Comments on: We Might Live Like Never Before

By: bluemorpho3

bluemorpho3 — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:10:43 +0000

that’s right with the f’d up baseline…
I’m currently reading into skills training that is used in the treatment of borderline personality disorders with dialectical behavioral therapy. This is also used for PTSD, and seems to be the most effective known therapy today. Nobody does this in the small city where I live…
Interestingly they are using some kind of vipassana / ZEN meditation as a skill to break the old behavioral patterns.

And I did read a very little into schema therapy, where schemas are “unconditional beliefs and feelings about oneself in relation to the environment. Schemas are a priori truths that are implicit and taken for granted” – and they can be “maladaptive”.

Healing our maladaptive schemas, so that’s another way of saying what we need?

I really think that anything that is successfully used to help borderliners must make sense for “smaller” problems, too.

So, roll on the ZEN
I think Albert wrote in similar directions, quoting some other behavioral therapy – and there really seems to be something in it. Breaking this damn deeply rooted patterns / schemas / habits…

Hope it makes sense, I’m in a terrible hurry currently…

By: AlienBaby

AlienBaby — Sun, 03 May 2009 04:10:56 +0000

I was just reminded last night of how difficult it was and how long it took to heal the chronic anxiety that developed from my physiological response to being shocked awake repeatedly by loud noises and vibrations (I had a neighbor who was being as big an @#$%^&* as that drummer was that I lived under). I imagine it’s not unlike how it is for people who have to sleep amid gunfire: namely, CONSTANT fight or flight, without the opportunity to even slow your heart rate.

So I can’t be cavalier about PTSD. When your baseline of existence is totally f’d up, it’s hard for anything else to feel normal.

On the up side, I was feeling sentimental about leaving my apartment, and my neighbor pretty much cleared that right up.

By: bluemorpho3

bluemorpho3 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:19:39 +0000

Thanks again.
I have great respect for people who (successfully) treat PTSD.
I hope we will soon find one. There is always the danger that stirring things up unsuccessfully makes everything worse.
Not becoming unhappy when “shaking hands with the devil” is a high art…I’m working on it.
The yellow flowers, the green grass, the excellent blackbird singing and JJ Cale today on the radio are helpful
(they played “roll on” from the 2007 album, could not find this at youtube, but “carry on” comes close)

Producing some of the right neurotransmitters the days after another neuro storm from hell is what I seem to have learned…

Take care!

By: AlienBaby

AlienBaby — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:44:14 +0000

If you were here where I live, I could send you to a woman I know who does couples therapy AND is trained to work with PTSD (as well as body/eating issues). She does EMDR, that rapid eye movement thing.

Ruiz: “If your partner gets angry, you can say, ‘You have the right to be mad, but I don’t have to be mad because you are mad. I didn’t do anything to cause your anger.’ You don’t have to accept your partner’s anger at all, but you can allow her to be angry. There is no need to argue; just allow her to be what she is, allow her to heal without intervening. And you can also agree not to interfere with your own healing process.

“Let’s say that you are a man and you are happy, and for whatever reason, your partner cannot be happy. She has personal problems; she is dealing with her garbage, and she is unhappy. Because you love her, you will support her, but supporting her doesn’t mean you are going to be unhappy because she is unhappy…”

I’m sure she’s doing her best. That’s something that occurred to me the other day, frustrated to tears with myself: I’m infuriated with the ways I’m stuck…why should this be any less true of the people I get impatient with? Suddenly I felt a lot more compassionate toward certain people.

By: bluemorpho3

bluemorpho3 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:11:31 +0000

Thanks for the kind words.
I feel like I deserve the medal only when she’s healed or at least feels much better…
Highly trained help is harder to find as one might think. Thousands of homeless Vietnam and Iraq veterans would agree. For us, two attempts already failed. But seeking help is definitely always on the agenda.
I own the book “4 agreements”, but did not read it yet.
The last series of Albert: I had the feeling that it makes sense what he writes, that it is similar to my own experiences. It will be very interesting to see what he will put up in the future…
There is a very valid core in a lot of what Albert writes, and what you wrote, this whole strange blog organism
The nonresistance thing…
Allowing the full experience…
Yes, I found this useful, to just allow the experience, how negative it may be, just remember, as Albert also pointed out, to balance this with the required pinch of setting boundaries…
Setting boundaries calmly, I might add! State that it was not fair / not right / is not true / was too much for you etc., don’t shout, leave the room without slamming the door, add a pinch of time, and show that you still care…
I think there’s one thing about the very negative things, like PTSD, that these things make some things really clear, which just are not very obvious when the problems are less severe…but the same principles do apply with “smaller” problems. I guess this is what Ruiz says about that nothing anyone does has something to do with you personally. Much of it hasn’t, I would say. Hopefully *some* of the more positive things anyone does *have* something to do with you
Does it make sense?
Have a nice weekend!

By: AlienBaby

AlienBaby — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:49:48 +0000

Sorry about my tardiness, I’m only getting legit internet away from home right now. Pffbbb. That and a past-due article and wanting to make a somewhat thoughtful reply held me up…

I can see now why you always want to cheer me up! You get the virtual gold medal this week for not abandoning your beloved because of her difficulties. But I hope she is also getting highly trained professional help. PTSD, especially, ain’t no messing around…

I lived with a clinically depressed person once (not a lover), and at times I lost patience, I thought I would kill her! Then, later, I became similarly depressed…kind of the universe’s way of teaching me a lesson. I had been letting her carry all the heaviness and sickness while I carried all the strength and supposed centered-ness. Not that I’m saying that’s your dynamic at all, but I had forgotten how her weaknesses both drove me crazy and kept me together!

Have you read Don Miguel Ruiz? For some reason I thought of him.

Your partner has a certain amount of garbage. Knowing your partner has garbage, you allow her to deal with her own garbage. You are going to love her and accept her with all of her garbage. You are going to respect her garbage. You are not in the relationship to clean your partner’s garbage; she is going to clean her own.

That’s from “The Mastery of Love.” I would love to talk to Mrs. Ruiz.

Did you find the last series on Urban Monk helpful?

By: bluemorpho3

bluemorpho3 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:28:22 +0000

I was trying to throw Albert’s advice in your general direction

My situation…I live together with a woman I love and two dogs. Sounds good so far…wouldn’t there be her PTSD and anorexia. The rest is very hard to explain. And I’m not fully anonymous here…

I love your PTBS and I love your bony hips?
Yes, in the spirit of how you described it, of course I love her despite her problems. But of course I want the problems to go away. It’s probably the worst thing you can imagine to have to watch a loved one suffer, and know that you yourself also have added to her problems. “I left you in places of despair” is not something lightweight to say if the despaired person is on the edge to suicide.

Know that I never give up as long as I breathe.
I have seen that the ocean has a bottom, you can’t sink deeper than that. Oh yes, you could dig a hole in the ground
You see, my gallows humor is intact.

By: AlienBaby

AlienBaby — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:34:18 +0000

I LOVE that line from “Animals Were Gone!!!” To me, as a woman, it says “You don’t have to be that glossy magazine ideal, you don’t have to be like the shiny New Age happy people holding hands, at least one man on the planet is capable of loving a woman with physical and emotional ‘flaws.’” Suddenly, magically, what even makes up a ‘flaw’ becomes subjective. For a long time, at the studio, I secretly felt inadequate for some of those very reasons…surrounded by slender, perfect yoginis who burbled platitudes about bliss. Ingrid essentially got me kicked out of there because I didn’t toe that line! Of course, it wasn’t depression I was bringing to the table then, it was ‘unacceptable’ ideas and feelings. Too much of something, rather than an absence of it. They probably would have liked me better depressed, then I wouldn’t have made any trouble!

I don’t know what your situation is, but I know taking Albert’s advice has made me feel better in the past. I made a point of being generous with a woman of whom I was jealous.

By: bluemorpho3

bluemorpho3 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:39:41 +0000

“I love your depression and I love your double chin” he sings,
*after* she is gone.
I love you but I don’t love your depression, I say.
I want your depression to go away – as long as it is here the reduced emotionality that comes with it destroys the relationship.
“I’m depressed because I’m alone” she says.
You’re alone because you’re depressed.
Catch22?
No, I believe we can kill the catch22, too.
Love is all you need.
I’m despaired enough to say this.
“Give what you don’t have” a post at UrbanMonk said.
And the monk needs to know…
Love is the only thing that increases the more you give it away, or how does the saying go?
It sounds banal, but there is no other way.
Cynicism must not win!

I have spoken

By: AlienBaby

AlienBaby — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:54:06 +0000

BM3: Ah, yes, it occurred to me later you were probably kidding. As we say over here, PSYCH!!! Your fence story is pretty amusing.

Chris: All I’ve got right now is this gig with a startup online magazine that doesn’t really pay. I’m not even sure they appreciate my sense of humor over there. I half expected to get a slap for the cheeky way I started my last column.

I like to think I’m as healthy as I can be under the circumstances, I eat lots of fruits and veggies (and no meat) and I walk everywhere and do yoga, but I’ve got a bunch of hereditary issues like sensitive digestion and poor circulation. Plus I was in a car accident that jacked up my back in 2002, and my knees are shot from years of running with bad alignment.