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Wow.

It's been awhile since I posted here again, and this isn't going to be a long entry either, since I just had a long day of work and DBT. I just wanted to pop in and say that everything seems to be going just...fine. The holidays were fine. Work is fine. Life is just fine.

Okay... I'm scratch the F-word.

I had my first truly bad day at work last week. Thursday we had a big deadline due for a complicated project that I was assigned to sort of help out on. I say "sort of" because I'm so new that I'm kind of like a three legged horse in this race to the finish line; I just don't have the skill-set to be effective. However, I do what I can. The team was short a person as it was, so it was just Cal and me in the office. My boss was home with a sick girl, so the scene was set for what was about to happen. Another manager from another department began to hover, prod, dictate, and contradict what our protocol was--and without our manager to advocate, Cal and I were left to fester and stew. We got threw the deadline somehow (and managed to sneak through using our boss' methods), but it took a lot of work and a lot of patience.

Therapy tomorrow is going to be about my waking up with a plan to follow my eating disorder every day (and having to consciously debunk it every.single.day), and how frustrating that is. I don't really know what I hope to gain from bringing that up, or if it's just going to be a vent session, but I hope something comes from it.

That's all I got for now.

Fudgin' it

So, I still haven't managed to produce a morning where I do the Kriya and meditation. I always choose sleep. It's usually because I have a headache, or the night was restless and I really do need ("need") the extra hour, or etc. It's not that I always choose sleep; it's that I always have an excuse. I'm hoping, as I often do around this hour of the evening, that tomorrow I won't have one.

I think it's different today, because I'm thinking on an exercise that my therapist suggested. I'm thinking about this with too much of a black-and-white mentality. I've always been an all-or-nothing thinker, so it makes sense that my default would be to go right there. She said that instead of thinking about it as do it all or not do it (because an hour routine is a significant time commitment apparently), I should consider how to incrementally introduce it into my life. Now, at first I laugh at this. I'm not sure if I can break it off and do "five minutes" of the Kriya. It's kind of a package deal, but then I thought about something they taught in the Art of Living that said about doing what you can. Granted, I can do more than five minutes; that was an exaggeration, but maybe if I shorten it to maybe even a half an hour, it won't seem so daunting. That would be enough time for the Kriya and a much shortened meditation session. It would make me very sad, but at least it would be something. I'm still shooting for the whole package tomorrow with the willingness to bargain with myself down, instead of just ruling it out.

All that said, I haven't been Kriya-less lately. I have been doing it during my lunch break. That's right, I do the Kriya during my 1/2 hour break and eat at my desk at work. I don't get to meditate, but at least that's something. I do notice benefits. I'm able to stay in the present moment a lot more easily, which makes me more alert, pleasant and resilient to stressors. Personally, I'm thankful to have it back in my life. I'm excited to have Sahaj Samadhi on top of that, because I think that will be great, too.

I think I'll make this strictly about Kriya and meditation tonight. Not much else to report. Happy Winter Solstice!

Incorrigible

I woke up this morning bright and early at 5:30 AM feeling rested and awake...

...only to discover that I wasn't due at work bright and early this morning, because I had a mid-morning doctor's appointment, which meant that I could sleep a full three hours more before having to canter out the door. Completely ignoring the overwhelming obvious opportunity to refine my morning routine into one that I want in the long-term, I opted for sleep.

Don't mistake. I cherished every moment of that added sleep, and woke up feeling much better than I had before, which probably meant that I did, in fact, need it somewhat--but I have to scold myself for not jumping at the opportunity to lay a foundation for habits I want in place...

La la la, whatever
La la la, doesn't matter
La la la, oh well


I did end up doing a guided meditation routine with Arun last night, and that went very well. It was very relaxing and I think it took both of us to a deep place (so deep that one of us, in fact, fell asleep--but that's alright for him!). It's been a long time since I've done a guided meditation, so it was nice to experience that in comparison to sitting and walking meditation, like I'm used to doing.

Speaking of guided meditation, I received a very charitable set of gifts today, including a guided meditation CD from a friend of mine. In the gift set was a small book called Buddha - The Manifestation of Silence, a book on CD called !Shut up! An Ancient Mantra for Complete Happiness, the guided meditation CD called "Sun Meditation" and a small wallet sized picture of His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (the founder of the Art of Living). A very timely and thoughtful set of gifts, I think... I'm trying to align my life a certain way and all of a sudden, these tools have fallen into my lap. More tools, really; I have plenty more on my belt!

Other than that, today I got my round two of three of HPV vaccine shot. That was a rather non-event. Show-up, find a seat, see a nurse, get a shot, shuffle out... That was pretty much it. I will take a moment to encourage women under the age of 25 to get that done, or at the very least research it. I'm not going to spew a bunch of reasons why or why not, though. Just know that I did.

Work was good again today. Found out that my boss is looking to construct my position to look a little bit more like hers, rather than like the other members of process services. Where they have one function with a particular client, she would like me to have breadth with a number a different tasks. This is probably why it feels like they scramble all the time to find work for me, because they aren't quite sure where they should be pulling from next; I could pull from anywhere. That's pretty cool, I think. We'll see what it develops into.

Picked up my mother and brother from the airport today, which put my dinner with Arun on hold. We made do. It turned out nice anyway. It was nice to visit with my mom, and I got to give gifts to Arun before the adventures of the evening (I bought him mixing bowls and "Complain-free Yoga Session" tickets for him to use with me).

In conclusion, I am going to work harder tomorrow to get up, get in the shower, get on the cushion and do Kriya and meditation.

Catch-up

So, it's been awhile since I've really blogged about anything other than my ED/cognitive distortion things--and even with that, it's been awhile since I've really updated anything. I was looking to have this be more of a frequent channel of communication between myself and whatever readers I may have, so I apologize for my lapse in posting; this should not be the norm.

Let's start with work. Work has been truly a shining light. I really lucked out on this front. The projects that they have given me have been steadily getting more and more complex, and they are beginning to trust me more. My most recent example was that on last Friday, my boss was working from home because her daughter was sick, so there wasn't someone there to make sure that I had something to do. So, between my coworkers and I, we divided up some new work that I could do from their responsibilities, which were already over my head at first glance. My coworker, Robin, spent a half an hour training me in on two of her duties that she was handing over to me, then left me to do them, inviting me over if I had any questions. It was difficult, but so rewarding to be able to sift through that pile of material and slowly get to know new, complicated tasks--and be able to work through them.

Beyond that, the company is cool to work for. At the holiday party, they gave out prizes (drawings) and I won 4 Twins tickets in the owner's box seats, which are supposedly really nice. So, I'm psyched about that. It was also nice to see that on Friday, someone came around passing out Christmas cards to everyone and inside were holiday bonus checks, including one for me (the new girl). That was pretty cool, too. It wasn't much of a bonus, but still, a bonus at all after only working there for two weeks is pretty awesome. So, work is pretty much awesome-- the work, the people, the company... all of it.

In terms of my meditation practice, I went to my Sahaj Samadhi meditation refresher course, and since then I have been more revitalized in mind, but not yet in practice. The refresher course was built like a Q&A session and then a group meditation, so I was able to get in a sitting meditation session with my mantra, which I haven't done in some time. The experience was effortless, which is how it's supposed to be. The only thing that was the problem was my seating posture wasn't comfortable. That would need to change for the practice to work fully, but I could tell that I went pretty deep--especially with how awake I was afterward. I wasn't able to sleep after I got home, which caused some issues the following morning. My problem is that I haven't built in the practice of Kriya and meditation into my morning routine yet. I'm still favoring sleep. I think if I switch the order to shower first, instead of routine first, I'll be less inclined sleep that extra hour. It's important enough for me to find another solution, even if it means introducing caffeine in the morning or something (not something I want in the longterm), but I want this in the morning. I want to be able to do able to do Kriya/Meditation in the morning, and then Meditation after work. I don't think that's too much to ask. It's all of an hour and a half of my day. I owe myself at least that, right? I think I might do a guided meditation tonight.

Since my last post, my symptom use has tapered off, but the thoughts are still loud. On Wednesday night, I went to long Kriya and while I was waiting for that to start, I detailed a dialogue between me and Mia (the personification of my eating disorder). That was surprisingly helpful to get both voices down on paper. Essentially, it came down to the fact that there is this problem that I'm having, this fear of being abandoned, that my eating disorder used to have an answer for--which no longer works. The dialogue reflected an argument as to why it no longer worked. To see it written down took a lot of the power from it, and it almost humanized what I was experiencing--it took a lot of the shame I was feeling on top of everything away. I went into long Kriya, feeling more hopeful, which made the cleansing experience much more cleansing, I think.

I'm particularly happy that my therapy is starting up again after a three week vacation. My therapist was out of town, so I was left to my own devices. I have my regular appointments starting on Wednesday. That'll be a very, very good thing.

Today, I woke up and went to sangha and meditated with the group for a brief amount of time. It went pretty well. A lot of mental chatter. Returning to the breath VERY frequently, lemme tell ya.  After that, I went to Rainbow to pick up some stuff-- I needed to get some moisturizer for my face. I have these prescription acne washes and they have been drying out my face that nothing else! Hopefully, the stuff I bought will help. I'll just add it to my already full routine (yeah, I'll spare an hour and a half, but thirty seconds and I'll gripe).

Then I came home to our pit of a place with a very productive mentality -- CLEAN ALL THE THINGS -- and I was happy to find that Arun was willing to help after a while, that made the whole thing go faster. We did about three and a half hours of solid work and the place does look pretty spiffy. Arun posed a good idea of just making it a goal to set aside two hours on the weekend to just clean. That's a lot of time when that's all you're doing. I think that'll work for most things. I'll definitely have to go outside those hours if I want to go above and beyond and, say, wash all the hardwood floors (which did not get done today...boo).

After cleaning, Arun made a really sweet salads with some of the leftover friend chicken breasts that we had last night. So, we had those with a side of fried string cheese. Tasty, tasty.

What's left tonight... Um, probably, dinner, dishes, and hopefully a guided meditation... I really should do some laundry, but I'm not feeling it tonight. I'll probably do it tomorrow.

Unraveled

This is supposed to be a catch-up post, but I'm too disheveled for it to be only that--I'll try at the end of this tirade to pay tribute to some of that backlog of events.

I woke up in a shell of my former self.

It started in my dreams. I was dreaming of eating uncontrollably and quite literally unable to stop myself--primarily fastfood, which is usually how my binges manifest themselves. I remember feelings of panic associated with this part of the dream, represented by distant crying and screaming. People were surrounding me, faceless, and did nothing--nor did they seem to take notice of my terror. Then, I began to balloon. The food was suddenly gone and I was just growing fatter. And fatter and fatter. The people around me started to fade away...until they were all gone. I was the gross thing getting fatter and fatter completely alone.

My alarm woke me there--and I never really woke up completely. A part of me is still walking around with this idea that I'm fattening up and up and pretty soon everyone around me is going to vanish. Some distortion. Some nightmare. Some way to start out a morning. I resolved to just make it through the day with the plan I had and avoid my fastfood triggers as much as possible. I had a piece of fruit for breakfast...and that wasn't sitting right. I kept being reminded of filling myself up metaphors, and images, and it made me really anxious at my desk. I threw myself into my work, but the work I was doing was so routine that it left my brain plenty of time to do some thinking on the side so there was plenty of scheming of how I am the fattest one at the office, how I can't be seen like this, something has to be done--and going over what I've done wrong, what I've eaten in the last week, what I should've done... By the time I got to my psychiatrist appointment, I was absorbed completely in food: what I should eat, what I shouldn't, what's good, what's bad, what makes something good, what makes something bad, etc. Obsessive thoughts lead to obsessive urges... NO! I said no fastfood this morning! I screamed at myself in my own head. But I knew that I had to have something or I'd snap and binge for sure.

So, I had a "safe" food. I bought a sandwich and chips from a gas station that were similar to a fastfood fix, but were "safe" according to my rules. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I was ignoring the current rules that I was listing, and living by my old ED rules. I ate half of the sandwich and chips and ended up having a near-anxiety attack. What makes fastfood bad also makes gas station food bad. Same parts, same building blocks. Image run: fat, bulge, gross, explode, desert, disappear, alone! I threw away the rest of it and the rest, as they say, is history (I purged).

In the aftermath, I somehow managed to have what I could of the lunch I brought originally. Somehow, through all of this, I managed the get work done--shocking for me, actually. I spent the whole day recounting the calories in a cup of rice and estimating the different amounts in a mixed cup of potato/chicken curry, as well as totaling and re-totaling my lapse from earlier. It's like a twisted little math game my mind goes into. The numbers have to work or the system will break. The "system" being the "thin game" in all of this.

I'm lucky to have Arun in all of this. He was patient and kind enough to talk me through it after work on the phone, and then to be with me and distract with me this evening by playing Dominion. I'm in a much calmer place now than I was when I got off work. I am still writing in the shell of my former self, but my recovery-centered voice is awake now and talking too; it's good to hear her voice in all of this again.

Tired and Fine: Revisited

I really have a lot to be writing, but I'm too tired to write it all right now, because I have been so busy with work and extra activities and sleep--we mustn't forget how important sleep is when you're taking psychotropics! So, I thought instead of lengthy update, I would post a little list of a length update that I would do tomorrow afternoon when I get off work right and early at 4:30:

1) Update on the ED/Cognitive Distortion struggles
2) Feelings about my practice, laziness, discursiveness, and boredom.
3) Sahaj Samadhi Meditation refresher course (Wednesday Evening)
4) New projects at work
5) Holiday party (Thursday evening - Tonight)

That ought to cover quite the blog entry, I should hope. Tonight, I'll just say this much: I am exhausted from having bounced around from work to something to do until 9:30 PM everything night this week. It's just been awful. Makes it even harder to get up in the mornings, and I'm TRYING to do more in my routine. All and all, I'm just fine. Pleasant, even. Just tired.

Old tapes

In DBT tonight, I talked some about my little situation yesterday to help make some sense of a rather chaotic situation. Why is it that someone with a year's worth of therapeutic training--nine month's of which intensive skills-based training--falls back into these old behaviors so quickly without notice? (Editor's Note: One of the girls in the group was curious how it was even possible to get the tapes to ever stop, so there's my perspective.) To be honest, if one of the other group members hadn't spoken up about her disbelief in the tapes ever going away, I wouldn't have begun to make sense of any of it.

It's not that my skills don't work, or that I didn't learn anything. I most certainly did, because in situations A, B, and C, I used them and the new, healthy tapes played, leaving the old, unhealthy ones to rot. This situation is a hole in my system of skill-based scenarios. Clearly, I haven't found the right set of coping skills and the healthy tape to play when I think about my support circle or treatment team is abandoning me. That spelled out in black and white sounds much easier to handle than the chaos of last night's entry, doesn't it?

But that leaves me with the aftermath. It's all well and good on paper that I have to just reason my way through to a more wise-minded understanding of how my support circle is not abandoning me; HIPPA has its rules and I never should have been led to believe that I could come back for that. However, be that as it may, I still have these old tapes playing now, playing loud and messing with my every move and attempting to dictate my every action. "You're fat. Eat this, or nothing at all." "You're gross. See this? Or this? Or this?" "You're inadequate. You could've finished faster at that. You could've done without that. You shouldn't have smiled so much." Very loud. The tools I use to fight them are working some, but not much. I'm going to try some more self-care things tomorrow and see how it goes. I did a lot of stuff today, though, and it didn't seem to workout. Group suggested that I box off the old tapes and set them aside. I'm not sure I know how to put a shouting voice into a box and expect not to hear it anymore...

The rest of my day was actually very good. Work was great. I finished my first project and started a new one, which I will finish promptly in the morning and will expect a new project. Yay. I went to my first departmental meeting, too. I'm coming to realize just how relaxed this department is. I dig it. Writing about work cheers me up immediately. I think it's because the atmosphere and the people there are so awesome that it's really hard for me to shake off the positivity from it. One of the skills I use to combat those tapes is thinking about work, even though a lot of the inadequacy thoughts stem from that (i.e. you're not good enough at x, y, z...)