Category: coping

Spend time with nature

by worrylessjourney, posted in anxiety, beauty, calm, coping, depression, just sit

Today was beautiful here. We have been having typical March weather…one day cold the next really warm. Today was just right. In spite of the weather the azaleas have been beautiful. We have several varieties in our yard and they don’t always bloom at same time. This year they are all blooming at once.

yard

There is nothing more beautiful than nature. Spending time outside will refresh the soul. Just sitting in the sunshine can make life seem better. Time under the trees quietly thinking helps reduce anxiety and depression. When you can take some quality time with nature.

The good

by worrylessjourney, posted in acceptance, appreciate, balance, celebrate, choices, coping, gratitude, perspective, Uncategorized

If I think I have serious problems all I have to do is to look around me. I know that all of us have problems but there sure are some I wouldn’t want to have. One friend has a child with a brain tumor, another friend has had 2 recurrent brain tumors, I can look around me and there are people in pain with things unimaginable.

the good

I need to remember to be grateful. Maybe I need to start saying: thank you that I don’t have a brain tumor, thank you that my children, grandchildren and great grandchild are well. Thank you that I am not in a wheel chair. Thank you that I have a home to live in. Thank you that I have food to eat.

I could spend the rest of the day listing the things that are a gift. I don’t need to be saying “poor me” and feeling bad.

Focusing on the good things makes life a lot more joyous. Gratitude helps us. Sometimes we are sad that some of our own problems are difficult and it is ok to understand that but it is not ok to dwell on it. It doesn’t help.

good instead of bad

Find some way to keep track of the good things and focus on them.

Time change! UGH!

by worrylessjourney, posted in acceptance, aggravations, anxiety, coping, darkness, sadness, stress

time change

Tomorrow we switch to daylight savings time. How ridiculous! This changing of time is so silly. There have been multiple explanations why we do this and most of them aren’t significant. I know that it gives us evening daylight hours in the summer and some people like that. For someone like me I will be back to getting up in the dark and my mood will switch from great back to SAD. The evening hours don’t help me as I am a morning person. I don’t do getting up in the dark.

 

For the next few weeks I will be grumpy and tired. I will adjust but only when the sun catches up to our new time. For a while we lived in Panama and to change time was insane since the sun time changed little. We were almost at 12/12. Maybe that is where I need to live. I know it couldn’t be where darkness is 6 months long.

time-change-i-hate-it

We are definitely connected to the earth’s time clock. Our bodies are part of the earth and we change with the seasons. We change with the tides. We belong to Mother Earth.

I hope that everyone manages to cope with this shift to our natural rhythm. We will manage and move on but I can still HATE IT!

The change of aging

by worrylessjourney, posted in acceptance, aging, anxiety, connections, coping, emotions, friends, sadness, Uncategorized

I have been overwhelmed lately by my friends crises. When I think about the things that others are facing tears come to my eyes. If only we could fix whatever we wanted. Sadly, life is not that way.

As we get older we have to face the reality of others traveling with us are also aging. With age come health issues. We cannot live forever. I know this and yet it still hurts to see those we care about struggling. I tried to express some of this in this poem.

aging-is-not-lost-youth-but-a-new-stage-of-opportunity-and-strength-its-a-di-0d2b7866058da1dd7ec4aa7d4024fc53

 

Aging Change

Life doesn’t last

forever

we know

yet watching

as time

erodes

friendships

descent

into pain

how to

absorb

loss

loss of abilities

bring

aches

and yet

we

continue

to love

to grow

to love

until

the end

And beyond

Fired into beauty

by worrylessjourney, posted in appearance, beauty, calm, coping, empathy, frustration, perspective, strength

swan 2

This is been a strange week. For the first time in forever I didn’t write at all for two different days. Both times life was overwhelming and it just didn’t work. For someone who is retired it seems strange that I have had very little time to do anything. Things are slacking off now and I hope to see a more normal pace. Is there any such thing as normal?

Have you ever noticed how some people seem to have one trauma after another and others seem to drift through life unscathed? I just want to shake my fist at God and say unfair! unfair! It just doesn’t seem right. To make it worse sometimes the ones who have just floated through are also the worst people.

Looking at these things from the outside is probably not logical. Who can really know what is going on underneath. It’s like the saying about the swan. Serene on the surface but paddling madly underneath.

Glaze_BeforeAfter

Maybe the people who have been through the fire have been formed into beautiful vessels. Most of the ones I know have so much more compassion and ability to care than others. With all their trials they can still support and care for those around them. You can actually feel the vibrancy of their empathy. It radiates from within.

No one knows what form us. Some can be broken by events and some make finer. When that happens it is a beautiful thing to see.

Disappointment

by worrylessjourney, posted in aggravations, compassion, coping, parenting, perspective, Uncategorized

Disappointment. Today I was disappointed. I have been handling a my best friend’s will and am just about finished with it. There was some stock that had to be cashed out. We thought it was around $900 but the final check was only for $54. I was hoping to give some more significant money to the family and I am disappointed. I know that the money has nothing to do with me but I am still sad about it.

disappointment

This has been a long time getting to the end. We now have to divide up some personal items and I am not looking forward to that. The two heirs have a difficult past and don’t really speak to each other. They will be fine during this last task out of deference to me but I still will be glad to get it done. They are both nice people who have gone through some stuff growing up.

I have been sad for them through this whole circumstance. It is so sad that with very few relatives they can’t even have each other. Families are complicated. Things happen and lives are damaged. Children are so vulnerable and parents are the ones who have the most influence whether they mean to hurt or not.

past

What happens to us as children travels with us until the day we die. Hopefully, if hurt, we will be able to get help and learn coping skills but it can be difficult. Parenting is the most crucial role that anyone can have. Whether the child is ours by birth, adoption or any other way our role can make all the difference in the entire life of someone.

I am disappointed about this situation and will help where I can but the past is present in their lives.

We are connected to the earth

by worrylessjourney, posted in answers, balance, control, coping, expectations, health, perspective

In coastal Georgia, where I live, we have 7-8 ft tides. There is nowhere else along the southern coast where there is such a fluctuation. It is because of the westward dip in the coast. Today we had extremely high tides. I have not heard how high but such tides cause some coastal flooding on roads that are extremely low. It is not unusual for this to happen on a full moon and at this time of the year.

high tide

When the tide is so high that we can only see a little marsh grass peeking out across Turner’s Creek we know it is well above normal.

Tide has an ebb and flow. It is related to motion of the earth. As human beings we also have an ebb and flow. The fluids within the cells in our bodies actually respond to the cycles of the moon and the motion of the tides.

Years ago my youngest daughter wrote a paper about the moon, tides and the increase/decrease of episodes of crisis in those with mental illness. She studied the admissions to psychiatric units and correlated it with moon and tide phases. it was a small study and not really enough to prove the relationship but there was an increase in admissions related to certain moon phases.

Nurses have forever said that hospital admissions, births and accidents have that same relationship although statistically it never shows up that way. As a neonatal nurse we usually saw more babies with problems at a full moon.

forewarned

I do wonder if we kept track of the times we ourselves have difficulty with mental health flare ups we would see some correlation. It would be interesting to know. It would help us to better understand the cycles of crisis and plan to be ahead of the curve.

 

 

A Serious Problem

by worrylessjourney, posted in addiction, answers, anxiety, compassion, consequences, coping, depression, emotions, help

Caveat: This blog talks about the partners addiction and suicide.

addiction2

Recently our family has watched a (for me) distant member continue to self destruct. From early on in his life he has been addicted. I suspect alcohol at first but quickly drugs. He has been to rehab many times and now in his twenties he was in a serious accident with his transportation. A short while before this he was hospitalized for an overdose. In the hospital following this latest incident it seems he has expressed that he couldn’t cope any longer.

I can imagine that to have spent most of your life battling addiction, always needing drugs, in and out of rehab unsuccessfully, it would be difficult to see anything in your future except continued pain. I can understand the desire to end it all.

Several blogs have talked about that kind of hopelessness. It is devastating to feel that there is nothing that you can do to stop the circle of pain. Most of the blogs that talk about this have suffered from mental health issues and many have found help with medications, therapy and coping skills. Unfortunately, I know several families who have suffered with the problem as it relates to addiction and wish there were more successful help for sufferers. Some people are helped by rehab but there are those for whom rehab is not enough. It has made me suspect that for these people there are underlying problems, possibly mental health issues, that have never been identified and addressed.

touched by pain

It makes me suspect these victims have spent their lives self-medicating their unaddressed mental health problem with drugs and/or alcohol. I hope that as we look more carefully into the people who are suffering with this that more help can be found.

We are a whole not parts

by worrylessjourney, posted in aggravations, anxiety, balance, consequences, coping, medical, strength, viewpoint, wellness, wholeness

It has been two weeks since I was so sick with IBSD. I have been so well in general that the episode completely blind-sided me. Now I am experiencing the hangover. Since these particular episodes always occur between 9 and 10 in the evening I get anxious each night around that time.

The irony is that this kind of episode only crops up, at the most, once a year. It will take weeks for it to fade from my mind and then I will be fine.

journey-to-wholeness

It is so amazing what we can do to ourselves. I am fine physically but my mind clings to the latest event. So what to do? I have increased my prayer and quiet time, continued my regular routine and let that event become a memory that will fade. Learning and using coping skills is such a critical piece to our health and wholeness. We must remember that we were created as whole beings….not separate parts. Everything that we do affects our entire being.

One of the problems with out medical systems today is that we are not see this way but as different parts managed by different physicians. Not only do they not see beyond their specialty but they seldom communicate with each other.

wholeness2

 

We must learn to be our own advocates. Even if a physician ignores or puts you down for your concerns and conclusions about your care remember who sees the end result. Don’t ever be afraid to speak your mind and if you have someone who can’t accept that change to someone else. Never let a caregiver dismiss you. Each of us is just a important as the person caring for us. Never forget it.