unresolved grief

I heard a comment at the weekend that got me thinking.  The root cause of many addictions and mental health problems is unresolved grief.  I pondered this and last night had a very weird dream about my great aunt who died when I was 12.  I woke up singing a song in my head and it occurred to me to analyse my dream, something I have not done for a while.  We have all the answers we need to help ourselves within ourselves if we are open to letting them be heard consciously.  I realised that as a child I only felt unconditionally love by my great aunt and when she died I was confused.  

I have been reading a book on time management and NLP.  It mentioned about open loops in the mind.  Things that are left unfinished can niggle away at your subconscious,  small things as well as big and the book I was reading said that the unconscious cannot distinguish between he big and the small things.  For years I thought it was a little toy duck that I was missing.  It is a standing joke that the root of my problems is that my mother gave away my duck to the poor, as if we were not poor enough as it was. Maybe it was never the duck maybe it was the loss of the unconditional love of my aunt.  Last nights dream was vivid, in bright colour and very real. At the end I found the place I had been searching for in recent dreams and I woke with the realisation that I never grieved for my loss.  Children do not understand loss.  It is also perhaps a sign that my daughters need to grieve the loss of their father.  He is still alive but absent and unreachable consciously as he is resistant to seeking help for his many and varied problems.  

Grief is an important part of life.  Living in rural Ireland was an eye opening experience for me when I attended my first wake.  The tradition of the funeral parlour is now diminishing even in urban areas.  It is perhaps all part of the move away from consumerism, away from running the country like a business, and towards a society where it is OK to grieve, it is OK to have and show emotions, and it is ok to be a person and not a consumer.  I hope that I can finally grieve for my loss, for all the losses I am not even aware of and that I can recognise the need in others to give time to getting over those things that cause pain.

So today cut yourself even more slack than normal, as by now I hope that you cut yourself alot of slack, recognise the need to rest, to recover, to allow time to heal the wounds of life and most important dont force the flow.    

Happy Tuesday. 

the roundabout

So heres the thing, now I am self aware there are many feelings and sensations I reocgnise.  I had a minor panic attack to day but I know to just keep on going through it.  I have a fuzzy feeling again.  It is like a cloud of conclusion.  I know now that confusion generally precedes a breakthrough.  This one will be about procrastination I hope.  I have been procrastinating alot for the last month.  I decided to look at the things that were getting in the way of me achieveing the things I want.  I noticed that too much stimulation, too many things happening at once, too much of a build up of mess at work of at home becomes overwhelming.  I need a quite space to organise my thoughts.  So in honour of my new years resolution I took action and went off by myself for lunch alone.  I really do need my down time.  So what beliefs are getting in the way of me taking adequate rest and downtime?   

I don't have any answers but at least I have the questions.  I have decided to work on a wellness project for myself.  It begins with a Wellness Recovery Action Plan.  I started it today.  It is quite a heavy piece of work to do as it required honesty about my triggers, what I don't do for myself, what people should do if I have another episode.  It is like a major emergency plan and an owners manual for me.  

Sometimes I feel like I am stuck on a roundabout unable to get off.  The bad thoughts try to keep me there.  Today I started to panic because I could not find my note from a meeting.  I started to panic and could not concentrate.  I had that awful sick sensation, the hot waves of panic, the dizziness, the cheat pains, the total inability to calm down.  I wanted to run home and cry.  But now I know it was just a feeling, feelings pass and taking action helps.  So I cleared my desk, I filed everything and still no sign so I let go.  I decided to just say well so what, I will just decided to accept that I lost it.  Within minutes I realized that I had filed it already.  Such  lesson for me.  The jobs I had stressed about for days were in fact simple.  I just need to cut myself some slack and accept that I am no longer the person I was.  I blocked out all the stress, ignored all the warning signs and convinced myself that all was rosy in the garden.  I am human, I make mistakes, I am still learning, and I don t except myself to have all the answers.

Today's lesson is to be kind to myself and get a bit more organised, stop forcing the flow, let things happen and don't try to control things too much.

St brigit cloak; nearing completion

Last week I decided that I could not return to work unless I had completed something, just to prove to myself I can complete things.  I decided that I would not return to work until I had finished the blanket.  Then as described by my daughter the blanket grew and grew overnight, and again the following night, and the following day(helped by frenzied crocheting obviously, am not that mad to think the elves did it).  So often we try to sabotage our efforts to do well and now I have surprised myself by supporting my efforts to get well.  I have turned a corner.  I have in fact retrained my brain into supporting me again.  For so long I could only see the negative and now maybe it OK to wear the rose tinted glasses I used to view the world through again.  Within us all there is the capacity to heal ourselves.  I am so glad and thankful that I am now healing.  Crocheting the blanket has given me many lessons, it has renewed my creativity, provided me with warmth, given me a goal, helped me reconnect with my mother, reminded me of the many parts of my life, inspired me to do more and taught me how to sometime wait for the inspiration to flow and not force it.  I have a few more rows to do before it is fully complete and then of course the edging, possibly something with reclaimed beads, not so sure that to do yet.  I found so many scraps of wool in the bags and bags my mother gave me.  They all have a story, there is even some wool which I think my granny used to crochet my older brother's teddy's coat.  There is wool from my favourite cardigan ever and my favorite jumper, from my daughters baby clothes, and possibly from my baby clothes.  I estimate that some of it is well over 50 years old.  My family keep lots of things in case they might have a use in the future.  I realise that I do too.  I have a large chest of drawers to store so much of the things that might come in useful in the future and have dumped out loads of things over the course of my illness.  Letting go of many things I do not need, objects as well as feelings, has been cathartic but I am glad that my mother and grandmother, and their relatives and friends who kept that wool did not, as it has created a most wonderful security blanket for me.  

I had an image of myself coming home from work in the coming winter in the middle of the floods and angry  complaints about the conditions of the roads and the lack of water.  I imagined a lull in the bad weather when a bright sunny frosty Sunday appeared and me lying out on my lovely sun lounger coccoooned in a wonderful colourful warm blanket enjoying a rest and peace and quite in the fresh air.  I also imagined my children bringing me the Sunday papers, tea and my favourite cheese on toast but that is perhaps a leap too far.  

I suppose I was looking for ways to deal with the stresses I had experienced in the past.  I sought my place where I don't have to worry.  I discussed that thought at a recent counselling session.  I wondered where that place was.  She looked at me with amazement and after I really really could not work it out she dragged the realisation out of me that the place where I don't have to worry is in my own mind.  We create our own heaven and hell within ourselves.  So since then I have been catching myself up as I start down the slippery slope of worry.  I am retraining myself, and in doing so, I will retrain my family to worry less.  So far I have helped my youngest to identify worrying thoughts, simply by making her aware of them.  I ask; Are you having a worrying thought?  And so it continues the trans-generational mind programming, expect, now I know I can reprograme myself so I can help them to undo the years of negative programming I have inflicted on them and release them from the years of self doubt that would invariably follow.  I have always wanted only happiness for my children and now I want more.  I wish them happiness but I now want them to have a full life and not just one thing.  Being happy does not mean being over indulged.  

I was lucky to be given such strong roots but I had my wings soundly clipped.   I have only given my children wings and no roots so they have no safe branch to land on in times of doubt and trouble.  I now combine it all into the roots and wings they need and tend to my own clipped wings.  No more pulling out my feathers in self disgust.  I love my favorite current therapy of thinking in ink as I am told it is not possible to lie while writing in free flow.  Today I succeeded in being myself, of expressing some of my fears, of dealing with the molehills that I had turned into mountains and  realised that I still have things to let go.  I walked mindfully to today's meeting, thinking about how different my life is from this time last year.  I feel lighter, although a stone heavier, and I feel free.