Summer Audit

Tags

blood pressure, energy, HRT, learning to drive, libido, MBSR, mindfulness, relax, summer, tax office

As I struggle to think of anything other than my conversation with 1sis on Friday and my impending visit with my father tomorrow, it seems the perfect occasion to catch up on the summer months.

Ten days away in Edinburgh, which felt like two weeks, did me the world of good. Other than forwarding on urgent emails I really did pay no attention to work, resenting the one conversation I had with a colleague who just wanted to share some good news with me.

Then we returned home and had one bizarre last week of term when 3son and 4son did very little and I tried to catch up. We had our first week of holiday and 2son joined us.

For the entire summer holiday we basically did nothing. We went out maybe six times altogether, and that was just locally to go and have a meal. We went to no museums, exhibitions, walks, day trips. I slept in and by the last week of the holidays felt I had caught up on sleep. I managed a couple of hours of work a day and decided to not feel guilty about the rest. The boys played on the computer, argued not a lot and generally brought 2son into their routine without some of the arguments that we’ve had in previous holidays. 3son built his first computer, which wasn’t without disagreement but did make him happy. I went out in evenings without worrying about what time I came home too much and we all slept in late. So we relaxed.

Overwhelmed

Tags

busyness, fed up, GP, holiday, mindfulness, motivation, pressure, sleep

I’ve really had enough at the moment.

I feel that I haven’t caught up with work since December, no matter whether it’s paid or voluntary. I know what I ought to be doing and yet when I get in front of the laptop to do it, I just don’t want to and give up after having done the minimum.

Now this is not about being depressed (I think). I feel that I’ve been managing well since I came of my anti-depressants a few months ago. I just feel under pressure to produce on all sides. And yet I’m awfully busy but without doing anything.

I get up earlier than I want to because I have to. I’m trying to redress that by going back to bed but that’s only a partial solution.

3son and 4sons occasionally miss school because they’re too tired. That’s all my fault of course and it ruins my evenings as they always end up in cross words. One way or another, whatever solutions I try, it rarely goes smoothly.

Acceptance

Tags

acceptance, mindfulness, past

Acceptance is the word that has kept coming back up over the last month, jumping up and down and doing a little dance inside of my head.

In order to be able to move forward without excess baggage, it is necessary to accept who you are. Accepting who you are includes accepting where you are and where you’ve got to.

Acceptance means losing those thoughts that start off “if only I had …”, or “what if this had happened rather than that…”. Stopping wishing you had led an alternative childhood and had made different decisions is hard, but ultimately you cannot move on from the past until you’ve accepted that this is the past you’ve had and it cannot be altered.

One Thing At A Time

Tags

distraction, mindfulness, multi-tasking, single-tasking

Women are often told that they are superior to men because men can’t multi-task. One can analyse this well-worn cliché on so many levels:

– for reality check: stay at home parents often seem to be juggling children, housework, working from home and having a social life (see picture!). Do they succeed at this because they haven’t any choice or because of their gender.

I’m Happy

Tags

Christmas, goals, happiness, happy, mindfulness

A strange sense of contentment has reached me this week. I’m enjoying it.

We had a good Christmas. 1son and I spent several hours in the pub on Christmas Day which was great. I found myself in the same place on New Year’s Eve and had a fun time without wishing I was somewhere else. We actually totally vegetated for the whole fortnight not going out at all but not really falling out either. I didn’t have an attack of the miseries at all.

On Sunday and Monday night this week I found myself awake in the wee small hours of the morning not being able to sleep before we go back to school hours. Rather than worry about it, I thought I must get back into mindfulness and stop doing this. My brain continued to wander and I just let it rather than getting wound up. After all, I could go back to sleep in the daytime if I felt like it.

The End of Self-Confidence Course

Tags

compassion, goals, mindfulness, observation, progress, sarcasm, slow process, small changes, thought

So we reached the end of our 10 week course and said so long rather than farewell as we exchanged emails and phone numbers all round. I hope to keep in touch with them as they’re a good bunch and I like them.

What have I learnt?

I had spent a year feeling stuck, feeling that although I have a vision of who I want to be (me, with bells on), I have no idea how to get there and nothing quite makes sense. I now feel that I have a bit of a road map.

Mindfulness and CBT

Tags

CBT, doing, learning, mindfulness, pracitce

I’ve had six sessions of mindfulness CBT. We’ve stopped for a couple of weeks to allow me some time to put lessons into practice. My counsellor is leaving at the end of the month so we have one more session to decide whether to recommend me to someone else to carry on for another half dozen sessions or wrap it up.

It’s been really helpful talking to someone about all these changes. She’s given me encouragement, useful suggestions and gone through the basics. But I think her real value has been purely in saying that I’m on the right track and need to do more rather than think about it.

So what have I learned?

• Meditation is good;
• Letting thoughts or events go is good;
• Getting up off my arse is positive;
• Hearing my thoughts slide downward and stopping them early is positive;
• Dwelling on the past is counter-productive (once understanding has been reached);
• Putting myself first is needful;
• Not worrying about not doing all these things perfectly is essential;
• Physical activity is necessary for sanity;

So what am I doing?

• a short meditation most mornings; occasionally more;
• Joining Meditation Society of Australia to get their meditations past week 15;
• finished reading The Mindful Way Through Depression and have other relevant books to read;
• used the CD that goes with the above book for meditation practices;
• tried to be mindful about what I’m doing from time to time; this can be almost like heightened sensory perception;
• focusing on what I’m doing now rather than what I will do when I finish my current task;
• pausing between tasks: taking time out to finish thinking about one before starting on the next;
• taking time out to do nothing very much; watching TV or other relaxing pleasures;
• stopped listening to the news for so long in the morning: this winds me up and makes me angry first thing so I listen to it for long enough to catch up and then turn it off;
• changed my evenings to spend more time reading books or watching films downstairs rather than going to bed early and to sleep late;
• exercising more: this week I’ve managed two half hours a day and realise how much fitness I’ve lost;
• chopped about five inches off my hair and started painting my nails.

It’s taken me quite a while to really acknowledge how big these changes are. They don’t seem big but what we are talking about here is a total change in the way I think and the way we are taught to think and behave. It’s about taking time out to smell the roses and not be quite as goal focused.  I’m less frustrated about not “achieving” mindfulness and more aware of being mindful, here and now.

Furthermore,

2son and I visited a school last week that offers 52 weeks residential, can cope with his emotional needs and offer him excellent education as well as activities that we both drooled over. Funding is not yet assured and that’s the next battle but it’s progress.

The Interconnectedness of Life

Tags

Asimov, Gaia, meditation, mindfulness, pale blue dot, Sagan

That’s a horrible world. But it’s where my second week of meditation led me. I’m not going to say anything that hasn’t been said before and I’m not sure if I’m thinking anything new but maybe I’m feeling it differently.

When I first read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation’s Edge some 25 years ago I found the notion of a conscious Gaia quite disturbing. Unlike the Gaia hypothesis which looks at the world as a single but complex system, in Asimov’s fictional Gaia, every organism contributed some level of conscious thought towards the whole in an ultimate democracy. I think I withdrew from the idea because of the element of giving up some degree of free will for the greater good. Not that I have any objections to making personal sacrifices for the sake of the greater good but I like to have the choice.

What on earth has this got to do with meditation?

Well, these are some of the rational thinking thoughts that I had when listening to this week’s meditation rather than just feeling my way through.

You are able to feel what every animal, every plant is feeling, and as time goes on in this way, so too does your expanded sense of awareness continue to grow.

We are one planet. And in the last hundred years, as communications have sped up we have little excuse for not knowing about the sweat shops that produce our clothes or the conditions in mines necessary for our latest phones. We understand that cutting down a forest on the other side of the world does affect us; we have a responsibility to everyone on this planet and to everything on this planet. Climate change has brought home that the world does act as single system on some levels, whether we want it to or not.

Meditating on this, for me, means trying to shove all these more intellectual thoughts and feel the connections, to feel the invisible tendrils that reach out from me and touch other people, the ones I know and the ones I don’t; to feel a solidarity and kinship with these strangers, to be aware of them as individual real people, not as statistics.

We’re also nothing more than lifeforms on Carl Sagan’s infamous pale blue dot. We live on a planet that is insignificant given the scale of the Universe. For all our puffed-up self-importance we do not matter and we never will.

And yet, despite my total insignificance, I am extremely important. To me, I’m quite vital and necessary, as is the planet I live on, the earth beneath my feet and all the people who help make my life what it is.

We are one planet, and it’s good to feel it rather than think it.

One Week of Meditation

Tags

meditation, mindfulness

So I’ve managed it: one whole week of meditation.

I am following the Australian Meditation Society‘s free programme. You can download it off the website or download the app.

There’s introductory text followed by a guided audio meditation. The recommendation is to follow each meditation for a week and I have managed that with the first class. Go me!

I’ve just about stopped feeling idiotic about doing it which in itself is progress. I’ve been doing it first thing in the morning in between getting 3son and 4son up for school.

It feels something like having a mental quick shower before getting up; it refreshes and cleanses in a good way to start the day. I appreciate that.

I notice how bloody hard it is. This week I’ve been using a candle. My mind goes off on tangents and meta-tangents and needs constantly reigning in.

Since I’ve started to think about mindfulness I realised that one of hardest changes to achieve is to focus on one task at a time. To take away all that practised ability to multi-task and focus on one thing, to finish an item without thinking about six other things at the same time. Multi-tasking is praised as being a useful life and work skill. Focusing isn’t.

There comes a fleeting feeling of calmness and serenity. It’s as if everything, including my brain just pauses. Only for a split second but it’s a beautiful moment of peace when it happens and the effects seems to last way beyond the feeling.

It’s been a good week. I faded out Thursday afternoon and had a quick nap. I cancelled going out Friday and Saturday evening and on Saturday I went to bed at half five and slept through until 8 the next morning. I woke up in time to put the children to bed and tossed and turned a bit but did feel refreshed. I also felt cross as although I had been out in the evenings I hadn’t stayed out as late as I could have. I need to change my night time routine as I’ve got in the habit of playing one game of Solitaire (patience) before sleep and it can sometimes take me an hour to get a deal out. Switching off is something else I find hard.

I’ve got back on the Wii again, managed 3 lots of exercise last week. It’s better than none and, as usual, I’m trying to just do and enjoy it, without worrying about how much I should or shouldn’t be doing.

I’ve also managed to go through my entire wardrobe, bag up everything that doesn’t fit and sling it in the attic. It’s taken two weekends and I was surprised that I didn’t feel as emotionally devastated as I thought I would by all the clothes I can’t fit in. I even found some I didn’t know fitted. So that’s a practical and personal achievement.

Lots of bits and bobs then. Mostly positive. Let’s see what this week brings, apart from snow.

Two Years On

Tags

HAES, meditation, mindfulness, SA

It was just before New Year that I first blogged, two years ago. I’ve gone through phases of trying to write every day but now I’m struggling to write every month. I haven’t written that letter to the GP although I do need the support.

So, where am I now?

I haven’t gone back to counselling since my last therapist finished last summer and I’m fine with that. I feel I’ve talked enough and need action.

I can “do” action for a few months. I’ve sustained exercise for up to three months but it always peters out. I need motivation and stamina.

The same applies to food: I need to plan meals and shopping, think more about what I like to eat and spend the time cooking. I can’t find the motivation.

While I agree with the principles of Size Acceptance I look at myself in the mirror and say “fat”. In addition I think “ugly” but don’t say it out loud. I’ve a long way to go.

There are of course a million and one other things I would like to achieve. But these three items are where it starts: looking after my health and believing in me.

I want to practice mindfulness. One of the things that has become clear to me over the last year is how much I’ve used and promoted that rational, organised, logical side of me and tried to bury the emotional, intuitive, instinctive side. I think, and of course I do not know, that mindfulness may provide me with the key to unlocking the other side and working towards an integrated whole. I have read books on the subject, as well as on intuitive eating, but just find it difficult to put into practice.

I spent an evening going through mindfulness apps for my phone (links are to Android apps). Many were dire unsurprisingly. I’ve started using Learn to Meditate from the Meditation Society of Australia which has a series of guided meditation as well as some reading material. I’ve done it twice now, slotting it in between getting boys up. I can’t say anything for sure but I feel positive about it. I find the whole meditation idea silly, ridiculous, I’m not sure what. It hasn’t been a thing I do, which is why I’m resisting, but then that is what I’m trying to change.

I’m also using the Mindfulness Bell, a very simple app that just dings several times a day and you’re supposed to take the opportunity to be mindful then. Again I feel silly, but I’m trying.

And I also got back up on the Wii this morning, for the first time in a couple of months. I had back trouble over the holiday and can feel my lack of fitness which does worry me. While I’m all for the concept of being healthy and fat, at the moment I’m unhealthy and fat and that is a losing situation.

So that’s where I am now. I know where I want to go but have no idea whether I’m capable of finding my way. I’ll keep on trying though, one way or another.

I might even go and write that letter now.