For this weekend’s mental health writing, list 1 or 2 things that are soothing to each of your 5 senses – sights, smells, sounds, textures, and tastes. Write about any memories associated with these soothing stimuli.
I hope you are having a lovely weekend!
What does the word miracle mean to you? Write about a miracle that has happened in your life.
Link your post or write your response in the comments below or just write about it in your journal at home.
Happy Easter to all those who are celebrating with me today. Many blessings to all.
Check out the just published online issue of Turtle Way, a literary art journal written by those with mental illness. Poetry, prose, research, humor, photography, and more…
Write about a time when you had a brush with death or found yourself in an extremely dangerous situation. How did it make you feel? Physically? Emotionally? How did it affect you short-term? Long-term? What did you learn from this experience?
Write your response in your journal at home, or on your blog and then share the link to your post in the comment section, or share your response in the comments below. Thanks and have a great weekend!
This weekend’s prompt is to write the longest gratitude list you possibly can. Add to it all weekend. Tell me how many things are on your list come Monday.
Life sometimes seems life a series of accidents, like things are spinning out of control. Scary, anxiety-producing, unknown. It can cause us to freeze in our tracks like a deer in headlights, just waiting for the impact take us out. Rarely does this ever happen. Our fears build up scenarios in our heads that make things more unbearable than they really need to be.
If only we could take a moment to stop our thoughts and concentrate on our breathing. Take a deep breath. Do the next right thing. Take it one step at a time. Have faith that if we only take care of what is in front of us – whether it be a daily task, a job responsibility, a self-care activity, a social commitment – the future will take care of itself.
For the future is never with us, only the present moment is. It is only in the present moment where we can take the actions that will make a difference in our quality of life. It is only in the present moment where we can find peace.
For this weekend’s writing prompt read my meditation post here and write about five fantastic things that happened in your life this past week.
Write your response in your journal at home, in the comments below, or on your blog and feel free to post the link to your blog post in the comments below. Thanks for participating and have a fantastic weekend!
We spend so much time and effort on our recovery, and some days, it seems as though there is little pay off. What is it all worth? Has it really made a difference? And then we look back over the months and years and we see that, yes, it has made a difference. We are further along than we were.
One plus one equals two. Life is more complex than such a simple equation, but does it have to be? If we take each simple action as an accomplishment, it can become as simple as the “1” in the equation of one plus one, and our daily activities will add up into something grand. Even something as simple as sitting up in bed in the morning and putting our feet to the floor can be considered an accomplishment, for it is healthier than laying there all day!
We must give ourselves credit for every little thing we do. Let us not take for granted each step we take toward recovery, for it is all the one plus ones that add up to the sum of our well-being.
When the cold of depression surrounds my heart with ice, and I shiver under the blankets in my lonely bed, it feels as though I will suffer alone forever with the silent screams of the voices in my unquiet mind. If only for a moment to feel the healing touch of God, to feel the warmth of his hands melt the chill of despair that suffocates my soul – oh, how lovely this would be!
At times, it feels as if our despondent mood will last forever, but like the tides of the ocean, the ebb and flow of life and its accompanying emotions are never stagnant. What is today will not necessarily be tomorrow. With every breath is the promise of new and different possibilities.
Hanging onto the hope of a better tomorrow is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves. Taking the necessary steps to facilitate such an outcome is what we are called to do. We alone are responsible for taking care of ourselves, our health, our own well-being. We must not wait for someone else to take charge of our lives. We must take even the smallest of steps to begin to make the changes in our lives to become the person we were meant to be, to heal if only a little at a time; to try if only in some small way every day.
I am a mother, and I have bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder (BPD) traits, meaning I have some but not all of the criteria needed to meet the diagnosis for BPD. Two years ago, my life was changed due to learning the skills taught through Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Below is part of my story which was originally published at Healing from BPD.org.
I bee lined down the hall into the bathroom, and shut and locked the door behind me before falling to my knees. Covering my face with my hands, I sobbed. Outside, my two and six-year-old girls banged on the door. “Moooommy! Moooommmyyy!” I thought, “Oh, my God! Why can’t they just leave me alone?”
I dialed a friend’s number and when she answered I cried, “I can’t do this. I can’t be a mom. I don’t know what I am doing. It’s too much. I can’t do this!” She calmly asked me what was wrong. I babbled through snot and tears, “One won’t eat her dinner, the other one always needs her diaper changed, they are fighting over toys, the Disney channel is driving me insane, and of course my husband is working all night again!” I was spiraling out of emotional control…over every day, typical motherhood stuff.
That was six years ago – four years before I would be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD.) On many occasions, my husband would have to come home from work to calm me down during times like this. Feelings of inadequacy, fear of harming my children or myself, anger, self-pity, gripping anxiety, immobilizing depression and loneliness were my constant companions.
The unpredictability of the children’s behaviors and moods, and my inability to set boundaries and provide structure in my own life, let alone theirs, only heightened my anxiety. I was permanently in fight or flight mode – instincts gone haywire. I was filled with self-doubt and self-hatred. I felt like a caged animal ready to chew off its own foot to escape the chains shackling it to the cold and filthy floor.
Then I learned (in Dialectic Behavioral Therapy – DBT) that this chaotic environment, in which I felt like a prisoner, was imitative of my own childhood home. Sure, I wasn’t walking around drunk all of the time like my parents, but the moodiness, anger, and self-absorption that consumed me were not much different from theirs. Also like them, I had no real sense of how to be a parent.
Everyday interactions with my children baffled me and left me reeling in emotional binges filled with terror like when I was a child. I felt as if I lived in a carnival fun house filled with mirrors that distorted my view of the entire world while everyone else had regular old mirrors to look at. In hindsight, this was closer to the truth than I realized at the time.
I was already being treated for alcoholism and bipolar and anxiety disorders when my psychiatrist suggested that I might have BPD as well. My first response was, “Great, another fricking diagnosis!” What I didn’t know, however, is that being diagnosed with BPD would be the best thing to ever happen to me and for my mental health recovery. For if I was never diagnosed with BPD, I may have never sought out DBT, which did for me in one year what years and years of individual and group therapies based on other psychological theories could never begin to do.
In DBT I learned how to be mindful of and radically accept my limitations as a highly emotionally sensitive person and mother. For example, this past spring I was beating myself up over not being emotionally balanced enough to take my children to church on Easter. The old me would have ignored my high anxiety levels and begrudgingly gotten them ready while screaming at them to, “Hurry up. Do this. Don’t do that!”
Then I would have suffered through the service feeling like a martyr while becoming angrier by the minute. Or I would have had a panic attack and then drove us all back home in a dangerous state of mind. Then I would have spent the rest of the day in bed, completely abandoning the kids to the television and their own devices. And let’s not forget the verbal hell my husband would have received for having to go to work, thereby leaving me to deal with the children alone, and on a holiday at that!
Instead I sat back and observed my thoughts and feelings as if I was watching another person go through them. I acknowledged the guilt and anxiety rather than fighting them. I also consciously did not make them who I was, but chose to view them as an experience of something separate within me. I chose to believe that deep down all was ok – that I was ok – no matter what thoughts and feelings occurred in my mind. I also made special care not to judge my thoughts and feelings as good or bad. The just were there or they were not…period.
Later that morning, I found an Easter service streaming live online, and my girls and I worshiped along with them from the comforts of our family room. It was a blessed day in which I owed no apologies at the end, neither to my kids or my husband, and most importantly, to myself.
What is it like for you as a mother with BPD? Or if you are the child of a mother with BPD, what is that like? What are some positive aspects of being a highly emotionally sensitive mother?
Write into the Light 