Gettting what you want - Mental health

Life is good.  I use to wear those t-shirts all the time it but I didn't really believe what they said and now they represent a time in my life that I was the most un-conscious.  By all means possible from the outside it looked like the perfect life but spiritually I was vacant still carrying the wants and needs from my childhood.  Hoping magically they would get met by the strangers in my life at the time.

Being abandoned by my own family I found different groups of people that I substituted for the imaginary family that I thought I missed out on.  My view of the world was a combination of sit coms from the seventies where you were surrounded by people who loved you no matter what stupid thing you have done. I definitely believed in magic I had to my mother was dying and I wasn't aloud to even acknowledge she was sick.

My sister buried herself in mostly Gone with the Wind.  Being four years older I think she might hold the record for the number of times that book was read in a short period of time.  I am not sure how that book shaped her twelve year old mind.  Maybe she liked where Scarlet pulled herself together and rescued herself.  I can only think of the part where she thinks Rhett has come back to help her and he rejects her.  Scarlet has burned all her bridges. 

I can now see how I was looking for trust and support and imagined other people had family's to give them that and I didn't. Blood is thicker than water. I wanted a shoulder to cry on but from as early as I can remember you are just suppose to suck it up and move on. Crying was not permitted - "I will give you something to cry about" - I only write this because it was shaped my life in a way that makes it impossible for me to be genuine about my pain except in words.

I gravitate to people like me because it feels comfortable.  I remember at my lowest sitting across the table from someone with tears running down my face and not getting even comforting words from that person.  The hard shell cannot be penetrated. I often said about my ex that if I was laying on the ground on fire I would have to say "call somebody".

My parents loved me but they had tough lives.  They said the words but but emotions were mostly off limits.  I think this is why they loved the Pentecostal church where when you were worshipping in the spirit you could be free emotionally.  You could cry or even laugh all you wanted.

My dad  told me the first date he had with my mother she made him go to a prayer meeting.  He said when he walked in he knew this was what he had been looking for all his life. It is a powerful release to be with a large group of people letting their emotions go and freely worshipping.  A celebration of a living God pretty powerful.

I think my point of the post is to say that we are conditioned by our past but if we can see this is just conditioning we can move on and not feel we aren't getting what we want. What we want is to feel safe and accepted.  We want to think that if something happens we will have a soft place to land and Rhett will save us and everything will go back to the it use to be or maybe we will have to start again because we have burned too many bridges.

I think that life is life and that we don't know for sure who will be there when something happens.  It is really frightening to think too much about this but for me I know it will work out.  Families are just people going through life the same as we are and can't magically solve the insecurities we have inside.

When I was sick and sad everyone ran from me.  Slowly everyone drifted away except one person who just made sure I was eating and occasionally getting out. I was physically ill and this was contributing to my already grief stricken mind.  One brought on the other and a crash was inevitable.

I would say to anyone going through something traumatic and having feelings of hopelessness and loss to get your thyroid tested. I know this sounds life a diversion from the rest of this post but a crisis can lead to a physical change in your body and add to an already bad situation. My anxiety was so high that late at night I would run around the neighborhood to try to feel better.

I never ate and when I did it was those comfort foods that heaped more bad on top of bad. I was just surviving and wasn't thinking rationally.  There is a lot of stories like mine out there.  Today my mind is clear and I am happy and healthier than I have ever been before. Mental health and physical health are tied together in ways that we can't imagine.  Your not alone with those thoughts and you can find health and happiness just ask for help.

It feels so weird - Seeing for the first time

I never really realized that my life has really been my work until now.  Since we haven't been very busy I have had a lot of time to see what it would be like not to work.  I will say not to work in a driven fashion even during the recession when there wasn't any work I still spent all my free time trying to get work living at the office scheming on how to bring in more business.

This is different because it isn't a crisis unless I make it one.  I am getting an opportunity to work to live instead of live to work.  What it would be like to not work 50-60 hours a weeks.  My mind at first was very unhappy very restless looking for a crisis of any kind to get it's teeth in.  Perusing the past for anything that would make me feel insecure or critical about myself and decisions that got me where I am today.  The kind of loop that I can get into easily when I need to fill time and I am restless.

I have been reading Dr. Amen book on healing ADD and the seven types.  I could identify with two one with the loop of bad thoughts the other the "I am bored" mantra. He gives examples and then combinations of natural supplements or pharmaceuticals that he has used with success with his patients. 

I have started taking a couple of different things.  Not really long enough for them to make a difference but I do think that the Keto diet has already geared me toward better nutrition and better mental function. His book does address the alcoholic brain and adult children of alcoholics.

This is beyond belief to me that my emotional patterns are caused by the composition of my brain and that there is something other than talk therapy that can help.  Sure meds have been an option for a long time but combinations of diet exercise and amino acids as an option is something different.  He said that they doctors are lumping all ADD together and prescribing the same thing for everyone.  Which actually make some people worse given the part of the brain affected.

I have avoided medication because the people I know that have been on it don't seem any better and they usually go through a bunch of different ones.  I like the idea of using the brain scan to determine what part of the brain has been shows up a problem.  We all can't get brain scans but we can see ourselves in the different patients he describes.

It is nice not being a slave to my emotions and really feeling so clear and less fearful.  The better I eat the better I feel  This might seem logical but when your mind is acting out you don't really make good choices about food or anything else really.  For me it seems everything is blown out of proportion and I am just surviving.

I am not sure this will count as related to recovery but it is where I am now.  I feel like I am seeing for the first time not just surviving. It feels so weird.