Stop drinking and Start living

August 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Wow. Apart from trying to plug my modest offering on this weighty subject, I am also plugging the www.myecovermaker.com  website. This cover was for free. There are paid versions, which I am also going to use. But for a freebie, quite impressive you might agree!

Stop drinking and start living is about the initial stage of coming to terms with a drinking problem and where to go next. I wrote it for the 1st timer who has an amount of confusion and trepidation with their problem. I hope that I have explained my thoughts in an accessible way. This is the link to amazon kindle.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Social Anxiety

August 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In the deepness of anxiety it is hard to let go. One’s natural bent is to cover up and struggle. But in the background there is usually a quiet intuition that everything will be OK. The thing that says it will not be OK is the racing mind and fearful heart.

These two things (whatever the real difference) makes noise. They make so much noise that it is hard to hear anything else. Often this noise is accompanied by physical symptoms which, miraculously disappear after the time of fear has gone.

But what do we do in the meantime? The time when the noise is what we can hear? We carry on is what we do. And if we do turn back….no matter. As long as we are going forward generally then all well and good.

But what is it to carry on? I find that knowing an easy route out of places is always a good thing. Knowing where toilets and quiet places are is also helpful. Churches are good hide-aways and excellent places to get centered and chill.

Also I like to make conversation with someone. This can be difficult in this day and age as many might think you a weirdo. Nevertheless, a passing comment or even better a conversation takes the focus off of self. Taking an interest in something else releases vital energy that is running around unchecked in the system. When the adrenalin is racing it needs calming down. Un-focusing helps this.

If one is off a faith then words to God concerning willingness to see things differently never go amiss. Removal of fear might not happen immediately, but the willingness to focus the mind elsewhere will head us in the right direction.

Eat something, drink something, sit and take things in. All these little ‘tricks’ help us start to feel ‘normal’. For it is usually the feeling of not being normal in these situations that stokes up the fear. If we fall apart in public then everybody will see us. What a catastrophe! It would be much easier to do things at night or when the streets are empty then there would be so much less stress. And if you know what I’m talking about then you will agree that it is the thought of being scrutinised, laughed at, seen as being different or weird, that really frightens us. If this is not so then why do we tend to isolate?

Yes we must face up to things sooner or later, but face up in a smart and humble way. Don’t just think you have to ‘man up’ or back down. This type of thinking will inevitably cause more tension.

You can do stuff that was previously beyond you. Onward.

Filed Under: Letting go

Living with one’s self

August 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Indeed, whatever philosophy, religion or pathway we chose, the bottom line is being able to live in our own skin. And what it is to be comfortable with self is a lifelong thing.

In The Road Less Travelled, Scott Peck says that loving one’s self is being able to put yourself in positions where you can be nurtured spiritually. He has a point. For if I am able to want to grow and change in a spiritual way of life then as a result I will inevitably try to place myself in positions where that will happen. It is a consequence of a change of heart, but not the change of heart itself I suppose.

Being crushed by anxiety and fear my life inevitably collapsed in on itself with the consequence that I could not, so it seemed, put myself anywhere where I could be healed. By this I mean that I could not physically go anywhere nor could I find respite on the inside. There was however, a curious ‘feeling’ that I could occasionally sense. I suppose now that I might call it hope or spirit. But my unaided will and crippling pain dissuaded any move toward the light.

My eventual turning toward religious experience has been gradual and punctuated with the many machinations that are entwined with such a path. But that turning has given me what I have desperately needed: A way of living with myself.

Onward.

Filed Under: becoming

Poem/wholeness

August 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 My heart doesn’t ache

not that I can feel.

It is a thought

that drifts toward the missing thing.

Disobedience follows the flesh

that I am bound to.

What plague is this to a man.

That of what

he is made

he must deny.

What faith this.

Between the hand

and the I,

I must lose.

In order that I

sit alone with God.

A blind man.

I am seeking a way in which I can see myself as a whole man, as opposed to thinking of myself as warring parts. This flesh/spirit battle seems to be an awful mess handed down to us from the Greeks. (Not the Greeks in the Eurozone but the ones in the Pre-Roman near east).

Perhaps there is such a thing as spirit separate from the human form but indwelling at the same time. But why should it be constantly at odds with the sensual world. After all, this is all we know and the only life we have as far as we know.

This conflict in how we see ourselves causes much anxiety. Have you thought about your wholeness and what it really means?

Filed Under: Poems

Claire Weekes. Occupation,Courage,Religion

August 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Firstly, my apologies for the inconsistent posts concerning Dr Weekes’ book Self Help For your Nerves. In attempting to give commentary and reflection on the late Doctor’s work I forgot that I would have to make the time to read it first!

And so our not so weekly offering (randomly picked) concerns Chapter 22 and ‘The 3 friends’ of occupation/courage and religion.

She begins; nervous breakdown is an emotional and mental exhaustion that usually begins with, and is maintained by fear. To a degree these symptoms of nervous breakdown are experienced by many people at one time or another and are a natural extension of everyday stress, magnified of course, by many times.

When we suffer such a breakdown we often believe that we are finished and cannot deal with what we are experiencing. Dr Weekes reassures us that there are no monsters waiting to devour us; no precipice over which we fall ”if we don’t look out”; no special point beyond which recovery is particularly difficult. Anywhere, at any time during breakdown, if we lose our fears we can step out of it.

These words do seem flippant, especially to the person deep in the pain of breakdown. But what the Doctor sees is what those people who do recover see; that healing can and does happen. And indeed that those times which seem darkest are part of the illusion that binds us to re-experience and re-cycle that darkness. She does not lay down time constraints for recovery. Only thoughts on the pathway toward it. The constant link between her thoughts is the vanquishing of fear. Fear is the obstacle that bars our way. It holds us to the breakdown itself. Breaking this link sets us free.

I never really know whether there is a point of no return. I guess there is otherwise people wouldn’t kill themselves. But whatever the case there is always something inside that wants to live and that urges me to live. I think it is this to which the Doctor appealed.

We believe that fate bars our way to recovery but whatever the circumstances of our life’s 3 friends will help us forward: Occupation courage and religion.

The racing mind is almost impossible to quiet by will alone and idleness can be torture to the sufferer. But occupation in the company of others is the best crutch for the tired mind. We must however, make sure that occupation is not used as a tool with which to fight our problems. This will lead to greater exhaustion.

If a person 1st accepts their condition, be prepared to cease fighting and accept the tricks that the frayed nerves will play on them, then occupation can divide the mind into 2 parts; the suffering part and the new part which accepts what is going on. This will help the person float on and into recovery rather than hang on through fear. The suffering part may continue to suffer for a while but the trouble will hover in the background.

Occupation is now the blessing that acts as a splint for the tired mind, replacing painful thoughts with impersonal ones and helping us to relax and break the cycle. Suffering recedes: This is on the condition that we look forward to our future healing without resentment, resistance, fighting or fear.

In her own style (and one that I favour) she sums up the 1st part of this chapter:

let occupation be a crutch

accept the tricks that your nerves will play on you while attempting to lose yourself in occupation

relax, accept the temporary slowness of your thought and be prepared to think as slowly as your tired brain allows; time and peace will bring full recovery

if you are a housewife, do not stay alone all day; find interest away from home

seek occupation in the company of others

remember, an hour spent in bed in panic, will exhaust you more than light occupation will, so get off that bed.

I hope this gives you food for thought and something to hang onto should you be in distress. it is better to be occupied in a simple routine than to be trying to work out your problems by thinking them out. It goes without saying that the broken mind cannot suddenly un-break itself. If you fear for your mind and life then seek guidance from the right places. Doctors are not everything but a good place to start should you need immediate help. Do not suffer alone and in the dark.

The next part on Courage will follow.

Filed Under: Claire Weekes

Olympic Lie

August 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I stopped watching athletics because I believe that it is full of drugs and corruption. And having poo pooed the London Games as a corporate £fest at the tax payers expense I sat back and waited for it to go away.

I do feel this way about the whole thing, but underlying this is also a sense of inadequacy on my own part. As my own hope for sporting glory ebbed away into my madness, so took its place a bitterness that choked the grace of seeing others succeed and being happy for them. If they did succeed it was ill deserved.

My anger at the ‘Olympics’ is in part an echo of the fear of time ebbing away, the lack of ‘glory’ in my own life and my reticence to give credit where it is due because I am jealous of success.

In attending the Olympics yesterday I enjoyed the feelings by proxy that they produced in me. Honour, glory and inspiration. I have lacked humility about these things and have been shown a lesson.

I will try to look at things differently from now.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized