Rest In Peace Dad

My father died around 4am this morning.  I had just seen and talked to him on Friday afternoon through the audiovisual program called FaceTime for Apple products.  He seemed in good spirits and I was planning to talk to him that way once a week, but then the phone rang at 4:30am this morning.  I got a message saying that my father had died rather suddenly and the nursing home needed to know what funeral home we were going to be using.  I didn't call back.  Three hours later they tried to reach me again and I did pick up.  I had needed those three hours to work through my emotions which I had been trying to push down again.  I still haven't cried.  Tomorrow I will have to make many calls and then inform my fathers long time friends about his death.

I wrote about my father not too long ago on Father's Day in June.  Today, after not having gotten a lot of sleep, I feel not only tired, but physically ill and, naturally, depressed and I'm not sure if I can write this blog entry.  I think I need to try anyway.  I have only told one person via texting, a woman from my Al-Anon group who recently lost her father, too.  All she could do was give me a little support and sympathy.  I haven't even told my brother yet.  I'm not quite ready for this to be real.  Tomorrow I will have no choice.  I will have to make all the calls despite my phone phobia.

(A few hours later...)

I haven't been able to get through to my brother, which is frustrating, but I have to let go and let God for now and wait.  I'm feeling a bit unstable.  Tomorrow I see my therapist.  If I need to I might see her twice this week and then next Monday, too.  My father is gone, but I'm still here and I need to take care of myself by reaching out for contact with others.  If I see my therapist and call up friends in the AA/Al-Anon program and maybe one of my childhood friends, too, and focus on healing activities like painting, writing, singing, I should be all right.  I know I'll get through this.  My distress is a golden opportunity to practice recovery attitudes and behaviors.

Repeatedly today I've turned to gratitude.  Gratitude that my father was only in the beginning stage of dementia.  Gratitude that he died quickly.  Gratitude that he lived a good, long life mostly in health.  Gratitude for his kind and intelligent and generous spirit.  Gratitude that I loved him and he loved me.      Yes, I feel sad that we didn't bond more closely, but I can accept that because he gave me so much anyway.  I've heard a lot of incredibly hard stories to listen to or read about people who had terrible relationships with one or both parents, but I was blessed not to have that experience.  My parents taught the importance of courtesy and honesty through their example and they were such bright and knowledgeable people.  Sometimes it was a joy to be around them, just to listen to them talk.  The emotional neglect that I went through from them was never intentional neglect.  That's so important, the intention behind speech and actions and their intentions seemed always honorable to me.

It wasn't that they had no emotional/mental sickness in them.  They could be obsessive/compulsive, codependent and controlling like many of us, but much of their spirits remained relatively innocent and open.  They had some of the best aspects of being big kids and yet they remained very responsible adults.  After I became ill many times it was a comfort to visit them.  Their homes were clean and organized and inviting.  They helped people out while doing the things that they enjoyed such as traveling together and eating out at good restaurants.   Their generosity to my brother and me was rather unusual in that it was so devoted to us.  Unfortunately too much generosity led to an unhealthy dependency for me.  It allowed me to withdraw into my isolated world and get very sick there.  But still, I was an adult nonetheless and I chose my own path.  They didn't have control over that, only I did.

I was proud of them and proud to follow them in the ways of courtesy, humor, honesty and intellectual curiosity.  I believe I'll carry those parts of them in me until the day that I die.  So on this day of sadness and depression, I also feel a lot of love and do believe their spirits are somewhere good going to somewhere better.  May you be well Mom and may you be well Dad as you both continue on your journey.

Edwin A Kiernan Jr   8/2/1926 to 7/12/2015

Social Anorexia

This past week I have started joining 12 Step telephone meetings for Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous.  This is a first for me and I've been to three meetings so far, two of which focused on what SLAA calls sexual, emotional and social anorexia.  I identify most strongly with social anorexia and to some extent to emotional anorexia.  I have practiced social anorexia since high school or, in other words, for around forty years.  I've met and known and been intimate with only a few people.  Thanks to the SLAA group I'm starting to see that my self-imposed isolation is really an addiction, too.  I know now that I can't stop this behavior without the help of the Higher Power.  People cannot help me, nor I them, if I don't reach out to them.  My isolation from people is a form of imprisonment.  I'm so used to it that I lose sight of this.  

Returning to the Al-Anon group has given me the confidence to begin reaching out to the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous group through the telephone meetings.  I feel I belong in the Al-Anon group, but I am starting to realize that I belong, in my present circumstances, even more to the SLAA group, especially to the anorexic group within the group.  My response to the two meeting I went to for anorexia was mixed.  I feel a real gratitude for the meetings and the people who chair them, the people who show up and for the connection between members in the meeting after the meeting.  I also feel sadness that there are so many people isolating themselves the way I have done.  And I feel fear of those fewer members who are so emotionally shut down as to be cold to themselves and others despite reaching out to the group.  

Many anorexics in this group practice self-hatred.  They are caught in a double bind of judging others and themselves equally harshly.  I used to be more like that, but I've found, after surviving domestic violence and serious mental illness, that I am generally kinder to myself and others than I have ever been.  And yet still a sense of shame lingers within me paving the way for me to continue practicing social withdrawal.  Perhaps I've known how pernicious shame is since after I graduated from college the first time in the mid 1980s.  So many people have had people in their lives that actively have shamed them to the point where they internalized it and began shaming themselves daily.  That's how it started for them, often in childhood and adolescence.  But that is not my story.  Why I chose to take on the burden of shame when no one had seriously shamed me in my childhood and adolescence, I do not know at this point, but that's what I did.  It led me right into a love addicted relationship with a young abusive alcoholic.   

I do not know what it is to have a deep, healthy friendship or love relationship.  In my sick state, I don't know what true health looks and feels like, except through the glimpses that my Higher Power shows me when I reach out to others.  Now, I'm reaching for greater awareness and understanding and as it comes to me gradually I am beginning to awaken sadder, darker feelings, the feelings that I have been pushing down deep, trying to ignore.  I don't want to, but I know I have to embrace feeling my feelings if I am to have the chance to break out of this prison I have constructed.  

Of course, the story doesn't stop there.  If I get too dark while coming out of my denial,  I fall back into living without balance and that is not a good place to stay.  I have to search for the good inside me and outside me.  I am close to trying to approach my 4th Step "made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves".  Many of the inventory guides say to pick out 12 character defects or shortcomings first and then pick out 24 character assets.  I did make a list of my shortcomings, but now it is time to make a list of my strengths and never lose sight of all the good that is in me.  I need to love and respect myself as I am.  Self love is not only precious, it is absolutely necessary in order to have a rich and rewarding life with oneself and with others.  

Working The 10th Step

I've begun the practice of working this Step recently.  I posted in my last blog entry a version of it that I found on the internet, a list of 34 questions to answer before going to sleep.  I'm not yet doing it every night yet have still managed to do it for most of the week these last few weeks.   Ideally, a person should go through the 9 previous Steps to get to this one, but I have not done that yet and think that it is good to review my day and see where I have been getting stuck and where I've been getting freer and more confident.  This can be gratifying in that many of the questions show that I am in recovery fairly strongly, but also frustrating because I see more clearly where I am having difficulty every day I take the inventory and it's the same issues over and over again.

So for a few moments I feel badly about what I didn't do during the day.  Then I realize that those tough problems I need to turn over to God and trust that if I stay open and willing to learn that good changes will come.  But reviewing these problems most nights keeps the work I need to do in my awareness.  The discomfort of that is a part of growth.  I can do nothing unless I am aware of the problem, willing to acknowledge it as a problem, pray on it and let it go till the time comes when I can approach it and diminish it or remove it.

When I take this Step I am holding myself accountable to myself, to God and to other people.  I'm aspiring to be as good a person as I can be on most days of the week.  The most basic way to be a "good" person, a healthy person, is to practice rigorous self honesty.  When I am honest with myself I accomplish a number of things:  I stay aware in the present moment, I make myself vulnerable before the Higher Power allowing that Power to point me in a good direction, I reinforce a sense of personal integrity and responsibility or put more simply, I follow a spiritual path.  Self honesty for me is really the first step.  I can't admit to powerlessness or any of my weaknesses if I can't remain honest.  Honesty is the bottom line practice for me.  When you practice honesty, you can literally feel when dishonesty is creeping into your mind and relations with other people.  That discomfort can stop you cold and help you to return to the healing path.  Honesty safeguards your spiritual health.

Taking the 10th Step you respect yourself by acknowledging just what you did and didn't do that day, assessing what your thoughts and feelings were that day and seeing if you reached out to others to help them as a way to help yourself, too.  It is a self diagnostic test you freely take to build a better relationship with yourself and God and all the people you encounter.  Answering some of the questions will feel real good and others will feel bad.  The bad feelings are meant to raise your awareness level in order to prepare you for change in your life.  Positive change can happen when you learn to feel your feelings.  I have trouble with feeling my feelings, but this Step eases me into it, both the joy and the sadness of being human.

Before you can admit to being wrong in some action towards another, you have to first admit it to yourself, and when you do finally do that you simultaneously admit it to the Higher Power thereby getting the strength to admit the fault openly to the wronged person.  And when you open your mouth and apologize you become strengthened again by taking on responsibility for your actions and that is the core of making an amend.  It is not about being forgiven, though that is always a welcome response, it is about honoring your ability to recognize the truth and speak it regardless of the response.  It takes courage.  It is a discipline of love for self and others.

10th Step = Nightly Review

TENTH STEP NIGHTLY REVIEW CHECKLIST
 Did I start my day with conscious contact with my Higher Power?
 Did I act with patience, compassion, kindness and love towards others today?
 What have I done to be of service to the people around me today?
 Did I resist the temptation to gossip or criticize others today?
 Did I make unreasonable demands upon myself, others, or life today?
 Did I label myself or others today (people rating)?
 Did I catastrophize any situations today (can’t-stand-it-itis)?
 Did I have contact with my support group and/or another person in recovery today?
 Have I contacted my sponsor recently?
 Did I do any step work today?
 Did I renew at any time today my conscious contact with my Higher Power?
 Have I been resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid today?
 Did I worry excessively today or dwell in the past?
 Am I taking myself too seriously in any area of my life today?
 Did I feel “stressed out” today?
 Did I experience any extreme feelings today? What were they and why did I have them?
 Did I exercise self-restraint today?
 Did I respond rather than react today?
 Did I harm anyone today? Do I owe an amends? What might I have done differently?
 Have I practiced unconditional self-acceptance today?
 Did I allow myself to become obsessed about anything today?
 Did I behave compulsively in any way today?
 What spiritual principles did I practice in my life today?
 Was I happy and peaceful today?
 Do I see any “old patterns” re-emerging in my life today? If so, which ones?
 Has there been conflict in any of my relationships today? What?
 Did I allow myself to become too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired today?
 What did I not do today that I wish I had done?
 Did I get physical exercise today?
 Have I kept something to myself that I need to discuss with my sponsor?
 Was I kind and gentle to myself today?
 What did I do today that I feel positive about?
 What are the areas where I need to improve the most?
 What am I grateful for today?

Eleanor Longden: The voices in my head - TED Talk

A TED talk that is definitely worth listening to.  Ms Longden is a powerful speaker and has a lot to say.

Inner Child Work

Me at about age seven, drawing.

I've always had a bad memory and, after enduring through an abusive relationship and psychosis, it has gotten worse.  I'm at a point in my life where this is no longer acceptable to me.  I want to remember my life or at least the key elements of it.  The few people I know, those not in a recovery program, pull away from remembering childhood and adolescence and want to leave the past in the past; it's apparently too painful to remember.  But the people in 12 Step recovery programs must face their pasts squarely when the do the 4th Step: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  Last summer into the Fall, before I had my most recent breakdown, I was working on my 4th Step and managed to partially take my 5th Step, the confession Step.  It didn't feel right and I know it's time to return to the 4th Step and try again.

In order to take this Step I feel I need to remember myself as a kid and so I've been tentatively telling myself to do some "Inner Child" work.  I've returned to two books, John Bradshaw's Homecoming:  Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child and Nancy J. Napier's Recreating Your Self:  Help for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families.  I bought these books in the early 1990s in Florida during one of my extended escapes from my abusive, love and alcohol addicted partner in order to try and reach inside myself and start the healing process.  They both focus on reaching out to the child within and reparenting that child.  I found the Napier book especially important to me.  She teaches her readers how to practice self hypnosis to find one's present self, one's past selves and one's future self.  She has a series of self hypnotic meditations that you read aloud into a recorder complete with appropriate pauses and listen back to in order to enter into a trance state for around 20 minutes a session.

I remember sitting down in a large closet for absolute privacy to record on a tape cassette recorder one of these meditations having to do with regressing to younger parts of one's self.  As I read and paused I got pulled into the trance state and my speech became more childlike as I regressed.  It was a strange feeling and yet I felt I really got to some deep places within myself.  I still have that tape hidden somewhere in the vast clutter of my house.  Recently I have recorded three meditations, one to imagine a particular safe place, one to get in touch with the inner child and one to have myself and my child self meet the future self.  The concept of meeting my future self is a challenging and magical one for me.  I still haven't met her yet, but I'm open to reaching out for whatever my unconscious has to reveal to me about her and the child or children within me.  I say children because there are different age groups within me, different stages of me.  I've met the four year old and the seven year old.

The four year old was sucking her thumb and holding her "thing" which refers to a very soft folded sheet that I would knead with my fingers as I sucked my thumb.  I sucked my thumb until I was seven years old when my mother threw away my "thing" mainly because my two front teeth were starting to buck and twist.  Besides that I was about three years too old to be still doing that.  The reasons why I did that are unclear to me right now, but I'd like to find out.  The little Katy stood on a path through a wooded area leading to a beach looking at me from about ten feet away.  She wore a short dress and her hair was pretty short, too. She was serious, but open, just there and watching me.  Later I would take her hand.

The seven year old, no longer sucking her thumb, was also serious, but no longer as accepting.  There was caution in her.  She wore shorts and a sleeveless shirt, her hair medium length and uncombed looking - she was very slim and very tan.  It was summer for her.  She stood close to a tree in the shade and watched me without speaking.  Her eyes were dark, large and soulful, nose small and round, and lips full but stopping short of a pout.  I could feel that she was bright, but wounded.  Damped down.  I just stood at a distance from her, not close enough to touch her.

I'm not ready to meet the future self because I don't even know these parts of myself well enough.  I've only done the trance work a few times so far, but wouldn't mind starting a practice where I do it once a day for around twenty to forty minutes.  Ms. Napier says it is important to go slowly and move with the changes.  She encourages changing the meditation to suit what the unconscious is directing you to look at and experience.  I'm somewhat nervous about doing this, but I think it's because it's a new and unfamiliar practice.

Of course, emotions will rise to the surface and I will have to work with the uncomfortable ones.  The future self is supposed to come forward to help with this, to begin the process of reparenting the sick children within.  I know I need this self therapy.  I have a new therapist and I will ask her to help me when I get stuck.  I think it's important that I have someone to talk to about the trance work, an outside view that might give me more clarity and direction than I can give to myself.  I need to work towards overall balance especially when I'm tipping into negative feelings and thoughts.  But really, the visions that come up are set in places of strong safety, for me, at or near the beach, my favorite childhood place.  This makes it safe to approach the dysfunction in myself that I acquired through living in a dysfunctional family system.

It disturbs me not only how out of touch I am with my childhood and youth, but how out of touch so many adults seem to be.  I haven't met anyone who hasn't been hurt as a child and adolescent, some severely so, and yet for all of us childhood and youth had many magical moments seen through fresh eyes with an open spirit.  The problem with the really bad stuff is that we let it stand out and color many of our memories and also our present moments.  Why do we have this tendency to forget so much of the goodness we encountered?  And why do we generate the one thing that we really want to disperse:  suffering, through holding onto resentment and regret or worse, hurting ourselves, as I have done much of my life, with a numb detachment?

I want resolution to all my unresolved conflicts.  Don't we all?  Isn't that why many people pick up all kinds of self-help books, go to therapy and support groups, reach out to family members, friends and lovers?  Those that get that far are luckier than the ones who wish to bury the conflicts to make them somehow disappear.  But they don't disappear.  They come up in disguised forms whenever we find ourselves conflicted with people and situations.  So I'm here to urge you to find your safe place or places inside yourself and take the risk of getting to know your beginnings, your core wounded self, in order to release a more profound self, what some therapists call the "true self".  What Buddhists might call the Buddha child within which is our unblemished true nature that sprang into life in even the most miserable childhoods.  It's always there, ready to be tapped into, but you have to commit to it and do the work.

6/28/2015 Drawing

6/27/2015 Drawing

Today's Drawing

My Art Process & The Higher Power

This is a drawing I did yesterday with rapidiograph pens and markers.  I drew it for a childhood friend because I had emailed her photos of a couple of other drawings done in this style and she wrote back that they were "delightful" and reminded her of the artist Paul Klee.  These types of drawing are so very different from my generally realistic drawings and paintings, but that is part of the fun of it, experimenting with a variety of styles and mediums.  When I start a drawing like this I do no prep work, but just begin to make marks on a page to see where I will go.  After I've laid down the black and white drawing, I go on to choose colors one by one to color in certain sections.  Again, there is no plan.  I pick colors intuitively and see how the colors I've laid down interact with each other and then just keep going.  Usually it winds up becoming some strange, fanciful world that I can enjoy visually, but cannot interpret.  This approach is a lot of fun, but each time it takes courage to lay the first mark down.  I'm hoping that I continue the practice.

I've been trying to get myself to draw and paint more within the last few weeks and have been having only partial success.  Over the last several months I have bought a lot of art supplies, initially because I gave my older supplies to a friend last year who was interested in making art at a time when I had lost interest, and then because I was finding good deals at an online store called Dick Blick and found myself unable to resist.  Earlier this year I had painted a couple of seascapes based on photographs I found on Google.  I used a new medium -  water based oils.  I had heard of them years ago and was curious.  Could they measure up to regular oil paints?  I had switched from oils to acrylic because I work in my living room and my six cats roam around and demand attention while I'm working.  I didn't want them around the paints or the turpentine, etc...  I also worked with watercolor and gouache for the same reason.

I found as I used the water based oils that I really liked them, more than the acrylics I had been using.  The seascapes, painted on 10" x 10" canvases, came out well.  Then I went down to Florida with my brother to clear out my father's apartment because he had been moved permanently into the nursing home.  That was emotionally exhausting and when I returned I wasn't ready to start painting again.  Then I got the urge.  I bought a standing easel, put it together and kept it in my living room.  I picked out another seascape to paint and then found I couldn't do it.  So I turned to my watercolor pencils and drew this:

It didn't come out the way I had hoped.  It was pleasant enough, but still not what I wanted.  I wanted to use the oils and felt blocked.  That's why I turned to the rapidiograph pens and markers and colored pencils, going in an entirely different direction.  That's good, too and, for now, I can accept that.  I'm not sure why I have this block.  Perhaps it is the Higher Power directing me.  I hope so.

I've been turning my will and my life over to the Higher Power much more consciously in the last 6 months.  It's a strange sensation.  Each morning after I get up I take my medications for the day - one anti-depressant and one anti-psychotic.  I thank God for the medications and then I pray for guidance.  I say aloud "Please guide my thoughts, speech and actions today."  Then I go on to pray for some of the people I know, wishing them to have guidance for the day, too.  If I have a particular problem I'm dealing with that day, I ask for help with that also.  Finally, I read from 2-4 daily support readers and reflect a bit on each one.  That is about the extent of the structure I create for the day.

I have never lived a very structured life, except, at times, when I was in school.  Because my family has been able to support me financially through all my illnesses, I have not taken on the responsibilities that most people do.  My desire since I was a child was to be some kind of creative artist, but I could never commit to it the way others have, even though I tried to over and over again.  And I continue to keep creativity a big part of my life be it with writing, songwriting and singing and making visual art.  It has been a godsend to me to have a lot of creative abilities and outlets, especially when I was in the midst of acute illness.  I believe creativity is a must for everyone, regardless of their mental state.  It's a basic way to stay in touch with oneself and the Higher Power at the same time.

So as my day progresses, I turn to the Higher Power in gratitude for so many things and ask for direction as to what I need to do in the moment.  Yes, I make some plans each week to see other people, or to call them or to do certain things that need to be done, but mostly I go with the flow and see where it leads me.  And there are times when I lead myself in a wrong direction.  Most of this week I spent alone meaning to reach out to people by phone and mostly not doing so.  I spent part of my day re-reading a few journals I wrote in 1993 at age 30 when I was separated for a couple of months from my then boyfriend who had been abusing me cyclically for over 3 years.  At that point in my life I had discovered Al-Anon and their daily readers and other support books.  When I was away from my boyfriend I seriously embraced recovery, but it was a very upsetting time for me, trying to decide whether to return to living with my boyfriend or not.  As I read, I felt respect for myself and how hard I was trying to heal, but still it stirred up emotions and I felt depressed.  After experiencing a couple of days of this, I stopped reading the journal and redirected myself to more practical matters and this helped.

I see art making as a practical matter.  The practice is down to earth and meditative.  It gives me a break from my studies (because I do study for hours each day either support literature or books on addiction, dysfunctional family systems and Buddhism) and allows me to let go.  It is also the most direct means of connecting with others on the internet through sending images I've made to friends through email or posting them to Facebook or on this blog.  People don't always have the patience to read what I write, but they do have the patience to quickly take in and respond to my images.  I need some of this connection and feedback.  It makes me feel happy.  It is self-revealing in a socially acceptable way.

I also know that I need to slow down each day.  When I work, I work hard and have to take breaks mostly lying down on my couch for 5 to 10 minutes.  It also helps to sit at my table in front of an open window and listen to the birds singing and feel the breeze, look at the trees and sky and feel peaceful and grateful.  So I'm living and learning as I should be.  The cool thing is that even when I go in a wrong direction, as long as I learn from it, it has great value, just in recognizing it and in becoming more aware.

The Therapeutic Value Of Coloring In Adult Coloring Books

A page I colored from Creative Haven Art Nouveau Animal Designs Coloring Book.

The Prismacolor pencils I used.

I recently started coloring in adult coloring books as a form of both concentration, meditation and relaxation.  There are quite a few coloring books for adults to choose from on Amazon.com, but you

need to choose wisely.  Some are the standard page size and some are small; some have printed designs on both sides of one page which is not good if you use markers and they bleed through; many have perforated pages so that you can remove them from the book after you use them; some are on thicker paper (recommended) and others on thinner paper.  You need also to decide what medium to use.  I chose Prismacolor Verithin colored pencils because the pencils can be sharpened to a fine point to color in small detailed areas and they don't bleed through the paper like markers.  I have not tested out different markers yet, but, of course, with markers the colors are more vibrant and that can be desirable sometimes depending on the design.  

As an amateur artist I find that when I make my own designs and color them it takes more planning and effort, which is great, too, but sometimes I like working with other people's designs precisely because it takes the pressure off of me and I get to focus on the color and different color combinations.  So I am recommending that anyone out there who wants a creative way to relax and express themselves try this option.  Some people might think that coloring in a coloring book is just reserved for kids, but I'm here to say that not true.  Check out the comments section on Amazon.com about whatever coloring book you've chosen to consider and see how much some people get into doing this form of creative outlet.  For me, it's a good way to learn more about color and to try out different mediums: colored pencils, watercolor pencils, watercolor and markers.  It's also a good thing to do if you have children, a time to learn and bond together.