Agh. ADD. ADHD. Whatever. Meh.

Somedays I feel like my brain is completely broken.  These are the days when I get on an ADD (or ADHD – I’m starting to see my own hyperactivity, though I’m not hyper all the time…) roll and can’t seem to help myself but to do one silly thing after another.  Yesterday was one of these.  I didn’t feel good about myself.  It was one thing after another at work… I knew when I went in that I just didn’t feel quite right.  I felt foggy even with my full dose of ritalin and some caffeine as a cherry on top.  Still, I just couldn’t get my brain working.  I broke dishes.  I spilled things.  I caused a big mess with chocolate sause.  I ground coffee, put it in the brewer… and then would forget to BREW the coffee.  I forgot orders.  I suppose that I should count myself lucky that I didn’t bite my tongue or lock myself out of the car… 

I have at least a couple of days like this a month.  I hate the looks I get when someone realize I am on some serious spazz roll.  Agh.

On the other hand, I’m also better at handling my spazz days with grace, so that most of the time people don’t give me pat advice that isn’t helpful (nor do I need or want it) or laugh at me or start treating me in a condescending way.  Deep down it is a consolation to me that my worst days are a lot better than they used to be… but still… sometimes I wonder how I will ever fulfill my potential when I have such frequent set-back of ADHD that can really shake my belief in myself AND the belief that people who give the promotions have in me… 

Hmmm… perhaps the most important bit is that I believe in myself.  People seem to take their cues from me and if I don’t think my occassional spazz-outs are devastating then other people usually don’t either.  But, this is going to take some time and practice for sure.  ADHD and me have a long and painful history.  I have a very deep habit of assuming that a series of two or three ADHD goofs completely dooms me to continue to make embarassing and “careless” (as my gradeschool teachers called it” errors.  “Careless”???!!!???? The more I cared and the harder I tried the worse I got and the more “careless” errors I made.  The mere mention of that phrase (careless errors) makes me wanna vomit in anger and disgust.  Later in life, my abusive father/employer seemed to delight in using that phrase after he figured out how much it bothered me and even after I had explained many times that IT WASN’T CARELESS AND I RESENT IT BEING CALLED THAT!  Grrrrrrrr… Roar!

I suppose it is time to remind myself that despite my differentness (ADHD, PTSD and such) that I am pretty sharp and productive.  Like Sassy posted recently… perhaps it is time to remember that I am a survivor and a thriver here… not a victim of ADHD or PTSD.  Besides, who is to say that some of my success isn’t due to ADHD.  One previous pdoc of mine explained that ADHD was in essense just a super-charged brain and nothing at all to be ashamed of.  I’ve wanted to see her point, but mostly I have only seen how ADHD has tripped me up – even after I have read all sorts of books and sites about how to use ADHD as a beneficial edge. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to see any benefits to my ADHD, but right now I’m don’t feel that is the most important bit anyway.  The most important bit is that I respect myself and believe in myself… rather than psyching myself into one mishap after another culimating in a second degree burn on my right hand… I wish I had just made that up, but I didn’t…

I had hoped that taking on a job that I am way overqualified for and don’t even need to keep would somehow “cure” my ADHD… and that taking this job that is so far below my potential would give me a break from my ADHD woes.  No such luck.  Ah well.  At least now I know – an easy job doesn’t cure the spazzing, though often it is easier to hide, because I’m over-performing in so many other ways.  I’m starting to feel ready to head back to the world of financial analysis, now that I know even a much easier job isn’t going to “fix” me.  It is clear that the only option I have here is to accept myself, continue to learn to manage and keep taking my meds as long as I need to.  It is something of a relief to realize it is highly unlikely that I will ever be symptom free or stop having crazy spazzy mistake days at least twice within a two week period.  No one can tell me I haven’t tried pretty much everything: yoga, meditation, exercise, meds, deep breathing, therapy, visualizations, diet changes, using more caffeine, using less caffeine, supplements, prayer… and prolly a hundred other things that I can’t think of right now cuz I’m a little sleepy and, of course, a little spazzy.  Yes, I can manage to be sleeping and spazzy at the same time and it ain’t pretty.  It’s frustrating.  Really freakin’ frustrating. Maybe tomorrow will be one of my less-spazzy days.  That would be sweet.  After the last three days, I could really use a break.  I wear myself out sometimes. 

–AngryGrayRainbows

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A weight has been lifted

About a week ago I released myself from the bondage of my cultish upbringing.  It took me years to do this for myself…literally YEARS!  I’m 46 years old and this is the first time in my life that I’ve felt free of guilt and shame on a minute to minute basis.  I can’t express the relief that I feel.

I went to several therapists, beginning around the age of 20.  I always believed my core issue to address was my father but I figured out just recently that my core issue was actually the religion I was brought up in.  Once that realization was made I had nowhere to go but up.

I knew that I had basically forgiven my father for his abuse about a year ago but I still had this feeling of heaviness about something that wouldn’t let go of me and I figured out it was my beliefs from my past religious upbringing.

I am a victim…I’ve played the victim/martyr all my life.  I learned from a very good role model – my mother.  I was a pouter if I didn’t get my way.  I was always worse off than anyone else around me.  My problems were always exaggerated to make my life seem so pitiful.  I was always so pitiful.  Poor pitiful sassyblonde.  I’m so mistreated.  Now, mind you, I truly was a victim in some circumstances but it turned into a way of life for me.

Again, poor sas isn’t worth anything so why try to make things better.  I’ll just wallow in my dispair until someone feels sorry for me.  Oh wait!  No one has to feel sorry for me, I feel sorry enough for myself.

Well, guess what!  I chose to be the victim.  I don’t have to be the victim anymore.  I choose to release myself from that old religion and break free!  I don’t have to be in bondage to guilt and shame anymore!  I deserve better and am worthy of better!

It’s like I have more spring in my step and that a weight has literally been lifted from my shoulders.  My heart even feels lighter.  This change has allowed me to think differently.  The guilt and shame had me encased in a balloon and objectivity and creativity were thwarted because of it.  It honestly led me to believe that I wasn’t even worthy of taking care of myself.  That “religion” had me convinced I wasn’t worthy of anything and that I was defeated before I even attempted anything…that I could never be good enough so why try.

The feeling of freedom that I feel is so outrageously uplifting and inspiring that I feel like a completely new person.  For the first time in my life I think I’m a pretty lovable person and I have some really cool attributes.  Why?  Because I’m not listening to the old tapes in my head telling me I’m not worthy.  I’m erasing those tapes and replacing them with some pretty awesome accepting and loving voices.  I wish I could bottle this stuff and send it to every one of you!  I’M NO LONGER A VICTIM…I’M A SURVIVOR!!

I’m sorry if I’m gushing but I’m just so excited about having found this feeling that has been buried for so long.  I hope you have a wonderfully fun weekend and WRT2, I’m sending you a special shout out!  I hope you feel the support of all your loved ones at this time!

~sas

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Major Depression…

By commentor SophieUK:

When AGR suggested I write this post about depression she referred to the fact I’m a published author and how jealous she is of that. It seemed fitting to take that facet of myself to illustrate the depression. I know many of us with eating disorders suffer or have suffered with depression. Sadly it seems to be part of the territory. It’s not that surprising either. However, what depression has done to my writing has surprised me.

 I have always loved books and created stories in my head. I didn’t bother writing them down for a long time. Then my house flooded and I spent a couple of months away from home. For some reason, I decided to use that time to write. By the time I returned home I had a completed first draft. I played around with it for a while then sent it off to a publisher simply because I could. Eight weeks later the email came back saying they wanted to publish it. They also want to publish the whole series and the second one is coming out in a couple of months. Two books published before I’m thirty, I should be proud, right? I should be respectful of my writing skills and pleased that my stories are something other people want to read, right? Wrong. Depression and ED have robbed me of any positivity.

 Instead, I have disclaimers. “It’s only lesbian fiction, that genre is less competitive than mainstream.” I have doubts. “How can they be making the same mistake twice?” I have worries. “They’ll be regretting that decision as soon as they start getting returns and poor sales.” I have shame. “I can’t believe I wrote the first book without understanding all these finer points of craft.” I have embarrassment. “Who am I to think I was intelligent enough to write a mystery?” I have obsession demonstrated with my constant searching on the net. A good review? That’ll be a friend or someone who doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. A bad review? Yeah, I knew all along that I wasn’t good enough.

 The point I wanted to show with this is how depression ruins everything. It is such an insidious thing that you can’t even tell its voice from yours. You can achieve a dream and it will tear it down. I have realised that nothing in my life will ever be a source of pride. I will never be able to just sit back and think “yeah, that was a job well done”. I am destined to fail before I start, in my own estimations at least.

 Now I suspect my writing career is over. I don’t have it in me to keep writing the books and feeding the depression with something that means so much to me. As with so many other things in my life, I’ll leave the writing dream cracked and trampled on the roadside.

 Is it better to dream and be envious of one who has achieved it or to be the one who has achieved it and found it a source of shame? I don’t know.

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Big Fat Irony

Recently, I went to the gyno and listened to my first “weight talk.”  Fun.  What I find most apalling is that I didn’t realize how ironic all this was until a couple of months after this appointment…

When I was a normal weight (or thin depending on the eye of the beholder), my doctors were very happy with my condition.  Never mind that I was falling apart.  I was painfully cold all the time.  I couldn’t think my way out of a paper bag, due to the malnutrition due to extreme restriction.  Almost any food or drink consumption caused painful indigestion.  For some reason, I was constantly in the bathroom cuz even just a little liquid in my bladder caused a feeling or urgently needing to pee.  I had migraines three or four times a week on average.  My lips turned blue during my workouts.  My complection was often grayish.  I couldn’t help but binge on a regular basis from all the restriction.  My hair was thinning.  A paper cut would take weeks to heal.  Walking to school in even a sprinkle of a rainshower WITH an umbrella almost always caused me to catch a cold.  Colds almost always turned into bronchitis.  Bronchitis generally lasted six months each bout.  My asthma symptoms were often painful and I used my inhaler several times a day. 

The only concern I remember any doctor voicing was about the copious amount of caffeine that I drank.  No one cared about the restriction or the sypmtoms that went with it.  Perhaps they just thought I was sickly… if so, they were naive. 

I got treatment for my eating disorder and my weight has gone up and down depending on what anti-depressant I’m on.  The one I’m on right now caused me to gain about three dress sizes…. and now the doctors wanna talk to me about weight loss.  I wanna smack these doctors in the face with a shovel.  I am HEALTHIER than ever… but of course that doesn’t matter, cuz I’m fat.  Wha…?

My asthma hardly ever makes a peep.  I don’t even catch all the colds that my husband catches and walking outside in wet weather no longer causes the default cold or flu.  As people go, I’m still pretty cold blooded, but I’m no longer painfully cold all the time.  Doctors keep mentioning that my weight must be causing horrible blood pressure problems for me.  Yeah… then they check my bp and find that my bp is LOW.  My bp is low AND I take ritalin… a med that increases blood pressure.  Yeah, my weight is really sending my bp sky high!  Everyone get your helmets – I could explode any minute from this extremely high blood pressure! 

My stomach no longer gives me all the trouble it used to.  I still have a sensitive tummy, but I no longer dread eating or drinking anything for fear of some nasty indigestion that could potentially last for hours.  I no longer have daily acid reflux.  My hair is beautiful again.  Maybe some of the thinning is permanent, but whatever.  I’m not about to beat myself up for spilled milk that I have worked very hard to mop up over the years.  I seem to have been one of the lucky ones who got some of their hair fullness back after years of restriction though.  My complexion looks healthy today.  No more gray.  Paper cuts heal so much faster now.  I’m no longer covered in mystery bruises.  I haven’t had bronchitis in a few years now.  Whooo hoooo!  Migraines are now rare for me. 

But, now, all of a sudden, I’m getting all these health lectures when I’m healthier than ever… and when I was starving myself and at a normal weight, I felt like I was constantly screaming for attention to my numerous health issues and still doctors ignored me, because I LOOKED healthy (to them) merely because I was thin.  Everyone knows that thin equals healthy, right? 

I suspect my weight is about to go back down again due to changes in the anti-depressant that caused my weight to go up.  My feelings about all this is mixed.  I’m not sure whether to be pissed for being (potentially anyway) treated differently and escaping the fat = unhealthy rhetoric or relieved not to hear that ignorant stuff anymore from ignorant doctors when I feel vulnerable enough wearing paper clothes and maybe even having my lady parts poked at with ouchy instruments.  Meh. 

The anti-depressant that caused my weight gain worked well in helping my depression for quite some time.  Even as it made me fat, I didn’t care.  I was HAPPY!  My psychiatrist seemed to not understand how I could go from “normal” to fat and actually get happier.  He offered to change my meds simply to help me lose weight.  For those of you who have never been on psych meds, I will explain what a ridiculous offer he made.  Changing psych meds is a big deal.  It can takes weeks, months or even years to find a med that works and doesn’t cause horrible side effects for you once you and your doc decide a med change is in order.  Changing anti-depressants is not like changing from Advil to Tylenol for your headaches.  Changing psych meds can be a long and painful journey.  If you work full-time, it can be even more difficult, because changing meds (even changing onto a med that works really well for you) can cause weeks of symptoms in getting used to the new med and withdrawling frmo the old meds.  For me, this generally means nausea, migraines, a short fuse, forgetfulness and being very easily flustered for at least two weeks.  It is no freakin’ joke…. and I’m supposed to volunteer for this merely because an otherwise lovely anti-depressant made me fat???!!!  ARE YOU KIDDING ME????  I made it clear to my psychiatrist that I’d far rather be fat and happy than be a normal weight and depressed or going through unnecessary psych med change difficulties. 

The rebellious part of me would like to stay fat (even though I’ve quit the med that caused my fatness because it stopped working for me) just to make my psychiatrist uncomfortable and to avoid the “you’ve lost weight!  how did you do it!?!” talk from my co-workers.  But, that misses the whole body and size acceptance point.  I believe in letting my body be what it wants to be…. and so, I will… whether that means weight changes or not.  Whatevs.  I’d rather be fat and happy and sane and healthy… or whatever size my body naturally is and happy/healthy/sane.  To my pdoc’s chagrin, I won’t be chucking future potential meds either if they make me fat or fatter.  Maybe I can teach him a thing or two myself.  He does seem to be fairly receptive…

If and when your doctors get ignorant on you, I hope you remember that you’re not alone and just cuz a doc is a doc doesn’t mean that they are always right.  Hang in there, friends.  I’m rooting you on… as I hope you root me on in my own journey. 

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Sadness. Deep Sadness.

I didn’t realize I’ve been so sad.  I thought I was dealing with my mother’s craziness (here and here) exceedingly well.  It turns out I’ve merely improved on past reactions to her nut-ball-ness… and that I’m not such a paragon of “I could give a shit” as I thought. 

I can see why I’ve been so clueless about my own sadness.  There hasn’t been time to feel it.  I started that new job and training was a big ordeal and so has getting used to the new ropes and all.  Then hubby left for vacation without me.  I stayed behind to take care of our stray (that we’re still trying to trap), Mr. Orange.  Hubby left the day my mother disowned me.  I was surprised and how “whatever” I was about it.  Apparently I was just holding it all together, so I didn’t implode when I had little support at home. 

Given my history of eating disorders and self-harm, I’m glad I didn’t do anything along those lines.  The only symptom has been my utter lack of willingness to participate in my own blog or to check or reply to emails.  I had no idea what the heck was wrong with me… I realize now that I was just trying to hold things together and keep things very simple, so I wouldn’t fall apart.  I needed every ounce of energy to get this new job down and not have a break-down while hubby was gone… 

Well, he’s back now and I feel the tide of sadness rolling in like a tsunami.  I suppose I finally feel safe enough to feel the feelings, now that my biggest supporter is home and I have some days off work. 

Big sadness is scary for me.  In the early days of therapy for eating disorders, PTSD and depression a flood of sadness that I had held back for decades drowned me.  I spent most of the time every day crying.  I cried in the office.  I cried on the train home.  I cried over the dishes as I washed them.  I cried in the shower.  I woke up crying in the middle of the night.  I am so tired of crying.  I am so afraid to feel this sadness I feel welling up.  It’s been a long time since I was so depressed or had really bad flashbacks.  I also have a sense that allowing this sadness to well up is going to cause flashbacks… and I really don’t want to go there.

But, I guess I have to.  It’s either deal with all this or continue trying to micromanage my life to such an extent that I have enough energy to keep the pressure cooker of feelings closed.  And, that pressure will just build and build and the amount of energy required to hold it all down will become more and more.  It’s just not worth it.  Been there.  Done that.  It sucked. 

I’ve been wondering why I’m even sad in the first place.  I’ve come to the point where crazy is what I expect from my mother and I also expect her to try to give me trouble in any way she can think up.  She bigger the better seems to be her motto.  My step-father also said that she thrives on chaos.  Maybe he has a point.  She doesn’t seem to go more than a few years without completely cutting some family member (that she used to be close to) off for “disloyalty.”  Pretty soon she’ll be living on an island by herself.

I don’t think it’s her recent episode of bull that is even bothering me.  What bothers me is that every instance of abuse from my mother just reminds me of all the other abuse… even worse, the abuse that happened when I was a child and had no way to protect myself.  She made it clear that it was either put up with her nutty behavior or I could go be homeless.  She made this clear to me when I was 12-years-old and reminded me of her resolve constantly, because she TOLD me of it constantly. 

If I complained that she constantly ran around the house naked or left buckets of her own urine under my bed (no kidding, she did this) or that she grounded me for entire summers with no warning because she felt I had too many friends or that my father beat me…. well, I should’ve just been happy that they bought me clothes and that I had a Nintendo to play.  To my parents the abuse didn’t matter.  The proof of their wonder-parenting was in my wardrobe or video game and music collections.  It didn’t matter that my mother was a pathological liar and my step-father (who raised me) a rageaholic.  I didn’t matter that my mother couldn’t seem to help herself from making sexual comments to me or telling me details of her own sex life (this started at age eight) or that my step-father ranted that I was a whore to anyone who would listen (including visiting family members) when I hadn’t even held hands with a boy.  They allowed me a small collection of nicknacks, so that made it all okay.  The fact that I stopped speaking as a teenager for several years was really just a symptom of my own selfishness and stubbornness… it couldn’t have possibly been PTSD or depression from all the craziness I’d been through. 

The memories just hurt.  I end up feeling like that scared little child again who is stuck at the mercy of big, scary adults who don’t seem to see their own failings, abusiveness or hippocrisy… 

Every time my mother (and I just mention her, because my step-dad is no longer abusive and I have cut my bio-dad and step-mother off for their abusiveness) is just another knife in my heart that is already full of cutlery that was plunged in and twisted regularly long ago.  Her one tantrum doesn’t feel like just one tantrum to me.  To me it is a rehashing of a childhood of torment… like she’s trying to remind me that she’s the one who is really in control and I am just some dirty, shameful child who needs to be put in her place. 

I suppose it would be more helpful to see this as it really is.  It is unlikely my mother consciously wants to remind me of the abuse.  She’s a tantrum thrower.  That’s what she does.  She throws tantrums and twists words and alienates people and disowns them.  It’s like her hobby or something.  It does help to understand that this isn’t a conscious attempt to drag me into the past…  as for her unconscious, I have no idea what’s going on in there. 

I am no shameful and dirty child… I never was.  I was a good kid caught up in insane circumstances and I have worked very hard to heal the wounds and learn how not to do to others what my parents did to me.  Oh right… now I remember… I’m a survivor.  I survived.  I’ve even taken these horrible experiences and tried to use them for good… to offer others the compassion that I didn’t receive until I was 25 and finally gave in and found a therapist. 

When I am in a wise mood, I am sure that those years of hell were a gift in disguise to make me unique, to make me strong, to be a voice against abuse and to help others in any way that I can that are dealing/have dealth with similar things.  In those moments, I feel grateful for the abuse and I feel like I wouldn’t change a thing about it even if I could. 

I can’t say I’m in a wise mood right now, though.  I hurt…. ouch, it really hurts so bad.  Unhelpful questions and statements scream in my mind and keep me from accepting what really happened… I tell myself it was too crazy to have really happened.  No people could be so cruel.  Such a horrible childhood cannot be possible.  Then I ask the ghosts of parents in my mind why they never seemed to see the pain they put me through (and still do) and why they won’t stop the abuse and how could they be so cruel?… 

What helps is answering the questions and even the statements… They were so cruel, because they were (and are) very mentally ill and untreated.  Such a horrible childhood IS possible and there are many on this earth who have had worse than I have.  It IS possible.  People CAN be that cruel.  People can also be kind and lovely.  It is up to me to bring in the lovely people and to give the abusors as little leverage over me as possible… 

Maybe all this repressed thought and feeling explains why I have had horrible nightmares about my parents for a week now.  The dreams are disturbing enough for me to not even want to sleep.  I get up… usually at about 4am and sit on the couch and force myself awake, because there is no way I’m going back to sleep and face the possibility of another dream of sexual, physical or emotional abuse.  I drink caffeine.  I watch “That 70′s Show”… usually after a few hours have past, I can go back to sleep and not have the nightmares.  I am so tired and frustrated with this screwed up sleep cycle…

I need a break. 

Again, I find myself wishing that my mother would get amnesia and forget that I exist.  I feel like if I knew that she had completely forgotten me that I would finally be safe… because even now I fear getting a phone call from her and going through all this again…. the pretending to be “normal” with all the tension under the surface and my mother getting more and more inappropriate and abusive over time finally ending with a peak of accusations and craziness and being told what an evil person I am and being reminded of years of memories of abuse…

Maybe this time I’ll be lucky and she really will just let me be or I’ll finally have the nerve to refuse to respond to her overtures.  All I know right now is that this cycle has got to end.  It hurts too much and I’m tired of the flashbacks her tantrums cause me. 

Kind words would be much appreciated.  For now, I guess I’ll finally let the tears come… even if I’m afraid that I will never stop crying… sigh…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Small Acts Can Move Mountains…

 Commentor Twistie posted a beautiful comment in response to my Small Things & Great Love post that I think deserves it’s own post:

Sometimes what is a small act of consideration to you is a huge act of kindness.

When I was thirteen, a girl at school tried to choke me with my own scarf during a recess. It was a terrifying experience. As soon as the attack was over, I went straight to the teacher who was supposed to be monitoring the quad and reported the incident. I was already on the verge of hysteria, but I guess she decided that since I was able to get to her under my own power (or maybe because I ‘asked’ for the attack by wearing a scarf in the first place) clearly the incident was of no consequence. She did nothing at all.

So…I was violently attacked at a time when I was minding my own business, the attacker got away without so much as a reminder that it’s not nice to try to choke people, and the person who was supposed to be keeping me safe couldn’t figure out what the big deal was when someone had cut off my ability to breathe with malice aforethought. Goodbye verge of hysteria, hello real thing.

A friend was trying to comfort me. She wasn’t the best at dealing with strong emotions, and was utterly powerless to do me any practical good, so we both thought. Then she did a little thing; she offered me her Coke.

I don’t even like colas, I never have. But she offered me kindness in a moment when I needed it more than I could ever have said. Taking that drink was taking her love. To this day, I have never tasted anything as good.

So the next time you think what you have to offer is too little, I hope you’ll remember that your kindness is no small thing. When you play with those kittens, you’re giving them your heart. When you smile walking down the street, you never know who of the people you’re passing may need that simple act of grace.

Sometimes the tiny gestures we make are vital to another.

Small things done with love can be the things that move mountains.

Twistie, you are beautiful.  Thank you for sharing your story. 

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Small Things & Great Love

I recently got a little book about Mother Theresa and found a quote that has become very important to me:

We can do no great things, only small things with great love.

  

Here, I think Mother Theresa was talking about how to make the world a more loving place or how to change it for the better… as sometimes it seems to be a struggle for me to get through a day (thank you depression and PTSD), I’ve been applying this to my own little world and wow… it’s a relief.  For example, I often get overwhelmed by the idea of cleaning up our whole apartment.  It is pretty big, plus we have a lot of stuff and four cats.  But, just focusing on a small thing that I can do with great love has been such a relief.  I don’t find cleaning up so overwhelming.  Afterwards I feel far more satisfied by what I’ve done, instead of drained and wondering why I didn’t do more. 

 

Coming from my history of eating disorders, sometimes Intuitive Eating and/or HAES can seem so complex and impossible.  I call myself recovered from eating disorders nowadays, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my rough spots.  I’m finding that this idea of small acts of great love can be EXTREMELY helpful in the application of IE and HAES ides.  A meal can become a small act of great love.  Cooking or a walk around the park can too.  The idea of eating a meal mindfully or getting up and moving joyfully no longer feel like the big scary tasks that they can seem like at times. 

 

Joyful movement is one of my biggest struggles at the moment, actually.  I have a long and disturbing history of over-exercise.  I’ve spent the last several years just trying to learn what an active live can be like without turning it all into some perfectionistic torture project that doesn’t respect my needs or limits.  I’ve tried so many things to try to help myself let go of the unhelpful ways of thinking of exercise, but I have never found anything to helpful as this small acts with great love thing.  The whole “exercise program” that I may want to implement no longer matters.  Getting super-competitive with myself no longer matters.  Doing everything perfectly doesn’t matter.  What matters is holding onto the love aspect of joyful movement… and when I start having a hard time holding onto the love or it starts feel unloving, I know when to stop quite clearly.  And guess what… I still get good exercise without stumbling all over my own hang-ups in thinking about exercise.  It feels good… and, more importantly, it feels safe.

 

For folks who don’t have an eating disordered history, the ideal of exercise feeling “safe” might seem weird.  However, after decades of abusing my body to the point that I couldn’t think myself out of a paper bag, feeling safe enough to trust myself not to hurt myself with exercise or food or anything else is EXTREMELY important. 

 

But, beyond eating disorders, I have a feeling that this idea of small acts of great love could be helpful to all sorts of people in all sorts of ways…

 

Here is another beautiful quote from Mother Theresa that I found today:

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

To me, this idea is counterintuitive and revolutionary.  I can be so impatient – expecting myself to be an expert in something before I’ve even started… expecting to be a great success at riding my bike, before I’ve even ridden it and fallen off it a few times.  This quote reminds me that my strength isn’t lying in being a “born expert.”  My strength lies in the little things… and the love I can put into them.  Yeah, there have been a lot of things in life that I hardly had to work at to do really well in, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to learn quickly in all things… and that is okay.  The little things – the small building blocks and taking time and making mistakes and learning slowly – is important as well… actually, more important than the things I learned so quickly, because most things aren’t that easy to learn (for me anyway) and it’s not fair to expect myself to be a quick learner at everything.

One of the funniest things this idea has helped with is my occassional over-consumption of diet soda.    I’ve long tried to stop drinking whenever it no longer felt good to my body… but frankly, even after eight years of work, I still feel pretty disconnected from my body, especially when my depression and/or PTSD are acting up.  Sometimes focusing on when my body wants to stop feels like a dead-end, because sometimes I just have no idea what it wants.  But, I have found that asking myself if drinking the soda still feels loving to be more effective, because I CAN detect this even when I’m feeling disconnected from my body.  I’m not sure why this would work, when keeping track of how my body felt didn’t work… but it does… and I’m very happy that it does. 

 Circling back to Mother Theresa’s original application – charity – I find these words very helpful as well.  Sometimes it feels like a blog post doesn’t matter… or that playing with shelter animals doesn’t matter… or that taking one of my rescued cats out of a walk doesn’t matter because these things are so small.  These quotes remind me that they do matter… prolly a lot more than I know.  I remember that it probably isn’t realistic to expect that I will save all homeless people and pets… but I start to feel hope that what small things I can offer DO MATTER… and that feels pretty sweet.

Thoughts?  Questions?  Comments?

–AngryGrayRainbows

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UK Photoshop Ban for Teen Mags… maybe…

Above are those old, leaked photos of Kim Kardashian before and after photoshop… 

Perhaps I was very naive, but until the last year or so, I had no clue how much photoshopping is actually done in magazines… and yet, for most of my life, I was one of those women who constantly had at least three fashion or “health” magazines chock full of pics of women photoshopped to give some impression of how a perfect female looks.  I wondered why I didn’t have a perfect complection or have perfectly hairless legs even just after shaving and all that.  I felt so amazingly “less than.”  It probably didn’t help that I started buying these kinds of magazines as a pre-teen and into my mid-twenties.  It was too many years of believing everything I saw in magazines.  Am I the only one who has been there? 

The Brits have an interesting idea of banning photo “enhancements” (including photoshop, according to the story I heard on NPR this morning, but cannot find a link to on their website…) in magazines aimed at girls age 16 and under.  Or, maybe they won’t ban it all together, but require advertisers and magazines to disclose the level of photoshopping done in their pics.  I would love to see an influx of real bodies in magazines, but somehow I doubt that it would be that easy or simple.  Magazines do seem so very attached to their photoshopped bodies of women (oh yeah… and men too!).  I don’t doubt that they would fight tooth and nail to subvert any such law.  Sigh…

What do ya’all think?  Do you think this could be a good thing or no?  Pros?  Cons?

For those of you who are still learning how much ridiculous photoshop is out there, here is a great blog that helped me learn how to spot photoshop (and OMG… it IS everywhere!!  sheesh…!) and how not to believe everything I see in glossy pages: PhotoshopDisasters.  I cannot believe that I didn’t notice this stuff before.  Heh.  Also, learning how photoshopped images are in those magazines I loved helped me put them down and realize that they were selling unrealistic images.  Good riddance! 

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Where Did My Curiosity Go?

This morning I spent a fair amount of time wondering where my curiosity went… I know I used to have it. 

This all came to mind after listening to some awesome Buddhist postcasts from the Zune marketplace (if you have a Zune, you can download these podcasts with ease… they are called “Zencast”).  The speaker, Gil, talks about brining a sense of curiosity and wonder to meditative practice and to life in general.  He also talks about not taking things too seriously, because it can overwhelm the experience one is trying to achieve… to just go with the flow and notice without judging in life and in meditation. 

And, I wondered… where did my curiosity go?  Am I naturally a less curious person?  Maybe I am.  But, I think the answer is more complex than that…

The next time I have an appointment with my therapist (in several weeks), I will ask about the effect of trauma on curiosity.  I have a gut feeling that there is a connection between my lack of curiosity and the various hells I have endured in abuse survival.  Off the top of my head, I feel that it made no sense to be curious.  Life just sucked.  Curiosity seemed to get me in a lot of trouble that I would’ve rather have avoided.  Asking my mother questions earned me punishment, scorn and lies.  Trying to be playful, not gravely serious about everything I did and trying to give myself the space and time to be curious got me raged at and beaten by my step-father.  In many ways, they broke my spirit. 

I remember how much it annoyed me that my cousin (who I was very close to growing up) always told me to not take things so seriously.  Ooooo… she made me SO MAD when she said that.  If I didn’t take things so seriously, after all, I could be painfully punished.  She didn’t know that.  But, now that I’m an adult and living in a non-abusive environment, I’m starting to see her point.  I think I’m going to call her today and tell her that and also to thank her for giving me good advice that I just couldn’t take at the time… however, the seeds she planted seem to now be taking root and I’m glad to have her voice in my head reminding me that not everything needs to be an emergency. 

I also have a gut feeling that some of my lack of curiosity has to do with just how I am.  Almost like I was born this way.  I have a strong drive to just get things done.  It doesn’t always leave room for questions or curious observations.  My therapist always tells me that she thinks my ADD may not be real-ADD.  It may be something that looks like ADD that is caused by PTSD… a hyper-vigilance born of growing up in an insane home.  I think it’s both.  I have reactions that I have been told by doctors are only the result of real, honest-to-goodness ADD.  For example, cocaine works like a sedative on me.  I tried it a few times in my early twenties.  I had the best sleep of my life, while my friends spazzed out.  At first, they thought I had overdosed… but after a bit, they learned that I am simply weird.  I look back fondly on that experimentation, because that was a turning point for me where I decided that messing with drugs was a really dangerous thing for me to do.  I never know what they’ll do to me.  The few things I’ve tried have given me ridiculous results.  Even alcohol hangovers are weird for me.  My psychiatrist is ever telling me how weird I am that ritalin can give me the loveliest naps and how klonopin was seriously unpleasant, while many people I know have used these drugs to get very different results than I do…  Geez… get lost in tangents much?  My point is… it is time to accept that I am the way I am.  In some ways, I am like the average Jane.  In some ways, I am not.  My guess is that we are all like this to some extent.  I bring this up, because this point helps me settle down and accept myself AS-IS.  Not how others thing I am.  Not how I “should” be.  Just as-is.

This morning I did a little meditation on my curiosity.  I sat back and listened to where some deep part of my mind thinks my curiosity went.  It was like a daydream.  I dreamed that as a child my curiosity wasn’t safe where I was, so it flew away like fluffy dandelion seeds on a wind.  The seeds went somewhere save… some grassy place near a forest where they could bloom and grow.  My curiosity is still in existence – it just went somewhere safe, you see…  So, I imagined myself being in that safe place with my curiosity blooming all around me and I was glad to know that this part of me was at least somewhere I now know… that it doesn’t feel completely lost to me anymore. 

My lack of curiosity has gotten me in plenty of trouble.  It caused me to not question things that needed to be questioned… that were obvious to others around me that there should’ve been questions.  This came up in my job a lot.  I cannot tell you how tired I am of being asked why I didn’t think something was worth looking more into… well, heck… my brain doesn’t really work that way… at least not very well.  Sigh…  Otherwise, my lack of curiosity makes life boring… and lifeless.  I’m not sure how to describe it better than that.  Life simply loses all flavor and color when we close our senses to the world around us and our questions and wonder dry up. 

I would really love to hear from ya’all how you cultivate your own curiosity.  How do you do this?  Have you had struggles in losing your curiosity like I have?  Did you get it back… if so… how?  I’ll definitely be bringing this all up at my next session, but in the meantime – I want to hear what you guys think.  I’m all ears…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Open Threadiness! 07.08.09

It’s that time again!  As usual, random ramblings  as well as coherent thought are encouraged.  Have at it!

BTW… I got some cacti in the hope my cats wouldn’t eat them, like they eat all other plants.  One of my cats went so far as to eat all the flowers and leaves off a rose bush… I had hoped the thorns would be a turn-off… apparently not.  Wouldn’t you know it – one of my cats is obsessed with the cacti and keeps trying to eat them.  He doesn’t care about thorns, the big weirdo.  Sigh… cats are so weird…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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