then stick it back together in an edgy, sharp way - like a spikey, odd 'installation'.  Pretentious, moi?  It spoke to me of the pain of destruction but felt as though it would relieve nothing of my personal anger and anguish as it had no direct, personal connectedness as an object from my life.  I am a green burial woman at heart.

Then I hit on taking a toy from the loft, already partially destroyed and smashing that up.  No.  That aircraft carrier was purchased with love. 

I resorted to painting and managed two canvases on Saturday - that still feel real when I look at them.  I can feel the emotion within them and through them.  I felt I painted at a deep level, not worrying what others would think.

Yesterday I hit it, if you pardon the pun.  I worked on a mosaic which used all the bits and pieces I have salvaged over the years for mosaics from crockery thrown (occasionally dropped), toys destroyed, tiles scratched, beads broken etc.. What I couldn't recycle I had long since thrown away.  (The aircraft carrier at some point I will do a peace mosaic with.)  It meant that as I created the mosaic on destruction, I could mourn and remember; the partially forgotten happenings; the hissy fits; the attempts to control or hurt.  It has taken me to a different level - phase.  Deep sadness and grief.

I can't touch me protesting about me and for me yet.  I just feel like a sad kid.  Funnily enough just like those first weeks after a death when you wake up and in those first seconds of coming to, you remember the reality; the person has died.  I wonder if a part of me has died.  Maybe I am having the space to get real and make decisions about how I want to live my life in the future.  Inevitably some part of that will have to involve re-balancing.  Whatever - some things have to go - the things that make me angry and frustrated and those that exacerbate self-sabotage; and I have to give much more time to my vocation and not just nurturing everyone else's.  I have to build the fire in my belly once again.

It feels as though there is so much to think about and my partner need to begin to talk - we both know that just like Moley in The Wind in the Willows our noses and whiskers are above ground, sniffing and twitching - and there are new possibilities to consider and chronic difficulties to re-balance.  We are both keen that I journey as deep as possible.  So loads of painting.  Time to talk and connect.  Still not answering phone - doing any work - and I have another 7 weeks work at the centre - so I have to be signed off until the New Year.  It isn't easy. 

I hate letting people down.

This afternoon I slept like a log but woke up ready to do. I think I may make a small cairn on the shore and write all the things I feel sad about and then gradually remove them again and throwing them into the sea - not to get rid of the problem - if it was that easy... But to give me a sense of the fact this can be shared and is.  I can try and sit lighter and physically throw some of the weight off my shoulders.

I am hoping if we both work together writing  stones, we can see what we need to start transforming.

I was assertive today.

I realised I wanted to spend more time at the centre.  I asked and it was given.

Maybe if I get used to saying what I need rather than facilitating everyone else's view and helping to find consensus, I will be making a start.

I am so humbled by what I am learning and have no sense why or what is next just now.  I am sure an offer will come at the right time.  Community will be a big part of my life - but I will also want to work because I enjoy the social side that goes with that.  What could you imagine me doing which doesn't involve giving out to others all the time?  I haven't a picture in my head.

I am buying a treadmill.  I am almost phobic now about walking out particularly in unfamiliar territory.  I think poor old Rainbow's concentration isn't all it was.  I've had weeks of little physical exercise.  Time to use those endorphines to release more positive energy.

Might not have all the sub-personalities back - but I am now recovering and feel I am.  Ups, downs, whatever.  I understand more about why.

Next stage is to grieve.  Sadness should be taken seriously.

Slainte - Rt Rev. Mark Strange, Bishop of Moray, Ross and Cromarty

Today we have as a Province consecrated our new Bishop, Mark Strange.

My prayer for him:

May you be touched with the gentle whisper of the Spirit;

Anointed to your vocation in ways that will continue to guide your giftedness and pastoral oversight.

And may you never forget  you have been called because you are you - and because this is the will of God.

Every blessing to you Mark, in the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of all.

Amen

I've thought alot about Mark and his family today and we prayed during the time of the service - holding a respectful silence for a person in transition and for all who will support and challenge - but to whom he has become our Father in God.

I wish I had felt well enough to be there, if only to reassure people that I am not just virtual.

I really knackered myself yesterday.  I've been physically shaky all day and so I've been gentle with myself.  Panicking a bit at the thought of  making my first meal for the family tomorrow.  Sounds so weird from someone who loves cooking usually - and would cook for 10 without much of a second thought.  I love the whole prep' thing.

Still I think there is some progress inside somewhere - a loosening is how I would best describe it.

Painted two abstracts today - one this morning - then sleeping to West Wing - although I made it through one whole episode before I dropped off.  Then another canvas this evening which came to me in my sleep.  They seem to be more about what I can't say just now - like a rehearsal for having to find some words at some point to work through all the baggage.

Otherwise I have been reflecting further on my capacity to self-sabotage.  My partner and I both do it - so we have decided we are going to have to work really hard on finding a list of things that we want to do for me - not us - or them.  Amazing how difficult INFPs find this.  Actually own it, woman, I am amazed how blank I am about what I want to do - what turns me on as a unique individual.

Agitation has been contained today by staying in the comfort zone of painting.  I felt most of the day it was either that or curl up with Mungo on the bed.  I felt this was more positive as a choice than just snuggling down, admitting into a muffled hat that I was hibernating for the day.

I don't know whether that's in line with the received wisdom, but it certainly feels instinctively right.

The hard part is knowing when I am 'choosing' at some deep level not to try something because it's easier to stay stuck and when I am actually needing to be gentle on myself.  There is no doubt anxiety/depression is reduced by distraction - especially painting which I wish I was better at, but I enjoy so that's all that counts.  But, I don't seem to have the energy/desire to go back to how things were and I want to go deeper before I spend too much time learning how to conform again.  I want to discover what my expectations of myself are -and then see how and if I can negotiate this with family and friends and work colleagues.

When I feel like one of those cardboard cut-out figures - two dimensional - it's easy to grab at things that get 'strokes' just because expectations are that you will get back to your usual way of being.  I know my depression is because my way of being isn't viable.  I can hang the two dimensional clothes, tasks and look on the cardboard cut out Jane - but it will be as authentic as a silk flower planted in a garden.  Authenticity has been the saving grace through all this.  When things aren't right deep inside there is no point in pretension.

More to work through - sure - but I have found one part of the jigsaw - I have more energy to look for some of the other pieces.

Mission Possible

I have so much to cogitate on at the moment that it feels odd doing it with three sub-personalities - humourful Jane; mean-voice Jane; and itsi-bitsie tiny mitsie creative Jane in place most of the time but none of the other mouthy ones about, offering insight, counter argument or playfulness.  I am making connections though. Today is a good day.  It may prove pivotal; - but I am ready for the downs and the ups. More downs over the next weeks as we have agreed to go deeper.

At the moment I'm as tender as an open wound - doesn't take much to send me scampering into the undergrowth.

I have realised today in a deep way that I can actually feel a release in my diaphragm/solar plexus as though some tension has been lifted.  My revelation is that a huge amount of what I do is serial attempted and actual self-sabotage.  The thought hit me with full force as we were driving away from the centre. 

Therapists have told me in the past that my fatness is because I'm a control freak and that I need to work on being vulnerable and through that will lose my protective armour -  my blubber.  I worked on my vulnerability, but discovered I was comfy in my skin - so that was a win - win. 

Another therapist was sure my problems stemmed from a partially absent father as a child and a mother I had not broken the 'umbilical cord',  even though I was in my early twenties and preparing for ministry.  My mother was furious.  I got a life.  She had been right that I worried too much what my parents thought of me - and I guess in that sense I was still drawing energy from their affirmation or disapproval - so that grew the me-ness of me on a little.

I don't think I have ever confronted my desire to self-destruct before or recognised it quite as that- whether by avoidance - "I can't" or by shutting myself in our bedrom and pulling the duvet over my head and sleeping for as long as I possibly can; or by eating in ways that discourage healthy respect for my physical being.  The moments of truth came when I was chatting with my partner in our favourite coffee shop after the session - when I suddenly said after a long preamble about how knackered I was and how I could sleep for a week - how weird it was that this depression came at a time when yes, things were tight and there was little room to manoeuvre emotionally and physically - but a lot had come right.  A chapter coming out in a book; a publisher taking on my first novel ( actually my fifth - but commercial not creative is the name of the game), we had a summer of some of my mum's oldest friends and mine coming to stay - not to mention my step son, his partner Angie and my step-grandchildren.  Then, quite slowly, after my fall at work and the broken and bruised period of my life, I felt more and more as though I was watching a slow-motion picture show of me pretending to be good old me.  Then one day I knew I was too angry and my thoughts too dark - and my loss of enjoyment in life  so powerfully manifest in depression that the 'rabbit' was finally caught in her own headlights and had to stop.

I don't think my depression is about me saying F*** o** to the people I love and my brothers and sisters in humanity; it's my turn to be ill and pampered and given space.  It felt good when it first presented as a thought but it hasn't held on reflection.  What has caught me like a life dart right in my heart  is that this is about the me - deep in the pile of do-do's - who attacks herself rather than addresses issues that affect her in detrimental ways.  She is, when well, in her element supporting other people.  But when I am ill -  I've exposed 99% of the pain, anxiety and sabotage, which I feel is about me being not worth the paper this blog is written on.  I now have a handle.  A step on the ladder if you like - something to try on for a bit and see if it fits.  I'll keep you posted on that.

So today there has been a breakthrough and that has given me a glimmer of hope and encouragement.  I am still hour to hour.  It takes a whisper of a mishap still to send a usually resilient Jane into a fast downward spiral - but I want to make the connections now that an important link in my thinking has been made.

Good things today:

Connection - but no answers as to why I want to self-destruct as yet - well not ones that are plausible - I know now most of what's in my head is the illness.

Fed Nutmeg our rabbit pear twigs and pears and she looks a bit too stuffed from yesterday but happy.

Mungo is coming off Diaz and has the DTs.  Constant need for reassurance.  Flatulence unbelievable - my hypothesis that Diaz causes the smelliest flat's in the world is now, I think, a full-blown (if you'll pardon the pun) theory.

Cappuccino and coffee cake at Simpsons.

A new t-shirt arrived: I live in my own little world... but it's OK, they know me here!

Hard Things:

Emotional exhaustion and fear when the phone rings etc...  Worrying in the night.

Believing that even getting well will just mean I start the countdown to the next episode.

Wanting my head to stop beating me up.

Living with the constant anxiety that sometimes it really does feel bleak enough to give up - but I get checked regularly at the centre and we are going deeper emotionally to look at what this ultimate act of avoidance or non-confrontation is actually about.

I thought I might paint this afternoon - and maybe I will - but for now I feel like it is legitimately snooze time.  So I will snooze legitimately.

Choices - This Is My Body Broken For You

I'm in a funny place just now.  I am in the process of making my peace with a person I have learnt from, admired, respected and honoured for years.  This feels healing and positive.

It is amazing the difference a day can make.  I don't feel abandoned, judged or hurt just now by recent events - perspective is all and I dealt with my anger in the moment.  I should feel proud of that, one day I will.  One day if the person wants to see it, I will show him the painting I produced in the pain - Broken. 

After all the Diazapam Mungo inadvertently downed yesterday I have the sense he has the mother and father of a fuzzy head. He looks as though he has been hit by a truck!

In the process of doing my journal for the centre even I can see I am still a bit nuts - but I am surprised how clearly a pattern is emerging about what makes me anxious, dislocated or reduces my capacity to function at my best.  Even I can see there's quite a lot of work to be done.

I have been trying to think back to a time when I wasn't anxious and as anxiety and depression shouldn't be separated, that raises some important questions about my early behaviours and patterns.  My earliest memories are around 3 and I can remember feeling lonely but not anxious.  4, much the same - I was the clown of nursery and one of the brighter ones.  I guess it began to become a problem when I went to primary school and was quickly designated by the other children as different.  Edge of playground - pretending not to mind being alone; too frightened to go into the girls loo in case I was bullied.  The favoured place out of the sight of teachers.  Where does a 5 or 6 year old learn this from? 

Thalidomide had left me with bilateral ptosis (heavy eyelids - I could only see by leaning my head right back) deformed optic nerves, odd, slightly malformed toes - unusually small back teeth and a tiny tongue - difficult to believe that someone who is as gobby as I am when I am well has a very small tongue.  I have heard dentists shriek - mind you he was Australian - and my Italian singing teacher at Drama School held my tongue like a tiny performing eel and said "Youn must immediately go and 'ave theze side bitz cut off so you can at least move the thing a little or you vill never sing - and I need a mezzo.  Tell me, how do you speak wiv' such clarity wiv such a uselez tonger".  I had the requested check with my doctor who said "OK - if you want to be an opera singer, sure.  I thought you were training as a theatre director?"

"Mmmm" I slurred as he removed the metal from my mouth.  "Leave well alone".   That should have been my motto I reckon ever since.  Singing class was compulsory for directors to help us warm up actors more than anything.

Now I've got to get back into training for returning to being me.  I'm holding on to the idea today that I must believe there are still choices to be made by me and for me.  I am holding on...