Super Better

I have good days and bad days, and there are two kinds of each. Good days are when I don't cry. The better days are when I don't cry because I actually feel good. These are the days when I am in touch with everything that is good and right and beautiful in the world. The days when I am grateful to be alive and for the wonderful life that I have with loving friends and family.

The lesser good days are when I'm simply pretending not to feel bad. I suppress it because I have to. These are the days I have to work or am obligated to some social function that prevents me from being able to reach the sadness. Sometimes I pretend because I am not strong enough to let the pain in. I feel good only because I won't let myself feel bad. I am numb to the sadness and grief that is bubbling just beneath the surface. I know it is there; I can see it and smell it, but I can't feel it. I simply cannot reach the pain even if I want to.

The super bad days are when I am in touch with the Black Oil. It makes me doubt and hate myself. Everything is so dark; I cannot see the light no matter how hard I try. I want to end the pain no matter what it takes. On those days, I am full of hopeless despair. It is on those days that I want to die. This past year I have had a lot of super bad days; days when I could not pretend but still had to function in the world. Days full of Black Oil when I felt like dying or like I could collapse at any moment under the pressure of normal life. Those were the worst.

The lesser bad days are when I am able to be in touch with my pain without it overwhelming me. I can process, I can cry, I can experience the grief and sadness. Sometimes I can let it out in small quantities, one cup at a time. Other times it comes spewing out at volcano-esque velocity. But the sadness is not Black Oil; it is not shame and self-hatred. It is simply the truth of my experience. It is the sadness locked away inside of me for decades, a veritable vat of grief that wants to be acknowledged, that must come out eventually in order for me to be healthy and well.

My ratio of good to bad days has gradually changed in my favor over this past year. One might conclude that my goal is to only have good days, but that is not so. I want to be Super Better. Super Better, for me, means that I no longer have to pretend and I don't want to die. When I have good days, I want them to be real. No more pretending. And when I have bad days, I want those to be real too. I need to be in touch with and able to express my grief and sadness when they come, and come they will - whether it is because of my sordid past or because of current life circumstances (whatever they may be) that naturally elicit pain. For life is pain; Joy and Sorrow are simply two sides of the same coin. I'm not trying to block out all pain as that would be akin to living a muted existence. I could do that at any time with medication, but have chosen not to. I want to be real, to live an authentic life full of truth. Sometimes truth is beautiful, and sometimes it is pain. I want both. I need both to truly live.

Perhaps I need a new lexicon. The bad days where I am in touch with my pain should not be called bad days; in fact I think I'll start calling them days of true sadness. The good days when I'm pretending aren't really good either; I will start referring to them as pretend days. What I really want is to live an authentic life, which consists of days of true sadness and days where I feel truthfully good.

This notion of becoming Super Better is not my own. Super Better is an online game created by Jane McGonigal where you can design a personalized journey towards health and wellness. Her journey involved recovering from a traumatic brain injury, but thousands around the world have joined in to create their own version. Playing Super Better helps you to build up resilience which supports you in  "staying curious, optimistic and motivated even in the face of the toughest challenges." The game encourages you to identify allies, power-ups, bad guys, future boosts and quests while tracking your achievements to reach your epic win. An epic win is something that can only be achieved by tackling a tough challenge, an accomplishment that feels so awesome you will do whatever it takes to get there.

I am a gamer, and so defining my epic win and identifying all the things that make it more or less achievable appeals to me. The objective of my Super Better is "To Live an Authentic Life." This means eliminating pretend days and days when I feel like dying, living only days of truth (be it painful or joyful). The process of outlining this game for my journey has actually been quite helpful in making sense of and giving language to my healing process. This can be especially useful when communicating with my support army. In fact that is the first recommended step in Super Better: to create allies.

All survivors need a support army; if you don't already have one then start building it. Who are your closest friends? Who can you trust? Who is in your inner circle? Who is the closest family member you can count on? Not everyone needs to know everything, and practicing discernment when sharing your story (at least at first) is wise. Admittedly, it is terrifying to think about divulging your abuse secret. But I have read in sundry sources that real healing begins only when the secret is shared. Brene Brown says shame needs three things to survive: secrecy, silence, and judgment. Until you start talking about your story, it will continue to be enshrouded by and fester in shame.

I found this to be particularly true for my own journey. In fact, sharing my story has been the most healing part and here is why: deep down I felt unlovable, unacceptable, and fundamentally flawed because of what happened to me. That's why I kept it a secret; if people knew the terrible truth then they would surely be disgusted and leave me! Ironically, when you give your loved ones a chance to really know you, when you let them into your pain and see that they love you anyway, it deconstructs the prison of shame. When they stand by your side (and they will), when they listen to your pain without running away (and they won't), then and only then you will know what your deepest fears aren't real and never were. By sharing my secret with those I trust and experiencing the fullness of their support, I have never felt so loved and lovable. And when I see that I am lovable by others, I am able to love myself. This is the essence of healing.

The second part of Super Better is identifying your power-ups. These are things you can do that make you feel better or stronger. My power-ups are:

• Talk to someone in my army; let them know I am struggling and allow them to give me support
• Cuddle with my dog in bed while watching Netflix
• Eat healthy, plant-based, nutritious food
• Practice yoga and meditation 
• Stay connected with friends and family by sending messages, emails, or cards
• Go to lunch with a friend
• Go for a run, or if I don't have enough energy...
• Go for a walk
• Listen to uplifting music
• Get a massage
• Create space in my schedule for several hours or a weekend alone in quiet introspection, which allows me to...
• Watch birds at my backyard feeders
• Read a book about holistic or self-healing
• Read a book about a person who inspires me
• Relax in my hammock, doing absolutely nothing
• Take my dog hiking
• Clean my house
• Write in my journal
• Paint, draw, or color
• Ride my bike
• Complete a small house project
• Listen to TED talks or On Being

I also have a list of super power-ups. These things are so effective that they truly have the power to change my outlook even on dark days. I have much less control over these events but when they happen I am super grateful and their role in my healing is not lost on me. They include:

• Getting a text message from my brother that says "Love you." He is my biggest supporter (I write more on his critical role in a later post called The General), and the one whose love has been the most healing.
• Listening to an audio book on healing
• Listening to Pema Chodron on meditation and letting go of samsara
• Connecting deeply with a friend or family member
• Witnessing something rare in nature such as a breathtaking sunset, a rainbow, holding a baby bird, or having a butterfly land on me

The next part of Super Better is to identify the bad guys. These are things that make it harder to feel strong or get closer to your epic win. My bad guys are:

• Prudence - my somewhat alterego who takes over when things need to get done and I don't have capacity to feel the pain. She organizes the pretend days, which move me further away from authenticity.
• Assbags - this is a general category of people (like my horrible neighbors mentioned in The Spiral) who are uncaring and make my life difficult. The world is full of these people, and you never know when or where they will show up.
• Unhealthy boundaries - these creep up in many aspects of my life including working too much, poor time management, overcommitting, and some personal relationships such as my mother. 
• Self-neglect - most often the product of unhealthy boundaries, stretching myself to or just past my limits without equal time to rest, relax, and repair is a surefire way to elicit a meltdown. My epic meltdowns are in exact opposite of my becoming Super Better.

Future Boosts are specific things you look forward to in the coming days, weeks, or months. The essence of this Super Better tactic is that hope and anticipation have a healthy effect on the mind and body. Some of my Future Boosts include planning for:

• Time with my family
• International travel
• A weekend retreat

The point of all this is to understand and anticipate when interaction with my bad guys is unavoidable, and to make sure I have enough power-ups and future boosts in place to make it manageable. Playing Super Better helps you build up 4 types of resilience - emotional, physical, mental, and social - in order to get closer to your epic win. One specific key is to strive for the magic ratio of 3 positive experiences for every 1 negative. Awareness and identification of what is positive and what is negative for you is the necessary first step.

I'm just now getting into Super Better so I have little to report regarding the online achievement tracker. It's taken me this long to get my arms wrapped around what works and doesn't work for me on the path toward my healing. They say that the journey is more important than the destination. Likewise, the process of outlining the parameters of my Super Better game has made me more understanding, aware, accepting, and proactive in moving myself along the path toward healing.

For more information listen to Jane's Super Better TED talk. To get involved and proactive in your healing journey, start your own Super Better today!

The Essence of Integration

Frau Wolleh with Children by Gerhard Richter

I recently visited the Art Institute of Chicago. The collection is largely Impressionist, most famous for their sole ownership of Seurat's Sunday Afternoon de la Grande Jatte. I was excited to revisit this Seurat and indeed spent a good amount of time admiring it. However, I was most captivated by this piece by Richter. I stopped, I stared, I wept. It is the perfect depiction of my struggle with fragmentation this past year.

Each time I was subject to an abuse event, I left my body so that I wouldn't feel and could pretend it wasn't happening. Now that I am revisiting and processing these memories one by one, I have a mental image of my dissociation. It feels like each time I dissociated, a part of me left and did not come back. They are each floating up above my head in ether-space like white, wispy smoke. Those parts of me are frozen in time (age, appearance, maturity level) and chose not to come back into my body. It's not safe in here. Each time this happened I became a little less myself, a little more fractured, a lot less whole.

Those lost pieces of me are my true essence. This is why I feel fragmented, damaged, and unwhole. As more and more of my essence gathered and lingered outside, I became less Me. A shell of my former self. At the point of mass fracture - The Terrible Awful (about which I have yet to write) - my frozen inner self curled up into a ball, a small and tight 13 year old version of me. Adult Me has grown up around her: hiding, pretending, shielding, overachieving. But she remains unloved, abandoned, closed off, and alone.

My essence continued to escape, one white wisp at a time. All the times I subjected myself to unhealthy situations. All the times I failed to erect healthy boundaries. All the times I entered and stayed in unhealthy relationships (I will discuss this more in a later post called Married to Crazy.) And each time I was revictimized, as it turns out that survivors of childhood sexual abuse are 2-5 times (sources vary) more likely to be subjected to sexual assaults later in life.

The boundary-less situation with my mother only served to perpetuate the escape of my essence. Last fall when I realized the true nature of that relationship and finally acknowledged that I had lost her many years ago, the last of my essence escaped. Adult Me wound up small and tight like a perfect mirror shell of small and tight Little Me inside.

This past year I've been trying to unwind. Stand up. Be erect. Move around. Let go. Loosen up. Be real. Face the truth. Reconnect Little Me and Adult Me. It's painful. Muscles have atrophied. We are stiff. Robotic. Unpracticed. Vulnerable. Rigid. But we are standing! Except now we realize we are empty. Upright, but utterly hollow. The essence of Real Me still floats above, outside. Not in. Not integrated. Not full. Not whole. Not real. Not really living.

I wish so badly to reconnect with those parts of me which were forced out because it was not safe. I can't live without my essence any longer. I won't survive. Being and feeling whole are integral to being me - the whole me, the Real Me. And so much of my efforts this past year have been to show my essence that indeed it is safe to come back in. I will care for each of these lost parts, protect them, name them (discussed in a later post called A Bouquet of Me), accept them, love them, allow them to be playful. Entice them to come home.

The Richter painting is me, Adult Me standing with pieces of lost Little Me just outside. Within my grasp but not inside. It pained me greatly to see an artful representation of what I felt. It still hurts when I look at this painting. Sometimes, maybe even often times, pain is necessary to produce change. I am on a journey towards integration and every little step that gets me there is critically important.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), though Wolleh is a proper German name it is strikingly similar to the verb wollen which means "to want." I desperately want to integrate all of the lost pieces of myself. I venture to say it is vital to my overall healing.

If ever there were a song to describe the message I am sending to my lost Essence, it is best articulated in Drifting by Sarah McLachlan....

Please come home.



Goodbye Panda

I'm not sure from where or when, but there is a story that has been stuck in my head for years about using a panda as a way to distract foolish onlookers. "Hey, kids, look at the panda!" is a phrase that has repeated itself in my inner monologue countless times. This typically comes up in situations where quick, slight-of-hand shenanigans would provide a momentary lapse in concentration thereby allowing some simultaneous shady act to go unnoticed. Perhaps it was the punchline of a joke. Whatever this was made a lasting enough impression on me that it has now become synonymous with my mind's coping mechanism of using the trauma with my mother as a distraction to keep me from acknowledging, dealing with, and healing from the darker truths that laid dormant far beneath.

I spent over two decades of my life living my mother's story instead of my own. I was overly obsessed with helping her, assuring the care she needed, understanding her illness, finding a diagnosis that made sense, and later assuming care and becoming financially responsible for her. I also venture to say that much of my hyperdrive overachievement in life has to do with my desire to get to a place where I could care for her. In some ways I became a mother at age 12 and had to procure and ensure safety and prosperity for both of us. (See earlier post on Growing up with Schizophrenic Mother for more details.)

At times I recognized the relative unhealth of this behavior and indeed I had many hypotheses for it. That I needed to fix her. That I needed to relieve my guilt of not preventing her suicide attempts. That I needed to pay penance for not being able to keep her well. That maybe someday I could even regain her love. It saddens me to write this now because, at 38, I see how very much of my time and energy was lavished on these needless and fruitless activities.

When I first began meeting with Em we used drawing therapy to extract and articulate the pain I was experiencing before I recognized it as The Breakthrough Crisis. At the time I only knew that my life was in disarray and my mother seemed to be the cause of that pain - or so I had assumed for many years. All of my drawing therapy centered around mother. Em asked prompting questions to which I drew out the answers. It went something like this...

• How do you feel right now? My artful representation was of me with lightning bolts for hair, drowning in plane tickets and work documents, surrounded by piles of money that I could neither reach nor spend, with all of the things I longed for (community, social life, free time, family) far off in the distance.
• What is your biggest problem? This one shows me on  my knees begging for my mother to love me while she sits silent and ignoring me while smoking cigarettes. In the background are all of the things I've done and bought for her and, ironically, a pile of money that I later recognized was a mirror image from my first drawing.
• What will it look like when your biggest problem is solved? I went numb. I sat and stared. My throat grew hot and then closed up; I began to cough. I had to run to the bathroom for a glass of water. We were at Zi's house (Em's friend) who was visiting in Bali for the month and the pipes had frozen so there was no water. I was able to calm myself with deep breathing before returning to our therapy room.

The body has a funny way of telling us things if only we will listen. I wasn't ready to hear what my body had to say, but I was being prepared. I was able to complete the drawing after thinking about it for awhile. At first I saw no solution. I divided the paper in half and drew a picture of mom and I holding hands and smiling, then immediately put a big black X through it. I then drew what I understood to be the real (and only possible) solution which is a picture of myself in meditative position feeling happy, healthy, and well all by myself. This icon became a theme in my mind's eye and in my journals for months.

It wasn't until the appearance of The Black Oil that I began to understand my mother was only the surface issue.  After many months of therapy, EMDR, and recovered memories (see The Theatre and On Shame) I now understand what and why I was hiding. What an amazing and resilient little brain I must've had in order to cover my trauma truth for so long. This charade parade made me incredibly functional but also inordinately fragmented. To not have access to my full self, to divert my focus onto a decoy for so many years, to treat my mind-body like a machine - always demanding and never recognizing limitations - all of this came at a cost. 

Now that I am acknowledging and confronting the layers of my trauma onion, I am paying myself back bit by bit for what was lost. I can never regain it all; some things are gone forever. And for that I am deeply grievous. But I am now able to take care of myself in a way I could or would not before. I am kind to myself. I have oodles of self-compassion and grace when I fall short. I look for signs of fatigue and depletion, and I restore and rebuild when needed. I surround myself with things and people who give me energy and add to my life. I no longer force myself to do things I "should" when they are things that make me feel bad. This includes discontinuing the charade with my mother (fully elaborated in Healthy Boundaries.)

Em and I did a second drawing therapy session many months later and I was mesmerized by the stark contrast. First, I noticed that in my second set I was clothed where I had been exposed in all of the first drawings. Mother was no longer in any of my drawings; upon this revelation I was not upset, I merely accepted. Perhaps most interesting was the change in my viewpoint. The first drawings were myopic, situation specific. The later drawings were teaming with ideas, people, places and included a variety of settings. The multilayered complexity and beauty of my life without charades was being revealed. And unlike my first set where I was off to the side, my later drawings showcase me at the center: calm and radiant.

And so it is with great pleasure that I bid adieu to the decoy, to the distraction, but ultimately to my pretending and fragmented self once and for all. "Say goodbye, panda!"

The Prophecy

Today is my birthday. Today I am better; I am a surviver. But one year ago I nearly took my own life.

The month leading up to my 37th birthday was the hardest I've ever experienced. The aftermath of my Breakthrough Crisis was a frightful and perilous time. I had never faced true depression before, but for those months I looked it dead in the eyes - operative word being dead. I felt dead: dead to the life I had known, dead to any coherent sense of myself, dead to hope, dead to the world. In fact I spent the month of September 2012 getting my affairs in order. I wrote a living will and planned a trip to Israel, half expecting and half desiring to become a victim of imminent prewar bombing. Truth be told, I longed to die.

The inside of my hands are lined with wrinkles the likes of which I have never seen on someone my own age. Everyone close to me who has looked at my hands says the same thing; we often joke and lovingly refer to them as my "grandma hands." So in my mid twenties when I visited a professional psychic she took one look at my palms and said, "you must be joking." She proceeded to mention enough relevant details about my current and heretofore life that made me feel comfortable with and confident in her skills. She foretold many things that have come to pass in the last 10 years. I know this because I made a brief list of her insights shortly after our visit and have referenced this list on many occasions since. She ended our conversation by telling me that I have an old soul. 

The psychic told me one thing that has stuck in the forefront on my mind for all these years. She relayed that I would witness a miracle by the time I am 37 and that I would write a book about it. I have oft wondered what that miracle would be. A sign from God? A healing? A baby? A walk on water? Some way I might change the world? I avidly awaited this miracle and the chance to share it. 37 came and went. I felt I had failed somehow, and that the hope of my miracle was dead, just like everything else in my life. It morphed from a source of inspiration to a plague of devastating disappointment.

Do you know what happens inside a cocoon? I mean what really happens? The caterpillar basically disintegrates; he melts into primordial goo. Total cellular destruction all except a few extraordinary pieces of embryonic tissue called imaginal cells that enable the transformation to take place. These imaginal cells lay dormant in the caterpillar for all its life until the special moment of transformation. Once they sense the state of goo around them these cells devour the nutrition from the melted caterpillar and begin forming the new structural body of the butterfly. All of the goo is consumed, and the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis fully intact. It takes complete and total destruction of the caterpillar to create the beautiful butterflies we so enjoy and love.

The butterfly has become a symbol for my healing process. Today I feel differently about my experience, about the prophecy, about everything. The great miracle in my life is the unfolding of my story, my truth, and my transformation. Real transformation is a miracle, like the lifecycle of a butterfly. It is hardly explicable by science, for healing doesn't come from the explained. The cycle of samsara - birth, death, and rebirth - is as endless as it is mystical. And through this blog, I am sharing my mystical miracle with the world.

Everybody has a story to tell. Everybody has a wound to be healed. I want to believe there is beauty and meaning here. I need to believe this. Pema Chodron speaks about the human addiction to hope in her discourse on Fearless Nontheism. I do not believe there is some 'great babysitter in the sky;' I do not believe God is actively intervening in our lives. I do believe that the truth is inconvenient and that suffering is a natural and inescapable part of life. But I have also come to understand that this suffering is necessary for transformation. And in the midst of suffering I need hope, for without it there is no meaning in my life.

Jane McGonagil's TED talk is a powerful argument for the relationship between suffering and transformation. In this talk she speaks of research done with hospice workers - those who care for us in our last days - and what has been documented as the top 5 regrets of the dying. They are:

1. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
2. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
3. I wish I had let myself be happier.
4. I wish I'd had the courage to express my true self.
5. I wish I had lived a life true to my dreams instead of what others expected of me.

These things are sad, mostly because they are true. And yet there is a ray of sunlight inside this sadness. The crux of Jane's talk is that in certain cases, experiencing trauma can produce a state of betterment. Instead of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, about which we hear all too much, there is a possibility for Post-Traumatic Growth. Some people can actually get stronger and lead fuller lives because of traumatic experience. In fact, the 5 things that those who experience Post-Traumatic Growth have in common are:

1. Our priorities change and we are not afraid to do what makes us happy.
2. We feel closer to friends and family.
3. We understand ourselves and know who we really are now.
4. We have a new sense of meaning and purpose in our lives.
5. We are better able to focus on our goals and dreams.

These five effects of PTG are oddly the direct opposite of the top 5 regrets of the dying! In this I find great hope, immeasurable strength, and renewed purpose. I have transformed a great deal in this past year and I'm not finished yet. I am hopeful for what I may become on the other side. What matters now is that...

I know that my suffering has produced a stronger state of me.
I know that my experience - awful as it has been at times - has shaped my ability to relate to others truly, deeply, and authentically.
I know that my truth and my story have helped me create a system of priority in my life that supports Who I Really Am.

I hope that a year from now I will be ever better, that maybe I will even be thriving.
I hope that by sharing my story I am able to help others do the same.
But most and best of all, I have hope.

The Spiral

I am a firm believer that the universe brings you repeated situations - new players and details but the theme remains unchanged - until you learn the intended lesson. This provides an opportunity to learn, grow, and apply new skills in a familiar, albeit sometimes uncomfortable, scenario. I've come to call this The Spiral and I am living one right now.

A year ago (see recent Anniversary post) I found myself in a circumstance where I did not feel safe at my home. I had arranged a few months' reprieve from work travel in order to spend time with my mother during her temporary stay. But as the days and weeks went on, the unfolding of my Breakthrough Crisis rendered me feeling inexplicably and extremely unsafe. I clammered for and even forged a couple of hasty business trips simply to escape my at-home exhaustion. I hated the speedy pace of business travel but was desperate to get away from the house and my mother. It did little to assuage my discomfort. As it turned out, I did not feel safe anywhere.

This year, I am in a different city and a different house with a job that requires very little travel. The last four months I have concentrated much on creating a peaceful and safe surrounding to aid my healing process. It has been working out swimmingly until recent events of death, dismemberment, and harassment ensued. It seems there is no pause button on life in the midst of one's healing journey.

My neighbor's dogs viciously attacked and killed my eldest cat in my own front yard a week ago. The experience was traumatic to say the least; picking up parts of his body, feeling his broken spine, noticing his missing pieces, and taking him to the vet for immediate euthanization. I grieved the loss for several days; he was a good friend to me for 17 years.

My youngest cat has been missing for 2 months; I no longer have hope that he will return as I suspect he met the same fate. I contacted Animal Control to get the scoop on local laws, and in fact there is one prohibiting free roaming dogs. In talking with other neighbors I now know that there have been multiple killings in the last year including cats and chickens. This is an epidemic but everyone has been reticent to communicate with the responsible neighbors. Now I know why.

I waited several days to talk to them so as to communicate in a calm, orderly manner. I relayed the sad story of my kitty and sited the ordinance which requires them to keep their dogs contained on their property. The conversation did not go well. They exploded in anger, proceeded to defame my character, denied all responsibility (despite the eye witness account) and ended the exchange with threats of property damage. Later that evening they retaliated in a number of ways with bright lights and noise which prevented me from getting any sleep.

This feels strangely like last year when, in a state of hypervigilance from unsurfaced abuse memories, I could not sleep in my own house despite all efforts. I felt/feel trapped. I felt/feel victimized. I felt/feel both helpless and hopeless. Again I am clammering for some reason to travel, a way to flee the situation with which I cannot deal. This is the point at which I would normally zero out and dissociate for days or weeks.

Instead, I am trying to see that I am simply in the spiral. It is continuous and it is virtuous. It can be my friend. Each time I revisit a place that feels familiar, I can only hope to be at a higher level of understanding and consciousness because of the previous completed cycles. I am more aware, have a better sense of self-grace, and an increased ability to comprehend and deal with the circumstance. Though the situation feels the same, I am different. It's not easy. It can be very frustrating and painful, for I viewed the most recent healing spiral as possibly the last one. It always feels like the last one but the truth is it never ends. That is what brings out my hopelessness, but it doesn't have to. My response to each event is infinitely more important than the event itself.

And so I have decided to view this as an opportunity to change, to respond differently, to transform. This is my moment to be brave! Instead of hiding, I will stand up for what's right. Instead of running, I will confront my fears. Instead of suffering in silence, I will reach out for help. After all, I have an army of loyal supporters now. I am not a princess who needs to be saved. I am a soul who has suffered loss and needs love and strength from willing participants. And oh how my army is rallying.

I see this cat/neighbor ordeal as a microcosm of the macro potential of sharing my abuse story. The memory (death) has surfaced, the perpetrator (dog) has been identified. The time for speaking truth is at hand. The neighbor ordeal has made me feel stronger in standing up for myself and others who have suffered the same loss. I have already addressed it with authorities and feel very empowered in my ability to procure my own sense of safety. Simultaneously, I am working on a plan with my wonderfully supportive brother that will unearth our family secret as a necessary step in my healing journey. It isn't easy, and it might be some time before I am ready. We often don't know when the time isn't right for something so big, but we almost always know when it is. I will be ready. More importantly, I will be supported and loved through it.

I am so much stronger than I was a year ago, and I have the spiral to thank. Scientists say a spiral appears in nearly all things in nature from honeycombs, seashells, the human ear and bronchial lobes, pinecones, and flower petals, all the way to the formation of galaxies. This spiral, represented by the Greek letter phi and best understood through the Fibonacci sequence, is referred to as the Golden Ratio or the Divine Proportion. I like to think that my spiral follows the same celestial pattern and that my healing journey is somehow connected to the healing journey for us all. In this, there is purpose, there is meaning. And there is hope.

Anniversary

It has been almost exactly one year since the onset of my Breakthrough Crisis. Celebrating or at least recognizing milestones is an important rite of passage in any culture. I often find that looking back on where I was helps me to appreciate where I am. It's why I journal so much. How else am I supposed to gauge progress?

Unstuck includes a number of journaling exercises at the end of each chapter. The book views depression as a call to change. An initial exercise is to outline the specifics of your call and how you can respond to it. These are my answers from one year ago.

1. What's going on right now?

I am extremely dissatisfied with the level of busy-ness in my life due to my demanding, hectic, and travel filled job. I've figured out that I am a person who needs a great deal of stillness, downtime, and routine in order to thrive. On top of this I am trying to deal with the fallout of realizations and changes in my relationship with my mother. Feelings of guilt, resentment, anger, and mostly depression are near consuming me.

Underneath both of these issues is a deep sense of loneliness because I have few friends and little time to build a personal life due to my job. I've spent all of my life's energy, time, and money in fixing my mother instead of investing in myself and my future.

2. Where do I want to be headed and what changes are necessary?

I want friends I can call to have dinner, watch movies, and see the city with. I want to sleep in my own bed most nights. I don't want to feel tired, rushed, behind schedule, and out of control all of the time. I want to enjoy my free time instead of feeling like I'm merely recovering in between times of intense work. 

I want to feel energized and hopeful about life again. I want to regain my sense of wonder in nature, God, people, and animals. I want free time and space to do good for others which makes me feel expansive. I want to express the full range of human emotion, to inspire and be inspired. I want to express Who I Really Am and feel I am making a difference in the world by doing so.

3. What are my first steps for getting where I am going?

- Make an appointment with my doctor to discuss depression and rule out any possible physical causes such as thyroid, hormones, or adrenal abnormalities.
- Find a therapist and stick with it, at least until my major symptoms subside. 
- Talk to friends. Stay connected.
- Pursue closeness with key family members; they are more important than friends.
- Make some modifications in my diet to support health and well-being: more beans, oatmeal, eggs, salmon and water; less coffee, cookies, chips, and crackers.
- Pursue a job change. 
- Set up my mother's care in a way that minimizes my involvement. 
- Integrate things into my life that I know support Who I Really Am: yoga, volunteering, running, hiking, nature, time with my dog, family, reading, traveling for pleasure.

Looking back at this is quite helpful, and I can almost not believe the progress I have made. I was able to make all of the changes I wanted in less than 12 months.

I found not one but two wonderful therapists; the work I've done with Dee and Em has been life altering. I went on two international trips for pleasure. I have a new job that I enjoy which requires little travel. I moved back to a city where I had an immediate circle of supportive friends. I set my mother up in a new living arrangement that no longer requires monthly oversight from me. I bought a lake house surrounded by nature and a peacefulness that allows plenty of time for stillness and introspection. This has enticed my family to come visit which has allowed us to grow closer than we've been in a long time.

When I started this post I thought I was going to lament the passage of time. A year sounds so long. And yet, seeing my own progress laid out in this way I now feel differently than when I began. I am incredibly fortunate to be able to integrate such massive change in a relatively short amount of time! But I believe it was necessary. I could not focus on my healing in the midst of near-constant travel to perform in an overly demanding job, nor when I was consumed with the care and well-being of my mother. I had to identify the barriers and then remove them one by one in order to create a safe place for me to process, reconnect, and integrate.

Most of all, I am amazed that my inner wisdom knew exactly what I needed and precisely how to guide me here. The universe responded to my call. I am forever grateful.

Playlist

I was a music major in college, a double major in music and psychology and then acquired an advanced degree in a specific area of psych in graduate school. Inside me - somewhere deep where the Real Me resides - I am an artist wrapped in scientist's clothing. Music has always been a source of inspiration and healing for me. During my darkest moments this playlist would sometimes help me dissociate, other times it kept me grounded. For much of my life, I didn't know the difference between the two.

Over the past year I have disappeared into this playlist for hours on end - at night to keep the demons at bay or to draw them close; in the car to force my brain into functional form or to numb/zone out so that I could survive another day; in dark moments to dangle my fragile self in blissful suicidal ideation or else to zing me back to life.

This playlist is both my oubliette and the source of stabbing remembrance. I play it when I need to feel, and when I need to not feel. Sometimes the music is my only way to feel, the scalpel reopening my gaping pain. Above all, it helps me to know this is real; this is really happening. The story, the memories, the truth, my truth. And in this knowing and remembering, I have survived.

My soul would forever weep without music to express the pain which has imprinted itself far beyond where language can reach.

You can listen to my Dissociation Playlist in its entirety on YouTube, or each song is listed and linked individually below.

Alice In Chains - Am I Inside
Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely
Alice in Chains - Brother
Alice in Chains - Right Turn
Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place
Zero 7 - In the Waiting Line
Radiohead - Codex
Radiohead - Give Up the Ghost
Smashing Pumpkins - Disarm
Plumb - Cut
Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
Flaming Lips - One More Robot
Kenna - Hellbent
Unkle - In a State
Pink Floyd - Breathe/Run
Gary Jules - Mad World
Coldplay - The Scientist
Radiohead - Morning Bell
Mad Season - River of Deceit
Nirvana - Lithium
Pixies - Where Is My Mind
Radiohead - Climbing Up the Walls
The National - Afraid of Everyone
Alice in Chains - Don't Follow
Nirvana - Something In the Way
Junip - Don't Let It Pass
Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
Alice in Chains - I Stay Away
Evanescence - Bring Me To Life
Radiohead - Last Flowers
FC Kahuna - Hayling
Air - Playground Love
Placebo - Running Up That Hill
Massive Attack - Angel
Alice in Chains - Rotten Apples
Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Radiohead - Let Down
K's Choice - Butterflies Instead
Pink Floyd - Learning the Fly
Lower Dens - Truss Me
Flume - Insane
Sarah McLachlan - Do What You Have To Do
Plumb - Need You Now
MercyMe - The Hurt & The Healer

I added some of the later songs as my healing progressed. There is a noticable difference in the nature and tone, a milemarker of sorts along my pathway to recovery.

What You Resist Persists

...and What You Embrace Dissolves.

Typically my posts are an amalgamation of processed learning over the course of time. As an introvert, this is how I integrate then articulate my healing journey. This post is different, a real-time experience that happened in yoga class tonight.

I have posted before on the healing powers of yoga nidra in my Pursuit of In-Bodyness. I've not been to a formal yoga studio class in quite some time, having lately been consumed in the process of moving and changing jobs. I returned tonight to my home studio for an hour of bliss-filled mindfulness and it far exceeded my expectations.

During deep relaxation I had an experience that brought me to tears. Yoga nidra is usually a time of restful, floating dreaminess filled with pleasantries of the mind's eye. However, tonight I could not settle. In a state of body steadiness my mind could not relax and the visions it produced were anything but pleasant. It was filled with dark images: spiders, monsters with open mouths full of sharp teeth, a virtual black hole of sorrow.

These visions were centered in my drishti gaze, directly in the front line of my field of closed-eye vision. I found myself avoiding these dark images with all of my might, searching for some place of light and solace in the periphery. As I attempted to look away from these images they only grew darker, scarier, and more vivid. I felt my physical self succumb to the body stuff of my dissociation, mostly heavy arms and elevated heart rate approaching panic.

Exasperated, I simply let go. I looked right at them. I stopped trying to control them and instead stared those demons right in the eyes. And all at once, they melted away and transformed into a beautiful lotus flower. The dark images were replaced by light and soft color. I found peace.

We come into this world full of love; it is our natural state. It is this life, this world, and the illusion of separateness within it that creates fear. The way of the Buddha is to stop resisting fear and to instead embrace what it has to offer us. It is the only way to reclaim vitality and thus, our true nature.

Even our demons give way to beauty when we embrace them as an essential part of ourselves and our journey. Only then can we truly Overcome Fear.

Unstuck in Tibet

After my Breakthrough Crisis, an unhelpful therapist - no slight on her, we simply did not connect - and miserable attempts at medication, I opted for the holistic route. This is true to my nature anyway, as I am not one for repeat foreign substances in the body. Occasional beer and wine, sure. Maybe even a cigarette or two when the mood (or the lucky) strikes.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe there are some people who have legitimate need for regular chemical rebalancing assistance. Case in point: my mother, the schizo-affective. The miracle drug of Zyprexa brought her out of a near 12 year catatonic fog which she affectionately refers to as her "period of unawareness." This was nothing short of a miracle, so rest assured that I do not doubt the usefulness and necessity of psychopharmacology in warranted cases. However, I had an inkling that my acute onset of emotional despair was of the let's-dig-in-and-deal-with-it variety, not with a numb-to-a-bearable-muted-existence solution.

I have been a turkepescatarian (I eat fish and turkey but no chicken, red meat, or pork) for nearly 10 years. I run marathons and teach yoga. I'm a hippie in corporate America's clothing; my brother calls my style of dress "business bohemian." I wanted a natural way out of this mess. Having worked my way out of a failed marriage and emotionally messy divorce (what divorce isn't emotionally messy?) through self-help books and soul-discovery exercises, I began searching for resources to help me unpack my emotional baggage. Understand that at the time I did not realize the size of my suitcase. I thought this was garden variety depression, perhaps with a little near mid-life crisis sprinkled on top. Everyone's healing journey is unique; the beginning of mine was overly optimistic and woefully misinformed.

I found an incredible book titled Unstuck by James Gordon, MD. He speaks about depression as a call for change. I had been feeling this call for many years and proceeded to outline them all in my journal. The call to process traumatic memories from my mother's multiple suicide attempts and resulting abandonment. The call out of my unhealthy, emotionally abusive marriage. The call away from my constant need for overachievement; I am off the charts in McClelland's nAch scale. The call to slow down from my overly taxing 70hr a week corporate lifestyle. I was finally ready to answer.

While Dr. Gordon's book had a lot of excellent information, and I do highly recommend it, it did not provide the total package of assistance that I required. But it was an excellent start. Most importantly, it led me to a mind-body skills expert in my area (the book mentions a website of providers who are trained in the Unstuck therapeutic methodology) who then ended up referring me to a talk therapist with whom I connected immediately. I continued to see them both separately once a week for the next 8 months. The combination of these two ladies, to whom I will refer as Em and Dee in subsequent posts, very well may have saved my life.

Em, my mind-body skills expert, gave me the most wonderful gift I could ever have imagined. Well, she gave me many but this one really takes the cake. I had recently purchased a new set of mala beads to help with my meditation practice. I chose the set pictured below because there are two colors of stone intermingled within each bead; I saw this as a representative balance of Em and Dee working together toward my healing.

The most special thing about these beads - Em's gift to me - is that they have been blessed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In person. He held them in his precious little hands and said a prayer just for Me. The pricelessness of this gift in the eyes of millions is not lost on me.


I am forever grateful for the miracles the universe will bring if you can simply open your eyes to see and hands to receive them. Never underestimate the power of connection. A quote from Unstuck: "Connection is loneliness's daimon. Accept who comes. Enjoy them. Do not burden with expectations. In experiencing one connection, you will realize that others are possible."

When the student is ready the teacher will come. When you are suffering, remain open to all possibilities that healing can and will come from a variety of sources. Though Unstuck did not heal me, it led me to many things, resources, ideas, and people who have helped me greatly along my journey. This is hopefully a theme you will pick up from my writings. There is an infinite supply of resources, relationships, help, and support if only you will look.

You are not alone. You are worthy. Healing is possible; all it takes is your openness to it.