Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Homework: Are Therapists Aliens? Discuss.

I haven't felt like doing much today if I'm honest.  A bit of an effort to get up and get to the centre, but I realise I have to, at some much deeper level, than I am at the moment allowing and recognise for now that however well-intentioned my own urging and that of friends to make a speedy recovery, it just ain't gonna happen.  I have to allow myself to go deeper.  I could murder my partner at times but his motto comes to mind - I have to trust the process.

The Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is now beginning to try and kick start me.  I've had a few dark days and I've needed extra appointments to pull me back on message as it were. The hardest thing is always to believe that I will actually get better, and that better doesn't have to automatically mean I am then living anxiously in preparation for the next depressive episode.  I am not frightened of being a depressive.  I am not frightened of the process I am going through although I genuinely fear what being known as flakey, a woman and a guide dog user is going to do to my longer term employment prospects.  If only I were lesbian and from a minority ethnic group too this would be less of a potential difficulty.

The last few days, words have been thin.  I am grieving for the dream of working for the Church again but using the skills and abilities I feel I can bring rather than fit into a 'let's be nice and affirming to each other all the time' and keep the negativity behind closed doors because that isn't very Christian.  That's how it feels, when I am ill at least, an attitude that besets the Church like an institutional sin.  We claim divine perfection; our need of nourishment, healing and forgiveness - but we brush reality under the carpet.  It reminds me a little of Chicken Run  - an inspired animation based on The Great Escape.

So for now I haven't replaced my motivator and light at the end of the tunnel - the job and community base - with anything else - but I know between those of us committed to community we will sort something out.

For now I am spending such a fortune on paint, canvas and framing - not to mention episodes of West Wing that we are officially bankrupt. I've thought about working the harbour quarter of an evening in stilettos and a cerise sequinned boob tube - but I haven't got the energy - and there might be something better on TV. 

I cannot and must not re-open The Sanctuary until I am fully well - and as I know I am slipping deeper into the parts of my psyche which need this space if genuine connection and healing is to take place, I now own I am officially really ill - and I can't kick start or bully myself out of it.  Bugger.

What I can do is find the things that will give me new life when the healing is underway - and I am well - enough to function without anxiety.

I know the vision of community is from God and is a vocation.  I have no idea as yet how it will come together - but those already interested will meet after Easter.  As many of you are based in England I am wondering about an East Anglian retreat.  You can e-mail me to let me know if that it doesn't feel much of a holiday /retreat etc...  Or we could use here and I book the cottage at Alturlie Point and we bunk up a bit - more about that later when I am functioning - but pitch your preferred options now as you will get everything you desire - I am back up on the Diazapam!

A quote from The Scotsman Magazine October 6 2007:

Elyn Saks, is an academic with scizophrenia she wrote a no holds barred account of her experiences:

I hardly ever missed sessions, except that time I thought my therapist had been taken over by aliens.

The Centre Cannot Hold: A Memoir of My Schizophrenia (2007) Little Brown £17.99

My response as a depressive:

12 step programme for depressives faced by Cognitive Behaviour Therapy:

1. Sleep a lot (this throws them off the scent of what you really like doing when you are well).

2. Cream cakes (comfort food is tolerated but there's the sense in the air  that if you are above a size 12, it may be obliterated from the get well plan).

3. If you are overly anxious and want to scream all the time.  Scream.  Ribena or honey and lemon are good when you feel hoarse.

4. You may think you are shuffling forward but sure as hell the second your energy starts to return something will off-balance you.  Work with the pain of that moment and try out the approaches to relaxation, acceptance and recovery you are being taught on that  present happening.  It will work - or does in my case for about a minute or two at a time - but that's a rest from the mean, beating up voice who usually rules my inner, depression roost.

5. When it gets really bad have someone sit with you and either read aloud or just sit. Do not stay alone for too long.  This is crucial.

6. When it gets really very bad.  Ask someone to look after all your drugs and celebrate this.  I am taking control and making a positive choice to choose to protect myself.

7. When things get really, really bad get emergency help.  It's there.  It's professional and they know you are ill even if you are fighting with yourself to get better quickly and paper over the cracks.

8. Accept you are ill and accept the guys who want you to do homework and talk about how you feel now - and who see you looking like death, in floods of tears, unable to sit still  or with a woolly hat pulled down over your eyes, they know  the territory and they can and DO help.

9. Hold on to anything that will get you out of bed in the morning.  Positives - no death threats or beatings up.  Sitting and painting helps for me.  Sometimes just sitting.

10. I am just starting making a list of my negative thoughts and trying to search for evidence that counters the tormented view of me. This is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it is important if re-balance is to occur.

11. Go to all sessions for therapy.  Yes, therapists are aliens, but like angels they have a distinct and wholly-life-giving and enhancing purpose.  I wonder if the celestial choir is really made up of CPNs and therapists?

12. When you cannot believe it is worth let alone possible to get better - live an hour or even half an hour at a time.  It doesn't have to be doing, just being - but it does need to involve a bit of hand to hand combat when necessary with the dark side.  The pain; the torment; the sadness and anger are all mine - but they are not all that is me.

Wind Out Of My Sails

I had some sad news yesterday which affects potential community members as much as it does us as a family.  You know I thought I might have located a community base and even, wonder of wonders - a job to go with it all - offered like some magical invitation by a fairy Godmother.  Well the whole darn thing has gone pear-shaped.  Usual Scottish Episcopal Church answer to everything - money - very happy to have something for nothing or next to nothing but not if it needs to be paid for.  I went into a downward spiral not just because the vision of what could be achieved in the location and with the added extras had fired my imagination, but also because it seemed to fit in with so much of what we and other community members were seeking.

I feel as though the rug has been pulled out from under me - and I can't help wondering whether my candidness and honesty over my depression has tempered the original  highly flattering proposal.  Ignorance of how well depression in particular can be managed with appropriate interventions must be bliss.  I just feel cheated out of a chance which looked as though we could have found our home base.  Now back to the drawing board and I guess the only good thing that can be said of the whole exercise is at least I have thought more about our process and needs as community and we have once again a clean sheet of paper.

I'm angry at the moment, but I'll get over it.  Sometimes people don't understand how much power they wield in our lives and how much hope and investment we place in their own aspirations, inspirations and offers.

I have painted a very dark painting today, full of black and red - much anger - sadness and disappointment.  I've called it Broken.  A very powerful and helpful way to exorcise my own deep sadness and negativity that what I very much hoped would be, will now not be my future.

Today has been tough.  Words don't make the feeling go away and I have started beating myself up.  If I hadn't been honest or sought help for my depression, people might have thought me odd, eccentric or even a bit unreliable - but let's face it - we're mostly wrapped up in our own stuff and keeping our own heads above water - so there isn't that much space to take notice of other people to that extent.  I feel foolish for believing that people can see past the immediate and see the person.  So sad.  A dark day, but I have been heard and had a good session at the centre - and my homework, which included the painting, and Googling for Newfies (nearly causing a domestic!).   I think I'll call the new dog Bishop.

The Communion of Saints

Painting continues to be a massive release and I am painting each day. I am starting an abstract later as the last couple of canvases have had more of a therapeutic theme and I need to play. 

I am still feeling raw - but raw for reasons I am just beginning to get a handle on - and as my subpersonalities are returning the reasons are becoming clearer and some even look vaguely resolvable.  I am also getting in touch with my anger - and have had a couple of moments in the last few days when I can't remember feeling this angry except - at about 6 - I gave my mother hell one afternoon in Marks and Spencer - over the simplest and most reasonable request involving the purchase of suitable school socks - I wanted the fancy design ones all the blonde pig-tail pretty- pretties wore.  Fortunately the person who I felt angry with yesterday, took my Anglo Saxon response firmly on the chin and the conversation flowed on with even greater ease - but I was a bit like Mrs Bucket on Keeping Up Appearances; I couldn't believe I had reacted with such force.  Reach for the smelling salts. 

I can get very angry and fight for others but it's a very rare moment I care enough to fight for me.  Another revelation and turn of the wheel of appreciation and understanding of self.

Staying with the rawness and feeling the pain, rather than analysing it or simply describing it, is very difficult.  My instinct is to box it or keep it within boundaries - a safety mechanism I guess.  The feeling currently isn't so much self-loathing - thank goodness - as grief.  It is very child-like, utterly sad and inconsolable.  Staying with that physically hurts and it's good for a lot of the time to distract myself - but sometimes I think this is just a way of avoiding making the deeper journey and I go back and just stay with the sadness.  I often feel it intently when I'm out with the dogs.  I wonder if I need to just go and sit in a graveyard and remember.

I had a dream last night where I found myself with a spiritual director I had some years ago - I was going to add when I was still young, naive and believing the Church could solve everything - and I have written it - so I guess that's a tick for assertiveness.  Something happened in my life which had devasted me in the dream and I brought it to him for counsel.  I have no recollection what the thing was, but he was sitting, large as life, in our bedroom armchair. 

His advice was mannered and considered; we sat in silence for a long time.

"Stay with yourself because that is what you have been given.  True uniqueness is not born out of emulation but out of acceptance and forgiveness."

M.  RIP.

You are an inspired guide and a wise visitor last night.  Thank you.  Well done, Cloud of Witnesses.  Spot on arrivals and departures.

Having Too Much of a Good Thing

I accidentally took my antidepressant last night as well as yesterday morning.  I realised about five minutes after I had swallowed what I had done and quickly read the small print on those sheets that appear in the packaging with prescription drugs.  No prob.  My mind wasn't on the job - I had been busy all day building plasticine models of cobb houses ( yes, you may well ask) and trying myself out in new situations and with skills I have been too frightened to entertain in the last couple of months - a trip to the deli in town.  lunch out, surfing for research, answering e-mails; thinking through my 'homework' from the psychiatric centre. 

Had a dilemma, of course, about whether to take the next dose this morning or not and decided to.   I reckon pharmaceutical companies must work on a pretty high margin of error on drugs for psychiatric patients; we never know what day it is - and as with last night I can't be the first to have forgotten when I was supposed to take the pill in the first place.  I've had a great day today.  So far, this morning I felt a million dollars, I could have done anything - I imagine something like a manic euphoric might feel; colours heightened; suddenly aware the house was untidy and dust visible - I cannot get the staff - and everything in the world perky.  A turbo driven severely depressed priest whose at a go, go, go energy level.  I warned my partner it might be either a very giggly day or taxing for him.  He sensibly put the washing on, fed the cat and retreated to our study while I began painting like a woman possessed!  I painted with absolutely no anxiety. 

As the day has gone on I am seriously slowing down mentally; my speech feels very measured and almost slurred like I'm on something and it's wearing off; I feel a bit like I'm swimming underwater - which I am  - but it was fun while it lasted.  I can't stop yawning and just want to sleep so I will in a minute.

I've had some truly uplifting e-mails today - a series from my foster daughter who I could not be more proud of.  Go girl.  You are a stunning individual with such talent - BELIEVE IN YOURSELF AND YOU WILL DO WHATEVER YOU PUT YOUR HEART TO.  The other e-mail from dear friends who one day I am hoping will be significant in helping me to continue to vision community.  The plasticine cobb houses were part of my own pre-planning and dreaming.

One of my friends sent me a wonderful prayer.  I share it below and hope that's OK.  I won't attribute it because this is a public blog - and it may not be entirely appropriate:

Mighty God,

Holy and strong One,

Give us strength

To do what you would have us do.

Deliver us from lack of purpose,

Free us from confusion of mind,

Save us from loss of integrity,

Maintain us in vision and ideals,

Sustain our openness and generosity.

Help us to continue to work for you all our days,

Mighty God,

Holy and strong One.

One Short, Baby Hefflelump Step at a Time - but not in circles - Circles are Dangerous

I have managed to get up and complete what are described in mental health circles in deliciously euphemistic terms as my hygeine goals.  I have started higher doses of Citalopram today which I guess will take a while to kick in, but I am hoping that I will be moving to the right dosing soon if not now.  I have been given what feels like the psychiatric equivalent of the Sacrament as well which is an extension to continue to take some more Diazapam - but in smaller doses and to be used at my discretion - oh the power.  Diazapam is wonderful for me and is a real stress buster and less harmful, as a morbidly obese person than some sedatives which apparently put weight on.  I did suggest the other day that around 1600 Diaz pills and an appointment in a year or so would be fine.  It wasn't funny and it wasn't clever - I could almost see the unspoken thought bubble in the air.  Still worth a try.

Sedatives are certainly not a good move when I am exercising and trying to remove some of my lard.  So as The Big D is addictive - smaller doses and lots of trust and flexibility about how I use them is best of best news.  I feel trusted.  The aim will be an occasional pop rather than a daily conveyor belt of the drug.  I need to begin to address the causes of the depression not just sit on it like some sort of precious golden egg which is all mine and I'd be lost without.  I can then think with the professionals about how to alleviate the triggers and patterns of behaviour which have caused this.  I must treat the anxiety and the depression as one.  In my case my anxiety is the hand brake or self-protection mechanism, but it could potentially impede the productive growth that is often achieved when I start to feel a little better and am at last ready for a full psyche excavation.  The psychiatric equivalent of four root canal treatments simultaneously without an anaesthetic.  Worth it though.  As I have felt transformation in the past I have felt like the rarest orchid blooming at Kew or a new species being discovered.  I want to claim that I am beautifully and wonderfully made once again.

At last the sleeping pills are helping to return my night sleep to a pattern which has some refreshment implicit in it and this will, in time, remove some of the physical exhaustion and fear around even bothering to bed down properly for the night - if I suspect that for most of it I will be up and tight as a spring.  I am sleeping longer and trying hard not to nap in the day unless I have had a very emotionally demanding session at the centre - or home.  The Citalopram suits me and I haven't lost my sense of humour at all during this depressive episode - and that has been a huge blessing - for me - at least.  Inner sub-personalities are returning and I am now beginning to think again and assess, argue and plan.  Yippeee. 

Read a job spec' this morning and actually felt interested and  wanted to know more.  This is an improvement on The Radio Times and the Freetoview menu.  My faculties are returning even if my concentration could do with a new motherboard.

I am very, very humbled by the amount of support I am receiving.  I am still a bit off talking on the phone for long and I am trying to prioritise.  I will be slowly replying to e-mails and such because I am still needing to conserve some energy for therapy and I am emotionally still fairly shrivelled and shriven - it is essentially confessional and a process of accepting at the deepest level unconditional nurture.  However in the weeks ahead we will be building the strategies which will help me to continue to identify potential incidents early, so that I can get interventions effectively and quickly in place.  As well we will I hope spend some time resolving issues that I have not resolved satisfactorily in the past - so that these will not have the power to act as triggers for further episodes.  This is very much like running an archeological dig - there are few signposts and some surprises once the process gets underway.  We are also going to need to think about how I release anxiety and reduce stress, I guess.  Ironically I have rarely, if ever found work stressful (more an escape) but a complex and highly demanding home life on top has taken me to the brink...  One of the things I must learn is how to articulate my needs and be assertive about how they can be reasonably met. Part of that process involves ceasing to care quite so much what other people think of me.  Why I bother so much has always defeated me rationally.  Some of the people I love the most and would do absolutely anything for are the most fallible and overtly self-aware and genuinely vulnerable, reflective, with an inner emotional maturity that I am in awe of and would be horrified if they masked or faked their true uniqueness.  I would die for them - for they hold vision, power, love and vision.  So what's the problem? 

If your a Hefflelump walk in a straight line; don't look back; less cause for anxiety and much more hope ahead.

Oh, Yo! Oh, Yo! Oh, Yo! (Wiggle hands - obligatory)

Hard to write anything much recently as I have felt very raw - as though my outer shell had been removed.  I have been enjoying quite a few sessions a week to recover - just 'be' - at the psychiatric day centre and I think as I have prodded and probed my psyche with skilled and highly professional assistance, to try and understand what's behind the presenting messages of my depression and anxiety, I had worked so hard in the days leading up to this last week that a week of taking things more gently was just the ticket.  I arrived at the centre complete with canvas, huge black box of paints and enough brushes and kitchen roll to provide an impromptu art class for 30 mixed infants - but this time it was me who was left to play for a bit - alone and for me.  It was important.  I was, for some reason, worth upsetting a busy professional environment to find a spot to paint in.  I was worth another human being taking the trouble to check I had everything I needed and that I had such support as I needed.  I was precious enought - somehow - to be awarded space that could not be eroded by anyone.

The rawness stayed for a bit in its acute form and I had a bad few days when I was very down having flipped the positivity of the painting experience into a negative view which framed it along the lines that it would be better if I was in some kind of long stay rest home for the mildly deranged where I would be no trouble to anyone and everyone could get on with their own lives in peace.  I then remembered we live in the 21st century and that our contemporary equivalent of that is Broadmoor which doesn't have quite the same appeal. 

The feeling of rawness I experienced had almost a physical quality.  I remember a young person once telling me that a carer had rubbed her hand with an abrasive houshold substance to try and get rid of a different pigmentation present on her otherwise lighter skin - it was I suspect a birth mark - but for some reason the carer was offended by the imperfectness of the blemish.  I can't imagine what that must have felt like for the youngster, emotionally and physically.  I just felt tender to the emotional touch.  I became as tight as a ball physically, clutching onto the fabric of my clothes and the old legs going ninety to the dozen as though I was keeping time with a punk band.  No thoughts apart from I can't.  Interestingly the one thing I was pretty much forbidden to say as a child.  But that was then and now, is now...

Without my sub-personalities kicking in to remind me there are several interpretations to events and thoughts I seemed to be on a treadmill of negativity.  Medication dulled my senses apart from a passion to switch off and splat paint everywhere over large canvases. 

I am now on series 6 of West Wing. I'm also on my second sleeping bag to snuggle on the sofa as Mungo (collie x) - bored by my sleeping - didn't just unpick the seams - he removed the stuffing so I woke to a snow scene. I am a lousy seamstress at the best of times glue and what I describe as invisble stitches which are enornous uneven blanket stitches - so it has been recycled.  Reminded me of the time when my son was about 6 and had a hissy fit in the bathroom emptying 2 and a half large containers of talcum powder over the whole bathroom (large for a semi) and part of the landing - that was after he'd discover how to back up the toilet and cause several days work replacing flooring and eradicating odour.

So, I have painted three canvases in the last two weeks.  This has probably taken the place of words and blogging.  They were a bit too factual and detached rather than emotion-ful and reflective.  I've worked in acrylic paints (on canvas, not on my emotions) and my treat for getting myself to my mental health review today - normally I am sitting there sagely nodding while someone else is assessed - was to take the three pictures for framing afterwards - exercise, a trip to a shop and the healthy alternative to a Hot Chocolate and a Cream Cake at Simpsons - a Garden Centre with a difference - the tourists haven't found it. 

I very nearly didn't go to The Frame Shop who have done all my more recent work - but the last piece The Stations of the Cross based on reflections of disability, nearly lost them my custom permanently.  When Holy Week got nearer and nearer - the traditional time to reflect on The Stations and I kept calling and promises were made and not realised. I lost confidence in their ability to quite literally  deliver on time.  We found another framing shop on the way to my old favourite and decided that if we felt the formerly favoured shop were much as we remembered last time - a guy with a vivid imagination and a fantastic eye for a frame - the capacity to make the frame draw you into the subject but a rather laid back attitude about the when and where - then we would try somewhere new.  The trouble is good framers with an inspired eye are like gold dust that's if you really don't want a picture to look like a bargain from Ikea.  Today the person I have always assumed is the proprietor was about and she is a genius.  I don't know how she does it - but she can make a painting live with a good frame.  Or maybe I should say an amateurish composition look like art with the right surround.  Of course the framing cost an arm and a leg.  But I am on a roll with painting generally.  Comfort Zone.  I can put into painting what I cannot touch with words.  The three compositions I have worked on are called Scrutiny, Driftwood and Summer Blooms.

Back to the mental health review; I am making "excellent progress".  Yes, I am still raw - but medium rare now emotionally.  No, I am not doing much apart from working my way through all seven series of West Wing before I start on 24.  BUT I am better.  The moment I KNEW I was better as opposed to other people telling me I was making progress was when it was intimated that if I was painting (Scrutiny made it into a session because it was significant in terms of my recent dreams.)   Very good signs noted; the way I am currently able  - and capable of making eye contact and speak articulately - I was told I was in a better place than many other patients at the centre.  Suddenly, from nowhere a sub-personality I have heard nothing from in weeks - who has been utterly dormant - as the now familiar droning mean-machine prattles on with my droning old, self-abusing monologue inside my head - rose into action and I stopped myself saying it out loud, but maybe I should have done just that - "IF you think this is me functioning, you should meet me when I'm well".

Oh, yo! Oh, yo! Oh, yo!

Now I must stay open; listen to these lucid and sometimes literally frightening dreams and practice gently returning to the chances, and opportunities - the hopes and dreams.  Time to explore what my psyche has re-ordered; de-fragmented; prioritised and respond to where the changes need to occur.  Time to see if in the silence of the painting some of my shadow can continue to find a means of expressing itself.

Prayer is difficult at the moment.

I am unpacking a lot of my theology and spirituality almost subconsciously because I want some synthesis between my life experience and my values and beliefs.

But now - even though I am emotionally knackered - I want to work.  Get inside - and understand and reflectively evaluate.  Find the rest of me and the painting gives me a place from which to advance or retreat back.  Cream cakes, salmon and cream cheese bagels, steak sandwiches and pasta carbonara help too - stuff I don't normally 'allow' myself.

I have broken into fragments.  Now the fun starts.  I have had my time to stop.  I must now claim whatever individuality means for me from now on.  I must find the Super Glue.

John Stuart Mill:

A people, it appears, may be progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop.  When does it stop?  When it ceases to possess individuality.

No longer on our Scottish Theological Training Course as far as I know - but a great, great thinker and ethicist.  Time to progress...

Purple Ball, Paint and pressies

High spots of the last couple of days.  Firstly, still going to the hospital day centre.  Secondly, I did the first painting I have done since before Easter and I really loved doing it.  I feel like a kid who wants to take my picture in to the day centre and show the teacher!  I am intending to be grown up about this as I think it's probably showing my neediness and attention-seeking (God, still beating myself to a pulp). 

I painted another canvas this afternoon.  I have also taken a dog out for a walk each day with my partner - although yesterday was a bit of a cheat as we took Rainbow - out of harness - so free to smell - for a full tour of Pets at Home.  I fell for an orb acquarium.  He was most interested in the cat food - his crimes will out.  I am on the look out for rabbits (domestic pets - we have an abundance of wild ones when Teazle and Cuthbert - our cats are not having regular take outs) but Pets at Home don't have many in stock and the rescue pets corner had one - but he doesn't like being around other rabbits so...

It was Mungo's turn to have a run this morning and he was great.  We had bought him the toughest rubber ball we could find - and he loved chasing it and then running up and down with it in his mouth.  I don't think he has quite grasped the idea that once you have caught the thing you are herding you probably don't need to run around to keep it under control.  We realised (slow tops)what he was actually doing was herding us of course so we had fun changing direction and watching him charge off to head us off and keep us in check.  He wasn't too keen to come in and refused his recall but he suddenly spotted I had another even bigger ball waiting in the back of the car and he couldn't resist it, bounding the length of the orchard to play with it - needless to say - leaving his purple rubber ball somewhere in the undergrowth!  He'll find it soon enough on his next free run.

I felt knackered this afternoon so slept while West Wing played on.  I am struggling with negativity and anxiety - but doing as much as I can.  I spoke to someone on the phone today admittedly a stranger demanding money because I haven't sent a cheque on this month's credit card bill - but I did it. 

I will get to know who I am by trying - quite literally - to rediscover myself.  For now I am trying to play.  No analysis yet.  I want to find out what I enjoy. 

The day started feeling really shakey.  I thought I had really over shot my runway yesterday - but it got better as the day went on.  First thing in the morning I felt like one of those targets that are used on combat ranges to teach soldiers to make a direct hit.  Mostly a bad night and shooting myself up.  Amazing how I can be up a bit one minute and then as low as low can be.  Usual rather tedious stuff about inadequacy, anger and frustration.  I went to sleep at about 7am when I had finally realised that these feelings are gifts and I carefully wrapped each negative thought in the most beautiful, uneco-friendly, glittery paper and ribbon, bobbles and bows I could imagine up.  I went to sleep.  I can choose when I open gifts.

Watershed

Things are looking up.  I have received an extraordinary affirmation from someone who hardly knows me and has every reason to give depression a wide berth!  I feel good.  The best I've felt in days.  Weeks actually.

The day started rather inauspiciously.  I was so knackered after achieving my goals for yesterday that I did plan B for sleeping and rather than face the 3am 12 rounds and a knockout with my psyche telling me I am not worth the considerable space I inhabit, I saved a Diazapan until bedtime (could this be construed as a conversion?) and took that with the Voltarol (for molten lava knees).  I then took the sleeping pill when my mean-machine voice kicked in at around 3.30am.  The consequence was that I slept through until about 9am had breakfast and medication and then snuggled down and went fast asleep until well after one.  I was woken by Mungo, our collie x sitting on my head eating the cream cheese and smoked salmon bagel which had been left on my bedside table for my lunch.  (There's no expense spared in this house - a little of what you fancy...)  Needless to say a very happy dog then settled down on the pillow and went to sleep and I discovered he'd scoffed the last of the smoke salmon.  Who said life was fair?

I have made my personal hygiene goals today - so much relief all round.  I have been out for a walk and I guess covered a fair way further than yesterday.  The new trainers are a joy and are like walking on a portable bouncy castle.  My partner and I took out the two senior dogs today and after they had got over their initial excitement they walked beautifully side by side on a lead splitter.  Our cat Teazle continued to accompany us just like yesterday - and this time could be seen, unbelievably, walking between the two dogs on their splitter.  An honorary dog - or more likely two honorary cats.  I am actually looking forward to my walk tomorrow.  It physically hurts because I have the fitness level after such a serious fall and then my depression of an amorphous blob - but it will improve and the received wisdom is that the more I do and the more I focus on solutions so my anxiety will become my servant rather than my mistress.

I am planning to paint this afternoon and watch West Wing.  I have slept alot today and I feel unless I set healthy alternatives to sleep which infill - I will quickly believe the mean voice which tells me that there's no point in even attempting to get better because I will only be ill again; that I shouldn't have got ill in the first place; that I would be better put in some sort of institution where I am looked after and kept out of harm's way so that others can get on with their lives and realise their potential.  I can believe my mean voice is lying the most easily when I am distracted and doing things which are pleasurable - the CPNs and the Psychiatrist are right.  So I will paint.  Work up an abstract which says something of now because I can't really cope with much else - but I know it will help to provide some ammunition (not a good image for a pacifist) - some protection from the often powerfully persuasive mean voice.

Prayer for Today:

For the gift of life I give you thanks.

For the joy of humanity in all it's diversity, I celebrate.

For the water flushing the shore and the wind burning my face, I recognise the pulse of life itself.

For the unwanted challenge of looking into my personal darkness and learning it cannot suppress uniqueness with fearful anxiety, I troth you my soul.

Amen.

Encouragment and Celebrating St Hildegard

I am feeling as though I am back as work in progress.  This was assisted enormously by a wonderful e-mail from a friend who compared me to one of my greatest role models and heroines of all time - in a class of her own - Hildegard of Bingen.  My friend couldn't have known just what a special place this saint, alongside Hilda, has in my heart.  I was so touched when I received her e-mail that I had a little cry - but with joy - at my correspondent's generosity - and with such a sense of thanksgiving - that she had the courage and insight to see me as having some worth - though I draw a line at being compared to an A list celebrity saint - just wonderful to be appreciated and enjoyed - yes - delighted in.  The greatest boost there is. 

I was also relieved that I have achieved my other main goal for today.  I went out for my first walk along the shore with the wind in my face and the tide coming in for weeks.  It was chilly - more like November.  I didn't walk very far - probably no further then a third of a mile - but I knew, just as my CPN D suggested this morning, that if I can only begin to exercise regularly I will know at a deep level that I am alive.  I felt alive and mentioned, as I turned to my partner walking with me and our golden retriever, that we hadn't done this for weeks, months probably. 

A special moment was watching our black and white cat, Teazle walk with the dog all the way along the track with us and all the way back, rather like an estate agent showing off a property to a potential purchaser.  We have given ourselves so little quality time as a couple.  Too much else to juggle; too much else taking over and sublimating our needs.  Tomorrow we have another 'date' - different dog - but a longer walk.  My new trainers make me look like an ageing hippy and would suit a 17 year old in a hoodie with an ASBO - but they are very comfy so I don't care.

The best bit about the walk was coming home and going into my mum's bed-sitting room to tell her we had walked about two miles.  She saw the joke.  Still I've started.  Fun teasing her.  Now I have to begin to get some routine back into my life as this will also help to build my confidence and restore perspective.

I've had some smashing messages and as I went on line and checked my mail this afternoon for the first time in well over a week, it was very humbling to read such thoughtful and supportive input from friends, students and colleagues. I still can't read letters or answer the phone - but this is still progress.

I can't begin to say how much all this love helps. I have always considered myself rather unlovable.

Amongst the e-mails I heard from someone who I have been waiting to hear from for ages.  Contact with this person is a real test of my nerve as much as a discernment of future possibilities.  She had no idea I was ill and so I have referred her to the blogs.  She may well have a pink fit.  I can think of a time in my past when I would have! I was very much in love with a person and his behaviour unsettled me sufficiently at the time indicating some sort of stress or emotional exhaustion that I listened to some very negative advice frome some people who weren't well informed and we parted, for all the wrong, ill-advised and stereotypical reasons that reinforced my ignorance and justified my prejudices.  One day I hope I will make up for this.  Now I am in the care-full hands of others and it will take a while for me to return to fitness to work.  But I am still a bit concerned that I will be seen as a liability rather than asset but I am having to trust the process (words my husband wants on his memorial stone under his tree in his green burial site!) and believe - heart and mind -that I will be seen rather than my illness.  My anxiety certainly hasn't been reflected in the messages, love and humour others have shared with me since I have become ill.

A Prayer In Celebration Of St. Hildegard

Hildegard,

We celebrate your embracing of life;

Your constant enquiring and questioning;

Your unwillingness to simply accept;

Your delight in nature and confusion with human convention;

Your pilgrimage towards authenticity and honesty before the Divine;

Your commitment to truth and your inability to suffer fools;

Your sense of the ridiculous and delight in the playfulness of the Creator.

We stand in awe of your skills and self-ness.

We delight that you are praying for us with the Community of Saints - and we give you our thanks.

In the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer Amen.

Butterfly Wings and Own Goals

I had the energy when I got home from my morning session at the psychiatric day centre to not only talk it through with my partner but also decide that I was going to begin to take some of the advice I had received at the morning session - with immediate effect.  Quite a lot of the assistance and insight is around my tendency to think catastrophically - particularly in the early hours. 

I need to develop some strategies to be much more proactive in handling these darkest parts of the day - in every sense.  Rather like setting a goal and then dividing the outcome into a series of easy to achieve stages, I am going to try and apply a not dissimilar technique to the dreaded early hours.  The goal is to return to a relaxed state and fall back to sleep.

I am often wakened suddenly with bad dreams still lingering thoughts and images.  These set my mind into a paranoia-like spiral.  Sometimes it's just that I've been jolted to by a dog barking at the local vixen seeing off a competitor or keeping her cubs in order.  Whatever I am up and alert in a second and then sleep can elude me until 7am or 8am in the morning - and then of course I want to sleep in - seriously sleep in.

The Grand Plan - Getting Back To Sleep

Stage one: remind myself what the goal is - to relax and go back to sleep.

Stage two: sit on armchair in bedroom and make sure I am warm.  Steady breathing and begin counting down from 300.  It's very difficult to focus on negative visions of the world when I have to count down and breath evenly.  If physical agitation continues or concentration breaks down, go and make a hot, milky drink and return to stage one and work on to stage two.  A biscuit I think would probably be allowed on the grounds that I usually wake at around 3am and I believe that's the time when blood sugar levels can be low.  (That's my excuse and I'm sticking too it).

Stage three: when I am relaxed enough I am to identify what it is that is distrubing me.  Take last night; a huge amount of energy went into worrying about my son and how we would manage half term in a way which made it enjoyable for him.  Then I wasted another, heaven knows how long, wondering why some of the folk I would have expected to have heard from haven't been in touch.  I know with my head just how stigmatised mental illness is in reality but I still hope with my heart that people are better informed than they used to be.  Given these 'issues' my next question will be "What can I do about this?"  Well, at 4am very little - just note the problem down and recognise it is a concern.  "Is there any evidence that this anxiety cause is as real or as important as you believe it is right now?"  Probably yes to my first subject but no to my second.

Stage four:  "Can I remember a time when I wasn't this anxious?"  Can I go there and find calmness there?  Relax.  Breath.

Stage five: Return to bed and sleep peacefully.

Of course the other alternative would be to take the pill which is supposed to help me sleep when I wake up in the early hours - but I miss out on befriending me if I do that and I remain fearful of my own shadow.  Chemicals don't resolve issues.

I achieved my main goals today. I went by taxi alone to the day centre, had a brilliant and insightful session.  It helps having a CPN with a sincere understanding of faith issues even when I am struggling with them a little myself.  I have come home and blogged.  My treat is a new pair of trainers which will be purchased this afternoon.  MY feel good activity just for me is to take my new pack leader out, Dido, the golden retriever, for some obedience work and a walk.  I think this will do us both good and get the endorphins going.

My ultimate goal is that I will, all being well, have a new guide dog at some point as R (guide dog) is getting older.  I am also keen to get another Newfoundland as I feel as though the heart is missing from the dog pack (the grumpiness we can do without).  The energy within the pack is well-balanced at the moment - but with a possible new guide dog - who will be submissive by nature - it would make sense to even the numbers and get a submissive Newf.  As the guide dog will be a boy - it may make sense to go for a boy Newf.  As pack leader boys seem responsive to female leaders.  All this is a long way off.  First I have to get my confidence back and encourage my dogs to build their esteem too.

Dog walk this afternoon and not to sleep until bed time are the goals for the day.

Prayer for Today

Dearest One,

It's not always a question of denying you, but more often a problem of identifiy what's going on and why.  Help me to see you in the smallest personal successes and moments of joy as well as in the greatest movements for justice and peace.  Touch me gently and with the sensitivity of a butterfly's wing in my everyday struggle to remain faithful.

Amen.