Tag Archives: anxiety

07.15.24
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What do you really want to know about the Fatal Accident?

I must give kudos to KCTV5 news in Kansas City for a well written Facebook/News article about a fatal crash that occurred last night. I don’t mean to gloss over the family loss, the trauma or the details in this story! My point is the LACK OF often used over-descriptive words and/or opinions and sensationalism by the writers of this new story and it was very refreshing….”news only the news”

2 killed, 5 injured head-on collision on I-70. Year, make, model of both vehicles described as going opposite directions. Time, date and who responded to the accident. Now deceased driver’s names recorded along with how many passengers in each vehicles were injured.

This is what news reporting used to be…no mention of speculation of what caused the accident other than an obviously opposite/bound vehicles crossed the center median and collided. No mention of impairments. No mention of juicy details, no mention of sexual orientation, no mention of political affiliation.

Thank you for just the facts KCTV-5.

06.03.24
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The Freedom to speak

I have often been taken aback during a conversation with a friend…or for that matter a casual conversation with a stranger…there can be one phrase that will mentally remove me from the conversation as I attempt to define exactly what was said, often as I slowly open a squeaky window into judgement.

During my childhood years, the words or opinions from my parents were soaked in as gospel…perhaps not the canonical gospel….but the absolute last word on the subject. As I matured into my teen years and young adulthood, I was often taken in by the verbiage of others my age…it was new, fresh and helped me sort my opinions about clothes, cars, social and world events. I have often later ruminated about particular conversations that did not feel comfortable within my belief system. I always have the right to release ties to a relationship.

Now many years later, I recognize that I still put value on my friendships by how we relate in opinions. I feel I give and receive a lot of grace as I accept and often absorb other’s values and opinions because I actually never know when there is something new that will change my perspective.

Fast Forward to this morning in 2024, A discussion about the acronym SRO in a book. “He” asked me what I thought it meant and I said “School Resource Officer” which came from my many years working in the law enforcement community. “He” looked it up to find the definition SRO as “Standing Room Only” which was obviously the context. It’s so much healthier to acknowledge, to learn perspectives from others. There are always going to be contrasts. WE have all lived different moments and built our individual belief systems. Thus the steadfast arguments revolving around abortion, legal euthanasia, race and religion! It’s not my job to agree or change anyones mind, it is my job to allow a difference of opinion in the moment and understand that life lessons will either harden or open the mind to a new way of thinking.

and so it is…..

05.29.24
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I had no idea…

until the morning I woke up at 67 plus about 333 days, that I realized that age is just a number. The designation of age gives us a benchmark of when we can start school, get a driver’s license, know more than our parents, should be married and have children, should/could retire…and the biggie….begin wondering if I’m close to the age when I’m expected to die.

I recently experienced a short bout of depression. I recognized the signs when I started snacking a lot, wanted to only sit in the recliner and read or do New York Times crosswords and binge watch Britbox TV. I had no desire to leave the house for ANYTHING and found I could only communicate via text message. I had moved negative fears and experiences into my house and gave them a bed and 3 meals a day plus snacks! The thing was.. I knew exactly what the catalyst was for my mental burial but I was incapable of working through what was just beyond my grasp…because I could not stop ruminating.

I moved through the fear/sadness and with it came a knowing of how much damage I can do to myself by thinking and trying to control each moment. (my moments and other peoples moments). Attempting to live by a planned outline of my life….which is impossible. It is ridiculous to drive with one foot hovering over the brake. The enlightenment in my THINKING about what is expected at this age (pencil in a number) came by realizing that my thoughts about aging are legends of someone else’s history or the lips of society telling me how I’m supposed to live and think…fears are a hammer and nail.

03.16.24
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Sometimes the perfect solution is elusive….

When I was young, Sunday nights meant my mom would drill me on spelling words. Very often I would go to bed very upset because I would screw up. The matriarchal tutor would tell me to sleep on it and she bet I would remember how to spell them in the morning. She was right!

Her theory was that during quiet sleep my mind would do the deep work. I still hold to this theory as an adult recognizing that if I have enough discipline to JUST STOP THINKING about something, it usually doesn’t take too long for an ah ha moment. But the true fact is that it may take a minute, hour, day or decade for the truth to surface. The often seemingly impossible step is the one where I JUST STOP THINKING ABOUT IT!

Not easy for a lifetime over thinker. This truth came to a head recently when “He” said to me, ok, I’ll give you a little time to Overthink this. It raised my hackles but I realized those words only pissed me off because they were on target and he recognizes this tendency in me.

It’s hard to release the need to know but if we realize the behavior is nothing more than mind paralysis, the answer will gently presents itself in a knowing that seems like an obvious answer that you’ve indeed really always known.

Until next time….

05.24.23
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Like a nice breeze on a spring day..

I’ve been practicing “understanding” and “releasing what doesn’t serve me” for the last 5 years. (This, after 60 years of trying to rationalize my unhappiness, frustration and anger). I, now, recognize that my mind usually grasps for must-know what will happen in the next moment so that I’m safe. Relying on the illusions in past experiences to determine the worthiness of other humans…the judgments, love/hate/right/wrong about people/things while living from my head rather than my heart. I still struggle quieting preconceived notions about how I’m supposed to live and love…right and wrong…acceptable and unacceptable.

What I know in this moment is that I THINK TOO MUCH. I “think” because I “fear”. My expectations, my never ending scenario building, my panic when faced with the unknown seldom comes to fruition….

I have been mentally exhausting myself staying busy…doing, doing, doing…after awhile it turns into resentment, resentment, resentment. But don’t we need to keep “doing” in order to be productive happy humans…or at least to make others happy humans? NO!

I first had a whisper of what was going on a few months ago when I said out loud, I am so sick and tired of living by the calendar. Why do I continue to over commit myself doing things I might enjoy doing if I had time to enjoy them…but instead believing I must stay busy to be valued.

It hit me yesterday as I took my walk amongst the trees, watering the flowers and the garden, sitting on the deck reading with a cool beeeze while the sun warmed my skin. I realized I was doing something…exactly what I wanted to do. My heart was happy, my brain was silent and I understood the beauty of the heart vs the brain. Doing nothing is doing something…attending to myself from my heart instead of my mind/ego feels courageously gentle.

until next time….

05.15.23
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Just in……Bombshell

It came to me from behind the curtain…my view from behind the veil…and then the curtains slid back and all was revealed….starkly…in black and white…the understanding.

The Daily News of the world presented for our consumption brought to you by the “human reporters” predicting the future and enhancing the past in order to inject fear into our lives. What causes us fear is the stories we already tell ourselves about our perception of the next second, minute, day, lifetime. It works because we are programmed to react…..to fear and the great unknown!

If we examine our lives, we tend to live in the future…when they say this, I will say that…. What if this happens…..I heard they are going to do this ….what if we lose our house….what if that car behind me doesn’t stop…what if (name that soul) gets sick and dies….remember what happened last time.

This human scenario is what happens each time we glob onto what we hear or read from the “pick your opinion media” or “did you hear…” Constant expansion and retraction based on the future as explained by a human with an opinion vs facts. Because FACTS have not happened yet….and quite frankly facts are interpreted quite differently depending on how we filter these facts through our personal human event center…

Each moment our personal thoughts bleed all over our reality….and reality honestly only happens in each individual present moments of our lives. No one has all the pieces to predict what will happen in the next moment nor how each individual soul will perceive what just happened. Politics, war, pandemic, what medication will kill you, the next mass shooting, whether the United States will fall because of the debt ceiling drama. Stop the heartache of what might happen especially when it is being delivered to you from someone who really has no idea; but just reporting on the odds rather than the fact. The bottom line with the news media is it all comes down to who can instill the most fear gets paid the most money.

Until next time….

07.11.22
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I’m having “not living in the moment” episodes

Why do I think everyone else’s life is better than my own?

I know that these thoughts usually only settle in when I am feeling irritable without a cause or irritable with a cause. So…irritable.

Or when I’m feeling sorry for myself…without a cause or with a cause.

Or when I have committed or not committed to do something in the future that I am often unable to follow through when the moment is now. Actually this particular situation has taken care of itself, for the most part, because I am learning the lesson of NO.. just say NO because it is not something I want to do at this time. Often after I have said NO….I feel very empowered. Standing up for myself…even if I can’t respond immediately because in the moment I don’t know if it’s a yes or no, I do understand that in the next second I may have an answer. I’ve accepted that I have quite a vocabulary and a mouth and I know how to use them.

Often when I’m driving in a new neighborhood, city, state, country – especially on a vacation – I think..ya..I like this area, I could live here or No…I don’t even want to eat ice cream here. Those memories seem to live in my consciousness so I can pull them out when I’m feeling irritable, sorry for myself, put upon, not appreciated. I USE THEM to compare my present moment with the illusion of the moment in my memory. It’s hard to remember the difference between fantasy and what I’m experiencing in the present.

But then…I can find myself when I’m sitting in solitary on the deck watching the water ripple on the pond, see the gentleness of the geese skimming across the water, an occasional ruffled feather, hear the birds tweeting in the wren house above my head, feeling the sun on my skin…reality sinks in and I know that I wouldn’t trade THIS or my life for anything. Which has me questioning sentence number 1 above:

Why do I think everyone else’s life is better than my own.

Namaste

03.03.22
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Changing life one coffee shop at a time

There is often a huge crevice between expectations associated with our choices and Reality… Capital R – Reality. Simply put, I’m in the drive thru of my favorite coffee shop, waiting for my turn to order, I make a snap decision and choose to get a large calorie laden coffee with caffeine, sugar and real whipped cream rather than my usual healthier choice of a regular decaf brew. In that moment of choice, I may set into motion a day of regrets and negative self talk because of the one moment (monumental?) decision. I’m hung up on the little jagged edge in the crevice as the the self talk…the disappointment in my choice…. morphs into the inner voice screaming why did I do it and why do I always make the wrong choice….this negative self talk and self irritation continues on and on even into the next morning as I step on the scale, not knowing that this one little coffee choice may be forgotten, but has become a building block for the next second, day, year, lifetime.

Sounds a little over-dramatic that a cup of coffee could set your life on spin but how many times do we make a choice, a decision that seemed right in the moment, but find out as life happens that it might not have been the best decision…..but…..oh how we fear intentional change…we fear the unknown. Like the wrong career choice, the bad marriage, the wrong investment, the wrong doctor. These “moment” choices can set our life on a trajectory of angst, hardship, anger or mental self abuse? When, actually, in any moment, we can make a different choice. Life doesn’t happen to us…We choose in each moment and each breath! We can step back and ask ourselves….hmmmm, “How is that working for me?” and then make a change, or a different choice by ordering the planned regular decaf brew!

The way we view our life is one drama after another drama or a sitcom after sitcom or an entire How-to HGTV day perhaps seeing other colors to use as our background. The choices and decisions are ours to make. In my life I have lived many stories. I’ve told myself and edited narratives while identifying with each story while also including play by play -free of charge- to anyone who would listen. It’s not an easy habit to break, but I realized that I created the monsters and the beauty of realization is that as soon as I “open my eyes” the monsters disappear. Until I actually believe they are real, they do not belong to me!

Namaste

01.08.22
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Just because I’m breathing…

does not mean it is mine to do.

From an early age (childhood) I learned that I had responsibilities. Not for just cleaning out the dishwasher but to rinse the dirty dishes, load the dishwasher “correctly”, run the dishwasher, empty it and begin again. This duty was not totally my responsibility but a metaphor for my childhood. From an early age, I felt responsible for my mother’s happiness and if pledge and dusting the living room furniture every other day was what kept her mental health intact then that’s what I needed to do.

Fast forward 6 decades. I’m very responsible. I do what needs to be done. I people please. I consider myself an empath and wear other peoples moods and emotions under my own clothes. This is a curse or a gift depending on how I experience it in my life.

A coffee date with a couple of girlfriends (who are like my Siri navigation giving me options of which route to take) reminded me that I need to set boundaries. I need to listen within to navigate what is mine to do. What brings me joy and contentment? What causes me to want to run fast toward or away from experiences….and the best advice….to seek answers from my inner guides before I close my eyes to sleep. So many life decisions are made as we slumber, when the ego is asleep and the deep inner soul has peace and quiet to figure it out.

What is mine to do?

Namaste

01.05.22
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Playing with building blocks

Recognizing the emotion. I remember myself and my history as having 3 recognizable emotions and I knew what to do with them…Sob/cry, let it all out laugh, and that feeling in my forehead of rage which I would not normally let out. Everything else (the initial build up) just felt like discomfort…and most of the time I was able to distract myself from that feeling by eating…yes eating….that always felt good….

It wasn’t until I learned and started applying “new thought” “Unity” principles to change the way I think that I began to notice the uneasiness that normally preceded one of the described emotions. The little tickle of laughter as I began to smile was easy because I could belt out a loud laugh that could be heard round the world (it used to embarrass me because it was loud). Second came recognizing the irritation and anger….that was also easy because I carried it around so often and for so long before it burst….but the uneasiness that would make me cry…that was different.

The uneasiness of violence (perhaps because of my mother and the yardstick), witnessing sadness in my beloveds and the world, witnessing murder and death of animals (this is actually the most difficult for me). This uneasiness I felt this morning watching the geese on the frozen pond and thinking…just stop….it’s time to go where it’s warmer…why won’t you go?

It brought that feeling of fear, uncertainty, grief, this doesn’t feel right to my heart. I snapped this picture, stepped back and was grateful that I was actually able to identify the feeling/emotion so that I could stand with it a moment and release it rather than letting it be the first block in the tower of emotional blocks that could/would stack up in my day until I burst free with sobbing, laughing or screaming about something that had nothing to do with anything!

If you are doing the work…working through habits and emotions…you are not alone….sometimes feelings hurt but ignoring them does not make them go away. Eventually they burst forward!

Namaste