More White Space Needed

Tags

clutter, mindfulness, silence, space

As pressure piles up on me (and as a recent Daily Calm prompted) I reflected on how I need to try and find ways of increasing the white space around me.

In graphic design terms white space is that space between texts, pictures and other items that helps set them out, that gives you the breathing space that allows you to see what is important. If you’ve ever seen a cluttered overly busy web site, you’ll know this is missing.

The same applies to real life. The more intense, stressful or emotional that a decision or task is, the more you need to create space around it, to ready yourself to tackle it, or to pause after completion.

When it’s this important I also welcome the silence, especially when I’m alone turning off my music in order to really focus and to truly hear what I am feeling. That includes working in the kitchen without the radio on or going for a walk without listening to something.

DailyCalm talked about using phones or TV binges to distract us from stress and anxiety. I have realised over the last few weeks that I have increased my casual game play, my attention to reading random articles online while decreasing my social media to be more remote. A Christmas gift to 4son of Amazon Prime has prompted us both to search through for programmes worth watching (with little joy) and to compare the advert strewn Prime with the relative clean and quite Netflix. I choose not to watch programmes with adverts in to save them cluttering my brain and just the annoyance they cause. I gave up watching Question Time or listening to the Today programme as I would end up just shouting at it and who needs that aggravation. When I started this course I unsubscribed from emails I never had time to read.

So I have, over the years discarded noise and busy-ness but there is more to be done.

There is a physical aspect to this as well, as a recent visit to my parents’ houser reminded me: so much stuff that you wonder how much of it is needed. My parents bought a four bedroomed house for themselves, not because they had so many visitors but to have room for the 8,000 books and other things. Rooms for putting stuff in. I have some of that, although I think my books don’t make 2,000 yet. I also keep kitchen implements just in case one day I start cooking the dishes that require them. I throw away my bits of string too small to be useful but I struggle to throw away good things that I just don’t use, remembering the days when I really couldn’t afford to replace things so would keep them for the possible use. Paperwork piles up, some of it needed, some of it not. I’m slowly weeding out books, but that is a very slow process for me as I have to read them first. Going through rooms and de-cluttering them is in itself a busy task that can serve as a distraction too.

So the lesson I am taking away from all this is:

• less phone or tablet use;
• less TV  (of any sort);
• more silence;
• more breaks from doing;
• less clutter;
• more space;
• pause and breathe;
• take time to smell the roses.

 

Advertisements

Starting This Year

Tags

fishbowl, independent, introvert, mindfulness, self-care, sheep

It had been four weeks since we’d all been together and it seemed like an awfully long time. But there was lots of smiles and happiness as we started in a relaxed atmosphere that seemed different, like a fresh start without any tension. We lost one permanently and had a couple of absences.

Most of us were relieved to be handing our first proper assignment in although worried about how it would be received. I did say that I’d like some feedback before we started on our next one just so that I know whether it’s OK or not. I feel amazingly confused over it but felt better that so were most of the rest of us.

The fishbowl got mentioned. We’re going to do some more at the end of term but not in full groups. As soon as she mentioned it, and the laughter I cringed and wanted to disappear. There was relief (again) that I’d done it but also embarrassment. It was used an example of immediacy, that the listener should have said “you’re smiling/laughing as you tell this painful story. Why?”

I reflected on something that had come up in therapy, and I’m not sure why it came back to me. Adler talks about the youngest child frequently becoming a perfectionist or an over-achiever, driven to gain approval this way. As my father is a perfectionist and an extremely hard worker I rejected these approaches and instead settled for being fiercely independent, even if it was just inside my own head. This stubbornness, this willingness to dig my heels in and do it my way, which is also very Yorkshire, I inherited all this from my father who is also very independent minded. My sanity has been helped and occasionally hindered by my absolute determination to decide who I am for myself. I’ve never been a conformist, never wanted to be a sheep.

I remember my son (think it was 4son) coming home from school one day saying he’d felt left out of the lesson because they were discussing some recent event in Eastenders about which he knew nothing. I held my breath wondering how much Eastenders we would have to start watching and he just said “why do people watch this sort of rubbish” and I relaxed, welcoming that he didn’t want to watch something just because everyone else does. In the same way this household does not watch I’m A Celebrity, Come Dancing, The Voice or any of that sort of popular cheap television. No sirree, if we’re going to watch crap television we are at least going to choose it for ourselves.

Bloody-mindedness has stopped me from compromising and has sometimes made it harder for me to make friends but, given that I have limited self-esteem it counter-balances that with sheer independent will.

We changed triads and I had a really good one. I was a rubbish observer as I got too interested in the speaker and wanted to say me too, been there, done that. Empathy was oozing out and it was hard to focus on the observer. It was also hard to be more critical as we had all agreed to do. I suggested she struggled to ask the right questions and to pick up on some of the strong words used and she then observed afterwards that my listener had asked 9 questions which seemed too many to her but not to me. It seemed ironic. Anyway I talked about the New Year and how difficult I found it to be hopeful considering all the crap I had to go through and he actually strengthened my resolve in those twelve minutes and made me feel more capable and competent and able.

I spent some time afterwards wondering why this person had that impact and I came to a sweeping generalisation, that introverts are better active listeners than extroverts. They spend more time listening to other people, are less inclined to jump in, to take over the conversation for their own story. They are more likely to pick up the under-currents and are less likely to want to impose their own views on the conversation. All this adds up to being more experienced at the active listening that is necessary to be a counsellor. I’ll see if this holds true as we work through triads with other people.

We also talked briefly about Roger’s seven stages of process (On Becoming A Person, p132-158, summarised very briefly above). In it he discusses the process of change of a person, from the first stage of being totally rigid to the end of being a fluid, fully functioning person. I am somewhere in stage 5 or 6. For me the difficulty is in accepting the qualities that I do have rather than actually developing them.

Last year’s huge achievement was my acceptance of my parenting skills and my ability to feel proud of where my children are (despite all the ongoing problems) and to simply accept that I have done a good job. I feel this acceptance and awareness every day in my interactions with them and it does help keep me strong.

This year’s emphasis needs to be on self-care. To not forget that sense of acceptance and achievement about my parenting and, if I cannot yet feel that about myself as an independent person, I can at least become better at looking after myself which will help me get through the next months. That self-care includes carrying on my daily meditation which, since I started with Calm, I have missed about four days in the last three months. I would like to do twice daily but I’m recognising the value of each meditation and the peace that it brings. I would like to get out of the house more for a walk, both for the exercise and the peace. If not to do half an hour every day just to do it occasionally. I’m quite good at, but need to continue recognising that I cannot do everything today or this week and must limit myself to what needs to be done and to try and let go of everything else.

During my triad I was thinking that anxiety is like the contractions of childbirth. Instead of feeling anxious or in pain for the entire duration, it’s important to recognise feeling anxious in the moment of dealing with some event and to then let go until the next event (or contraction). That ability to let go gives you the peace and strength to deal with what happens next but it is vital to relax in between.

So I also need to try and let go of things over the next few months, deal with them when they come up and then let them go until they need a further action. I need to be kind to myself, whether it’s allowing myself to veg out, read a light book, have a bath, to give myself the permission to not be on all the time.

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.