Kindness as a way of living

"It is simple, it takes only  a moment, and the opportunities are endless.

It is kindness in action, and while kindness inwardly benefits the giver, the ripple effect of compassion for others is boundless. The world is blessed with acts of kindness that have their origin in two simple words, Thank You.

Detach. Be an observer of your own life, and see yourself seeking out, and eagerly setting in motion opportunities for kindness. Share your gratitude as the beauty of kindness grows, and your chances to touch the lives of others unfold more and more every day.

In a difficult world kindness has great power. It is not simply a tool for transformation, it is a way of life." Brother Lawrence

I had to be taught what kindness is, and learn ways of being kind to myself. I can only speak from personal experience, but if I extrapolate away from that experience, I can only imagine that there are many people, like me, who have experienced judgement, violence and aggression, lack of care and concern, criticism, cruelty and humiliation. For what felt like a very long time, the world to me did not feel like a place of kindness. Also, my illness can generate very derogatory thoughts that constantly belittle me or fill me full of guilt and shame. I am really good at giving myself a hard time.

Kindness in action is gentleness, affection, warmth, tenderness, concern and care. It means taking the time to behave in a way that expresses Agape; spiritual love that transcends and serves regardless of circumstance. Therefore if you feel that you yourself, or someone else feels undeserving of love and kindness, you treat them with love and kindness anyway. And this action had to begin with me. 

Kindness towards myself takes many forms. Whether it is allowing myself to rest, to eat a wholesome meal, to have a bubble bath, detach from damaging people or places of work, or to seek out help from others, I actively make a choice to behave in a way towards myself that expresses love. I have accepted my humanness and need for being held. I let go of the old blueprint of self punishment and become willing to be healed.  Although this makes me vulnerable in a hostile world, it also opens up the possibility of inviting kindness from others and an opportunity for sharing goodness. By practising kindness towards myself, I also begin to see the need for kindness towards you. I am no longer isolated in my pain, I am able to look further and see your struggle too. It's no longer just about me. I am connected to your humanness and have a genuine desire for you to experience the beauty and wholeness that can result from an act of kindness. 

Whether you sit and listen to somebody without prejudice for half an hour, or take someone some flowers, or send them a text to remind them they are not alone, offer a hug, share your baking with the next door neighbour, smile, say hello, or more recently for me, offer prayer and gentleness in a situation of horror when nothing seems like it's going to be OK ever again, just do it. Send it out into the universe. Because when you do it, somebody else will very likely do it too. Kindness is catching. 

Living this way does not mean I am exempt from experiencing hideous behaviour from others. But it changes my world view and how I fit in to it, and by acting in kindness, it may well change your perceptions too. One act of kindness does not change the world, but if we all do small acts of kindness, it spreads. I become grateful, thankful, and see the expression of God's love in so many more places. I totally love being a part of that dynamic. 

It also improves my mental health and sense of well being. It shows other people that through simple acts of self love, much can be achieved in my mental health recovery and the hope that it fosters in myself and others. Brother Lawrence of the 17th Century had it right, whilst he prepared food and washed the dishes. It's not about the massive crash, bang, wallop, and falling into the trap of selfish ambition and power. One act of love towards myself and towards you can build a glorious community of wholeness and peace. That gift is priceless. 

So I will keep practising kindness, in the hope that you will treat me with kindness, and the cycle of selfless love can continue to spread and shine a light of hope for a gentle way of living. 

Mood monitoring

One of the blessings of being in secondary care is that you can pick up some amazing tips in self management. I did a CBT course around self esteem, inner dialogue, unhelpful thinking styles and mood monitoring. In my case when I first came into services I had zero self esteem, my brain never shut up, I didn't understand about skewed thinking and it's impact on mood and I had never thought of actually trying to get a handle on my mood spectrum or understanding it's natural rhythms and explosions. Also, it helped me to identify that these mood patterns had been in my life since I was about 16 and it took another 20 years to get a diagnosis!

In a mood/mental health context, I oscillate on a very different frequency to most normal folk. Mood disorders are generally identified by the list below:

Ongoing sad, anxious, or “empty” mood, Feeling hopeless or helpless Having low self-esteem Feeling inadequate or worthless, Excessive guilt, Recurring thoughts of death or suicide, wishing to die, or attempting suicide, Loss of interest in usual activities or activities that were once enjoyed, including sex Relationship problems, Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much, Changes in appetite and/or weight Decreased energy, Trouble concentrating, A decrease in the ability to make decisions, Frequent physical complaints (for example, headache, stomach ache, or tiredness) that don’t get better with treatment, Running away or threats of running away from home, Very sensitive to failure or rejection Irritability, hostility, or aggression. (www.hopkinsmedicine.org). Add to that the mania mood of elevated joy and excitable thoughts and actions, excessive energy, grandiosity, agitation, racing thoughts, hyper sexuality and the desire to encourage the whole world to be as excessively mental as you are, in a creative speed freak style! Oh yeah and 20 years ago, add into the mixing bowl a large dose of 90's love biscuits and a litre of whisky. I'm such a catch!

Chaos aside, keeping all of this stuff contained is hard going. Also, there is a huge spectrum of day to day thoughts and feelings that knock around alongside the challenging stuff, and also the more difficult thoughts and feeling during periods of genuine distress, joy or sadness that are appropriate and necessary for processing life events. 

So what is the solution? I needed to understand my scale of oscillation and its nuances. I needed to monitor it, get a grip of what happens when, and then figure out how I can handle the situations and the thoughts and feelings that go on when I am in particularly challenging periods. The only way I can describe it is that "you lot" walk through the woods, at a gentle pace, looking at leaves and weaving in and out of the trunks with a direct and purposeful manner. You know where you are going and understand your surroundings. Sometimes a conker lands on you, or you trip over some roots, but you seems to manage that just fine. I however, enter the woods on a mountain bike, cannoning around trunks, vaulting over rocks and whizzing past other folk, then crash unceremoniously in a heap and pace around confused for a bit, then drag my bike around looking for signposts that everyone else apparently already knows but forgot to tell me. Sometimes I just sit in a heap and cry into my helmet until the season changes, or, imagine setting fire to the whole fucking forest just because. Sometimes I actually walk along with you. You think I am matching you for stride and pace, but actually I am just copying you to look normal! I am practising. 

So I did the dreaded mood diary. I took a mood snap shot every half an hour throughout the day, all day, until I went to sleep. I did it for about a month. For every mood snap shot, I also correlated what had been happening, with whom and how I was acting out. So, 7.30, kids screaming and I am tired. Mood snapshot, irritable, angry, self pitying. I am shouting a lot and feeling excessive guilt. Also you can scale the strength of what your mood is doing from 1-10 or 1-100 if that suits better. 1 being manageable and 10/100 being out of control. What it showed me is that depending on where I am in my illness, my mood unpredictability and intensity can vary wildly. I am generally more reactive and sensitive than most on any given day. My spectrum of mood movement is far greater than yours. That doesn't necessarily mean I am suicidal or manic but what I do recognise is that I need to implement strategies and techniques to live in the day to help me manage the fallout of that. Also, if some moods persist much longer than others or start impacting on my day to day functioning, my family and my ability to live normally then I need to get some kind of help, input or review to see what's going on. 

I still employ mood monitoring on a daily basis. I don't stand still every 30 minutes and write it all down. I do however, mindfully check in with myself throughout the day to see where I am at. People who know me really well will pull me if I am "Off" or being a little odd. My mum is great at noticing if I am speedy or fractious. My husband is good at noticing if I am getting easily distracted as I cannot concentrate as my mind is in 80 different directions,  or if I need to ease down on the pathological anger rant about something that isn't even important. I am also much better at knowing when I need to step back as my mood is not helpful and is running rampant and unbridled and I may well act out on it. Also, asking a sensible person if you are feeling the right things in the right situation is also a good practice. I have a few specially selected grown ups who I can ask for emotional accountability. I don't always trust the barometre in extreme circumstances. 

It is hard. Thankfully I am getting to grips with it. Lithium has really helped to reduce the variance of the mood barometre spectrum. I feel more manageable now than I have done for 25 years. Scary I know! Thank God I have great friends and family who are willing to love and accept me as I am. Acceptance is the key. Finding the way through it is up to me, with or without my mountain bike x

Having no words or strategies

Sometimes things happen that really shouldn't. They have little rhyme or reason. The toolkit of emotional responses and coping strategies that you carry as an adult suddenly look rather useless and pathetic. You look to others to maybe help out, but they too are woefully under prepared. I feel like a fish, flapping on the dirt, after being rudely thrown out of the stream onto the river bank. There is nobody willing or able to chuck me back in, as they too are further down the bank flapping away, gasping in anxiety and dread.

Something terrible happened. Thankfully my family and kids are OK, and we live to tell the tale. Someone else didn't. And it's funny because normally I can be quite forthright and vocal if I am experiencing justified anger. However in this instance, my anger in particular, has been quiet and measured. My personal and geographical landscape is forever changed and making loads of noise seems like a self obsessed luxury that I do not wish to indulge in.

Coming from a background of some difficulty gives you things, like coping behaviours. Some of my behaviours are unhelpful and skewed. But some, as I learned very recently, are actually quite helpful. Like recognising danger and unpredictability, pushing through fear to do something that is positive and right, not judging others in fear but practising compassion, support and love.

However, when you hand over some of that power and skills to people who profess to be professional, in a position of trust and power or security, you hope that they will honour your truth and experience and carry it to a place where goodness and safety will be achieved. In this instance, that didn't happen. For whatever reason, my 11 years of experience did not win out, versus 24 hours of snapshots of people who could make decisions that would affect so many lives.

I did my best, or so I have been told by many people. But I feel let down, incredibly sad and dis-empowered. So I will keep it very simple. Keep it in the day, rest and take it easy. I will be gentle with me and my community and maybe eventually we will adjust to what is.

I am grateful.

Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka's Gregor actually returns to "normal". Only 1 swear word.

OK so in "Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka, Gregor, the salesman, wakes up one day and has turned into some weird kind of bug. Just go with it..... His family cannot adjust or accept his change; what it means for their relationships, the impact on their home and the embarrassment they experience of other people in their circle of friends and life in general. Although it was written in 1915, it's an amazing parallel of mental illness arriving uninvited into a family setting and ruining the gentle world in which everyone was just getting on, blissfully unaware of any potential chaos and fear. Sadly in this scenario, Gregor gives up, and for what he feels is the greater good, goes into his room and dies. Sound familiar anyone?

So why am I going on about this? I had a lovely chat with someone yesterday about transformation, letting go and moving into newness. Metamorphosis, transformation or change, involves a process of fear and letting go. Even if you don't believe in God, in changing you have to step out into the unknown with a degree of "faith" in the hope and expectation that something good may come of your exercise in positive risk taking. It's either that, or fester in the rut of comfortable suffering.

We talked about tadpole to frog. The tadpole may never believe that it could live without water or a tail. But, as it forces its way upward to the meniscus, new legs popping out of its side, tail diminishing, there is a beautiful resistance between old an new; friction as it presses its face towards sunshine and fresh air and explodes through an invisible barrier. And in its arrival into the new universe, surprisingly it finds it can breathe, jump on lily pads, eat flies with a very long and exciting tongue and generally have a whole new experience.  The struggle was real, but it was worth it. And our frog can still dip into the water, know it's depths and challenges, but it no longer needs to spend its whole life there. He has been transformed.

For me, living with a debilitating mental illness makes me feel like I have been cloaked in otherness. I wear the insect like exoskeleton. Although I am me, it's not the uninhibited real me. Whilst poorly and attempting recovery, I push against the invisible film surrounding me and fight to break out of the constraints to reconnect and to breathe effortlessly. In this space, I am Kafka's constricting, life limiting insect. Whilst suicidal, I am the tadpole, sitting on the algae in the bottom of the pond, wholly believing that I will never reach the surface again. I consider going to my bedroom and not returning.

However, I find myself more recently, throwing off the shackles that have held me back and am spending more time on the lily pad. The things I believed were helpful or necessary have been discarded in order for me to grow skills for the world of the well. And although this process is uncomfortable, fear provoking and throws everyone I know into mild disarray, it has been worthwhile. I am beginning to feel "normal".

Normal- noun

1. 1.

   the usual, typical, or expected state or condition.   Or maybe not the whole 9 yards eh?

The biggest indicator of this transformation is when my Mum and sister recently saw me (In the real flesh sense and by photo) and both commented, "Oh, you actually look like you!". A sentence of 6 words, encompassing 10 years of hard work, struggle, terror and a "Fuck you mental illness" attitude.

Struggling with the invisible monster is a daily occurrence.  The degree of struggle varies, but it doesn't disappear. Wellness, recovery and happiness are achievable. I know it isn't that way for everyone, but for me, giving it a go is everything. The desire to really live is strong. Existing for me is not enough. SO I will keep showing up, and if you think I don't really look like me, I am still there. Maybe I just need you to recognise my struggle and walk with me patiently whilst I readjust between pond and pad, exoskeleton and the glorious nakedness and freedom of wellness.

It's been 10 years - lets have a review!!!!!

I realised yesterday that it's been pretty much 10 years since I entered secondary care services and first experienced a psychiatrist, cpn's and the whole system of mental health provision. In hindsight, which as we know is a beautiful tool, I could never have imagined the journey I have been on. When they told me at my initial assessment they'd like to keep me in services for a little while to assess my symptoms,  I assumed the whole cycle would take 6 months to a year. I had no inkling that 10 years down the road I would still be turning up at the cedars centre (Not a gentle old peoples home) and sitting in the crappy reception with it's water dispenser and oddly inappropriate magazines. So lets have a recap!

I have taken:
Citalopram
Quetiapine
Abilify
Procyclidine
Propananol
Valporate semi sodium
Lithium
Lamotragine

I have received:
12 sessions of Understanding depression cbt
12 sessions of Understanding low self esteem cbt
3 sessions of exposure therapy (trying not to avoid bleach, glass, knives, boiling water etc. in daily living)
3 sessions of mindfulness (But had to stop as I was so sedated by quetiapine I kept falling asleep; I did come off that stuff.)
5 sessions of family intervention with Ian
1 session of Schema and domain work
5 days respite during crisis
Crisis team intervention twice
A cpn on and off for 2 years - 3 different people
Recovery college courses living with bipolar, anxiety management, comedy and creative writing
6 different psychiatrists
3 manic episodes lasting up to 4 days

What I have done:
Not drank alcohol
Not taken illicit or unprescribed medication
Not actually attempted suicide even though it's been a bit dicey a few times
Asked for help and done what was suggested by professional people
Fought discrimination and stigma
Tried to be unafraid and rooted in faith
Been rigorously honest (Which doesn't always go down so well when your intrusive thoughts tell you to do incredibly random stuff and you share it with your husband!)
Attempted optimism and hope in the darkest of times
Forced myself to parent, show up to the business of living and try really hard to have a recovery centred, solution focused life
Smashed the odd plate and used the C word (By the way Christian friends that wouldn't be the Christ word sadly :) )
Reached out to others and tried to express how it really is for me in the hope that I might be understood


Sometimes I wonder how on earth I have got through it, survived it and am still here to tell the tale. I got fat, got thin, got fat; my hair fell out; I slept all the time then couldn't actually sleep at all. I got a rash that they thought was life threatening.  I had a psychiatrist who told me I was really ill and needed to do nothing except sit and get well, but wrote on my notes that I was in remission and needed no help. Someone told me how to hang myself properly (That was the day of the guy who had tried to remove his eye with a spoon), have been held and prayed for and felt love that is so strong it has kept me wanting to live. I have run about a work office like an insane person and heard voices.

My mood barometre is bouncy and flutters erratically, but in amongst the peaks and troughs, I am living and engaging and attempting all that boring normal stuff that some people take for granted. Never under estimate the power of the ordinary. And never doubt that God isn't in the very fabric of your every breathe and heartbeat.

The healing of the blind man - Some God talk today people

9 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. John 9 1-3

________________________________________________________________

These three verses sum up the last couple of days for me. It is interesting that as human beings, we struggle and resist difficulty and suffering. We cry out against emotional discomfort and seek a quick fix. We run away from things that might challenge us too deeply for fear of change, rejection or of people laughing at us. 

I am sometimes asked if I have a) Asked to be healed, b) If I have demon activity going on and a need to be freed/released or c) Why haven't you been healed (Inferring I am doing something horribly wrong or it's my fault!) The way my body is made when I am born is by a combination of DNA from 2 people. It's a physical manifestation of a body, in the physical world.  Spiritually, at that point, I am dormant, and awaiting a reboot from the divine. In biblical terms this is a fallen world, where humans are spiritually disconnected from God, and through the correct use of the will, we can return to that relationship by seeking a covenant with Christ, accepting his sacrifice and our salvation. Then, by the Holy Spirit, I am reconnected through the spiritual switchboard to God, where He has been waiting eagerly for me to sign in for conversations, gifts of the spirit and the odd miracle. He didn't want to force me. He wanted me to come by choice. To some of you this is either ridiculous, on a parallel with Santa and faeries, or the best thing since sliced bread. Some waver between these states. 

But what I am getting at is that actually, I don't need to know why I have bipolar. I don't need to find out if it was drugs that did it, genetics, my environment or all of the above. My brain chemicals are just disordered. What I become aware of more and more through this journey, is that my illness is an opportunity to get to know God more intimately. I can resist His intervention, believing that I know the answers or that if I try hard enough it might go away. Or I can try and perceive my situation from a spiritual perspective and see, in amongst the madness, where God is at work and laying out a discreet plan of action for me. I can let Him reveal to me where He is honing me, encouraging me, putting people in my path, granting me wisdom or divine guidance. It is also an opportunity for me to nurture and foster a genuine spiritual relationship. Not one where I go about judging everyone and being pious like some weird Christian legalistic biblical Olympian.  But one where I listen, He speaks. I speak, He listens. We journey together.  I am trying to live the parable. Bipolar happened and God's work is now being revealed in me. What that means is that I am not beholden to my illness. I am not a victim of it. I can use it as a tool. I can be a living testimony to God's love and powerful Holy spirit. 

When I was in deep depression relapse in July 2015, my thought processes were very dark and suicide was on the cards. I remember being on my knees, head on the floor and completely submitting myself to God as I had felt totally overwhelmed by the power of my mind. In the acute darkness, God revealed to me the cross. I was placed on a plinth, laying quietly at it's base covered by a sheet, resting and at peace. The light illuminated Christ in splendour above me, and God gently told me that the sacrificial work had already been done. Dying was not what I needed to do and He would honour my life and continue to restore me through this period of terror and despair. 

God has never abandoned me and I trust His will in my life implicitly. For me my faith is not a convenient idle crutch, or a way of elevating myself above you. It is a living, breathing, active relationship and in my illness I have been able to access something deep and meaningful beyond my wildest dreams. 

I don't know whether healing or a cure is on the cards for me. I sometimes resent the illness and it's consequences, but wild flowers can grown amongst the most broken rocks. I will keep allowing the spirit to work in me, and if I am lucky, you will see the face of Christ in my life and recovery.

Glimpses of the bigger picture

Have you ever experienced that space between sleeping and awake, when you think you've dropped off but actually you can still hear things and have random thoughts flying around your mind? This happens to me quite a bit as I struggle with sleeping these days. However, what happens in that suspended reality state is that images and subconscious thoughts materialise from the hidden parts of my psyche, as well as symbolic memories and connections that reveal deeper truths about my life. Cool eh!

So last night, I had a huge experiential memory moment laying there in the darkness, and a realisation of how that past moment gave me a glimpse into what was happening in the now. As a caveat, we have decorated the bedroom so it could be the wall paper paste and gloss, but it still felt meaningful and uplifting. I felt amazed and moved.

(Warning - I'm about to share a memory about drug use about 25 years ago so if you aren't up for it, exit now!)

So I took LSD once. (Or maybe more than once, but that's another story). I remember going up to the common in the inky darkness. It was very early in the morning about 4 a.m, very cold and my breathe misted in front of me. I was wrapped up warm and didn't actually have a plan or direction. I found myself in a large circular clearing, trees around the edges, and lots of knee length heather. I spreadeagled on the ground and looked skyward and was completely overwhelmed by the sight above me. As I lay there, I was surrounded by a fringe of leaves, edging a huge dome of the universe above me,  which on one side was black with bright stars, then graduating from left to right from an Indian ink navy blue, all the way through to red, and orange and yellow as the sun peeked it's head above the tree line. I felt like I could see the whole world in one small moment of time. I was laying inside a snow globe of space, floating on the heather totally connected to my environment.

What strikes me about this is that I never see the whole picture of my life at any time. To see everything of God's plan for my entire life would just be too intense to deal with, so I am privy to snapshots and the odd connection and memories that reflect back to me the journey so far. It can also make it hard for you to measure where you are at.

Recovering from a severe episode of mental illness takes time. And what I realised yesterday is that I have been trying to recover since I had Oscar in 2005 and it's been incredibly hard. The last 8 months has been the first time that I have totally dedicated myself to getting completely well. I have fallen foul of the "Have to do it all" even though I have a severe mental illness mantra. On some level the deep acceptance of my condition is still happening, but I am also influenced by the expectations and hopes of others. In acting out my desire to be well in the world by going back to work too quickly or down playing how bad it actually is, I have thwarted my own recovery. And this made complete sense to me when yesterday I was chopping vegetables for Ian's lunch. For about 5 minutes I was totally relaxed, I had energy, I had motivation to do something boring but necessary to help my husband that wasn't forced, I had no anxiety in my body, and my mind was almost silent. I didn't feel chained to a concrete block or feel like my breathe was laboured or that in any second I would be taken hostage by a thought of self harm or death. I felt what I can only term as "Happy and normal". It was truly humbling.

The Dome of the universe connects to this, because as I wander around in the snow dome of recovery life, I only ever see a small section of the sky. Three years ago we were in inky darkness, but my eyes had adjusted to living within that tone, Now, as I look skyward, it's actually turned orange and although it's shaded differently to before, it still has it's challenges and again I adjust. Yesterday in my kitchen, God allowed me a glimpse of the amazing place I was in, in relation to the rest of my recovery journey. Meeting with God, in simplicity and deep soulful gratitude whilst chopping veg. How very Brother Lawrence!

"The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen , while several persons at the same time calling for different things, I possess God as if I were on my knees at the blessed sacrament." Brother Lawrence c. 1614 – 12 February 1691