Tag: mental health

The Detective’s Toolbox

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“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – e.e. cummings

Mr. D hasn’t wanted to go to his pre-school lately. It’s been such a marked change that it’s evoked the inner detective in me trying to figure out why. Was it the week that the lead teacher went on vacation? Is there a shift in schedule or meals that is bugging him? Is there a particular classmate that he’s having trouble with?

At four-years-old, Mr. D doesn’t seem to have the answers to the questions. I say that like his age is the factor. I’m sure it is in part, but I think we all get stumped about what’s bugging us from time to time.

Yesterday, we’d just parked at the curb and were just sitting there collecting ourselves before we went in to school. Cooper, the dog, was in the front seat next to me. Mr. D from the back seat said, “Cooper is sad.” I asked why and he said, “Cooper is sad because he misses us.”

Oooh, my first break in the case.

So I tried two more things. At the end of the day, I asked Mr. D to tell me a story about school. He told me a story about John waiting in line for the roller coaster on the playground. Another student, Molly, gave John a look and it made him sad. So Mr. D went to play with John and it made John happy.

The second thing was to have him show me something he’d learned that day. They are studying the human body this week. In their study of the stomach and intestines, they put bread into plastic bags with soda water died green to mimic stomach acid.

We repeated the experiment at home so that he could teach his older sister and me. Yes, it’s really gross, but I took one for science’s sake. And giving Mr. D a chance to showcase a bit of how he spent his day made him feel proud of his learning.

Here’s what I noticed. That when we don’t know what’s wrong, we project it on to others like Cooper the dog. We also can get to it by telling stories or acting things out. I haven’t cracked the case entirely yet but I’ve started figuring out the toolset. A similar set of tools probably works for all of us.

Speaking of telling stories, Vicki and I talk with David from the Pinwheel in a Hurricane and unwanted blogs on the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast this week. It is a fantastic episode where David talks about doing story work to find clarity, integration, and healing. Check it out: Episode 53: Practicing Creativity with David

5 Things I Wish For You Today

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“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do , Something you are, And something you give away.” – John Lennon

1. A moment where your heart touches the heart of another.

2. At least one belly laugh that, in the best case, makes it so you can’t breathe for a split second.

3. The calm feeling that you are okay right here and right now.

4. Something unexpected that creates a ripple of knowing that magic exists.

5. An experience where you notice the sun on your skin, the rain on your face, or the wind at your back.

I wrote this as a list of what I wished for my eight-year-old and four-year-old kids on Christmas day. Then I realized that it was what I wanted for myself on Christmas day. Finally, it dawned on me that this is a an everyone on every day kind of list.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Climbing Out of My Gunk

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“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” – John Muir

This post was previously published on 12/14/2022. Heads up – you may have already read this!

The other day I felt like I was working at my desk when pressure tipped the scales and slid into anxiety. I had a client project that wasn’t going well, something that I tried to do for a friend didn’t turn out as I hoped, the holiday bills were adding up and I had strange red spots splotching the skin on my face. In response, I was eating all the Christmas candy I could find even though I knew the only way that candy would solve my problems was that it soon would be my biggest belly-ache. So I managed to put down the sugar and I went for a walk.

“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”

John Muir

For all the John Muir and Henry David Thoreau quotes that I love, the person that I often think of when I feel this way is Beck Weathers. I wrote a post about him – The Power of Stories. He is the Texas pathologist caught in the 1996 storm on Everest that Jon Krakauer wrote about in Into Thin Air.

Beck tells the story that he climbed to escape depression. He’d head out into the mountains because climbing helped alleviate the darkness he was feeling. But it became a cycle of its own – he had to climb bigger and bigger things in order to keep depression at bay. Which is how he ended up at 27,000 feet on Everest in one of the deadliest storms.

I relate to Beck’s story not because I’ve suffered from depression but because mountains have given me relief from my own psychology. I started climbing in my late 20’s because I was bored after breaking up with a boyfriend and yearning for something bigger. I literally turned the corner on a street one day, Mt. Rainier lorded over my view, as it does so often in Seattle, and I knew I had to climb it.

What is it about climbing that makes it such a relief? For me it’s that when I’m having to work so hard to keep my body safe, my mind finally takes a back seat. When I’ve reduced what I have to do to the simple task of putting one foot in front of another and find a rhythm that works, I relax because I have far fewer choices about what to do or say next. At the same time, the perspective puts my ego into check because I’m no longer the main player in the small stage of my life, I’m a microscopic speck on the enormous stage of nature.

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

John Muir

In many senses, climbing was the beginning of my meditation journey. It slows my mind down, it simplifies what I need to do and it puts my ego in its place. To a degree now even walking does that for me when the muscle memory kicks in.

My favorite meditation is one that makes me think back to my climbing experiences. It’s where I feel the weight of everything I’m carrying on my back – the way the shoulder straps dig into my shoulders and the hip belt cinches my gut, the pressure of it all pushing my feet heavily into the ground. And then I take off the metaphorical backpack and sit with it in front of me, emptying out everything I carry one by one onto the ground before me. As I watch myself unload my problems and worries, I get a sense of detachment from them, a space that opens ever so slightly because they have been separated from my back. And then, after a few minutes of unloading, contemplating and breathing, I reload my backpack with only what I need to carry.

I always walk away from that meditation feeling lighter. Like walking and climbing, it gives me a bit of perspective and distance. I still need to return and figure out my problems but I can do it from a more capacious sense.

That happened with Beck Weathers as well. When he returned from Everest, albeit without his toes, nose, most of one arm and the fingers from the other, he was able to deal with his depression more holistically. His story always gives me inspiration – that I can face what’s weighing me down, use the tools I’ve learned from my experience, and maybe even roll it into something hopeful for others.

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”

John Muir

And so it went the other day with my anxiety – I took it out for a walk and it came back in a much more manageable size. One where I could sit with one thing at a time, hold it in perspective to life and the world and then deal with it in its own rhythm.

I only scarfed down just a little more candy along the way.

I’ve written a post about a different type of letting go on Wise & Shine: Am I Copying? Getting Over Writing Defensiveness

The Power of Story

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“Quiet the mind and the soul will speak.” – Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

This is a piece was published previously on 10/19/2022. Heads up, you may have already read this.

Among the many stories my ex-husband told me of his precarious childhood, there is one that sticks out. He was five or six years old, living in Florida and his mom was dating the Hat Man, a man who wove and sold palm frond hats to tourists by the side of the road.

One night after he went to bed, my ex-husband woke up and smelled smoke. He tried to get out of his bedroom but his mom had locked him in from the outside. Finally he escaped out of a window to discover that his mom and the Hat Man had fallen asleep while smoking and drinking too much and set the house on fire.

Now that I’m a parent, I often think of my ex-husband’s story even though we divorced years before I ever had kids. The story of the precocious and energetic young boy who was probably a little bit of a pain in the ass locked into a room so his mom could drink in peace and set the house on fire.

I think of it when I need more patience to coax cooperation instead of compel it. I think of the story when I need extra capacity to provide good care to little ones when I am needing care myself. I think of it when I’m digging deep to do my best when my kids seem to be bringing their worst. I think of the story when I’m grateful that my parents modeled kind and consistent care with me as I was growing up.

When we tell our stories, or when we as writers tell other people’s stories, we often can’t see the effect they have on those who read them. Our narratives have the power to inspire others and become fuel for good and bad decisions. When we do a good job of humanizing the trauma that comes with life, we pass on the comfort of being seen and open the source for healing. We can lay the ground for growth by telling the stories of when life wasn’t so good.

I thought of my ex-husband’s story again the other day when I heard a Ten Percent Happier podcast with therapist Dr. Jacob Ham. He was talking about relational trauma, the small moments of neglect, abuse and fear some children experience from a very early age.

Dr. Ham described this trauma, “What’s really screwed up is as a baby that the only way to deal with fear and terror is to run toward your caregivers. They are supposed to protect you. You scream out hoping that they’ll come to your rescue but if they are the ones hurting you, then it puts you in a terrifying loop where you want to run from them but at the same time your body tells you to go find them. And then you spend the rest of your days trying to figure out how to resolve that paradox.

“I have seen it [the paradox] be worked through. The key term that and I haven’t found a good layman’s term for is reawakening the capacity for mentalization. And mindfulness is a very close overlap to mentalization but the term means knowing that other person has a mind and that I have a mind and being curious about what’s happening in your mind as well as being curious about what’s happening in my mind.”

Which I interpret as that Dr. Ham works with his patients uses mindfulness to notice the deep stories in their minds and unpack their reactions that are fueled by them. In other words, the power of the story runs through this all – to tell where we’ve been, to inspire and inform others and to discover our internal paradoxes when we face ourselves.

No wonder being a writer is such a rich pursuit. Rich in power to change that is, because rich in monetary reward doesn’t necessarily follow. But it should – because it’s important work.

I’ve also published a post today on the Wise & Shine blog today with my favorite quotes about writing: My Favorite Writer Quotes

(featured photo from Pexels)