Mindful Streaks Aren’t Mindful

Tags

loving-kindness, meditation, metta, mindfulness, streak

 
I have made it, 100 days of calm in a row. A daily mindful streak.

When I first joined Calm, which is totally utterly brilliant by the way, I got an invitation to join the Facebook group, as do all newcomers. In it people post their own tales, their own beautiful meditation spots and their winning streaks. People post pictures of 100 day, 365, and 1000 days.

People also moaned, of starting their 98th meditation five minutes before midnight and it finishing five minutes after so technically not completed within the day and thus breaking the streak. I looked at angst over broken streaks and thought this is not what mindfulness is about.

I also recognised that I could hook into it, even at the stage where I was getting excited about doing 7 days of mindfulness straight. I realised that if I could feel disappointed with myself over such a small streak the disappointment would be bigger over breaking a large one. So I thought about it, how mindfulness is being in the here and now, not leading a streak. I don’t have a good or a bad meditation session, just sometimes my mind is busier than others. In that same way, I decided that missing a session was just a thing that was going to happen and I wasn’t going to see it as a failure.

Inevitably it happened and I broke a streak of over 30 days. I decided to forgive myself and managed to do so. The last streak broke when my son’s GCSE results came out and he had to return from school after collecting his results for a piece of paper before he was allowed to sign up for sixth form. I realised at the end of the day that I’d missed my session and decided I wasn’t going to do it and I wasn’t going to fake it either. I’d just start again.

Today, I am just over a year on and the less I worry about my streaks the longer they are. My ten minute daily calm meditations have brought me self-awareness and contributed to increased inner peace. I have felt more connected to myself than ever before. I have noticed my ability to be mindful in real life as well, not just in practice.

Today’s meditation was a loving-kindness one, or metta prayer,  in commemoration of World AIDS Day. The first time I did a loving-kindness meditation I felt it stupid. This time I was tearful. I felt greater warmth towards myself, increased self-compassion. I was kinder to me.

So I share 100 days of calm, and my pride in this achievement, whilst simultaneously recognising that today it is today’s meditation that matters, as it will also be tomorrow.

 

 

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Mental Well-being Needs a Safety Net

Tags

body, connections, Kolk, safety net

I’ve recently been reading The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma by Dr Bessel van der Kolk, an excellent book marred only by being in 8pt which has made it difficult to read. There’s some irony there if you will.

Mental well-being (as opposed to mental health which always refer to a lack of it) is determined by one’s ability to bounce back rather than fall all the way through to the ground. Bear with me, I’m being metaphorical.

If I have a strong safety net then it stops me falling more than a little bit and bounces me back up. The weaker it is, the further I fall and the harder it is to bounce back up. If it’s too weak then I might fall through it and crash down all the way to the bottom, which is so far down I cannot see it. Then I have to climb back up which is a lot harder.

So it’s really important to have the strongest, bounciest safety net I can. The safety net is formed of connections: connections between myself and family, close friends, acquaintances, librarians, random strangers I pass on the street. Connections are also between myself and places I go for all sorts of different reasons: my college, for learning, the river Thames and my local canal, for beauty, tranquillity and green stuff, my local pub, for good cheer and silliness, theatre for culture etc.

Some of these connections are tiny weak threads of cotton, others are big strong pieces of rope. Some are life long and others are short. Together they can make the net strong and balanced (I cannot find an appropriate picture of the sort of net I envisage in my mind).

But connections aren’t just the external ones. It’s also about the connections to my mind and my body.

Am I self-aware, do I know what is going on in my head and why, do I understand me? Can I spend time in my own company? These are all the connections between me, myself and I that also form part of my safety net. Therapy and mindfulness goes a long way to highlighting my connections with my mind but this is about truly living it, not just practising it on a daily basis.

Increasingly now I am aware that I have been lacking connections with my body and am using daily Pilates (go me!) to try and re-connect with my body. So body connections are about an awareness of what my body does for me, caring for it, knowing which parts are stronger or weaker than others, recognising that my body is part of who I am and is not just a meat suit I put on (thanks to whichever TV series put that name in my head). Body awareness is also about recognising, seeing, feeling, noting what goes on in my body at times of stress, recognising the reaction in my pulse, tremors, butterflies, all that is built in reaction. It doesn’t just apply to times of stress either; I need to learn to be aware of my physical responses to all situations, in particular times of strong emotions. I am only just beginning to get this.

So, external connections, internal mind connections and internal body connections all come together to weave a hopefully strong safety net that stops me falling when I struggle. I cannot ignore any of these three aspects of connectivity if I want to make my safety net big and strong.

I love my boys

Tags

board game, essay, holidays, laughter, love, positive, sons

I have done 11/13ths of my essay,  due in on Thursday. I have come to a conclusion, other that I still hate essays. School holidays are my downtime, when the alarm is switched off and I get up to my own beat. Work lessens as people are on holiday or not really trying very hard and it’s often an opportunity for me, if not to get away, at least to simply spend less time in front of the computer and thinking that I must get on with stuff.

I didn’t get my essay done before the half term, which was the plan. Something came up that was more important as something often does. I really resent having to do these assignments during the holidays. That was my big conclusion. Our next one happens over the Easter holidays with no way of doing it first. It’s a clear pattern, but not one that I like as it doesn’t suit me. My holidays are a little bit of space when I have time for me and I don’t like giving it up.

Anyway, back to school with a horrendous week up ahead. 2son came home on Friday and we had a few days with 2son so all 4 boys together. Four of us placed a new board game – Scythe. It said the gameplay was 115 minutes which is awfully precise. Why not say 2 hours? Anyway we debated the fact that we’d add on an hour for not knowing the rules and then add on a couple of hours for the amount of arguing and poking fun at each other. That was about right. We started around 7pm on Friday and finished around 4pm on Saturday. Great game that took us a few hours to get the hang of and we really enjoyed its complexity and the fact that you didn’t have to go to war and double cross other players (as in Game of Thrones). I do worry about 3son losing out by not participating in these activities but whatever we do, someone always doesn’t join in.

It really reminded me how much I enjoyed spending time with my boys. When I go to therapy or discuss them on my counselling course I often focus on the negatives or on all the stuff I have to do for them. Even on here, when writing. The truth is though, although two of them have major challenges to get through in life, that’s only part of who they are. 1son is about to go off to Italy and have a go at life there. Good luck to him and congratulations to him for wanting to do something different. 2son may be autistic, with lots of emotional and behavioural difficulties, but he’s also one of the most intelligent people I know and he makes me laugh. 3son is in a world of his own and severely struggling with depression, to the point where he struggles to get his prescription renewed and is probably about to drop another A level leaving him 1 and and EPQ. 4son’s greatest burden is living with his brothers but he has got through whatever that did to him. He has given up coming to football since December but we’re aiming for mid table mediocrity with nothing to play for and it really isn’t exciting.

They all make me laugh. They all make me think. I love it when we just sit down and talk whatever we talk about, whether it’s deep and meaningful or complete and utter nonsense (more likely). They are good companions and it’s part of the reason I feel less of a need to go out in the evening to escape. I’m almost a stranger in my local.

Having said all that, this week is going to be a ‘mare. I have to fix the car, take 2son to his first interview for Universal Credit, sort out 3son and his missing prescription, have my therapy, have my second appointment for ASD assessment, finish my sodding essay and go out and have fun five nights in a row. Busy.

Self-care isn’t Selfish

Tags

emotional resilience, exhaustion, paperwork, self-care

I had just worked out that the reason why the refuse collectors hadn’t come to collect mine before I hastily finished putting the rubbish out on the day rather than the night before was that I was a day early.

I considered that if I got that wrong, maybe my recollection of completing last week’s journal on Friday was also wrong. It was and so here I am trying to recollect last week’s session.

After all that kerfuffle about the essay, it took me half an hour to make the necessary changes and much of that was spent wondering whether that was all I needed to do. I still think the lack of guidelines is unhelpful but at least it’s done. I did ask whether it was satisfactory as I handed it in and will feel better to get the ticks back.

Much of our session was spent discussing self-care. The focus was on how, if you didn’t look after yourself, especially your emotional well-being, you were unable to give your clients the attention they needed. I reflected on how much this applied to me in life rather than in counselling. It’s taken me a long time to recognise that I do need to look after myself, that it isn’t selfish, that it enables me to look after my children better. However many of the signs that we talked about as depicting exhaustion have been a part of my life for a long time: broken sleep, constantly feeling tired and lacking in energy, social withdrawal (which yo-yos) and that feeling that it is all never ending without signs of improvement.

Several of us with complicated family lives took this to heart as a reflection of our existing life which was further reinforced by a self-care assessment sheet we then completed, rating different aspects of our life according the frequency and regularity we complied. This was actually quite interesting, dividing our self-care into physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual and professional. My weakest area which came as no surprise, was physical, with a lack of sleep, exercise and fun physical activity. The others though were better than I thought in recognition that I was aware of where I struggle and that I am at least trying to look after myself even if I don’t always succeed. So there were no real surprises but it was thought-provoking.

The majority of us are wanting to continue with the diploma next year and it was a relief to hear in PD that we would get priority over external students coming in. One less thing to worry about.

Self-care at home went out the window. Firstly with the lack of writing this up quickly. Then I had a reminder that I hadn’t filled in a form for a prospective school for 2son. A quick glance at it revealed why. At 30 pages I spent the entire weekend completing it, and sorting out all his paperwork at the same time. I didn’t get any work on the next essay done or anything else. But I did it, over 5,000 words of it. I’ve also almost finished my care assessment which is only 15 pages which I struggled with. Questions asking me what my long term goals and aims are in various areas left me often stumped but I shall revisit it for the third time and send it off today.

Saturday saw the arrival of one of those nasty letters from the council asking whether I thought 2son still needed an EHCP or whether he was cured. Or words to that effect. At least it’s only one page and I didn’t get quite as emotional as the last time I got a similar letter.

So the last few days have been filled with forms and quite a lot of introspection. Many of the detailed questions about 2son’s behaviour I found myself unable to answer and then felt guilty about not knowing. The care assessment is emotionally challenging as it basically asks me to describe all the ways in which I am not coping. Writing these down requires a level of deep honesty that is painful and in complete contrast to my normal coping mechanisms. Whether it will achieve anything is another matter but I did put in it that I should have done it years ago but didn’t have the awareness or the capacity.

I was also planning on booking myself a quick holiday for next week’s half term before 2son returns. I haven’t and I’m not sure I’ll get round to it now although I desperately need it as I need to finish my essay apart from anything else.

Adding to all that we had 3son’s parents’ evening where it is very clear that he is probably going to completely bugger up his A levels. If that happens he will find another way but why does life have to be so fucking complicated.

 

Radical Change

Tags

calm, change, Intuitive Eating, meditation, positive

It’s been a month of change and I am beginning to think the change is really radical.

The course is forcing me to really think about who I am and how that  compares to who I think I am. I’m beginning to really look at the fact that I am not the person I was, but I am also not the person I think I am. I am better than both these people.

I read through the About Me on here and didn’t recognise myself. I wrote it from  scratch and decided to resurrect the previous versions I wrote, in 2010 and 2011. Sadly I didn’t update it each year as that would have been interesting. I am not the miserable person I was then. I’m really not.

I’m in a good place with my children and have been for months.

Celebrations

Tags

Christmas, expectations, family, hope, New Year, optimism

I find Christmas a lot easier than New Year’s, but both present their own difficulties.

This year (well, last year) I did not feel in the mood for Christmas at all in the run up. I didn’t have 4son asking for a tree at the beginning of December and by the time it was the end of term I just decided it wasn’t worth it. If no one else is bothered by the lack of Christmas decorations then why should I go to all that effort of getting it all down from the attic and packing it all away afterwards.

That wasn’t the only reason though. We normally put the tree and other decorations up on the front room, which the boys often don’t use during the day at all so what’s the point?

It’s also more fundamental than that. I’ve done Christmas for so many years and put all the effort in mostly by myself and I’m bored of it. 1son used to be master of ceremonies and turn present opening into a long happy and fun occasion but that’s no more. I’ve come to an agreement with my children on presents as they either want cash or online games that don’t need wrapping. This year I didn’t even wrap the selection boxes. 1son normally goes to a book shop to buy a round of presents but he only managed his bus fare home this time. He does succeed in getting most of us playing various board games over the holiday period which is the one thing that brings most of us together. Doctor Who is the only television we watch together and 2son didn’t bother attending.

Nevertheless I enjoyed the day. It might have been low key but we all did what we wanted to do and spent time in each other’s company which is what Christmas is really about, once children grow beyond wanting lots and lots of massive presents to open. In the years since my parents stopped joining us for Christmas the day has evolved and is still evolving. Having a relaxed attitude to food and spending a few hours in the pub are two of the key differences. Drinking champagne out of pewter tankards is a minor one. It’s becoming our Christmas and won’t ever fully stop evolving. Hopefully one day the others will grow up enough to want to put a little bit more effort into making it special.

New Year I find a lot more challenging emotionally. I see it as a time of personal hope and optimism. People are excited to face new challenges and book new holidays, making resolutions that often fall by the wayside by the end of January. My attitude tends to be more “same shit, different year” and it’s only very rarely that I can be in the mood to feel positive about what’s coming. I’ve learned this over the years and if I am staying at home I don’t watch live television and feel miserable because I’m not out there in a crowd. I don’t watch or read anything that can get me close to tears. Last year I went, on my own, to a local pub with a band playing that I liked and, while it was certainly weird being on my own, I was fine and happy. This year the opportunity to go out with friends was there but I just didn’t feel optimistic or enthusiastic. I turned down several offers (which in itself was nice) and chose to go home early and ignore it all. I was fine, although resented the staying up to 2am waiting for 2son to come home from his revels as he does not yet understand the concept of taking a key with him.

This holiday period (the French say “Bonne continuation” as the holiday continues from Christmas to the New Year, and so, I just discovered, do Swedes) is tough on expectations. Whether it’s the expectation of presents, or turkey on the table at 1pm sharp, or unwanted relatives, in the run up to Christmas we are all filled with messages on how we ought to perform at Christmas, with lavishly decorated rooms, tables filled with food and drink, presents galore and every family member. And everybody is happy, smiling, laughing, having fun all the way through. If this truly is how you spend Christmas then you are very very lucky. For most of us it just isn’t, for different reasons for all of us. I have done what I can to take control of how I spend the day and how my children spend the day so that we all have a little of what we want and we all end up reasonably content at the end of the day with the only murders taking place on screen or in a board game. Sometimes it’s brilliant, sometimes it’s just fine, but never are we going through the day again with gritted teeth biting our tongue. And even if my parents end up living round the corner, they are not joining us for Christmas again. Ever*.

* I have a feeling we may have a debate about this.

 

 

Is it what I do or where I live?

Tags

air quality, medicine, move, plan

I came across a truth as I swam contemplatively: if I want my health to stop deteriorating, however slowly, I have to move away. 

Whether it’s living under the  flight path or the general lack of air quality, my ability to breathe and be  outside in the sunshine is duminishing year on year. 

I never got hay fever before and once I realised I had got it and not just a very ling cold I went through a number of medications. Some didn’t work or had side effects; others worked for a while and then stopped. This summer I am actually staying indoors if it’s a high pollen count which makes summer and a garden a bit pointless.  Eventually I will run out of medication to try. 

I’ve had a persistent cough for a couple of months. It’s the  leftover from a cold. I’m  should expect to be more susceptible to these  kinds of minor complaints due to weakened lungs. 

I have been wondering recently about moving away and have shied away from it. I’ve found a home for the first time and good people. I don’t know where I’d go other than North of Watford gap. I also have no idea what  I might do for a living. 

I have got at least four years until 4son finishes school to consider it. It might be unwise leave the borough until 2sin has squeezed every penny of funding out of it and hopefully finished his A levels. That could be five years away. 

So, other than the total lack of detail I have a five year plan. 

Holiday, day three

I have managed the last two days to do a mindfulness body scan.  It’s a lot easier when you’re lying on a beach in comfort. 

I have also been eating mindfully, that is without my phone for entertainment but rather focusing on the food. 

I’ve been swimming three or four times a day. Again it’s a total pleasure in this sea that is a tad cold but so so blue and transparent. 

The bad news of course is that I’ve burnt a little more than I should have done which is making life a little uncomfortable. 

More worrying however is that I’m left alone with the voices in my head and they are loud. The constant self awareness when not self criticism is enough to destroy my faith in humanity and I’m the one causing it. Nobody has said or implied that where I haven’t misread where possible.  

I am contemplating excursions and I’m fairly sure it’s just because I don’t want to listen to me. I do seem that I  have the best conversations while I’m swimming. 

It’s not as if I do this a lot. The last time I had a holiday without children was two years ago and that was the first time. 

It does emphasise the need to do less and slow down generally. And lots if other things, probably. 

I never realised that relaxing is just so much hard work. 

Holidays

Tags

holiday, relax, solitary

I am now on my second holiday all by myself and the unwritten rules are amazing. My anxieties all kick in.

I don’t have to go on excursions.

I don’t have to go to the local village.

I don’t have to discover the island.

I don’t have to do anything intelligent.

I don’t have to leave the compound.

I don’t have to make an effort.

I don’t have to absorb the local culture.

I don’t have to apologise.

I don’t have to talk to anyone other than for politeness sake.

I don’t have to speak the language.

I don’t have to meet the Holiday rep.
On the other hand,…

I do have to learn to relax, to vegetate.

My routine (day one) is eat, read, drink, swim, doze. Repeat in any order. I don’t have to do any more than that. Not only do I not have to, it’s important that I do just that. I’m not good at doing little. But that’s exactly what I need and is why I booked an all inclusive holiday in the sun.

I Don’t Know if I’ve Lost Weight

Tags

Dances with Fat, size acceptance, weight loss

… and for the first time ever, I genuinely (99%) don’t care.

Several people over the last month or two have said:-

You’re looking good. Have you lost weight?

I’ll ignore the one who suggested I must have found a man in order to look good.

My response was automatic and their faces were pictures:-

I don’t know.