Late Night Recovery Practice

Yikes. I noticed I haven't posted here in a l-o-n-g time. I've thought about it from time to time and didn't feel I had anything meaningful to say, but then again, if I wait for something I think is meaningful,
I'll never post or write anything. Perhaps I feel my writing should be exceptional but isn't even average.

I attended a meeting earlier tonight. I don't go to this one too often because it's right around dinner time on a Friday night and it's hard to break free from my family, but I also need to make a business of my mental health (for without it, I might not have a family). As it turned out, the meeting was exactly what I needed.

However, when I arrived at home, my husband seemed a bit upset and my child, a bit needy. I gave my child a bath and then we brushed the teeth. Afterward, we read in bed for a while. I called my mother, hoping my kid would actually fall asleep if I took long enough, but alas, that did not happen, so I spent the next 45 minutes or so in the bedroom waiting for sleep to descend upon one of us and thankfully, it didn't descend upon me.

I was hoping my husband would want to watch a DVD with me or spend a little quality time or at least chat a bit, but instead he wanted to snooze, not shmooze. And that is when I began to work myself up. I won't go over every single thought that ran through my head, but I did feel quite a bit sorry for myself and all alone in the house. I thought I'd sit in bed and read a book, but I couldn't settle myself. Then I saw the pile of clean yet still unfolded laundry in my bedroom and started to fold it, but that wasn't soothing, to say the least.

At last I started thinking and spotting. I remembered the chapter on sabotaging sleep in the book "Mental Health Through Will-Training." I realized that the word insomnia could be considered temperamental lingo and that if I decided to stay up and fold laundry for a while, of even go online and got less sleep than I had planned and hoped for, it would be distressing but not dangerous. Of course, I could also see the angry temper I had at my spouse for "abandoning me" (more temperamental lingo flitting through my mind) and fearful temper at making an irresponsible decision by staying up later than I should, but I dropped the judgment on both counts.

So here I am, rattling and prattling on and on about it. My hubby still snoozes on the couch and I'm typing up a storm, but we're both happy. Thank you, Dr. Low and the Recovery Method for saving another person from marital strife and a sleepless night.

Unusual Circumstances require a meeting

It's been a while, but I'm still around -- just really busy. I guess it's good to be busy because it gives me the chance to practice objectivity. Or at least it's a distraction from what I'm really upset about.
So I've had a few events of what we in RI might call "unusual circumstances." I really never found a specific definition of this term. If I had one of my books with me right now, I'd look it up and I apologize in advance for being so vague about it. In my mind, however, unusual circumstances means events that are still trivialities but might not be average everyday occurrences for every single person. For instance, if I have the flu, it's a triviality but still, I don't have the flu every day.
I'll get to the point: so I had some circumstances that to me seemed unusual but not in the realm of the nontriviality. A few people I know were ill and then I had a personal disappointment. I started feeling lowered tones and getting irritable and a little panicky, too. I wanted to avoid letting these symptoms turn into a vicious cycle, so I decided to go to a meeting.
When I walked in the meeting room, several people had already gathered in a circle of chairs. Many of them were familiar faces. It wasn't my usual meeting, although I used to attend it regularly before starting my own meeting. After a few minutes of sitting there, I started to feel better. Giving my own example helped a lot, but listening to the other examples and spotting on those really helped me by becoming more objective. It's so much easier to see temper in someone else than in yourself, but then you find the spots apply to your circumstances -- usual or unusual -- as well.
By the end of the meeting, my lowered tones had vanished and along with it, my irritability as well. I still had to cope with some of the unusual circumstances, but they no longer felt as burdensome.

Eleventh Year Anniversary

Last May marked the eleventh anniversary of the first Recovery International meeting I attended. Back then, the name of the program was called Recovery, Incorporated. I only attended one meeting in May 1999 and didn't come back again until June of the same year. It took me a while to realize that the tools of Recovery could really help me and that I was not a hopeless case.

That May, I had experienced a relapse of my nervous symptoms. My symptoms included anxiety, panic attacks, mood swings from deep depression (including suicidal symptoms) and hostile outbursts. I could not keep a job for more than a few weeks at a time. During the year prior to my first RI meeting, I had been hospitalized several times (I lost count but it was at least five times) for the above symptoms and even had ECT. After ECT, I felt marginally better and even started dating (I later married the man I was dating), but by May whatever relief I had received from the ECT had faded and I was just as depressed, anxious, and suicidal as before.

A friend from another support group was attending RI meetings and her improvement encouraged me to attend a meeting with her. The problem was, I was so distracted by my symptoms, I had no idea what was going on. (As a leader now, I share this experience with new members who sometimes express their frustration about not understanding the method.) Later that month, I had a relapse and ended up in the hospital for three days. While I was in the hospital, I decided to try RI one more time. Within a week of attending my second meeting, I was able to use the spots I had learned and work down my temper and symptoms.

Since then I've attended meetings regularly for eleven years. For the first two years, I probably attended five to six meetings a week, mostly with the friend who took me to my first meeting and also with my husband. My attendance slowed down a bit after the birth of my son in 2004 and now I lead a local meeting.

Luckily, there are now several online meetings and phone meetings, too, that I can attend should I feel the need to step up my attendance. I hope that anyone reading this who has not attended a RI meeting will sign up for the chat room right now and learn all you can about RI. "Do the thing you fear and dread to do" and "make a business of your mental health." Thanks, RI, for a wonderful eleven years.

When it's hard to spot your temper

About 10 months ago, I wrote here about trying to conceive (TTC). I realized it's not a triviality, but it I thought the Recovery Method could help me with the nervous symptoms it generated.

Now, I still am TTC with no success. And recently, I had another disappointment. Needless to say, I was worked up, depressed, discouraged. A friend who knows I'm in this program told me to spot, but I just couldn't. Everything just seemed bleak to me.

For three days, I really felt hopeless about the situation. I realized three days is not a long time to feel bad, but since I've been in Recovery, it's been a long time since I've had three solid days of feeling so rotten.

Then I woke up today and felt okay. I could see a ray of light was starting to penetrate the gloom (how's that for tempermental lingo?). Now, I can finally spot on my symptoms and even on the situation itself. I really believe that because of my Recovery training, the symptoms lasted a shorter time and had less of an impact on my behavior. I'm so glad that I didn't give up and give in to the symptoms for very long.

Rediscovering an RI tool

Recently, I've been listening to my collection of audio tapes of the book "Manage your Fears, Manage Your Anger." My husband started listening to them last week after a long hiatus away from the program. I used to listen to them from time to time, but they had gathered quite a bit of dust on the lower shelf of a organizing unit in my bedroom.

Unfortunately, when I bought the tapes more than eight years ago, they weren't on CD. Now, however, they are on CD and RI recorded more than two chapters on most of them, so you don't have to buy so many. My husband called headquarters today and they told him that they just transferred the tapes to the CD format, which means that they're still the original taped lectures given by Dr. Low in the 1950s. Every time I listen to a tape, if I close my eyes (which I don't do if I'm listening to the tapes while I'm driving) I can imagine sitting in the audience in a lecture hall in Chicago almost 60 years ago with Dr. Low at the front of the room, speaking to the group. On some of the tapes, you can even hear automobile horns honking outside the building as Dr. Low is speaking. You can get a real sense of the personality and character of the man just by listening to these lectures.

I think it's great that Recovery International still sells these original recordings to its members. Even if you can't buy the whole series, I think it's worth it just to buy one or two of the CDs so you can experience the program at another level.

Decisions and symptoms

We were invited to go on a camping trip with a group of families we know. I haven't been camping much (only once since staring a family) and this particular trip would take us outside the realm of modern plumbing and running water. I had a few reservations about going and agonized over it for several days. To top it off, we were invited to two other events that same weekend.
I am terrible about making decisions. I've struggled over decisions about what job to apply for, what job offer to take should I get offered another job later, what to eat for dinner, whether or not to eat dinner, what to wear to a party -- pretty much any decision anyone has had to make at one time or another. Big and little decisions alike throw me aback and cause me to shudder.
Since attending my first Recovery meeting more than 10 years ago, decision making -- while still not on the list of my top 10 things to do -- has become a lot easier. Sometimes I just decide to "do the thing I fear and dread to do," like going camping without access to a flush toilet and running water, and sometimes I "decide, plan and act." Sometimes I just have to bear the discomfort and be group-minded toward my son, who really wants to go camping with his friends and doesn't care about running water. Taking things in part acts really helps me when I have to make major decisions. And if I spot "to know is not to know," I relieve myself of the responsibility of trying to predict the outcome of a decision years into the future.

So much has happened since the last time I blogged. First of all, happy New Year to everyone out there. If you've never attended a RI meeting but set a resolution to improve your mental health this year, an RI meeting is a great place to learn new coping skills and get the support you need to help yourself. At RI, you'll meet non-judgmental people, all of whom have experienced some type of mental illness or symptoms that interfered with their ability to function in the world. Whether they suffered from what's commonly referred to as "garden variety" nervous symptoms or an illness with label such as "major depression," "bipolar disorder," or "social anxiety disorder," everyone is welcome.

At RI meetings, we don't focus on labels but rather on the everyday events, or trivialities, that upset us. I remember at my first meeting, sharing my particular label and nobody blinked an eye. The meeting wasn't about who was the most ill or had the most complex diagnosis. Instead, it was about learning specific tools that would help us alleviate our nervous symptoms, regardless of their cause.

What really threw me off, however, was that instead of a group of sad-faced, frowning, bitter people sitting in chairs around a circle, people were laughing -- at themselves, of all things. They had learned not to take themselves so seriously. All my life, I had the inability to laugh at my mistakes or my thoughts. If anyone, including my friends, laughed at me, I took it as a great offense. They must hate me, I would think. I never realized I was supposed to laugh along with them. We all make mistakes, and I knew that, but to laugh at them? Never. Not until I attended my first RI meeting did I learn of the healing power of humor.

Today, I'm having a pretty bad day. I feel tired and want to eat a lot of chocolate and sleep. Instead of pampering my feelings and giving in to my impulses of wanting to go back to bed and sleep (notice I didn't mention anything about not eating chocolate), I'm moving my muscles and, most importantly, I'm not taking my symptoms too seriously. Without the training I gained by attending RI meetings, I'd be immobilized by my symptoms. So I urge anyone who is still immobilized by their symptoms to attend a RI meeting, either in person or by phone, or visit the chat room, and start on the road to mental health and well being today.