Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Petals and Passtimes

I am feeling as though I have just spent the last nine days on an outward bound course which I had either forgotten I had signed up to - or that some well-meaning friend had coaxed me along to because it would take me out of myself.  Much of these last days have been an absolute blur and today is the first day I have made it to the computer.  A huge effort of will over desire.  As I write my hands are shaking and my typing is slow and I am need to think twice about my spelling. (Mind you as a sixties child in primary school I was taught expressing myself was more important than learning basic grammar - I've always been linguistically creative!  I spelt before as either befour or befir probably until I was twelve.)

I was referred to a psychiatrist at our local day mental health facility nine days ago.  It's on the same site where I work as a chaplain - but because of the work I have done within a few of the in-patient facilities - I know, first hand, the extraordinary quality of much of the support patients received.  Attending the day centre, even in my acute anxiety, was a huge relief.  It was rather like going home.  I felt safe there.

My anxiety was at it's most acute at that point of referral.  Speaking out loud seemed meaningless and as though someone else was doing the talking. I felt most comfortable silent.  I was physically very agitated too.  I couldn't keep my legs still and when they stopped bouncing about my hands would start flicking or I needed to rock.  I think they are all self-comforting and calming techinques as is tapping my temples which seems to relieve tension, but also indicating levels of duress and at times they are my only means of communicating  - that and hand holding or a thumbs up or thumbs down signals.  I have always had a slight sense of being mildly autistic and at times like this I feel it much more acutely.  It's as though my actions become a self-fulfilling prophesy of isolation and worthlessness.

I felt eight days ago I would be making other people's lives a lot more uncomplicated and easy to manage if I wasn't around.  I guess I had vague notions of going to some hotel and taking an overdose - but - and don't laugh too loudly it is quite funny - I was far too anxious to work out the details and certainly didn't have the energy to do anything about anything. Far too much effort to leave the comfort of the duvet.  At that time and even now the goals I am being encouraged by the CPN to set for each day are by most standards more akin to the management of a pre-school.

My new psychiatrist I intuited was gentle and safe.  I had braced myself for a rather perfunctory ten minutes consultation and a prescription - very much my experience when we lived in the south and I had a similar bout of severe depression.  This guy had the gift for giving me space and time to calm down emotionally and attempt to balance myself - and he told me my story - effectively inviting me to correct any inaccuracies.  There were very few as my CPN at my local medical practice is a wise bird and had represented my circumstances clearly and concisely.  Yes, I left with a prescription for an increase dose of antidepressant and Diazapan to try and reduce my anxiety.  But I was utterly overwelmed by the help available;  I would see a CPN a few times a week; start OT and there was a chance I could join a writing group.  I know this is probably a sick mental health joke that only fellow depressives would understand - but I did wonder if I had overdosed and this was heaven.  I felt someone was interested in me and not just what I could do for them - or what they projected on to me.

The only anxiety I have about my new CPN who I will call D is that she is a person of faith and I am already a bit anxious about some of the assumptions she is making about where I might be in religious terms.  I sense she feels I have been 'sent' to her in some way and I feel I would be better off consigned to the compost heap for recycling.

The Diazapan and the increase in the Citolopram were very reminiscent of snuggling-up in a warm, cocoon like environment and when the Diaz' was at it's most effective all the physical symptoms of agitation were reduced and I was able to sleep - deeply and refreshingly.  When I wasn't asleep all I really wanted to do was lie on my bed with dogs and cats, and count the hours to the next dose. The agitation and anxiety kicked in badly about two to three hours before I could take the next one.  As the Diaz' wore off my darker, tormenting thougts returned in no greater intensity than before but became ever present like an unbroken record - same old complaints and criticisms.  At least I know what's coming now - at least most of the time.  Over the last few days these have been accompanied with flashbacks to memories - mostly unpleasant and brutal incidents in the past.  The Diaz' is less effective now.

I was set up with a session with CPN D based at the day centre.  I didn't like to ask if I would see the one I'd grown attached to at the surgery again.  I was thrilled he'd phoned and had an update.  Apparently I will be able to see him again at some point, but for now I guess the idea is to stabilise me and make me feel comfortable at the day centre where they can keep a close eye on my progress.  D was upbeat but gentle.  She listened hard to both my partner and I as we tried to fill her in and make sense of our story. 

D is hoping to work through a booklet with me which is an introduction to a series of workbooks on Depression using CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy).  We haven't got as far as Part 1: The Overcoming Depression Workbook yet - but I can feel my stomach churning at the prospect - mostly because it demands changes in the way I think, feel and conduct my life.  It involves facing myself and continuing the process of be-friending my inner shadow which so often bullies me and frightens me.  It involves trust too - absolute trust of others and of myself. 

The changes are implemented and will be maintained by me - and that feels a tall order just now when getting to the sitting room and stting there for a while feels exhausting.  Still, the flesh may be weak, but my heart, soul and mind is up for it.  However tempting it is to listen to the voice that goads I know that the other, multifarious sub-personalities cannot be welcomed back into their rightful places unless I am proactive in releasing the issues that cause my anxiety and seek ways of managing my depression.  It is my nasty, small-minded, mean, pinched voice that has been allowed to dominate.  My mean-voice is usually a very unimportant part of my sub-personalities and maybe the reason mean-voice has taken such a vice-like grip now is because mean-voice hasn't felt heard fully for a long time.

D gave me a copy of the workbook we would use together and the Deacon's Flower Exercise which is brilliant but I would like to adapt - both to make it more inclusive and disability friendly.  It was developed by a mental health practitioner and also a person who lives with mental illness, who also wanted to explore holistic approaches to patient care.  In one diagram provided, the centre of a large daisy is identified as 'Mental Illness'.  Rather like the game 'Loves me, loves me not' all the 'petals' are scattered around the page, but none are attached to the central part of the daisy.  Each petal covers an aspect of life:

Values and beliefs,

Hopes and Dreams,

Spirituality,

Class,

Politics,

Work,

Sexuality,

Friends,

Family,

Culture

and a blank petal.

I didn't make a copy of my response but I can remember roughly what I wrote for each 'petal'.  As I am now attending the centre three times a week I will try and remember to ask for a photocopy but my memory isn't my strong point at the moment - the cocktail of Citaloprame, Diazapan, Antihistamine (mosquitos love me - but my blood must stun them into a quick death just now), Voltarol (for the after effects of that accident a few months back - joints are like walking on molten lava) and Zopiclone at night means it's amazing I'm upright!  (Still, in a previous life when I was a theatre director I could drink quite a few colleagues into oblivion.  Interesting that since marrying a tea-totaller I haven't missed drinking and go puce after the first mouthful!  Not always the company or conversation.) 

Values and Beliefs

I focused on the idea that we are all uniquely and wonderfully made.  We all have a unique vocation to fulfill.  Belonging is more important than believeing.  Justice is what changes the world.

Hopes and Dreams

To get well.

To be fitter and more confident now my mobility is shot to bits.

To get the book published and write the next one.

To live as I am as fully me as I can be.

Spirituality

Work in progress.

Angry with pacificity of the Church.

Inclusive.

Justice centred.

Heart.

Class

Parents middle class living in a very poor working class area.  Both high achievers in their fields.

Educated and still actively learning and changing.

Politics

Left wing, pascifist, CND, Friends of the Earth, Amnesty International, Disability Rights.

Work

I wish.  Some from writing.  Some from lecturing.  Some from running a retreat space.  Some from consultancy.  Happy - balance wrong - components right.

Not enough responsibility and therefore very, very frustrated. Feel de-valued and useless.

Sexuality

Heterosexual but no real sex drive at the moment - although even through much drug induced haze I can see I have a gorgeous husband and equal first would be Raymond Blanc.

Friends

Very few locally.  Isolated and the local ones are busy professionals.  Most friends it's phone, writing, or e-mail.  Lonely.

Family

Resembles the story-lining for a new soap opera called Dysfunctional Enders.

Culture

Passionate about creative activity.  Love music, art, sculpture and theatre.

Blank Petal

Disability

Visual impairment

Thalidomide

Mental illness

I am really looking forward to the sessions with the CPN and with OT when they get going but it is the most agonising journey to get myself ready and up, and contemplating coming out and being  present and receptive somewhere other than our bedroom.  After a couple of hours at the centre - and sometimes much less - I am exhausted and often sleep for three hours flat out.

This morning is a good example.  One of my first pieces of homework has been to try and re-discover things that I enjoy doing just for me because I have lost sight of my own wants and can't really identify the subtler nuances of the me-ness of me.  I drew a complete blank during the first days after this was suggested and got no where.  Then it was reframed for me in a slightly different way.  I was to set a goal.  Think of one pro and one con regarding the goal and then divide into much smaller goals how the end goal could be achieved.  So for example I had a second bad night last night - the sleeping pill doesn't seem to work at the time of night I most need it which is the early hours when my anxiety level boils over and goes into melt down.  I have been asked to set a positive goal for each day.  Today it took until about 3pm to get going on achieving the aim.

Yesterday was alot better.  I managed to get up and shower by about 12noon and go into the sitting room and sit and watch West Wing Series II.  I didn't watch all the episodes - but I felt as though I had achieved something I wanted to do and I enjoyed it - that's a word I haven't used for a while.

Like a toddler at a party I may have overdone it a bit yesterday because today was so much harder to get going.  The night held dreams of being attacked and frightened.  When I was awake I was plagued by fears of what others must think of me - by the morning all I was up for was breakfast, pills, blue woolly hat with ear flaps down and front part pulled over my eyes and more sleep.  My goal for today was to blog again and to get back into this really very therapeutic habit. 

In a sense going to the day centre had taken the place of the blog for a bit and once I had managed to get words out into the air of the consulting room, I didn't have the energy to be more reflective in blog mode once I came home.  However D, my CPN and I think this is probably going to be an invaluable record to help me understand my illness when I am well again - and even as I am going along.

So today the goal was to get up and blog.  First anxiety attack was the thought of getting out of bed.  Decided to wait until my next round of medication and then do it after that.  Very agitated but sat on the side of the bed.  Next stage choose clothes to wear.  I can't handle choices at the moment - "What would you like for supper?"  "Do you want to..."  so I used The Dog Whisperer trick and thought I am animal first, then species, then Jane.  I visualised the animal and realised it didn't matter much what I wore - polka dot bikini isn't a flattering option - but the point is that it doesn't matter what I choose.  So I was able to go to the drawers and take the first things I found.  The multicoloured tie dye t-shirt and socks with stripes and individual toes in different colours may not be to everyone's taste but...  Does it matter if it matches?  Maybe if I was doing a book signing or meeting the Primate of the Scottish Episcopal Church for lunch, but not otherwise.  Anxiety then bounced in about having to get up at all so I settled once more on our bed until the physical agitation subsided.  Stage Three; loo and teeth clean.  Difficult because the Diaz' is kicking in and making me feel like a snooze is a much more viable and inviting option.  Complete task.  Sit on bed, agitation less.  Get up and run shower.  Shower enjoyable once I'm in there.  Water soothing and warm - why can I never remember this at an earlier point and use it as a motivator?  Drying done.  Forgot deoderant.  Forgot to brush hair - but as I am not looking in the mirror just now and have only just remembered these details as I write, I still think I'm ahead on points.

Then, without stopping - straight into study and start blogging.  It's a bit of a weird life just now - but it is LIFE.

Prayer for today

Dear Befriender,

I've never been a fan of footsteps in the sand and the idea that when the road gets tough you do the hard work and carry us, I guess because I can't quite see how over-parenting enables us to realise our potential.  Can we agree you keep an eye on how things are going?  I've got to concentrate on finding a new way of walking just now and your support in this way would be appreciated.  Yours faithfully, JEWG

Faithfully Yours

I've seen my Community Psychiatric Nurse this morning.  He is so good at being a calming presence and an affirming person.  He reminds me without even needing to say the words that I need to hold on.  I kept wanting to say thank you to him and look him in the face - but I couldn't - it was as though the link between my brain's wishes and my vocal chords was tenuous in the extreme.  I can't do words out loud very well today.  It was a struggle getting to the surgery and I did it by using my blue and white bobble hat as the transitional object.  As long as I had that in my hands I would be able to make it.  I have messed up the bobble though.  My anxiety was so significant I have undone quite a lot of the strands.  I now have more of a dredlocks hat than a bobble. 

I hear the words I say and they sound as though they are coming from another person.  I look down and observe my knees jumping up and down in fidgety agitation and I don't recognise them as mine.  I know they are - but they feel detached somehow as though they are an outer casing belonging to someone else.  The illness is taking it's course I guess. 

So few words made today's consultation difficult and quite stressful for me.  I was hoping I could muster more energy - put on a bit more of a brave face.  My CPN has been intuitive, kind and practical - I wanted to show I had listened and taken note - but I don't have the energy to articulate this in words yet - my psyche is still very depleted. 

Inside my head the single voice goaded me about not being able to speak and accused me of making a mountain out of a molehill and wasting the CPN's time, NHS resources and being a tragedy queen.  "I should jolly well pull myself together".  I tried, I really did.  I realised as I sat in the waiting room and wished I could leave that I couldn't be anything other than how I am.  I desperately wanted to put on my bobble hat.  What's more I didn't have the energy to care very much what the voice in my head thought and I told her so.  She was none too pleased and had a hissy fit.  Nothing new there then.

I don't feel suicidal as such which is a huge blessing - but I would very much appreciate some relief from the constant vigilant anxiety that feels as though it can torment me - particularly at night.  I am not responding that well to the Citalopram (antidepressant) and my suspicion is that I need some careful input over dosing etc...  To try and give me some immediate relief from my agitation I have been prescribed with Diazopan.  I don't think this is the correct spelling but I can't be faffed to go and find out what the correct spelling is.  I have been given an appointment to see a Psychiatrist tomorrow with a view that I become a day patient at the Psychiatric Day Centre.  I feel relieved I am not going in as an in-patient - as a volunteer chaplain when I am well at the psychiatric hospital - I know how good the care is - so I have no worries professionally or personally - a lot of chaplains and psychologists get involved in mental health because they have personal experience of various illnesses associated with the area.  I think the in-patient facilities here are excellent.  But I have been worried that I would have to leave the dogs which I know as I write sounds a bit daft - but I find them such an inspiration just now and a great source of calming energy and unconditional support.  All they want is a slice of the bed, to be groomed, played with and loved.  In return they do not need words - just the occasional cuddle, kiss and love (a bit like my partner really).  They are brilliant and they are keeping me hopeful at a instinctive level.  They seem to intuit my need of them.

Now to rest.

A prayer I am calling

Yours Faithfully

Dear God of Darkness,

Into the torment, send courage.

Into the anguish, send perspective.

Into the blankness, send a tiny symbol of hope.

Into the agitation, send creativity.

Into the nightmares, send relief.

Into the fear, send pragmatism.

Into me,

Send what I need to be as you would have me be.

Yours faithfully.

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who has sent love, good wishes, healing vibes, encouragement and expressions of understanding.

A new cross arrived in the post from my foster daughter which was timely and so right as I had given mine away a few years ago to a person in need.  E-cards have provided me with games I can play and do well at - good distractions.  I have found a programme on children's programming I love about a pink elephant which is narrated by Stephen Fry.  Magazines have arrived by post which I will enjoy hugely when I am reading again (although The New Stateman may challenge my political sensibilities it is much more likely to make me smile) and best of all - I know I am not alone.

Blue Bobble Hat With Ear Flaps

My depression at the moment feels as agonising as pulling teeth.  Very different from my last bout six years ago which I still have little memory of.  A lot of the time when I was severely depressed I blanked - a part from the fact that I used to get very agitated if anyone interupted me during the afternoon showing of Diagnosis Murder on BBC 1!  What makes it more excruciating this time is that I am much more aware - and so I can't switch my head off and just 'blank'.  Sleep is the only relief and I try and sleep as much as I can - not always easy though with the bangs and crashes of my particular slice of reality!

I continue to wear my blue and white nordic woollen hat with ear flaps.  My family are being brilliant and know that I cannot speak out loud much just now - an occasional whisper - or a short chat - and then I feel as though I have used up all the available emotional energy in the 'heart battery' and don't feel up to talking any more.  My woolly hat has become a visual signal that I am struggling a bit and I am able to pull the front and ear flaps down in such a way that I can block out all visual stimulus and limit my hearing.  When I do this I seem to be able to still my body and stop the physical symptoms of foot and hand tapping - severe anxiety.  I must look like a morbidly obese garden gnome - but it works.  A sort of waking sleep.

My family are great at understanding my silence and the use of the hat.  My partner has a matching one and often slips it on as he enters our bedroom and sees mine in place.  I love this symbol of solidarity.  My son has an equally fetching number in burgundy - so sometimes we all sit together in a line on the bed with our hats on and ear flaps down.  That feels so affirming and accepting of my current reality - and mine of theirs.  It is difficult for us all.

I've had a couple of days where I haven't been able to speak about anything other than thank yous and about dogs.  My current equivalent of Diagnosis Murder is The Dog Whisperer.  I am so trying to come to terms with my Newfie's death - and learn.

At the moment I am too anxious to go anywhere outside our bedroom and my study.  Today is a good day as I have made it into the study.  Most of the time I sit or lie on our bed with the TV on or I sit on the decking outside my bedroom door and stare at the sea.  I love the sea.

I am finding that grooming the dogs often lifts my mood temporarily and means I can communitcate for a short time after I have completed the task.  The dogs love this too as they get oodles of attention and it helps us bond in a slightly different dynamic now that Jess has died.

I am missing the different nuances and voices that usually tossle, flounce and inform my inner reality.  I feel two-dimensional just now.  A cardboard cut out of my former self who is uncomfortable being propped up anywhere other than in the most womb-like of environments.  I can't read anything much now and even writing this blog will probably mean I go back to bed and sleep for a couple of hours when I've finished.  I don't have a comment on this.  It's just how it is and I am at a point where I can't accept quite that this is how it has to be in all its humuiliating and soul-diminishing glory but I haven't the energy emotionally to do anything about it.

I am having very lucid dreams and often wake myself up with a start and in a panic.  I seem to have lost my sense of smell a bit too - something I use a lot as a visually-impaired person - except waking from dreams - when I am convinced there is a fire or a person attacking or some horrible thing about to happen.  The nights are long.  I am taking no exercise and lounging about all day - so I guess it's no surprise that my sleep patterns are all over the place.  Again I have no sense of wanting or being able to heave myself out of my current stupor and do something about this.  Having a shower is a momentous undertaking and takes half a morning to work up to - if at all.

I have coped pretty poorly with the night anxiety and find after a day with the TV in the background - it doesn't work at night.  Neither does music or the radio.  Relaxation tapes wash over at the moment.  I tend to breath and pray.

I often feel trapped at night but also too scared to do anything about it.  Weird and disconcerting for someone who is usually proactive and capable of re-framing into the positive.  I am learning patience by default.  In depression all I have is the moment and I am able in this episode to live it and to some extent, I am sure, even remember it.  This is a gift and a curse.  It may help me in time to befriend the feelings and parts of me my depression taps into.  It may not.  For now I have the moment - and for once I can't escape into a project - or distract myself with hard work - or offer myself to others as a resource.  For now I must be with my own inner stranger.  Sometimes she is a painful, demanding companion.  Often she is silent.  Whichever she is for now ever-present and I have not dis-owned her, blanked her - or pushed her away.  She is as important a part of me as my creative, engaged, life-loving self.  She is a part of that too.

Voice in the Night

Come unto me for your burden is heavy.

Don't look at me like that - with disbelief in your eyes.

Come unto me:

Your burden is heavy.

My love is here.

Look inside

Into your fear

Offer a little reassurance.

Come on you can do it.

Not enough to overwhelm

but just enough to admit

how intolerable it feels sometimes to be you

and how unfair it is

that I offer insightful answers

which you sometimes choose not to hear.

Deep breaths.

Aim to get back to the same.

The same is better than worse.

Come unto me.

No, I will not carry the weight,

It is yours

You can balance it well enough.

I will offer you reassurance.

Stay

with the now.

The burden is not the future or the past.

The burden is the untameable present,

the inescapable reality that you are what you are  most fully in this precious moment.

Don't still when you cannot, use the anxiety:

Make it your protection.

Go darker when you are blinded by the light - and make the darkness your most reassuring companion.

Go inwards when the outside is fearful - and befriend.

You and I can sit, lie and tap out the reassurance you need until you start to feel it as real.

But can we watch a little less day time TV?

Travelling the Road

Really difficult day yesterday from what I can remember.  One of the problems I have just now is that I don't seem to retain information and most life happenings feel meaningless as though they are an alternative reality.  So my more usual life has become increasingly unattainable and unrealistic as though I am watching a play going on around me - but I am no longer part of the action.  I am verbally silent a lot of the time.  Words are odd to hear out loud.  Mine - not anyone elses.

Pragmatic decisions have to be taken.  The Sanctuary is to be closed for the two months I am signed.  It all feels unbelievable.  I look at the blogs I wrote a few months ago and wonder who wrote them.  I hate this feeling that the me-ness of me has somehow become detached.  It's like a detached retina - I am emotionally-impaired just now.  No stitch in time though.

One moment of spiritual insight came at about 4am.  Agitated and unable to sleep I tried to go into a visualisation to see if I could distract myself.  One that calms me at the moment is to move forward to a time when I am well again and we are busy setting up the community.  I can't hold the imaginings for long but I feel I need to re-programme my brain at some level to acknowledge hope even when she feels her most hope-less.

I caught myself as I imagined moving into a large static caravan to begin the cobb self-build with a grass roof - let's face it I was never going to want to build a series of 'little boxes' - I turned my attention to the chapel - a circular building with solar panels and a grass roof - a bit like an igloo and I found comfort just sitting in this womb like space feeding splinters of wood into a large iron stove.  Very Saxon.  I reflected on why projecting forward in this way seemed to work and came to the conclusion it has much to do with recognising the deep desolation of not belonging.  I am a passionate and compassionate priest but I have a deep dislike and suspicion of much of the Church borne out by bitter experience.  I think my projection may well be about this deep longing to turn a sense of being unacceptable to an institution I passionately want to serve (part symptom of my illness and part on-going restlessness) into a deep sense of being present and belonging before God. 

Being involved with the Church is rather like fostering a diffiult child.  I have learnt to love the child but not always condone her behaviour.  I love the Church and still feel the deepest connectedness to the Church as community and expression of incarnation but I am uneasy with her lack of transparency and accountability.  I am suspicious of her use of power and her unwillingness to stand with those who are marginalised and seek justice.

Your Terms

To be a pilgrim on my terms has never be enough.

On your terms, dear God, may it be so.

To be a seeker within the comfort zone of all I have and with all I claim as essential to my identity is to miss the point of life

On your terms I seek, dear God, may it be so.

To be a traveller on the road to justice and the Kingdom is nothing more than armchair politicking and hot air buffeting through the reality of givenness.

On your terms I travel, dear God, may my life make it so.

Muted

Time to stop speaking.  Writing feels OK.  Feel secure enough with how things are as opposed to how I wish they were to reduce the energy I am putting in to staying vigilant.  I know why I need to stop speaking.  I have a powerful sense of the injustice much of what those with mental health issues engender.  I have a sense that I need to be quiet with my psyche and listen.

Even in the Church which claims such a high motive in care and ministry is amongst the most ignorant and prejudiced regarding issues of difference.  I need to be silent because I am angry, frustrated and confused.  I feel as though I have splatted against a religious brick wall.  Faced with illness some of those who work for the Church like to spin vulnerability and difference as either incompetence or flakiness.  Unreliability; whispering behind hands with worried expressions and half truths; tut-tuts and shaking heads.  My dear brothers and sisters the greatest prophets and mystics in our tradition were depressives, bi-polar, perhaps with personality disorders or syzophrenia.  It may be much easier to isolate and segregate those who challenge our understanding of what the incarnation must surely be, but it cannot, surely be the divine way, can it?  Easier for an institution - but unrepresentative of the blessed, broken and given Body of Christ.

An incarnation which does not embrace the totality of creation and celebrates it only is a joy-ride into spiritual denial; a cosy club for like-minded people who cannot handle their own inadequacies and sense of failure and who do not want to live reality - suffering, poverty and all.  I can't handle my reality either - but I am committed to several rounds and even a knock out in the name of trying to better understand the process.  I will never know why, but I can have a sense of how.

Life is random, but my engagement with my God-givenness need not be.

Silence is where I must go.  It won't make the pain go away but it will help me to be with it.  Give it more attention and time.

Creator

Heal but not so quickly

That I fail to honour myself fully.

Redeemer

Befriend but do not take me too seriously

Follow your divine insight and lead off our dance.

Sustainer

Accompany me as we ascend into silence and

Listen to my heart.

Amen.

Virtual Reality

I found this on the net.  I can't remember where but it worked for me as a description of why depression can occur.  I love the humour.  A sort of 12 step recovery programme in reverse, I can't tick many of the boxes but I certainly own some of them.  Now into the garden to eat worms...

1. Try to be PERFECT.

2. Be very critical of any mistakes or failures you might make.

3. Do what you SHOULD do, even if it is not what you want to do.

4.  Always do what you are supposed to be doing.

5.  Make other persons happy at any cost to yourself.

6.  Work hard at pleasing your most severe critic.

7. Know that if you don't please, the other will reject or leave you.

8. Never make a mistake

9. Live alone and have few friends.

10. Keep your failures, mistakes, errors and faults to yourself.
    Never let anyone know of them, because you never want anyone
    to know how bad you really are.  Keep your secrets personal.

11. FEAR the future, because you know it will turn out bad.

12. WORRY about how bad it will be.

13. With such an awful future, try to be in control as much as possible.
    Knowing you are not in self control, seek to control other and events.

14. Knowing how you really are inside, your secret self, never listen
    to or accept praise or compliments.  They will just make you big headed
    and egotistical.

15. Recognize the true importance of a negative interpretation and be
    certain to always emphasize the negative, and generalize it to
    yourself whenever possible.

16. Avoid any awareness of how your negativeness affects others.  You
    have an important role to fulfill for them, and they need your realistic
    balance.

Toothpaste Tube Emotions

Not a good morning.

Words not flowing.  Thoughts can't seem to stay in one place long enough for me to catch a real sense of them.  Numbness is the predominant emotion and a sense of not being able to cope with people around me and intimacy - whilst really craving physical company - but not communication.

I have put on my bobble hat which has ear flaps and makes me feel more secure and enclosed.  I can't sit still however and my agitation shows either in constant leg movements, hand movements or tapping my temples.  I want to be left alone but don't want to be alone.  I want to be well.

The journey hurts.  It's like being squeezed out of an emotional toothpaste tube.

The Frog Has It

I have just opened an e-card from a friend and it made me laugh, smile and shed a tear.  Sometimes I can hear through the greyness.  I feel encouraged.  Thank you.

Into the Silence

I feel as though Jane has gone 'walkabout' and left a tiny (I refuse to say essence of her being behind because the present 'me' isn't an essence more of a by-product) in charge.  What's left is happy to spend most of the day reading Jilly Cooper and watching Big Brother.  My family and friends will dine out on this!  I don't want to meet new people (rudely I left my partner to field maternal grandparent and partner collecting grandchildren).  I want to spend time silent - just doing nothing.  Looking into space feels good.  I'd love to say sitting with my own thoughts but there aren't many, so I sit anyway and haven't much sense where my mind wanders to.  I expect it hibernates like my computer.  Getting up is now the big task of the day and I dither quite a lot if I am distracted.  I had to walk back to the bathroom once to clean my teeth and again to brush my hair and then again to find my watch.

I fell over in the hall yesterday because I didn't see the dog.  No harm done - but the little voice inside keeps telling me I'm stupid.  I'm distracted.

My mum's district nurse reduced me to snuffles by being wonderfully concerned and caring as she left after her visit.  She hugged me.  That was enough.  Kindness reduces the 'critical hedgehog' to a tiny little curled up blubbing ball.

I told my GP that I thought Jane was "dead in the water".  I just can't locate her just now and it's making me anxious.  She has signed me off for two months.  Serious.

My anxiety can be used.  I am trying to think about what's going on inside and it is very helpful writing this.  I can't be too analytical.  I can recognise how empty I feel and numb.  Dislocated from the me-ness of me.

I have been singing the Taize chant "Bless the Lord my soul and bless God's holy name, bless the Lord my soul, who leads me into life".  I am sure I have butchered the words but haven't the energy to go and find a hymn book and check.

Prayer is simple just now.  The silence is very nearly complete as the voices and distractions that usually fill my head and need to be quietened and appeased are all but exhausted, numb or absent.

Into the Silence

Into the silence comes uninvited

the assurance that there is

something to be gained from the suffering darkness.

Listen my beloved

for I too can only whisper;

those who have known the depths

carry the mark of stigmatism.

They have wrestled with the stranger

limping on into unimagined creative insightings and meanderings.

Their gift is in their willingness

to suspend their neediness

and risk engaging with the parts of themselves

and of me that cause them such pain.

Be patient Beloved

I am faithful as the love that transforms and heals.

Wrestle on Loved,

You do not fight in vein.

Thanks be to God.

JEWG