The Prime Directive

The Prime Directive

Today I want to talk about something I need to hear, myself. Back around the end of October and early November, I was suddenly exceptionally busy. There was a trip out of state, an anniversary, a CD release party to throw; there were all kinds of socializing and chores and errands and projects. I was fulfilling the world’s agenda for me, ignoring my self-care routines. Then one day, wham, it all hits me at once...and I have to spend the next several days doped to the eyebrows with anti-psychotics. Everything came to a standstill.

Because I forgot. I can’t do all that. I forgot the Prime Directive every person like me needs to follow. It’s as important to me as any breathless crisis of the Starship Enterprise. It’s simple and it goes like this: Put Your Sanity First.

That means first ahead of everything. Everyone. Period.

I suppose you could say I agree with Eckhart Tolle: at any given moment, our state of consciousness is more important than anything else that may be happening. When your brain is prone to go flying off in odd directions, that’s how it has to be. If you’re going to live in the real world, you have to be something that I will loosely call “sane.” Of course, what I consider “sane” and what you consider “sane” can be two very different kettles of fish, and that’s all right. All I really mean by it is “more or less functional” or “sufficiently aware of standard reality.” I do not mean symptom-free, since many of us are virtually never symptom free. We can sometimes function with symptoms, at least to a certain point.

But I take this basic “sanity” level very seriously. If I am driving and I suddenly realize my brain is going south, I turn around and head home. NO destination is worth it. If I’m not feeling sane enough, I skip the party, no matter how much I want to go. If I am not sufficiently sane, I try not to stay in angry discussions (that’s a hard one). Functionality is more important than a job, or whatever I’m doing, or any plans I had, or even my husband (I have a lot of trouble remembering that one). There’s just nothing out there more important than keeping my head relatively straight, unless my physical survival is under immediate threat.

My strategy when things get weird is to withdraw. I am better off in a quiet place alone where I can take my pill, get calm, and not scream at anybody. Other people need more structure or activity, not less, and they get very busy. Others need exactly what I don’t want: people to talk to. Coping skills are individual. If it works for you, it’s worth doing.

But whatever your coping skills are, they need to be used early and consistently. What I did last month was ignore all my personal warning signs and plow on. I kept trying to function like I had a garden-variety brain.

I don’t have a garden-variety brain, and neither do you (maybe nobody does). My state of consciousness requires special, gentle treatment to thrive, like an exotic hothouse flower. The difference between me and those fragile flowers is that I can care for myself. The trick is to pay attention, every day, and not forget.

Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She has also published two romantic comedies. All three books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Kindle Editions, iBooks, and other major vendors; or  you can order them from your local bookstore. Visit her web page at www.lafruche.net, or see her catalog at www.lastlaughproductions.net. Her newest project is a guided meditation CD produced with her husband, musician Robert Hamaker; available on iTunes and many other venues.

Rx for Anxiety

Anxiety is one of the more stressful altered states life can dish out. If the feeling is continual, and applies to everything, always, then you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and you are always on the edge of screaming. It’s very hard to live life this way, with “relaxation” a fantasy word that only applies to other people. Unless you are drugged, it just never goes away, ever. You live in grinding fear of what the future, the next hour, the next minute, will bring. Your very next action could be the one that will send the sky crashing in on you, and you can’t help tensing for it.

Short of a strong right to the jaw, or heavy meds, there are only a few things I’ve ever found that helped much. The list includes music, reading, deep breathing, yoga, meditation, natural beauty, and really good hanky panky. You probably have a few remedies of your own. The other really serious deterrent is living strictly in the present moment.

There are a number of Eastern philosophies that recommend this, and they do so for a lot of interesting reasons. But the one that counts for us is this: if you are only right here, right now, you are not thinking of the future. And fear - which is what anxiety really is - is all about the future: what will happen IF, what will happen AFTER, what will happen NEXT.

The present-moment-only state of mind takes your whole, alert attention, pulling you away from all that speculation. It is a great state to be in if you’re playing sports, because it jacks up your reaction time. It’s the state we should all be in while driving, but mostly aren’t. It is the way not to think yourself to death. It is also the behavior recommended to addicts to get through drug yearnings. One moment at a time, resisting a craving - or dealing with almost any pain - is bearable. It’s the anticipation of an hour or a week or a lifetime that breaks us down.

When you are in mental pain, try to drag your attention OUTWARD again. What color is the curtain? What does the carpet smell like? Savor the taste of your coffee, your fingertip on the table top, the feel of your jacket settling across your shoulders. What is the barista saying to that brunette? How many studs is she wearing? How many people in this room? What is their age range? Do they all speak English? Any with an accent? NOTICE what is around you, react only to what is required this very second, and you will feel better. The voice that tortures you cannot be heard as well when all your senses are engaged and your mind is focussed on right now, right here.

By the way, this is not only useful for Anxiety. Depression is based partly on dwelling on the past (and its failures); if you drag yourself to this moment, and it really is intolerable, perhaps you will be moved to do something about it, which beats the hell out of brooding. And if you are heading towards psychosis, putting your hand out and touching a real wall, smelling the scent of an actual couch, might help more than any words going by (inside or outside your head). It couldn’t hurt, anyway.

Try it. Practice bringing yourself back to this very second as many times as you can remember to during the day. Even if everything you’ve ever dreaded comes to pass, one moment at a time you will outlast it. Nothing is forever. Only for now.

Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She has also published two romantic comedies. All three books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Kindle Editions, iBooks, and other major vendors; or  you can order them from your local bookstore. Visit her web page at www.lafruche.net, or see her catalog at www.lastlaughproductions.net. Her newest project is a guided meditation CD produced with her husband, musician Robert Hamaker.

Addendum - The Art of Derangement

My last blog talked about mental health programs that emphasized Art as a means toward recovery. I had wanted to add the Art Works Gallery in Riverside, California, to that list; but I could not find an active page on the web and concluded sadly that they were defunct.

Good news, however. I received an email from their Services Coordinator, and they are very much alive and well, though their web presence seems to be in some sort of transition.  Let me tell you about them, as an addition to my earlier list of resources.

Art Works and Recovery Art Corps is one arm of the Jefferson Transitional Programs, a respected long-time recovery system. The only URL I have at the moment is www.jtp.friends.org;  perhaps the link there to the Art Works program will be working again by the time I post this. The gallery is on 3741 6th Street in Riverside, and is open Monday through Saturday. Their classes and activities for October alone included collage, painting small-scale items, finger weaving, and ‘zines and journalling, to name a few. They also opened an exhibit in October oriented toward empowerment of the artists associated with the gallery. Their latest flyer announces “We believe in the wellness and healing that art so often brings to artists in every genre...we have seen countless artists, writers, craftsmen, actors and musicians find meaning and purpose through...artistic endeavors.” Amen to that!

If you’re anywhere near Riverside and not yet involved with this center, stop by the gallery at 10:30 on Thursdays to sign up. They can be reached at (951) 683-1279, or email:   jtpartcenter@gmail.com.

My understanding is that this project is supported by funds from the California Mental Health Services Act which was passed a few years ago. Those funds are likely to be differently distributed soon due to a recent bill (I believe it’s AB100 but don’t quote me) that gives control of these funds less to the State and Administrative level and more to the County level, down where the action really takes place and the needs are better known. Some programs are bound to be shuffled around and defunded, but it is to be hoped Art Works will carry on.

More news on the reshuffling when I figure it out a little better; stay tuned.


Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She has also published two romantic comedies. All three books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Kindle Editions, iBooks, and other major vendors; or  you can order them from your local bookstore. Visit her web page at www.lafruche.net, or see her catalog at www.lastlaughproductions.net.

The Art of Derangement

One of the discoveries in psychiatric treatment these days seems to be that artistic endeavors help us get sane.

Hell, I could have told them that.

I discovered long ago that art – in my case in the form of writing – is one of the few places on the planet that has room for unusual thinking. There is praise for being original, even if original isn’t always beautiful. I discovered decades ago that in certain artistic circles there is even a certain cachet to mental illness, since it guarantees that your points of view will not be run of the mill, and may help give others a new slant on old issues.

Of course, art is good therapy, or there wouldn’t be sand trays, drama therapy, music therapy, art therapy, at hospitals and clinics all over the nation. But it seems these days that artistic expression is also coming into its own as a way for the mentally ill to come back to themselves and connect back to mainstream reality.

Look for instance at PeaceLove Studios in Providence, Rhode Island. The founder of PeaceLove, Jeffrey Sparr, has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and discovered to his delight that when he painted, he had no symptoms. Now he runs a series of studios and community classes dedicated to connecting people through original art. Check them out at http://www.peacelovestudios.com/about. I guarantee you will find it heartwarming and hopeful.

Closer to home for me here in California is the Peer Recovery Art Project, which operates out of Modesto. The P.R.A.P. exhibits artwork every third Thursday  at the downtown Modesto Art Walks, puts out a monthly newsletter called Renaissance, holds art exhibits at no cost to the artists, and received the 2010 Stanislaus Arts Council Excellence in Arts Award. It is described as “an art collaborative in which some of the artists may have lived experience as mental health consumers and their art may reflect that experience but the emphasis is on respect of the art,” says CEO John Black. One of the purposes of the group is to help end stigma, which is a nice thing to be doing while you enjoy yourself creating. This 501 C (3) public charity group can be found at www.peerrecoveryartproject.org, or email them at peerrecoveryart@yahoo.com, or call (209)985-0467.

And if your art is not visual but literary, you might consider submitting work for publication to Open Minds Quarterly, in Canada, or their offshoot online, The Writer’s Circle (both projects of the Northern Initiative for Social Action). They accept work from persons with psychiatric diagnoses, although all the work need not be about psychiatric topics, and have an Artists’ Loft that produces the artwork for the 8 ½ x 11” glossy magazine. Recent projects include a poetry page and a photography contest. Open Minds Quarterly has its own Facebook page, if that’s your cup of tea, or check them out at: http://nisa.on.ca/index.php?option=content&task=category&sectionid=3&id=11&Itemid=30.  You can email them at openminds@nisa.on.ca.

In California, you can probably can do a lot worse to connect yourself to art than by visiting NAMI’s site for “consumer” (that means those of us with a diagnosis) programs, to see what else is going on, not just with art but with all of their fine services. You can find them at www.namicaconsumerprograms.wordpress.com.

Meanwhile, don’t wait for anybody. Just dig out that old jar of playdough and have some fun. What could it possibly hurt? And it might help. A lot.

Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She has also published two romantic comedies. All three books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Kindle Editions, iBooks, and other major vendors or  you can order them from your local bookstore. Visit her web page at www.lafruche.net, or see her catalog at www.lastlaughproductions.net.

Who's Doing the Driving; Conclusion

This is the final part of a series I started some time ago about how to regain some control of your own mind. This edition is about emotions.

Emotions are important. I’m not going to say they aren’t. They help us decide what we care about, what our values are, how to weigh the relative importance of events around us.

But if we have a mood disorder, we need to understand that our emotions are not reliable guides. We need to really get it at a GUT LEVEL that emotions are actually chemical responses. They are not “you” any more than the little naggy voice in the back of your head is “you,” and if you have a mood disorder they will mislead you 90% of the time. Emotions are generated in various brain structures (the amygdala is the one I remember) in response to certain stimuli. The amygdala sets up chemicals that produce fear in situations it deems bad for survival. These responses are set in us very young. They are strong and reasonless, and they do not mature as we grow older. Emotional pain is just as strong at 35 as it was at 3. Fear is just as scary. The only difference is that through socializing and other learning, we have developed the capacity to run those feelings by other parts of our brains, analyze them, and choose an appropriate response. It may feel like it’s happening instantaneously and without our will, but there is a process, that can be interrupted.

The difficulty with mood disorders is that our brains were set on OVERKILL, sometimes at a very early age (that setting can be adjusted somewhat by the right medicines, but it’s rarely a complete solution). Think of it as having your stereo locked in at a very high volume. The emotions are so big, and so loud, it is hard to notice anything else.  For instance, with an anxiety disorder, just about all the incoming data gets labeled as “dangerous,” and the chemical response of fear gets slapped on almost everything that happens. The whole world feels dangerous, and we worry and stress and perhaps start withdrawing from all these risks.

But if we understand that this is not our  soul’s true response to the world, but an overdose of chemicals, we can delay our fearful reaction until the chemical overflow stops. That takes about 90 seconds. In only 90 seconds, the chemical floods our bloodstream and then, if we don’t buy it or hook into it, passes out of circulation. After that, it’s possible to choose some other reaction, using the same analytical parts of our brains that helped us learn not to scream when we are hungry.

As I counseled once in a previous blog, your best bet with oversized emotions (such as rage) may be to do NOTHING until the chemical surge passes and you actually have some choices again.

Don’t let just one or two parts of your brain boss you around. Stop, see who’s talking, and decide if you want to listen. Don’t let it be up to the primitive parts of your brain stem. You can still go with your first instinct, if you want to. Just decide for yourself.

Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She has also published two romantic comedies. All three books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Kindle Editions, Nook books, and other major vendors; or you can order them from your local bookstore. Visit her web page at www.lafruche.net, or see her catalog at www.lastlaughproductions.net

The View from a Pit

I am indulging myself this week by posting a relevant piece of my creative nonfiction. Thanks for reading.

I remember being drunk and suicidal. It is like crouching in the bottom of an old, dry well, a deep one, maybe a mile down. You don’t know how you came to this old abandoned farmstead anyway, you didn’t see the covered pit, and now you are trapped and wounded and thirsty and no one has a rope long enough to save you.

The real problem is not the pit. It’s not even the broken leg you got when you landed. The problem is the view. It’s small and dark. You can hardly see any sky at all, just a little pinhole. And sometimes it’s night and there’s nothing to see. And you get to thinking maybe the sky is a charade; maybe it’s not really up there and not really as blue as you remember and not worth climbing for since as you can see it’s only two inches wide.

You start believing it’s not worth the effort to climb out. Even if you did, you would still have a broken leg. And you would still be lost on an abandoned farmstead, still hungry and thirsty and alone. It’s just too far to medical care and warmth and comfort – especially if there is no sky.

So what we need in the bottom of the pit is someone who brings the blue sky with them. Someone warm and alive who convinces you that the sky still reaches to infinity, even if you can’t see it, and that under that sky there is still room for you. Someone who will be there with you when you climb out of the well.

Bless all the people who descend to the bottom of the pit when ropes don’t reach. Bless those who bring the blue sky with them, in their eyes and in their voices, for they are better than drink or food or even ropes and ladders. They show us there’s something up there. They give us a reason to climb.

Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She has also published two romantic comedies. All three books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Kindle Editions, and other major vendors, and you can order them from your local bookstore. Or visit her web page at www.lafruche.net.

 

Take an Animal Break

I was going to talk this week about emotions. But I’m going to take a break to advocate for a grand old institution: the live-in pet.

My morning was lighted up today by the kitten - almost cat - who lives in our house. She will reach her first birthday in just a few days. She plunks herself down on the bed in the mornings, rolls so her stomach is up, and waits for me to do my stuff, in perfect trust and faith. Sometimes she purrs before I even get started.

Doctors have known for a long time that pets are good for the mentally ill, and if you have even a tiny bit of money in your budget for cat food or dog food – or bird or rat or lizard food, for that matter – I would urge you to get one. Some places which otherwise don’t like animals will let you keep one if you have a note from your doctor showing that a pet will help improve and stabilize your condition, or words to that effect. The love and trust of a pet is a valuable thing, and its response to you, and your knowledge that you are taking care of a living creature, are very health-encouraging things.

I think pets are a sort of energy-transformer in a living package. You give them your emotions. You pet them when you’re sad or bored or play with them just to try to feel better – and you do. It purrs or it woofs or it tiptoes over your hand, and you DO feel better. It turns your weeping into a cheep of contentment. For one thing, if your mind is a very complex and painful place, it is entirely soothing to watch a beast go about its instinctual and simple behaviors without (presumably) the kind of angst we are stuck with. Just having someone – a living presence – there in the room when you come home is a sort of blessing. Mental illness is often a very isolated and lonely place. Having company is a good thing. Company that doesn’t get tired of you or complain or tell you to just buck up and shut up and FIX your life, as people so tiresomely do. Your pet accepts you as you are, period. Even a hamster on its wheel or a lizard on its rock  is a living presence that accepts you as part of its life.

Of course, the flip side of this is that you have to provide for its care, even if you are flipping out. Food and litter or cedar shavings or what have you are minimal provisions, and if you don’t feel you can provide them regularly, then pets are a bad idea. Killing your pet rat by neglect will not make you feel any more sane. And there is the spectre of occasional veterinary needs, though many of the standard surgeries and immunizations are provided for free, or very cheaply, by the ASPCA. But if you check on local service organizations, you may find – as did a friend of mine in San Francisco – that there are even groups  that will help pay veterinary bills (I believe this one was called PAWS). Perhaps most importantly, find someone nearby who will agree to take care of your animal at short notice if you need to go to the hospital or anything else wild goes down. This kind of planning will also go a ways toward reconciling your landlord to a live-in animal – he doesn’t have to worry that it will end up on his hands.

If all this is too much, you might want to stick with plants. Living things are good. But they don’t make those cute little sounds.

Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She has also published two romantic comedies. All three books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Kindle Editions, and other major vendors, and you can order them from your local bookstore. Or visit her web page at www.lafruche.net.