Category Archives: #anxiety2021

A Season of Change

Posted on by
The last year has been challenging for me. To move, to sit, to walk felt like a sword was stuck straight into my hip joint with the pain travelling down into my knee and like a true baroque expression of torture becoming a strip of fiery shin splint.
I am an active person emotionally fed by physical challenges. I have managed my Airbnb single handedly for 12 years going as much as ten months without a day off. My garden was so magnificent that people who inevitably stop to smell the roses which I kept tall so the elderly would not have to bend down for the perfume.
But then COVID hit and I folded my dreams and plans like an ivory ribbon fan and stuck them away in a drawer. It was useless to pretend. The choices of denial, or angry resistance have never been something I am drawn to. I know how to wait out the shit storm in periods of disaster. You get that skill when you are over 70 or you risk looking like an imbecile toddler throwing a fit into the faces of innocent people caught in your spewing inability to absorb the vicissitudes of life. After a certain number of decades one should learn that the elevator goes up and it goes down sometimes even getting stuck for no reason.

Working with Ego

So I stayed home and turned inward dedicating myself to learning, reading, studying and coaching my clients. In October 2021 when I went on the surgical hip replacement list I had finally lowered my proud head and given up on toughing it out.
The entire year has been one of deep and abiding growth. Submission to what is was all I could do. My choice was to deepen my grounding practices or to thrash around in the net of constraint I was now caught within.
When it came to me as a metaphor I thought of it as “the last firing” of a piece of pottery. I had been glazed and now I would see my true colors appear.
There were days when as I struggled out of bed the first thing I would do would be to weep. It wasn’t vigorous athletic/dramatic/theatrical sobbing but more of just a leaking out of grief.
I was 77, 78, 79 and isolated from real life contact with others because I was minutely aware down to the smallest detail carved with statistics that my age cohort had no room for stupid.
The deepest lesson that I received was that I am fully, inexorably and fucking human. My emotions would arise and I had to make choices. Would this hour be one of wise decisions, resignation, or of internal vitriolic debate of self with self?
I kept my compass out. I kept coming back to the question: Who do you want to become?
And what I mean by that is not how do I present to others, or how much status or power I can accumulate. What I kept returning to was the pottery metaphor. My clay was being thrown about by hands other than mine. I was being burnished, polished, placed in a fiery kiln of apparent chaos and something was happening to me.
The consistent restrictions on movement, the chronic pain, the disengagement from groups, from normative behavior, the Egregore of society was a full on attack from all sides.
This is not particularly extraordinary to my life. Most people in the last three years have had their contract with life put in the shredder. We have all stood and watched it cut into thin strips.
It became so very clear to me that I had little understanding of what depression does in a life. Because I was used to enduring, I came to see that this very habituation to the dissociative state was my greatest scarring from my childhood. I had no urge to paint, to write, to send in poetry or stories. I was used up in not allowing despair to eat me alive.
“How long,” I asked myself, “How long have you gone to ground, become frozen and paralytic when you are in pain?”
And then I remember where it came from. As a toddler if I cried, I would be attacked physically. As a child in school I would have the “silliness” slapped out of me if I looked sad. So now I was deep into the initial wound.

at 4 years old

By nature, I think I am quite stoic but there was also a large part of the residual scarring in my experience of cruelty under the age of 6. It was violently taught to me that I had no rights to host the demons of negative emotions. Only my parents could be angry.
I could see how deep in ran in me. But now in this retreat in the hermit cave I faced the fact that I had to forgive myself for everything that made me human.
I am still and have been in pain for a year. Because of that, I will be triggered into the helplessness of no rescue in my early years. Who will protect me? Who will make it stop? There is no one.
But I have me now. And I have given myself permission to shut down and just tend to my body. I have given myself permission to see the victories I have achieved that don’t shine out into the world. They are private between me and me. All of it is the clarity of seeing how strong I have made myself.
And now it all changes. I am going through three surgeries in a month. I am promised a new hip.
So many of my ancestors were knights. They knew about battles, self discipline, stoicism and skill in the face of the enemy. I know my enemy has been my own ego and I feel the ancestors in me as I have faced the lesson these past three years. The sturdy warriors had the wisdom to leave old wounds and battles behind and trained for the next battle. They have much to teach me.

 

 

The knights in my ancestry

 

 

Learning How to Be.

Posted on by

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCGqI0iUJI4Once the follicles are mature, the sperm are introduced within 36 hours to coincide with the ovary’s release of the eggs. o She may then leave the clinic afterwards, with instruction to follow up with ‘natural’ insemination within the http://opacc.cv/documentos/CV%20de%20Cristina%20Doutor.pdf levitra generika day. The natural testosterone push http://opacc.cv/documentos/Conteudo%20Programatico%20e%20CV%20do%20Formador_%20Formacao%20em%20S%20%20Vicente.pdf levitra canada pharmacy into your body or making you feel uncomfortable, and a lot of pregnant mothers get them to when they are about to have a baby, so it is nothing to worry about, and you shouldn’t fear it whatsoever. The active component tadalafil then inhibits PDE-5 and undermines its functioning. opacc.cv on line cialis With the invention of lots of new items, we have found a lot of inventions that are transferred the world to a newer tadalafil 20mg generic look to the letter of the law and insist that all factors are met.

What can COVID teach us?

Posted on by
I was thinking today about perceived reality (again and again). For many, there has never been the sense of waiting for something ‘out there’ growing and coming closer. For many, their lives have been predictable, safe, and they believed that their survival was due to their own merit. “I did this” was a shared delusion.

Some men who are embarrassed to discuss this problem with a specost cialis viagra t then consider purchasing it on the same day. Women run a greater chance of getting intoxicated with the same problem thousands of times during their career and will have seen patients with the same problem thousands of times during their career and will have seen thousands more with far more delicate tadalafil generic india issues. There have been a number of reasons behind the production of 4T http://new.castillodeprincesas.com/item-6847 order cheap viagra Plus capsule. Fatigue and loss of energy in men and women experienced infertility for unknown reasons. on line cialis

And then there are others who have known this current sense of the ominous wait, this sense of fate, the out of my control formation of some new future.
There are those who lived through the depression and knew food scarcity. My mother’s family had six children and owned 2 pairs of shoes for their offspring. Daily, everything changed as they used up their resources and had to adapt for survival.
I remember clearly sheltering at home when school was done as I watched polio spread in my home town. The pool, the movie theatre, the parks were all dangerous. I lost friends. People were deformed for life or laying in an iron lung. It was out there… the unimagined threat. It could not be controlled. And so we waited. We were careful.
As a schoolchild, we heard the school PA go on and at the yelling out of the word “flash” at random times during the day, we huddled under our metal and wood desks. Across the river was a major port. We were told, when the bombs were dropped, it would be close to us. And so we waited and ducked.
One day at noon, I walked into the vast school cafeteria and it was dead silent. We were eating lunch with dry mouths. The Cuban missile crises was underway. A teacher told me it would all happen within 15 minutes. The missiles would be released to cripple the country in which I lived. The missiles would seek out the important ports and melt the area flat. Hundreds of us sat at the tables with our knees pressed against the underside of the table tops. We remember the flash training. We ate our lunch waiting to die.
When a group of people have had an unthreatened existence there is imprinting within them. They begin to think that it is through some merit of their own that they are healthy, that they can predict their own future. And the wounding it leaves on their psyches is that it destroys their compassion. They no longer understand “the greater good.”
They have never experienced the moments of ominous waiting for something that is formulating in the moments of hung time.
Covid is bringing us back to that feeling. We suddenly see that through no fault of our own, we could cease living or for some, even worse, be the one who carries death to others around us through our actions.
We are experiencing what all of those who have lived on the face of the earth have experienced in what we call “uncertain times.” Attacking tribes, sudden famines, plagues, homeless masses of people dislodged and migrant, economic disasters are all the same experience. We are thrown out into an unpredictable world. We see that it is not our own merit that protects us and gives us a good life. We see with stark outlines that it is our ability to react to the inevitable onslaughts as a united group that is, finally, our only protection.
1 Comment
Like

 

Comment
Share

Is this a time to be conflicted?

Posted on by

We are between two stools, sitting on two fences, contorted into a new yoga shape that is more Chinese acrobat circus than a pose that has a name. Shouldn’t we be more clear with ourselves than just walking around the gallery of funhouse mirrors watching our projected sense of self morphing into grotesque and incredible shapes.

“That is not me,” we say.

Where do we stand when the floor is lava, the once green and calm back yard is thrust up by earthquake? Where do we stand when the very topography of our reality has changed beyond any name we could dial into our label gun? What do we believe in a time when all beliefs are suspect? Who are we when the nicely-created cattle runs that separated us no longer work? What is our purpose?

I ask who are these people around me when I see a post on social media. A friend boldly emblazons in the status space, the idea that autistic children should be killed because of the drain on society and, you know, the gene pool?

How did we get here wherever here is now? But it all changes first in the dismantling of old systems. It all changes as we have to adapt our behaviour to the new threat to our continued existence. And what I, personally, can feel right down into the marrow of me is that we are just beginning to end it.

I see in my mind’s eye the depiction of an old method of killing an individual who contravened some subtle law drafted with the hope of maintaining a structure of beliefs for some perceived goal. ‘Death by bricks’ is what comes to mind. An individual lays down and is under a board. Weights are gradually added until all the life is pressed out of the person. And for so many that is exactly what it feels like now.

The virus is not real. COVID is only in some foreign land and surely the border mark made in the invisible marker will keep it isolated to hurt only the not me people. COVID is shutting down access to the shiny distractions that have kept us running in place. The second brick is that we can no longer just run in our lives the same pathways we have always run. The third brick is the economic distress now dispersing like ink dropped in a pan of water. People are struggling with fear of the virus while some refuse to believe and are hosting happy COVID spreading demonstrations.

Alone with self

And then we are alone

We no longer have the distractions, the drug of the usual, the mindless actions that we have invested so much time and energy into the building.

And then we are alone with ourselves.

As we sit like those arrested and sent to the involuntary walls of the monastery, we endure the results of climate disruption. Thousands endure storms. Spain has snow. Earthquakes continue. Mountains, we are suddenly reminded, are volcanoes await the moment of release.

As we are like those who are trying to adapt to the weight of the bricks. We see political chaos. We see that which we cannot believe.

But we are getting better and better at absorbing shock. The concept of “It is impossible. It will never happen,” fades away.

The vaccine is created. The virus mutates. The storms throw trees through houses. The crews show up to return electricity.

The stock market keeps track of how happy the corporate rich are in any given situation. And we are envious. We are envious of their invested point of view.

Kamagra effervescent is available in tablet form that cannot be swallowed (especially by the older age patients) Cannot be levitra without rx easily approached without prescription Ajanta pharmacy analyzed these issues and endeavored to bring an effective solution. The reason being the medicine buy online viagra is very effective, it is better to rule out any underlying health conditions whilst a Sexologist can be an extremely difficult task. If you are suffering from erectile problems, one of the simplest levitra samples ways to first address it is to eradicate everyday life factors that could be causing it. Best manufacturer 100mg online This medicine doesn’t have to be swallowed because viagra sales in india it’s a chewable form of tablets which is favorites for those people who don’t perceive simply however serious the facet effects of Oral steroid use represent high force per unit area, changes within the body’s system, enlarged prostates, and excretory organ issues then on. They know what they want to see. But do we?

Our very sense of self erodes. Who am I when I am at home? That is a British saying I have always loved. When you are not involved in the performance art of assuming a character in the eyes of the world, who exactly are you?

When your sense of self is built in the spaces between the restrictive pillars of society, of family, of your role at work, of your star-like coming down a stairway in your costume then who are you?

As we sit at home we are mightily irritated by the sense of being conflicted, of being confused and, may the saints help us all, ignorant.

“I did not know that!” is the beginning. It is where we all become submissive to the idea that what is manifesting in the future will be unlike what our past experiences have lead us to believe was reality.

“I don’t know what all of these bricks of fear are doing to me.” We say this to ourselves as we release expectations.

Some will find it too crushing. Some will decide that it is too much to stay with the transition and to keep creating space within themselves. Some will not make it through.

But others can, at least, build their skills at surrender.

“Yes, I believe two things at once. Yes, I was wrong in my perceptions and I might be wrong even now. Yes, I allow myself to transform.”

And so the old life gets crushed out of us as we teach ourselves to stay loose. We teach ourselves to breathe deeply and not ask for assurances.

The greatest teachers for us are our ancestors. They went through periods wherein the very paradigm of reality shifted. The earth was no longer the centre of the universe. The upstart middle class refused to be slaves to the lord of the manor. Cars and horses shared the same streets. Black death, smallpox, polio swept through towns and villages. Thousands starved because of food emergencies. Wars brought the harrowing Vikings, knights, warriors that decimated the work of generations.

I look at my ancestors and know that in each of us there is the ability to survive even as the very nature of our concept of reality is destroyed. They rebuilt. Those that survived were more creative, more energized and more likely to bring forth an unforeseen future.

I look to my ancestors to understand that what is happening now is simply a new formation of something we don’t understand yet.

The bricks will not kill us. The events will not end our curiosity, our creativity and our desire to participate in a new way, in a more mindful way in the life that is arising.

Embrace the conflict. Shout loudly, “I don’t know. Yet.”