I NEED THERAPY.

I don't look down on people who want to help themselves.  In fact, I try not to look down on anybody for any reason.

People are doing the best they can, with what they have, where they are, and that is all anybody can ever expect.  Sometimes we can do our best on our own, other times we need a little help & guidance.  Please don't judge yourself, or be hard on yourself for falling into the latter category.

I like to say, at least people who have been through therapy know how to some-what handle their problems, which has got to be better than running around throwing out negative vibes because you personally lack consciousness of how to cope with your emotions.  (Big Al calls this a personality problem)

Life is ups & downs, ebbs & flows.  There will be times of independence and times of dependence, times of joy and times of sorrow.  Roll with it, ask for help when you need it (especially in times of joy- we forget that sometimes, to ask for help in having a damn good time.  Anyone who needs help with that- I am in ha).

Keep in mind, asking for help doesn't make you weak.  Asking for helps means your strong enough to admit your own shortcomings, which in turn allows for greater improvement and growth.

Weakness is avoiding sensation out of comfort and habit.

Weakness is avoiding your true self to be less-stressed & numb in consciousness.

Weakness is stagnation, atrophy, and narrow-mindedness.

Weakness is feeding the beast of fear instead of feeding the power of your own divinity.

 I know this "own divinity" concept may not sit well with every Christian (God-fearing women are the bees knees right?) but that's because you immediately reject the idea I'm proposing without considering the implications.

God made man in his own image & yet gave us the power to have free will & be different.  Your heart beating is a gift-from-God-miracle and your free will is affirmation that God admired the unique and individual aspects of each soul.  We see this similarity/contradiction paradox throughout our human experience. For example, we all have thumbs (ideally- i know this is a blanket-overconclusive statement) but every person's finger print is slightly different.

We are similar for what makes us God-like (a body that is capable of life) & we are also similar for being unique (having our own characteristics and free will).  By embracing the things that make us different we become more unified.  Rather than striving to be a "perfect-person", our consciousness elevates to empathize with the notion that we are all perfect for precisely those things that make us feel imperfect.  If you're thinking "why should I want to improve myself/get healthier if we are all 'perfect'?" 1) I hope you get to a yoga class ASAP and 2) suffice it to say there is a reason enlightenment is not achieved by all and that reason usually happens to fill the space between a person's ears.

That's what makes this human experience so hard for some of us.  Contradiction feeds fear when we deny our own divinity.  (when we deny ourselves the honorable quest of good for goodness sake)

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions I am unqualified to make, and if so, I apologize.  But Jesus Christ washed the feet of a prostitute and said he who has not sinned may cast the first stone.  I may not "glorify" every statement made in the bible, but I hold that one to be pretty damn true.  Jesus wasn't a hurt, angry, bitter man walking around spreading hurt and negative bullshit.  He was a healer, he was personally healed by the love of his father God (so internally/emotionally healed that he physically was able to give up the greatest sacrifice imaginable).  Jesus healed those who needed help and guidance, not through fire and force, but through love and empathy.

If you want to be sick, you will be.  If you want to be healthy, you will be.  Sure, it takes a little more time and consistency to "get healthy" but that's only because this world is so sick.

Rise above the ills of our life time.  

Observe the power your words- the language you use in your head and out of your mouth is shaping the life you create for yourself.  Be intentional with your words.  (Instead of "I'll never be able to do [x]" say "I acknowledge my inability to get there at this moment, but with patience and consistency I know I have what it takes to do [x]".--Even if you're wrong, at least you'll be less of a pessimistic shit head right? ;)---)

God did not give you a heart beat and a voice so that you could wall yourself up in isolation and tell yourself how bad you suck.  You were given the gift of life to share life, not die faster.  

I LOVE you all :)  even you little pessimistic shit heads, we're all in this together.  I hope no one takes this way out of context.  I am not trying to make people marginalize around differences, but rather Embrace the Yin & the Yang. We are all doing the best we can.  :)

Embrace your divinity, don't deny it.     #namaste



For anyone who is interested in reading further into the brain's ability to cope, I recommend the following article-

It's not all superstition and sanskrit, there is science out there to support the Yoking of Mind/Body/Spirit which we call Yoga & Meditation.  (Yoga moves us out of body consciousness into awareness necessary for a healthy meditation practice.)


http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/11/meditations-positive-residual-effects/

The Present, A Gift

(found this in a hidden place in my email :) from 7/30/2012)

I used to walk outside in a trance,
Mindlessly raising my hand above my eyes.
I'd ask the sun with a burn of resent,
Why it had to shine so bright?

I never took the time to see,
The life that was actually developing around me,
With cuffed wrists and a blindfold of Guilt,
I allowed my self to be imprisoned by Me. 

Strangled  by chains of Expectation,
Allowing others to orchestrate My motivations,
It's a miracle I broke the Iron Grip of Fear,
That So desperately attached me to hesitation. . .

My mind's jail break is just a reminder,
An incentive  for self-reflecting,
A Moment to come back down to earth,
And forget what is worth Forgetting.

With my eyes finally wide to what matters,
And a newly designed path all my own.
Leaping off the plank of everyone else's idea of Right,
Sinking head first into the ocean alone...

To my greatest surprise,
And unexpected jubilation.
I was carried to shore by waves of clarity,
My heart's tide shifted in motivation.

There is no necessity in regret,
Even the times I wish I could, but Can Never forget.
I wouldn't trade a single mistake,
For the compassion & empathy my mishaps led me to get.

The escape from my own anxious darkness,
Has afforded me the ability to welcome the light;
Releasing the Fist of unnecessary judgment,
Facilitating a recapture of My Own Right.

I would give every possession I own and more,
To spread this peace within.
Awaken another soul to what we too often miss out on,
Spread this gift of enlightenment to a friend.

The freedom of living in The Moment,
Is worth a trillion at the Very least.
As is the Acceptance of The Present,
which gives judgement and pressure the chance to Cease. 

Letting go of all plans,
And Understanding that right now is really all we've got,
Being present is the most precious Gift in this world,
one that could never be wrapped in a box.

Give yourself what you deserve,
and begin to try and see,
Right here and Right now,
is ALL you will ever REALLY need.

Lovingly detach from yesterday, 
Let go of fear of what tomorrow may bring.
Live to experience all This Moment has to offer,
Be generous with love and when necessary, let it be. 

A Repressor's Prayer

One day this past fall, I was riding in the car with my friend from school.  We were taking a break from studying, driving to get a coffee or maybe just driving to get away, conversing about random pieces of the law we were learning and life.  Blame it on an attention disorder, but sometimes I start saying something and the next thing I know I’ve gone so far off of the initial track that I have no clue how to get back.  This was one of those conversations. 

I’m not sure where it started, but I know the cluster of sentences that came out of my mouth ended with real tears streaming down my face at an alarming rate, my voice shaking and cracking, and my dear friend having no idea what the fu*k had just happened.  The last thing I remember saying before drying it up and pulling myself together, “I just wish I knew which memories really belonged to me, I just want to remember”.  I didn’t have a clue that day what was going on, which is funny now looking back, because I have been through this many times before. 

I didn’t know this until today, but apparently there is some controversy surrounding rather or not “repressed” memories are scientifically provable.  I can see where this paradox has derived from.  Psychoanalysts going in with a notepad full of loaded questions, essentially leading patients to conclusions about their “repressed memory”.  I’m a skeptic.  I get it. 

I’ve only been to one therapist that I enjoyed enough to stick with for more than one visit, and it was immediately following my divorce.  Needless to say, we had plenty of shit to deal with, WITHOUT ever needing to dive into my ability to repress.  That was also three years ago, so unfortunately for skeptics of repression, I’m pretty sure I haven’t been led by someone else’s bias to reach my conclusion. 

A repressed memory is simply a memory that has been “blocked” in order to avoid stress or trauma.  I think I first became aware of the term “repressed” during counseling as a teen, but it didn’t sink in much what it actually meant or how the concept would play a role in my life.  All I knew, at that time, was that I couldn’t really remember much of my childhood.  To this day, I look back at yearbooks from elementary school and it’s like I’m reading about someone else’s life.  I can only remember one person, specifically, from elementary school, Ms. Duke.  She spent a lot of one-on-one time with me in first or second grade, making sure I made it all the way to 100 AR points (.5 at a time with Berenstain Bears books).  She was small, friendly, and had hair that looked like gold.  By the time I moved in with my father I was a master-represser.  I didn’t know it at the time, I was 8 years old, but I had successfully blocked out a good majority of the years prior to then.

Fast forward to my conversation with my friend in the car last fall.  That day, in my emotional state, I figured my stress must have been coming from something from the earliest years of my childhood.  I was frustrated.  I’ve dealt with that shit, plenty of times.  Why would it be coming back up?   I tried to let it go, move on, but something kept tugging at the back of my mind. 

One of the most beautiful things about a yoga practice is meditation.  Not the goofy-humming-fingers in weird shapes above your head meditation- just stillness.  For me personally, meditation occurs all the time; Sometimes when I’m walking, sometimes when I am listening to a song that makes me feel emotionally drawn in, and sometimes while I’m doing mundane things, like showering or fixing my hair.  When I ‘meditate’ I focus on being quiet in my brain.  Listening to what is happening around me, or feeling the temperature of the air that I’m enveloped by.  I try to clear my mind and create almost a dull humming behind my eyelids.  From this humming, calming place of breathing I then simply try to relax.  Sometimes meditating is just relaxing, no epiphanies, no signs from God, no break-throughs. But occasionally something incredible happens. 

After my melt down last fall I began focusing my meditative energy towards letting go of my fear and allowing forgiveness to come into my heart.  To my surprise, it wasn’t my “childhood” that was bringing me so much anxiety.  Sure, the fact that I was able to repress, with such an astounding accuracy, is most certainly symptomatic of being a kid who had to do so all the time, in order to be okay with the world.  But the real “thing” that was haunting me happened to be something that happened when I was a teen.  Something that has taken me almost 9 years to face and accept. 

Fortunately, my life and my yoga practice have led me to a place where I truly do love myself enough, to NOT take shit too personally.  Bad things happen to people all the time, and I may be a unique snowflake but I’m still just a piece of the snowstorm.  I know that people do mean and hurtful things to one another for a plethora of reasons, but mostly they all boil down to fear and pleasure, not an evil spirit. 

I know I can forgive.  But can I forget how to repress? 

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I don’t remember a lot of being a tiny person, and that’s fine.  And now I’m coming to terms with the fact that there is a chunk of adolescence that I have blocked out, and that’s fine too.  But, how do I come to terms with the fact that there is an invisible hand that shields my eyes and mind anytime something bad happens?  How do I teach myself to face and forgive rather than repress and forget? 

Does it all come back to forgiveness?  They (the experts) say repressors carry around a lot of guilt, not for who they are but for what has (or has not) happened to them.  This guilt, stemming from past trauma, affects present situations without the repressors knowledge of association (the invisible hand).  Disassociation of feelings from their origin leads to interferences in present relationships, both with the self and the surrounding world. 

So how do you prevent the repression & the disassociation?  How do I keep the past in the past if I can’t even remember it?  How am I supposed to associate guilt with its origin if it takes 9 years to face the origin? 

I guess forgiveness.  That’s all I can think to do, is forgive.  And when I run out of energy, I guess I’ll rest and then start forgiving some more.  I’ll forgive those from the past; I’ll forgive myself for repressing the past and allowing it to play such a hidden, destructive role in my life; and in the face of future stress and trauma I pray to God that my heart can immediately forgive so that my mind wont forget.  

Please, please, please, God just let me remember.  I can handle it.  Please.