Compassion for all

When I heard the news of Michael Jackson’s death yesterday, I thought I would be the last person on earth to write about it.  I have not been a fan of his music since Thriller ( I was ten when that album was released) and have felt deeply critical and resentful of his actions as a father, especially since he was such a celebrity and had so much influence in the world.  I was not happy that he died, rather I felt almost nothing.  This lack of feeling prompted me to ask myself, “where is my compassion, my empathy for a fellow human being?”  After all, I am a psychotherapist and much of what I do with and for clients involves feeling compassion for them when they are too full of self-judgement to feel it for themselves.  It is easy to see why I felt disturbed by my lack of compassion for Michael Jackson, a man who was known to have suffered abuse as a child and who so obviously wanted the approval of many, if not the whole world.

I think this lack of compassion occurs in all of us.  Instead of compassion we feel judgment.  Why?  Maybe because it’s more comfortable to feel judgment than compassion.  Having compassion opens us up to the pain and suffering of another human being.  Judgment on the other hand, can tempt us into the illusion of feeling superior and powerful.  I am not a child-molester.  I am not addicted to pain killers.  Therefore, I must be better than him.  Why should I feel compassion for someone who has hurt others? I believe that judgment, while being less obviously painful, is more damaging to our soul.  It separates us from others and when we are separate we are less connected to life. 

If it’s easier and less painful to feel judgmental, however, then how do we get from judgment to compassion?  Psychologist and author, Daniel Goleman, has this to say:

“The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I’d say that compassion begins with attention.”

This is how I suddenly discovered my compassion for Michael Jackson.  A friend passed along a link to this article written by Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, who was one of Michael’s friends.  For some reason I felt compelled to read this particular commentary on Michael’s life.  And the result was unlooked-for compassion.  To peer into Michael’s life through the lense of someone who knew and loved him allowed me to open up to his pain and the longing he felt to be loved and accepted.   How sad that he was taught at such an impressionable age to equate love with the admiration of strangers.  How tragic that this lesson was beaten into him by his own father.

So I now feel compassion for a man I previously felt only disdain for.  It doesn’t change the facts, as I see them, that he was responsible for hurting others and for setting a bad example.   And that’s the really tricky part about feeling compassion for others; it can be painful to witness another’s suffering AND they are still responsible for the injuries they inflict on themselves and others.  Compassion can inspire us to help someone, as it seems it did Rabbi Schmuley, but the burden of accepting the challenge to change rests on the individual who is suffering.

In the end, I don’t feel better now that I feel compassion for Michael Jackson, I merely feel humbled.  That seems somehow more human that judgment.

 

The healing power we all have

Disclaimer: I would like to make it very clear that the following entry is no way intended to be a Judaic teaching.  It is my hope that my experience is merely the vehicle through which I am able to share something I believe to be important for every one, regardless of their belief system.

After a long bout with serious illness and several weeks of recovery, I’m finally back to blogging.  In the last four months I’ve learned a lot about the importance of rest, good food and other things that support healing.  Last week, at the monthly Rosh Chodesh women’s group I attend, I was reminded that each individual has the potential to support health and healing in others.  Since then I’ve given quite a lot of thought to this and have decided to share what I learned because even if we’ve all heard it before, it’s one of those basic truths that bears repeating.

The sliver of the moon just after it was new

This Rosh Chodesh we learned about the month of Iyar, the second month and the month that the recently freed Isrealites began to recieve manna* from the heavens. After a brief teaching we each pondered what would be the perfect nourishment for us in that moment.  Then we took turns asking to receive that nourishment from each other.  Since the group is a sacred space I will not share other women’s experiences but I can say that the requests varied from being massaged to simply being listened to.

My unique form of nourishment in that moment was to lie in child’s pose and have each woman place their hands somewhere on my body and remain perfectly still for five minutes.  What sounds like a simple request became very powerful and healing when put into practice.  Five minutes is a long time to lie perfectly still, especially in the presence of others.   In that time I relaxed and enjoyed the experience of simply breathing and being held and supported by other women.  Each woman gave herself completely to the exercise and I could feel the love and kindness of their intentions.

In our culture we think of healing in many ways: being treated by a medical provider with medicine or a procedure; receiving a massage; taking herbs or special tinctures; getting regular accupuncture treatments; having a healer give us an enegry treatment like Reiki.   All of these things require payment or at the least a trade of some sort.

While I believe they each of the above have their place and are important forms of healing, how many of us forget how powerful our loved ones are?  It can be difficult for some  of us, it is for me, to ask for what we need when we’re asking friends or a partner.  But asking is an important aspect of the healing we need.  When we ask we are acknowledging that we have a need.  We are also giving others the opportunity to help us.  Most of us, if asked, would be happy to help those we love in whatever way we can.  Why, then, is it so hard for us to ask those same people for what we need?

Whether we are the one asking for or the one giving nourishment, we are reminded that simply listening, being present, and touching another human being are powerful forms of healing that every one has the capacity for.  If you do one thing for yourself today, ask one person to give you the nourishment you need in that moment.

*Manna is thought to have been nourishment from the heavens.  It is said that manna was the perfect form of physical and spiritual sustenence for each person.

 

Doing my part to promote climate change

Most of what I muse about here at Windjourney’s Weblog is focused on nurturing a healthier body/mind/spirit.  In order to enjoy health in these ways, however, we have to live on a planet that will sustain us.  Some of you may have noticed that on the lower right hand side of this page there is a badge stating that this blog promotes climate change.  I got this badge from the folks at brighterplanet.com.  This site offers all sorts of helpful tools for reducing your carbon footprint and learning more about climate change.  Because I took part in their challenge to get 350 bloggers to post the badge on their websites, I earned the opportunity to help other people do their part in offsetting their carbon footprint.  There’s absolutely nothing required of you in the way of payment so if you’re interested please click on the link below.  Only the first 25 visitors will get to participate so do it now!

http://oneday.brighterplanet.com/users/4656/passes/public/WZG-JLI

Thanks all!!!

 

What it’s like to live with clinical depression…

As a psychotherapist, and as someone who has experienced brief depressive episodes as well as the long term depression of a family member, it has often been my unhappy duty to explain depression to those who have no personal experience with it.  Anyone can go to the DSM and look up the diagnostic criteria for depression, but try explaining what this feels like.  That is a completely different jar of cookies.

Maybe you are depressed or have been depressed.  Chances are good that you know someone who has experienced depression.  The World Health Organization estimates that depression affects about 121 million people worldwide, and leads to 850,000 suicide deaths per year!  It is important that every one have a basic understanding of this serious condition because until the stigma around it (and other mental illnesses) is gone many people will continue to be alienated and go untreated.

My purpose here is to do my part (small though it is) in spreading awareness by presenting some descriptions of what depression feels like.  People who are depressed may be perceived as being lazy, self-involved or anti-social.  But in reality they tend to feel little interest or pleasure in anything, have low self-esteem and little energy, and experience their lives as meaningless.  Along with this, many people who are depressed also experience debilitating anxiety and find it hard to be around people. Some succumb to this while others fight tooth and nail to overcome depression or live with it in such a way that their lives are not ruled by it.

Perhaps the most courageous and vivid ongoing description of living with depression is found in an online blog I read quite often.  In this particular entry, the author aptly describes her experience this way:

“Can you ever run out of emotion? In trying to explain Depression the other day I said imagine that one day you found you’d run out of fun and pleasure. You woke up and those emotions had disappeared – your tank was empty and the car wouldn’t start. It just sputtered and spluttered until you finally gave up on it as a lost cause and kicked the tyres till you’d run out of energy too.”

Other ways I’ve heard it described:

“I wake up in the morning and I can’t think of a single reason to get out of bed.  Everything that used to have meaning has no substance for me anymore.”

“I once spent three days crying and I didn’t know why.  Everything, a broken dish, the sound of my baby crying, the mail in the post box, it all made me cry.”

“When I’m depressed it’s like all feeling is gone.  I can look at the sky and know intellectually that it’s beautiful but feel nothing.  My children laugh and I feel nothing.  I want to feel something but it’s like I’m in a bubble where everything, my emotions and desires, is on the outside of the barrier between me and life.”

If you or someone you know is depressed and not already getting help, please make a phone call today-right now-and get help.  Most counties have mental health hotlines and if you have insurance it probably covers a visit with a mental health professional.  At the least, call your primary doctor and schedule an appointment for a depression screening.  Depression is a serious illness but it can almost always be successfully treated with psychotherapy and/or medication.

Here is a resource for learning more about depression and how to get help.

 

Do We Ever Stop Grieving?

Grief is a funny thing.  And I obviously don’t mean in a ‘ha-ha’ way.  Most of us expect to feel intense grief in the time just following a loved one’s death but we also tend to expect that the age old saying about time healing all wounds is literal and that some day we’ll wake up and we won’t feel all the feelings related to grieving that loved one.  It’s true that if healthy grieving work has been done we will eventually come to accept that loved one’s death and may even feel peace around it–most of the time.  In my experience, however, that does not mean that we will stop missing our loved one or that we won’t occasionally experience a flare up of anger, disappointment or intense loss.

In the time just after a loved one dies we are overwhelmed by a myriad of feelings.  We may: be in shock or feel numb; feel relief if a long illness preceded death; find that we are crying uncontrollably; and/or experience intense rage.  These possibilities represent only a few reactions to death; people’s experience of grieving can be as unique as they are.  There are recognized stages of grief but the order in which we pass through these stages varies.  As time goes by we navigate back into our everyday lives and our thoughts slowly turn less often to our loved one and more frequently towards the life we are living.  This needs to happen in order for us to avoid becoming consumed with grief to the extent that we abandon our own life and the loved ones who are still with us.

Even once the initial grieving has been done, feelings related to grief can show up unexpectedly for the rest of our lives.  That’s because when a loved one dies we do not stop loving them.  Months or years may pass and you see a person who resembles your loved one, begin to reminisce and suddenly find yourself in tears because you miss their presence in your life.  I recently saw a dog who looked very much like the dog I lost several months ago.  I went to pet her and was overcome by sadness and spent the rest of the evening feeling deep grief.  You may go to fix a leaky faucet and remember that your loved one used to attend to these kinds of tasks and feel angry that they are no longer around to help.  People have been known to dream of a loved one for years after their death.  These dreams can be comforting and may bring the feelings of deep grief back to the surface.  

This is all very normal and we should treat ourselves gently when these feelings surface.  They are a testament to our ability to love someone even after they have long departed.  When these feelings come up be curious about them and allow yourself the time and space to feel them.  They will pass and can sometimes turn into a fond remembering or laughter when we allow ourselves to fully experience them. After all, the person or animal we miss was a part of our life and the joy we felt in their presence can continue after they have left this physical world.

 

Women and Intuition

One of the most common complaints I hear from women is that they feel disconnected from their intuition and they don’t know what to do to recover this most precious of senses.  It’s easy in this busy world, with all it demands of us, to lose touch with the voice inside that warns us when a situation or person is inappropriate for us and guides us towards what will be fulfilling for our soul life.  It’s similar to losing touch with a trusted old friend because of a move or life change.  Sometimes, and this is frequently the case with our relationship to intuition, we never invested enough energy into the relationship in the first place, and when we remember its value it seems too late to go back and fix it.  In relationships with people, time away may render the lapse impossible to mend, but our intuition can only recede from consciousness for a time.  Intuition is a birthright and is only waiting to be re-membered and engaged with.

I recently began teaching a workshop designed to help women connect with intuition through a deep exploration of the folk tale, Vasilisa the Brave, and the creation of a hand crafted doll.  I have written briefly about how conscious examination of stories can increase mental health (refer to this post) so I won’t go too deeply into it here.  In brief, stories can serve as maps to personal development.  The key to understanding these maps are the symbols and archetypes that make up the backbones of the stories.

The story of Vasilisa and her journey to the witch, Baba Yaga, gives clear instruction on how to nurture and utilize a relationship with deep wisdom and intuition.  A handmade doll given to Vasilisa by her dying mother symbolizes the powerful roll the intuition can play as a messenger from the inner realm of deep wisdom.  It is clearly illustrated that in order to establish an ongoing relationship with intuition we have to nourish it, listen to it, and trust it to guide us even when we cannot consciously foresee where the indicated direction, endeavor, or relationship may lead.

In the workshop, the telling of the story of Vasilisa forms the bones of understanding and the exploration of the symbols and archetypes becomes the flesh.  But, as if often true of learning on a soul level, there is no breath or life until we translate the knowing into physical experience and form.  This is where the doll creation comes in.  Several years ago I learned to make needle felted dolls.  Here is a photograph of the doll I made for the purpose of working with intuition:

The creation of the doll serves two purposes.  First, while students are listening to the story of Vasilisa and working with the symbols and archetypes they are also crafting the doll.  Their hands are engaged in a simple and repetitive motion, thus freeing up mind and soul to aborb the wisdom in an itegrated way.  Second, the finished doll takes on the energy of a talisman.  The doll as talisman is a physical reminder of their developing relationship to intuition.  One woman who recently took the class spoke of her doll as representing a powerful protective force.  I found this very interesting because the word intuition has its roots in old French and Latin and can be translated as not only “to look at or consider” but “to watch over.”  This understanding of the word sums up the purpose of connecting to intuition: as we build a relationship to our intuitive selves we engage with a force within us that carefully considers everything around and inside of us and thus allows us to make decisions that will ensure our development.

 

Here’s a great tool for people with depression and bipolar disorders…

I recently discovered a wonderful tool for helping people with depression and bipolar disorders track their mood and recovery.  It’s called Mood Tracker (found at http://www.moodtracker.com) and anyone with an email address can sign up for a free account that  provides you with access to some great features.  It seems to have been designed with the intention of helping people taking medication for depression and bipolar disorders by providing them and their care providers with a graphic mood chart that tracks hours of sleep, daily mood, and medication taken.  Over time, such a chart would be very helpful in fine tuning medication dosage.  For those living with bipolar disorder, this website can be used to notify caregivers, family and friends of a manic episode.

Here’s how it works:

If you desire a reminder, Moodtracker will email you at the same time every day to remind you to log your mood, medication and hours of sleep.  When you log in you enter a new a new mood record for that day.  This includes the mood that was most prevalent throughout the day, as well as the opportunity to record a second mood you might have noticed during the day.  You record the level of anxiety you experienced, if any, and enter the level of irritability you experienced.  You are also asked to enter the hours you slept the night before, whether you’ve taken your medication and, if you’re a woman, if you are currently menstruating.  There’s also a journal space for each day so you can write down anything related to your mood or experience that you feel is important to track.  (Some examples might be: noticing if you enjoyed anything that day and what it was; if there was a particular theme to your thoughts; if there was a crisis and what preceded it; and what kind of exercise you did that day.)

The website also allows you to enter what medications you’re currently taking, how much and how often.  This information, along with the information you entered for the mood record, is automatically charted and can be viewed graphically.  This allows you (and any caregiver you allow to access your account) to view shifts in your moods over a period of time.  Your journal entries are catalogued separately and can be kept private in case you do not wish to share them with your caregiver.

While this website was intended for people taking medication, I strongly believe it could be an important tool for any one with a mood disorder seeking to track changes over a period of time.  Even someone who is making major changes in their diet, exercise and sleep patterns might want to see how it effects their mood over a long period of time.

The most exciting thing about having a simple tool to help you track your mood is, I believe, that it gives you the opportunity to see how your mood shifts over time.  This gives you power to become more of an active participant in your treatment.  If what you see is a consistently depressed mood, or high levels of anxiety, you can take that information to your caregiver and request a change in your treatment.  If you’ve been depressed for a long time and start tracking your mood as you begin a new treatment, you can watch as your mood begins to shift and become more frequently elevated.

 

How stories can enhance your mental health

All of us are exposed to stories in some form. We read fiction, watch movies, and have dreams. Chances are we first came into contact with stories as children who were read to or told stories as part of our daily lives. If we were encouraged (and sometimes even if not encouraged) we probably picked up books on our own once we could read. What not everyone is aware of is how important stories are to our mental health. Joseph Campbell, C. G. Jung and many other philosophers believed that stories, especially the myths and fairy tales upon which many of today’s books and movies are based, tell us basic truths about culture and the psyche. In short, they provide solutions for dealing with psychological problems.

The great thing about myths and fairy tales is that they tell these truths in a bare bones way that makes it easy for us to interpret and use the information contained in these stories. So as not to get deeply entrenched in the variety of truths myths and fairy tales provide us with, I will list a few of the more common and important ones.

1. Creation myths explore th creative instinct, patterns of renewal and the birth of consciousness in the human psyche.

2. Hero/Heroine Journeys are stories of individuation and overcoming great odds to become whole.

3. Tales of relationship and love describe the inner relationship we have to the masculine and feminine parts of our psyches. They also serve as a guide for how to go about uniting the active and analytical masculine aspect of the psyche with the more intuitive and receptive feminine.

4. The theme of encountering evil in fairy tales and myths help us understand the nature of evil in the world and how we relate to parts of ourself that we are unconscious of and are often destructive.

So, what do we do with stories other than just read them or watch them in the form of movies or tv shows? It is true that in simply being exposed to them we integrate a bit of information necessary for understanding our inner nature. But we can go a step beyond and try to relate to them consciously and in engaging them we can amplify the benefits stories can give us. What follows are some relatively simple ways to begin an exploration of stories and how specific themes might help you find solutions to habitual patterns and ways of being that are not constructive or healthy.

Think about all the fairy tales and myths you’ve been exposed to (you can think about movies and books as well but they are a little more convoluted) and pick one that feels special to you or that somehow describes a basic theme in your own life.

Is there a movie you like to watch again and again because when you see it you get a deep feeling of excitement or satisfaction? Is there a type of hero or heroine who most attracts you? How are you like them or how would incorporating some of their qualities enhance your life?

Is there a villain in fairy tales, a book or movie that particularly scares you? I knew a young woman who had recurring dreams about vampires and was interested in reading vampire stories. Upon exploring her associations with vampires, she felt they represented her abusive father and characteristics of him which she had internalized. In understanding this she was able to more consciously relate to this aspect of herself and to work with some of the psychological issues coming up around that.

Even if you don’t do any conscious work with stories, try noticing characters and stories in movies that attract you. Be aware of what makes you feel good in a story, what scares you and what excites you. If you want to go more in depth with this, read C. G. Jung’s Man and His Symbols, Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By, Gertrud Nelson’s Here All Dwell Free, and/or Jacoby, Kast, and Reidel’s Witches, Ogres and the Devil’s Daughter.

 

The Importance of Baby Steps

A blogger friend made an important observation about my post Five Things You Can Do To Feel Better About Yourself. She said that in her experience, using tools such as those I wrote about is a great way to help yourself when you’re feeling pretty good but can be hard to implement when you’re in a negative space. So how do you make these tools “reliable when (you are) in an unreliable state?” I believe my friend was correct when she said she needed to take baby steps.

This means you have to give yourself a break. When you’re depressed or just feeling down about your life it’s easy to be hard on yourself for everything you do, or don’t do, without any regard for what’s truly important. Part of you is complicit with the negativity and will do all it can to continue the negativity (see my post on the Anti-Me). If you are aspiring to implement new tools into your daily life you could very well beat yourself up every time you realize you’ve forgotten to acknowledge yourself or taken a step to feel better. So you have to give yourself attainable goals and start slowly. And above all, BE GENTLE with yourself.

Here are some practical things you can do to start taking baby steps towards feeling better:

1. Choose one new skill to focus on and don’t try to add anything else for at least a week, maybe even a month.

2. Give yourself credit for doing it when you do and if you start beating yourself up for not doing it, try to find a voice inside yourself that can simply repeat: Be Gentle.

3. Make a sign (this could be as simple as using a sharpie on a piece of blank paper or the back of an envelope) that says “Be Gentle With Yourself” or a reminder to use another tool of your choice.

4. Remember that in the beginning you may only try your new tool once in a whole week. This is still very much an accomplishment.

Every step gets you closer to feeling good about yourself.

 

Will Power: it’s a muscle

For a few years now I have been toying with an idea a friend suggested. She was teaching small children in a Waldorf school and she explained how helping children develop their will requires encouraging them to exercise it as though it were a muscle. Many of us think of will power as something we have or don’t have depending on the circumstance in which we need to use it. One person might have great will power when it comes to staying on task at work and completing projects but very little will around pumpkin pie. Another may have strong will in eating nutritious foods but terrible will when it comes to setting boundaries with their children.

The variables in these scenarios are desire and knowledge. When desire is greater, it’s harder to employ will power. As for knowledge, when something is understood (like the importance of setting boundaries with children and how to go about it effectively) there’s more motivation to employ will power. Being familiar with these variables can help us make conscious decisions about using will when we want to but we must also make our will stronger by exercising it.

Some steps you can take to exercise your will:

1. Make a to-do list (see my post referring to this). Be sure to start with things you might do anyway if you typically have trouble following through with lists. If you want more of a challenge, include one or two items that you’ve been “meaning to get to but something keeps getting in the way…”.

2. Give yourself credit. At the end of your list write down what you’ll do for yourself as a reward. Positive reinforcement is a fantastic way of making it more likely that you’ll employ your will in the future. Be sure and choose something you can do immediately after you complete the task. And, obviously, choose something you enjoy, something that makes you feel good. Some things I do: sit down and have a snack, buy a book or magazine you’ve been wanting and take some time to sit down and read, if your task is running errands stop on the way home and grab a smoothie or other treat, watch an episode of your favorite show, take a walk with someone you love.

3. Give yourself a time limit for each task. I have issues around doing dishes. I don’t like doing them but I need to have a clean kitchen to maintain my sanity. Lately, I’ve been giving myself a time limit on doing dishes. I’ll tell myself, “do dishes for 15 minutes and then you can do more later if you want to.” Fifteen minutes feels like a small amount of time and I know it’s something I can tolerate. Quite often I surprise myself by actually doing all the dishes in the allotted amount of time! This is teaching me that I make a bigger deal out of tasks that they really are. As I regularly see how much faster it is than I expect, I need less and less will to encourage myself to do the task

4. Increase your enjoyment of the task. If the expression of your will is task oriented, add something to it that makes it more enjoyable. If you’re running errands or exercising bring a friend along or your favorite music. If it’s a household chore you can get someone to help, listen to music or have a familiar movie or tv show playing in the background (familiar because you’ll be less inclined to get too drawn into it). If you’re using your will to avoid certain foods, have nutritious snacks on hand that you can replace the unhealthy one you want, or have a list of alternative fun activities to do instead of eating. Just because it’s a chore, job, or the denial of a desire, it doesn’t have to follow that you can’t have fun with it. Be creative. Be inventive. Think like a child and make it a game.

If you have a really weak will power start slowly and choose goals that are achievable. It may just be that you notice when you use your will effectively. No matter what, give yourself lots of credit for trying and celebrate your victories. And remember, the will is like any muscle in your body; you have to exercise it regularly and allow it time to grow stronger.