Most of us have gone through times of great stress and emotional upheaval. This exercise gives you a simple, effective way to deal with these challenges and the difficult feelings they bring up. Research suggests that completing this exercise can increase happiness, reduce
symptoms of depression and anxiety, strengthen the immune system, and improve work and school performance. These benefits have been shown to persist for months.
TIME REQUIRED
20 minutes per day for four consecutive days
HOW TO DO IT
Over the next four days, write down your deepest emotions and thoughts about an emotional challenge that has been affecting your life. In your writing, really let go and explore the event and how it has affected you. You might tie this experience to your childhood, your relationship with your parents, people you have loved or love now, or even your career. Write continuously for 20 minutes.
Tips for writing:
Find a time and place where you won’t be disturbed.
Write continuously for at least 20 minutes.
Don’t worry about spelling or grammar.
Write only for yourself.
Write about something extremely personal and important to you.
Deal only with events or situations you can handle now—that is, don’t write about a trauma too soon after it has happened if it feels too overwhelming.
Optional final step: After the four days of writing, try writing from the perspectives of other people involved in the event or situation.
When we experience a stressful event or major life transition, it’s easy to ruminate over that experience; thinking about it can keep us upat night, distract us from work, and make us feel less connected to others. Expressive writing allows us to step back for a moment and evaluate our lives. Through writing, we can become active creators of our own life stories—rather than passive bystanders—and as a result feel more empowered to cope with challenges. Transforming a messy, complicated experience into a coherent story can make the experience feel more manageable.
This morning I feel the best I’ve felt in three weeks. I finally got a good night’s sleep with some time in the “deep sleep” zone. If I don’t get a good seven hours of sleep, then my day goes pretty much like the famous quote from the great Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Dear reader, I think you know what I’m saying. When you’re dragging your *** through the day because you didn’t get a good quality sleep the night before, every little thing seems to be a momentous chore, like the dishes in the sink that need to be rinsed and put in the dishwasher. The towels on the kitchen floor, and I don’t even feel like bending over and picking them up. It makes for a very tough and challenging day. My motivation is low or nonexistent to take action and get things done. So what ends up happening is I look at my calendar of action items which I keep in Google Calendar, and I just say to myself, “I fucking don’t feel like it.” I have strung about 14 of those days together up to this point. My caregiving effort also becomes sub-par. So now today is a new day, and the past is just that, nothing more.
Morning on Boca Ciega Bay
So here I am writing this down because I want to get it into this blog right now. On my Google Calendar, I have from Monday through Saturday in the time slot of 8:00 to 10:00 o’clock the word “writing.” I don’t specify what I’m going to write about. It’s just that discipline of sitting down in front of this microphone where I’m dictating my thoughts onto a word page.
So here is what has happened in my life. I’ve been working on getting up to speed on my medical health side of things. In the past few months, I have seen my primary physician 3 times and had several trips to the blood lab and orthopedic surgeons. And here’s what’s going on.
.1.) I have confirmed high calcium, which is out of the normal range, which means that I have been diagnosed with hyperparathyroidism. This is a condition where the hyperthyroid is overactive and is essentially is pumping calcium from my bones into my bloodstream. OK, so we’re looking at surgery to see what the story is and at the same time remove any of these minor (the size of a rice kernel) glands that have most likely an adenoma on the surface. But, again, it’s an outpatient procedure. I’m just waiting now to hear back from the Norman Institute in Tampa, Florida (where I live) for an appointment with the specialists. Several of the symptoms of this condition are fatigue due to poor sleep quality and irritability.
2.) I have a total knee replacement surgery scheduled now for August 30th. This has been a long time coming, and actually, it is something that I want. As a personal trainer and a very fit athlete (cycling), I know that this is the road to having greater strength and mobility. Also, as a former triathlete, it will be great to see that I will be able to run again, albeit not too much and only on a soft surface like a high school track.
Dear reader, I am out of time… I’ve got work to do (my business). Thank you so much for visiting with me.
This morning I got up at about 6:30, and I felt much better, having gotten a good night’s sleep. I knew this week would be a rough one, and it started on Sunday evening with a zoom call with my siblings. It would have been my father’s 99th birthday as he passed two years ago in November. Everyone shared stories of our parents and when it was my turn, and I decided to share something they didn’t know. When I was around 42 years old, I told Debbie that I was going to go to Columbus, OH and visit my father. I told her I was going because I wanted to have a conversation with him about our past and our relationship.
You see, my father, in his earlier years, was very abusive to me. I took many a beating from him, and I was the 3rd son. I really hadn’t spoken to my father from the age of 20 to the age of 34. I wanted nothing to do with him. The important thing was about having t this conversation with him. I did not want him to pass and have these feelings of guilt because I didn’t do it.
I will not elaborate on the conversation other than to say that it was a tough weekend for both of us as he really was still in denial about the abuse. I cited multiple incidents with clarity. I knew, however, that he heard me and probably thought about it after I had gone. I told him about Father McClory and his pedophilic ways. After many years of subtle approaches by him for me as a young child singing in the choir, the final straw was when I was 15 years old, and after getting home from wrestling practice, he was having dinner with my parents.
I went upstairs to take a shower, and while drying myself off, he came into the bathroom and, with his index finger, touched my junk and asked me if it was giving me any problems. At this point, I gave him a stern no and asked him to leave. I didn’t tell my father at the time. I just figured he wouldn’t believe me. It was 1967 before any of this came to light. I wasn’t affected psychologically because I was a tough kid, and I just threw him out.
I told my father this story at the dinner table in his home in Columbus, OH. He was living alone as mom then was in a beautiful facility for people living with Alzheimer’s. He was at first incredulous, but after I told him he could ask my brother Jim to verify the story, he became highly agitated. He wanted to know where Father McClory was now. He wanted to go find him and commit who knows what.
I’d like to be there….
So after sharing this with my siblings on Sunday evening, I moved to a warmer and loving side of my father’s being. It was 2008 when Dad had finally realized that my Deb was not going to recover fully and would suffer from severe short-term memory loss and partial cognitive impairment for the rest of her life. He was with us on Long Island for thanksgiving. On the morning of his departure back to Columbus, Ohio, we were sitting having coffee; he looked at me and said, “buddy, you have such a long road ahead of you.” He had tears in his eyes, and he looked away out the back slider to our beautiful backyard. I walked him to the car, and I was just barely holding it together. I hugged him and told him I loved him, and he was off. He loved Deb the most out of his daughters-in-law. It was his compassion. He always insisted that she sit on the right-hand side of him at his birthday parties that were annual events in Columbus. I think about that, and I am sad that there were times due to hard circumstances that I couldn’t make them.
It was in 1984 When I first started meditating. I was introduced to it by a very spiritual Hindu Indian man; who was always kind and loving, a sort of Maharash, and one of the owners of a natural products manufacturing company .He saw that I was a restless and emotionally charged young man. I was going through a divorce. He saw this and took me “under his wing.” I was thirty-one and a business development executive for the company. I would sit in his office for hours at a time. He taught me over months the initial practice of the Tantric meditation method and gave me a Mantra to use in my meditation sessions. In the beginning, it wasn’t easy to focus and concentrate on my breathing. This was and still is because of my “always-talking brain,” which is annoying. Most of us: in fact, all of us, have this “always talking” part of our brain. My Deborah is an exception. The “always-talking” component of her brain is broken. You see, due to her anoxic encephalopathy condition, Deborah has no short-term memory. That component of her brain, that is, her “always talking,” doesn’t work or perhaps very little. Deborah can’t remember things that you’ve said to her 5 minutes later. The result of this is that Deborah is very near that Enlightened place called Nirvana. This Nirvana is, according to the Buddhist & Hindu scriptures, the achievement of enlightenment. I will write about this in a later chapter.
“Sittin on a dock by the bay” Otis Redding
I was in and out of meditation over those younger years. Too busy, too anxious, traveling for business, generally pushing the all-american envelope of over-working. One of my favorite books by Eckhart Tolle is the “Power of Now.” The basic premise is that your brain is continually talking in three different planes of time; the past, the present, and the future. Tolle’s premise is that the only thing that really matters is “now,” and it is in the “now” this very second that we should all try to live. That is to say that if one can live in the “present,” one can be free of those issues and feelings that arise from our always-talking brain. For example, my thoughts are so often about what I “should do” (future)or what I “didn’t do” (past). These feelings of guilt are nothing more than feelings in the present sense. Have you ever just stopped and became aware of all these thoughts you are having? These feelings are not the real you: your “authentic being.” They are just thoughts. Have you ever thought about how much and how often your brain is interrupting you and taking your attention and focus away from a task that you’re performing? It can distract you. It can make you feel guilty or insecure or both! It is in the present moment that we are genuinely ourselves and free to take action. The past brings up thoughts and memories of things we did, something we didn’t do, things we should have done, things that we ought to do now.
When we wake up at 2:00 AM, and we can’t go back to sleep because we have anxiety and worry. These thoughts are holding us back from self-actualizing and succeeding in our true intentions. This is the crux of Gestalt psychology. You understand that the power comes from understanding that the always-talking brain isn’t reflective of your true self. This part of our brain has evolved to protect us. It’s simply a mechanism that is there to help us survive to stay alive. It will always give you a reason why you can’t take a risk. It will put fear into you to keep you from succeeding in those things that you authentically wish to accomplish in your life. The practice of meditation has become an essential daily practice for me. It has been so crucial in my transformation.
My last post was almost 1 year ago today. The pandemic is now over 12 months old. The pandemic is what is known as a “Black Swan” event. It comes suddenly, without much foreboding. It has changed our societies and will leave a historical record of worldwide human suffering. Closer to home, I view it as changing our collective consciousness.
Humans have different connotations for consciousness. Trying to define consciousness takes us into the world of neuroscience, the science of the brain, and while some excellent research has been conducted, a consistent definition of consciousness has proved elusive. For me, a succinct definition is “the state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings.” And our surroundings and societal “so-called “norms have been altered permanently. And it is okay. The reason it is okay is that “it is as it is.” That is to say I am consciously “being present as to what is, nothing more. This is the noumena; a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes. This is like “letting go” and surrendering to “what is”
It is my choice to look to try to look at things as they are and not interpret their meaning which leads to wasteful thought and time and leads to the creation of my “phenomena”.
Dear reader, I must go now as the clock says it 10 AM. I wish to follow my daily calendar and move on to the next task which is entitled “Get Deb up.” Please be kind to others that have less than us. Thank you for visiting my space.
June 29, 2020 ” Where do we go from here now that all other children are growin’ up And how do we spend our lives if there’s no-one to lend us a hand I don’t wanna live here no more, I don’t wanna stay Ain’t gonna spend the rest of my life, Quietly fading away”…. Alan Parsons Project
Dear Reader, Two months have passed since I have posted in this sacred space in time. I will try to keep my thoughts organized as best I can to keep from using too much “Stream of Consciousness.” Deb is in Miami staying with our daughter Kate. She is such a beautiful soul and inherited many traits of mine from the 46 chromosome gene pool. Most good…others are a challenge….The depression, anxiety, fear, but not temper. Since the plague arrived, she has been collecting unemployment insurance as the hotel on South Beach where she manages is closed and there is no date yet on reopening Kate is so kind. She is caring for Deb.
In my last post, Dear Reader, I was on the fairly low end of a depression curve (along with the anxiety), from no income coming in the business. There is something to be said for the magnanimous word “Perseverance”. I guess I have it in spades. I don’t know why, I just do. In previous posts, I shared that I had remodeled my consulting business Nutrition50. My previous revenue stream dried up in failure and I decided that I would learn the cGMP federal regulations regarding Food and Dietary Supplement manufacturing; then go to writing articles on Linked In targeting manufacturers of Hemp oil extracts. It is a young category and smaller entities have a need for my service as I am lean and hungry. I also am learning the processes literally “as I go. I am a chemist and I understand the processes of extraction and distillation. I now have 3 clients in this sector. This type of scrambling reminds me of a quote from Albert Einstein…”I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.“
There is so much more in my head right now.
At the same time, I am dedicated to Senior Health & Fitness, so I earned certifications from NASM in CPT, CE (Corrective Exercise), and Senior Fitness. Solid to the Core. Again, perseverance. It took me over a year and a half to gain these certifications. This is a true passion. Senior full-time caregivers take a physical and emotional beating….almost every day. I know. It is my world.
So Dear Reader, I am going to end this post here. There is so much more inside my head right now that is very intimate, authentic, and vulnerable to share. I will post again this week. Deb has been in Miami with Kate for a month now. I have been mostly alone in my head. This has helped me get back above water in my business as I am working about 10 hours a day. Most of it is technical writing and critical thinking to create the cGMP documentations. The mantra in this field is, ” If it is not written with precision and specificity, it does not really exist.”
Dear Reader, thank you for visiting and spending time with me. Please come back.
Dear Reader, It is 5:30 AM. There is something special about the early morning rain. I think it is because it doesn’t happen that often here in Florida. I hear all the sounds that it creates in the darkness before the dawn; that melancholy feeling that draws me to my outside porch to commingle with it.
There are no human-created sounds. Only the pattering of the drops on the sidewalk and street. The soft sound of the water landing on the leaves of the majestic live oaks in the yard. The gusting wind moving the wind chimes creating the sweet tinkling sound as the pipes gently kiss.
Ahh, my brain and soul are mindfully joining forces to move my mood from a very familiar pensive sadness to sanguinity.
And here comes the light of day…and with it the sounds of mechanized humans. It is time to push toward the passions of my being.
My last share was Sunday 3 weeks ago. Time is a river, and the water that flows under my boat, I will never see again. It flows downstream and empties into the swirling universe I guess. That doesn’t matter. That time is somewhere, and I’ll never visit it again in my lifetime here on earth. Today, I took a new route on the bike going south on Gulf Boulevard down to St. Pete Beach. I wanted to see where I go from there to to get to Gulfport and one of my favorite coffee houses which is servicing as “takeout only’ . Covid19 has shut us all down now for 5 weeks and there is probably 3 more weeks to go. But just like last time here in this place, I am not going to write about that.
Cycling is really my only regular joy. When I write the word “joyride”, that is exactly what it is. It is my time for me and me only. Since the last post I purchsased lights for the bike and I ride before the sun comes up. For the month of March I rode 3e30 mile. All in the early morning.
Caregiving is really wearing on me.
Sooooo…I returned bike to the condo around 9:30AM and Deb was still in bed, of course. …. I put together a summer squash quiche with Italian herb base that we would eat for brunch.
Yesterday afternoon, I spent four hours getting Deb back to presentable. I dyed her hair, got her in shower, got her to shave her legs and armpits, made sure she was her body well ( I mean all cracks and crevices). I should have got in with her because I looked like a drench rat but I felt like a tired, depressed old man. Next was blow drying her hair which, after so much practice and Tou tube instruction I can say I am proficient at that as well as straightening and styling.
I plucked some eyebrows and gave them a trim. Next up was her toes. I soaked them in a bucket of warm soapy water for 15 minutes and commenced the pedicure. So much patience is involved. I kept my brain focused on the task at hand while also admonishing her for being a “baby” as I was irrigating the cuticle area, cleaning out the “toegunk”. She did say however, ” I think you should shower after doing all this.” She was probably right. So now I colored them a nice rich red and moved on to the dining room table for the fingernail job. Her nails looked like bear claws. She could do some serious damage to my face with a surprise attack. That potential is ending. We matched them up with het toe and now she good to go. Naturally, there is nowhere to go. But I felt better because her hygeine had been bothering me. I make sure she washes her face and brushes her teeth twice a day.
Now, forward to Sunday again. I really am down in the dumps. I’ve been caring for Deb for 12 years now. I’ve got no cash flow from the business and like many of you, I don’t know when I will. I have 2 cGMP writing proposals in play, but the potential clients also are suffering. I don’t know if you know Dear Reader, that I also was starting a Personal Fitness Coaching business as I am a CPT and hold 2 advanced certifications in CE (Corrective Exercise) as well as Senior Fitness. So that is also on hold obviously.. I am currently putting together an online training platform and I will write about that later…maybe next time. I need a camera and microphone and there’s no cash for that at the moment.
I also put together a Chair Exercise Program (Level One) and I thought I would have Deb perform it today. I set the laptop up on the Tripod to record the session and arranged the chairs and lighting to record the session. I started the first exercise which is simply sitting in a chair marching your feet up and down and tapping your knees in a cadence. Deb couldn’ t perform the exercise. So we moved to the next. It wasn’t working. Deb,s motor skills are very limited. I can’t expect her to be able to move her hands and feet in differing motions, like lifting your arms upward while we march to a slow beat. These exercises are basically used in the “silver sneakers program”. My heart and soul fell two stories down. I was near tears. I am as I write this. I am in a real depression. I fought my way up mentally as she asked, ” Can we go outside?” “Yea, we can go to the Lake and take a walk.”
Deb loves walking here.
I walked ever so slowly on the lake trail and Deb was still 30 yards behind. I stayed silent as I tried to listen to the sounds of Mother Nature. But she couldn’t be heard over the humanoid sounds of loud jet skies on the Lake and radios blaring along the paved trail that runs adjacent to the dirt lake trail. My depression was compounding. “This is the only place people can go while we are still under the “Stay at Home Order”. I thought. ” I understand. But this isn’t something that is good for me right now. It is good for Deb,” I thought as I sighed. I don’t feel like a hero….far from it. So little joy today, every day.
Last time I posted the COVID19 was starting to make some serious noise here in the states. As a biochemist, I always knew and explained to many of my friend and peers, that population density and viruses is a formula for disaster. A virus is the ultimate human predator. But Dear Reader, I am not having any of that in this post. Not today.
Got up before the sun this Sunday morning. I am on 6 hours of sleep and I need 7 or 8. Got my morning Joe and dressed into my bike gear. I want to hit the bike trail before the twilight of Dawn. I decided to head south on the bike trail thinking that I might go all the way out to the Skyline Bridge. But I knew I was feeling tired and the 45 mile trip wasn’t in the cards on this beautiful southwest Florida morning. I have cycled over 300 miles this month So I decided to take it easy and ride to the Gulfport waterfront and have a Cafe con Leche at Sumitra. Of course, these days one doesn’t get to go inside and sit in a nice chair and muse over one’s coffee. Instead a counter is set up within the double door entrance and your choices are ordered from outside on the sidewalk. I was the first customer of the day and I was alone.
Sumitra, Gulfport, FL
I think of so many things when I’m cycling. I fantasize sometimes about the ways things could have been; I know Dear reader, that is a useless endeavor…but it occurs. If only Deb didn’t have those 4 cardiac arrests. I think of writing in my blogs; what I’m going to write. My brain likes to go to my troubles too (of course). This morning, I am not holding on to them. They need to be scheduled on my work calendar! (That was a joke.) This morning my singing brain was stuck on this song by the Fortunes, a British invasion band.
You’ve got your troubles, I’ve got mine.
I love this song for it’s musicality. The key changes are great. The Fortunes 1965. My brother had this on a 45. I remember it playing on the new WCOL Columbus, Ohio. I was 12 and playing little league baseball in the summer of ’65
So, back to the bike ride…It is a period of freedom for me. Deb is in bed and I am moving my brain to some mindfulness.
This time I am using my auditory sense. The morning birds cacophony gives me a peaceful ,easy feeling. Crows, Laughing gulls. Blue Jays, mockingbirds woodpeckers, osprey chirping, pigeons, sparrows, cranes, mourning doves cooing. They are my friends this morning.
On the ride back, I came upon a guy named John, who was riding his electric bike. It is called “pedal-assisted” as the battery run motor assists the rider in pedaling. These are going to increase in popularity as a”zero-carbon ” method of commuting. After explaining the mechanics of the bike to me, he asked if I would like to draft behind him; meaning I would have a much-reduced air friction or resistance as I pedaled forward. We went 3 miles at a 22mph clip. That was a nice interval.
So Dear Reader, coming up to the end of my ride, I decided I would make blueberry waffles for our breakfast, get Deb up and showered and hair washed. Then we will take a trip to Walsingham Park to sit in the spring sun for an hour since the beach is closed to dampen the so-called” infection bell curve.
Dear Reader, thank you being in this space with me. Please stay safe with your loved ones. Our normalcy is changing drastically.
Please be kind, caring, and help those who ask for it.
