SPORADICA STOPPY STARTICUS

#artbySENSE '015

Getting out of practice with Essential Practices 

Yes fine, I totally get it. I broke the "Post Often"(*) rule, haven't posted since November blah blah BLAH.  Well, you know what this blog is about, right? Let me remind you...it's a mentally fucked up person trying to make a blog about trying to not be so fucked up. Do I need to say any more? No? Good, let's get on with it...

OK, so today it's less of a straight-up tactics post, and more of a run-down of my recent rundown and some light analysis, but it features an easy-to-get allegory that I will not disrespect your intelligence & insight by pointing out.  You can reflect upon it as deeply as you like, but I put this forward in the hope that by relating the experiences wherein I learn something, you can also find something helpful for your own experience.

So, a little backstory..

#artbySENSE '015

By spending a large proportion of every day for the last year determinedly following an endless regime of mindfulness, meditation, exercise, yoga, breathing, supplements, visualisation, affirmations, ritual, analysis, reflection, micro-managing my nutrition/diet and my physical/mental energy supply/demand equation AND *gasping inbreath* all the other stuff I experimented with, I managed recently to obtain (and for a short time maintain) the closest thing to equilibrium I've ever had.

And of course, once I was feeling pretty productive I decided I could finally move through coping moment-to-moment, day-to-day to making tentative lifestyle choices and considering my potential (me! potential!) as a member of a larger community. Your world gets pretty small when you shatter, and realising you might finally have the chops to start considering putting primary-coloured blobby shapes on your Life's Landscape is nothing short of a MASSIVE DEAL.

Sounds pretty logical, doesn't it? Break down, get the tools to repair, start repairing, complete sufficient repairs to continue as before, or as close to that as possible. Got it? Go!

Only problem is that we are also humans, and when things are "going well" we start taking that state for granted (can you see where this is going?).  As I got more comfortable and confident, I started venturing out of the house, having the odd social interaction, became a volunteer companion to an elder, was back busking and regularly practicing my instruments. You know, just trying to make myself a bit of a Life, such as it might be.  It was still part-time (It seems I'm not able to do Life full time), but it looked very different from recent years.  Any interest takes up time though, and small but fundamental practices started to be put off as demands on my time and focus increased. Initially I was still feeling pretty deadly (energetic, strong, if a little scattered), so it didn't seem to matter that I'd choose to forgo a stretch, or my walk for that day. I was substituting it for something healthy and recognisably good for me, so it was all still a balanced equation, right?

#artbySENSE '016

Without consciously realising it, I broke out in an invisible rash of hairline fractures. It made me vaguely itchy, but my timetable had gotten pretty full and I didn't notice I was starting to use all my resources in trying to keep up with myself. I'd even stopped checking in regularly for reflection time, so I hadn't faced what was going on.

By the wayside it did fall. First the more subtle routines/habits; sleep hygiene, wake-up rituals etc. Then more structural stuff, like my exercise plan, regular eating and sleeping. On and on it went, getting incrementally more frenetic and sketchy until I finally sank to the floor a bit before crissMess, burst into tears and let the truth stare me down.

#artbySENSE '015

When I look back at my Scale of Stability now, I can see that I had been running at +1's and +2's for weeks and weeks (manic, some loss of function), with pretty negative summaries of the day's state-of-mind. I did kind of assume that I was tired and insecure because I'd been working really hard trying to start a home-business, and it was triggering confidence issues.  It was just recently realising that my current Scale and daily assessment criteria wasn't working for me anymore, that made me realise that my current stumble wasn't out-of-the-blue.  If I had kept up with checking back over the last few weeks to see if anything obvious jumped out, I would have maybe caught myself a bit earlier, before I totally withdrew.

Sometimes I really do feel this intense HATRED for the binding, black paralysis that attacks me. It's intrinsically bound up in my expectations about everything and my place within it, as well as the aforementioned PunyHuman tendency to forget that change is a constant, and that no state can stay fixed outside of our reality and it's onward pull of Time. But it's like having a circuit-wipe every so often, and I have a keen sense of Time lost and momentum stilled whenever I drag myself out of another one, and there is always a sense of rebuilding, and re-starting that can seem so wasteful and tedious if I let myself think about how inefficient it is. I guess I'm saying it's a hard thing to accept.

I've been psyching up to spring as soon as I peg a gap in the blackness, to seize the first micro-opportunity available and slip it's crushing clutches. This was a pretty bad creative siezure, with even my usually-prolific journal entries dropping dramatically in frequency and length. Usually I can let the private pen roll pretty freely, even when all else is stalled. After having to dial back all commitments to zero (ugh, again!), I've been feeling the approach of this gap in the clouds, and working hard to value myself enough to spring for it as soon as I see that first welcome shaft of Light.

If you're reading this post, it means I really put my legs into the jump, and have made it at least to the lip. I can't promise I do have the required Self-belief to pull off a worthy Lyfe, but I do learn authentic life lessons and take them in as consciously as I can. I am rolling my eyes a bit at myself (OH PUNY HUMAN!) and at the whole merry-go-'round, but I see enough evidence that if I guide my thinking the right way, I'll realise I am better off hanging in there and trying to spread some Love, even if it's a bit Sporadica Stoppy Starticus (+)

So.... Guess who's back? (dah dah duh uhn) Back again ... (rinse and repeat)

#artbySENSE '015

___________________________________________________________________________

* Watch out for  'My 2Sense about the "rules" of successful blogs' in an upcoming post on my other blog,  iCREATRIX
(+) Sporadicus Stoppy Starticus fake-Latin species name for the Manic-Depressive

HITTIN' THE BIG 'DOWN' BUTTON

 WHEN IT ALL FALLS APART

(and you're NOT comin' out from under the blankets, no matter WHAT)

Haha, hilarious.  It finally happened, as I knew it would. It feels like you could rule the world and nothing can hold you back.  You're gettin' things done, even making plans. You're going to have a Life!  And then a certain song starts playing, faintly in the background. It goes a lil somethin' like this. Hum along, you might know the chorus...

  I feel my grip on 'reality' start to slip, and all my lovely progress & sense of "being productive" begins to feel a little desperate. I try to keep the vibe going, but within (*insert timeframe*), I am cancelling all appointments, regretting anything I did/said over the last (*insert time frame*) because it just showed everybody what a complete fraudulent waste of space I am; castigating myself for thinking I have any business believing I could make a success of anything. Like run a blog about 'Living' when I just want to step into the Black and be done with it.  What a Hoax! Slowly sinking into a physical, mental, aethereal ParalySea, so that I even if I try to reach my Toolbox the immobility is so total I can neither reach out to it nor stay afloat.  I see its dark and reassuringly rectangular shadow bob by me on my Black Sea, but I am too busy trying to remember why I want to keep trying to breathe, and I will soon lose all memory that a Toolbox exists, let alone be able to use it.

This wasn't meant to be the next post.  I had a useful, sane and positive draft post that I was enjoying writing until I trip-a-ding-donged (I trust you know the -ve self-dialogue as well as I do). I've had a shitty three weeks (three fkn weeks!) on the Flopside, and I have missed my self-imposed blog schedule (meh, that's normal for mentalFolk, I tell myself, I tell myself). In the meantime, as I start to be able to move again,  I thought I would throw this lil 'mini-post' out there in the name of staying true to the Whoopy-Daisy see-saw of Bipolar, Depression & Anxiety Disorders.

 See? I'm not LivingTheDreamAllYouHaveToDoIsFollowMyMethodToAbsoluteBlissAndWealth, or any of those hashtags.  I'm just a person living with an oft-hellish bunch of disorders that has decided to have a go at having a go. I can't always just put on the HappyCanDo Hat and walk the walk.  Sometimes it's just shut the door, put a cupboard up against it, and turn the phone off.  I no longer have expectations of an end date for being a bit of a wignut, but if I'm gunna be finding myself alive each day that I wake up, I may as well have a bit of a philosophy about how I wanna meet the day that I find. Even if that philosophy wavers like a bamboo building in a Tokyo earthquake. Which it does.  Ugh.

 I dunno... there's still a bit a bit of a swim before I can touch sand and wade ashore; dry my clothes off and turn my eyes upward and onward again, but I'm in shallow waters and in sight of Land now. Barring any unanticipated downturn,  I will probably put the next-intended post up within a few days. It's a nuts-and-bolts, TALKING TACTICS subject that I hope you will find interesting.  Until then, if you're UP, make the most of it; if you're ABLE, put some work in; if you're DOWN, Hold Fast! and we'll see you on the other side.

THYSELF KNOW-HEAL-ACCEPT

The Importance of Strategy

NB: for brevity, group reference to BiPolar Disorder, Depression and Anxiety Related Disorders is written as BpDA

 

 Honest, non-emotional self-reflection is fundamental to building and maintaining the framework of a healthy life.    Just as a business benefits from an overall strategy, so does your conscious journey into living well with Bipolar, Depression & Anxiety Disorders.  If you have a clear strategy, it will guide you when selecting effective tactics.  Strategy is your long-term, overall  specific outcome, and its approach should reflect your ideal values and nature.  Strategy is not an inspirational poster (that's a tactic), it is your guiding light that keeps your destination illuminated. When you lose your way, you need only to make sure your decisions are in keeping with your strategy whilst you narrow down how to more specifically proceed.

You can evolve your strategy as you go, there aren't any rules (there are, however, some undeniable, sometimes irritating truths), and it can be pretty simple. Your strategy needs to include certain information; it needs an aim, an outcome and a timeline.  Don't get scared! It doesn't have to be a huge deal.  Keep it simple. My first conscious strategy was to make it alive to the end of the year, and arrive there with the desire to want to live another. No big deal, right? (!) Right, that's why it took me months (no shit, many months) of thinking and writing, writing and thinking (in between wigouts, heheh) to arrive at. But it was a clear aim, with a clearly defined outcome, and a timeline to complete it in. To my surprise, I also learned important stuff about myself in the process, without really meaning to (bonus!).

Truthfully, it was a big deal, but only after I had come up with it. (And I'm nearly at the end of that first year!)

  Invest some time and reflect on yourself. The You inside (not the You facing the world out there). Not weeks of insular deep thought (we all know where that can lead), just set up a couple of reminders that work for you, and tell yourself you need to check in and observe every so often. I'll post a list (when I work out how to do it) of prompts, to kick off with, but you know yourself best, so take it slow and once you get the hang of it, start shining a li'l light on some of those inner dark corners (but gently, gently, you're not chasing outlaws!). Make your own list, so you always have ready the next thing to think about.

Now the problem with thinking about big-picture stuff is being overwhelmed, and the resultant paralysis and damaging headspace it can bring on.  Being overcome is a common block in the way of progress and will leave one awash, head bobbing in the Great Sea of Everything-ness with no sight of a horizon. I'll post separately another time in more detail about ways I've tried to deal with this, but for now just pick one thing to ponder and only ponder upon it when you feel like you will do it without getting too attached.  Remember, you are setting up new LifeHabits, one breath at a time, and in this one small act you are also sneakily setting up other new LifeHabits without drawing attention to that fact (more about 'tricking yourself' another time as well').  Inherent in taking this action is the belief there is a better way for you to Live, and the belief that it's worth you having a go. Inherent in this action are the seeds of nutritious thinking, processes that feed you rather than feed on you, as our destructive thoughts do.  Already there are three additional tools you are setting in place, and you haven't even tried yet!

Think about it.  You are Here, Now.  You've gotten this far, by whatever means, and you have not thrown in the towel yet.  This means you have some hope somewhere, even if it's sooooo deep down inside and hiding from you that you think it's gone for good.  Deny it all you like, but you've just proven to yourself that it's still there, just by being here now.  You don't have to go chasing your hidey Hope down, it might be shy and not want you to look at it.  Just know it is there and send it a little mental thumbs up, then be on your inner way. 

Getting to know yourself deeply and honestly can feel scary! It can be confronting, downright paralysing holding a mirror up to ourselves in the bright light. Without always being wholly aware of it, we assign a value to any personality trait/habit, and if we see signs of 'low-value' traits within ourselves it can set off any number of individual triggers.  I find it is (still) ESSENTIAL to preface my periods of self-reflection with a reminder to myself that I am 'just looking;' that I've had enough practise at freaking out about myself and this time is just for observing and recording.  Once you've gone for a wander in it a few times, your brain will start percolating away while you're not looking, and it will often surprise you by randomly tossing out a pertinent insight when you're not expecting it. (Weird, but true!)

There is a significant amount of breaking down old (non-productive) beliefs & assumptions necessary to live BpDA with self-respect & some sense of power, but that fact needn't be added to our mental list of "Things To Get Overwhelmed about" (we've all got one!). My personal trigger to remind myself to stop getting so wiggy is to give a little shake of my head while I roll my eyes and say "silly Zebby," just like I am an old nanna fondly admonishing her favourite grandchild.  It's taken most of this year, but it's becoming more of an automatic kick-in the longer I stick with it.

And I do stick with it,  because there is a more than significant amount of return on my ongoing investment.  And that is something to put on your list of Affirmations (or whatever you use to remind you of smart stuff).  It's not always a good time to think deeply.  Don't force yourself.  Remember you don't have to progress every time to be progressing overall.  Don't be afraid to 'fail', expect it and have a li'l roll-your-eyes laugh when it does. It's just a fun thought experiment, and if it accidentally does something good, you can take the credit for being wise and subtle.. 

 For doing this small action,

I receive a MORE THAN SIGNIFICANT return on my ongoing investment

(I tell myself this ALL the time, sometimes over and over. Even when I don't believe it I know it's true) 

We are the Mind Mechanics.  We may not have the Manual but we have the Tools...

 _______________________________________________________________

[JUST A QUICK SHOUT-OUT TO SOME BELOVEDS DOING IT TOUGH.. HOLD FAST, MY FRIENDS, WE EACH ARE THE WARP AND THE WEFT AND EVERY THREAD IS NEEDED, INCLUDING YOURS]