Re: worksheet on psychosis

December 29, 2003

Dear dear ,

I read your worksheet yesterday and woke up thinking about it today. Must have

been

with me in my dreams or something.

I have been hospitalized twice in my adult life for mental-related things,

illnesses,

thoughts... Going crazy has been a recurrent fear of mine and as i reflect on it

now i

see that by doing the work i no longer focus on that fear very much... I think

that the

fear of going crazy for me has all the world to do with fear of losing control.

As i

continue to do the work i notice that it's all just thoughts. I was commenting

to a

friend last night that through doing inquiry and awareness work i find that i am

so

aware of all my thoughts. I used to be so afraid of some of them, thought so

many of

them to be shameful or bad or crazy, and shoved so many of them into the spider-

webbed recesses of my mind (where they never really go away but just seem to

multiply and look scarier). One of the most powerful images that uses, for

me,

is that of meeting my thoughts with love and understanding, as if they were my

children... i am their loving mother. Do i have to believe what they say? Well,

at first i

always seem to and i'm scared by them. But then there's inquiry and i learn that

they

aren't really true, just thoughts, just stories. Can i notice them and meet them

with

love? Inquiry and awareness and self-realization have come to be the best way

that i

can show myself love. I don't have to make the scary thoughts go away... they go

away if and when they are ready. What can i learn about myself through them?

I was brought up in a very strict and fundamentalist home. Maybe that is part of

the

reason i was so afraid of all my " unacceptable " thoughts and feared losing it

and

going crazy. The amount of control needed to keep only the " good " thoughts is

enough to make me crazy!

What's the worst that could happen, sweet , if your mental illness

returned?

Can you picture it? Seems if you are afraid of this then some of those thoughts

are

already there even though you may want to deny them their life. Can you write

down

a story of how you picture this happening? What would you do and say? What would

you think? What would happen to you? What would others around you think and say?

Seems that the worst that could happen already happens when you are afraid that

it

will. Why not put it down on paper or on the list or to some trusted friend and

then

take your fears to inquiry. Sit those scary-thought children on your warm lap

and let

them tell you what they are about.

About a year ago, at the School for the Work, i had an incident that in my mind

was

completely losing it and going crazy. Now, some may have thought " there's a

crazy

woman! -- shut her up! " ... i don't know... what i do know is that i " lost

control " and

no one took me out of the room and no one told me to shut up and afterwards

several people welcomed me and thanked me--no less!-- for expressing parts of

them that they fear to voice. But, really, i had nothing to do with it... the

one that

loathes the control i'd exerted over her for so long, did not have a choice, she

simply

spoke -- no, yelled, more like it.

I love that you're here, . Welcome and thank you

Love,

Heidi

> What angers or saddens me? It saddens or disappoints me that I had a

> mental illness recur about 5 months ago. What is it about my illness

> that I still don't like?

> I don't like that it makes me feel out of control of my life and that it

> keeps me from perceiving reality as others do. I don't like that it

> seems to put me into a different world than those around me. I don't

> like that it seems to be able to come into my life almost completely out

> of the blue. I don't like that it stigmatizes me....

December 29, 2003

Dear ,

Great work!

I had some more TA ideas…

> <lyricv@w...> wrote:

> It makes me feel out of control of my life and it keeps me from

> perceiving the world as others do. Do I know that this is true?

No, at

> the moment of the illness, I am not out of control of my life, it is

> still living me... and I have no way of knowing that the illness

makes

> me perceive the world differently than others.

new TA: It falsely makes me feel in control of my life (if at that

time I feel that I am able to perceive or know something that the

others are not perceiving). An example would be thinking that by

wearing a hat, one can prevent alien influences from entering

your brain.

> It puts me in a different world that those around me. Is this

true? No,

> I am still in the same world, just in a different role than I might

> normally choose.

new TA: The illness puts me in the same world as those around

me. Being out of touch with reality occurs on a wide spectrum.

No one lives their whole life fully in touch with reality. Lifelong

" sane " people still show little blips in their awareness. People

show mental confusion when first waking up or when very

fatigued or sick. A group's consensus about what reality is can

have profound influence on the perceptions of an individual.

Anyone who is in a rage is not in touch with reality—they just

hear their own story of what is wrong and are no longer open to

input. People can get drunk or on drugs, too, which is another

way of getting out of touch with reality. Our whole culture could

be analyzed as having little aspects of insanity, which may

contribute to some people becoming the " identified patient " , just

as in family therapy one child may be identified as having a

problem whereas the whole family may be living some kind of

lie.

Yes, the illness puts me in the same world as those around me.

It is part of being a human to go out of balance. People get

extreme to greater and lesser degrees in many different

terms—getting really angry, getting really anemic, getting really

smart, getting really weak, getting really funny, getting really

obese, getting really high blood pressure, getting really

delusional. Here we all are, doing the human thing.

new TA: It puts me in the same world as those around me,

because then I have a verifiable " problem " and finally people are

concerned about me, bringing me into their world.

> Does my illness really stimatize me? No, I do that to myself.

new take on the above

The illness represents to others the ability to be out of touch with

reality—an ability that all people have to some degree. Most

people are frightened by the fact that each person has some

ability to become out of touch with reality. Some people wish to

deny this, and so they do actually stigmatize those with the

illness. However, I may or may not agree with or accept their

stigmatization in my mind. What they are doing is pushing away

something that is inside them, too. You could argue that

beneath it all, they love themselves and they love everyone with

mental illness; they just don't know it yet.

> My turnarounds. I put myself into a different world from other

people

ÿ when I tell myself my illness must never recur.

Good one! Would you require someone who got pneumonia

never to get it again?

ÿ I need for my denial of my illness never to recur.

How about: I need for my denial of others' illness never to recur.

I need for my denial of the variety of perceptions of reality that

occurs in society never to recur.

Many people who have a taste of " mental flu " begin to see that

" consensus reality " is not as solid or clear as they assumed

earlier. Having perceived things in a radically different way than

ever before, they suddenly realize that others may not be

perceiving in the way the person always perceived before. If the

person stays open and does not slip back into denial, they stop

assuming so much when they communicate with others. They

can listen more carefully to the perceived realities that people

refer to in their speech.

new TA: I need for my illness to recur.

Yes, what if it is supposed to happen?

What if in dealing with repeated illness you can find some kind of

spirituality that you said you missed this Christmas?

Perhaps the illness is your style of sickness response to the way

you think and feel about some life stressors. Perhaps the

illness is getting you to face the way you think and feel about

these life stressors, giving you a chance to finding another way

of being in the world. Perhaps if you managed to stop the illness

from occurring without any new insight, you would instead

develop a heart attack and die—in which case you would have

no second chance to find a healthier way of being in this world.

How about: I need to be OK with it, should my illness happen to

recur.

I hope this was more food for thought.

Working on--

Loving What Is

December 29, 2003

I found you finding it out and being didactic we are finding ourselves

out . Everybody knows and that specious , dear I can ' t is gone

with the health of finding out in communion and community . It takes a

village to raise up the kid (s) ! Mental health cannot be taught , it

is learned to gether ... gathering things and they are common knowledge

after all those who mind don ' t matter , and those who matter don '

t mind .

Don ' t fear the kiddies (feeling-thought complexes) PRAY OUT LOUD or

at least LOL ! Shake yourself loose ... dance those thoughts away ...

have you ever seen a mare or stallion roll around or arise from being

down shaking itself loose ... JUST DO IT !

Feelings are like children , and I am like the teacher in a classroom .

It ' s up to me which ones get permission to express themselves in

word or action . PEACE and I submit to a companionship test upon

demand . Lovely what ises be upon you ! KT is loving drunk 'cause

health has to be loved back through us to health and happiness . I am

back wards material ( State Hospital ) or a " lost soul " in the PHD . 's

notes ( but not all of them ! and thank you for the spirit of

friendship . )

> Dear dear ,

>

> I read your worksheet yesterday and woke up thinking about it today.

> Must have been

> with me in my dreams or something.

>

> I have been hospitalized twice in my adult life for mental-related

> things, illnesses,

> thoughts... Going crazy has been a recurrent fear of mine and as i

> reflect on it now i

> see that by doing the work i no longer focus on that fear very much...

> I think that the

> fear of going crazy for me has all the world to do with fear of losing

> control. As i

> continue to do the work i notice that it's all just thoughts. I was

> commenting to a

> friend last night that through doing inquiry and awareness work i find

> that i am so

> aware of all my thoughts. I used to be so afraid of some of them,

> thought so many of

> them to be shameful or bad or crazy, and shoved so many of them into

> the spider-

> webbed recesses of my mind (where they never really go away but just

> seem to

> multiply and look scarier). One of the most powerful images that

> uses, for me,

> is that of meeting my thoughts with love and understanding, as if they

> were my

> children... i am their loving mother. Do i have to believe what they

> say? Well, at first i

> always seem to and i'm scared by them. But then there's inquiry and i

> learn that they

> aren't really true, just thoughts, just stories. Can i notice them and

> meet them with

> love? Inquiry and awareness and self-realization have come to be the

> best way that i

> can show myself love. I don't have to make the scary thoughts go

> away... they go

> away if and when they are ready. What can i learn about myself through

> them?

>

> I was brought up in a very strict and fundamentalist home. Maybe that

> is part of the

> reason i was so afraid of all my " unacceptable " thoughts and feared

> losing it and

> going crazy. The amount of control needed to keep only the " good "

> thoughts is

> enough to make me crazy!

>

> What's the worst that could happen, sweet , if your mental

> illness returned?

> Can you picture it? Seems if you are afraid of this then some of those

> thoughts are

> already there even though you may want to deny them their life. Can

> you write down

> a story of how you picture this happening? What would you do and say?

> What would

> you think? What would happen to you? What would others around you

> think and say?

> Seems that the worst that could happen already happens when you are

> afraid that it

> will. Why not put it down on paper or on the list or to some trusted

> friend and then

> take your fears to inquiry. Sit those scary-thought children on your

> warm lap and let

> them tell you what they are about.

>

> About a year ago, at the School for the Work, i had an incident that

> in my mind was

> completely losing it and going crazy. Now, some may have thought

> " there's a crazy

> woman! -- shut her up! " ... i don't know... what i do know is that i

> " lost control " and

> no one took me out of the room and no one told me to shut up and

> afterwards

> several people welcomed me and thanked me--no less!-- for expressing

> parts of

> them that they fear to voice. But, really, i had nothing to do with

> it... the one that

> loathes the control i'd exerted over her for so long, did not have a

> choice, she simply

> spoke -- no, yelled, more like it.

>

> I love that you're here, . Welcome and thank you

>

> Love,

>

> Heidi

>

>> What angers or saddens me? It saddens or disappoints me that I had a

>> mental illness recur about 5 months ago. What is it about my illness

>> that I still don't like?

>> I don't like that it makes me feel out of control of my life and that

>> it

>> keeps me from perceiving reality as others do. I don't like that it

>> seems to put me into a different world than those around me. I don't

>> like that it seems to be able to come into my life almost completely

>> out

>> of the blue. I don't like that it stigmatizes me....

>

December 29, 2003

AND A LITTLE SUGAR HELPS THE MEDICINE GO DOWN >>> THE MEDICINE GO DOWN

>>> THE MEDICINE GO DOWN SAYS ST. Poppins and friendship is the

best pill to be a poppin !

Begin forwarded message:

>

> Date: Mon Dec 29, 2003 1:10:38 PM US/Central

> To: Loving-what-is

> Subject: Re: worksheet on psychosis

> Reply-To: Loving-what-is

>

> Dear ,

> Great work!

> I had some more TA ideas…

>

>> <lyricv@w...> wrote:

>

>> It makes me feel out of control of my life and it keeps me from

>> perceiving the world as others do. Do I know that this is true?

> No, at

>> the moment of the illness, I am not out of control of my life, it is

>> still living me... and I have no way of knowing that the illness

> makes

>> me perceive the world differently than others.

>

> new TA: It falsely makes me feel in control of my life (if at that

> time I feel that I am able to perceive or know something that the

> others are not perceiving). An example would be thinking that by

> wearing a hat, one can prevent alien influences from entering

> your brain.

>

>> It puts me in a different world that those around me. Is this

> true? No,

>> I am still in the same world, just in a different role than I might

>> normally choose.

>

> new TA: The illness puts me in the same world as those around

> me. Being out of touch with reality occurs on a wide spectrum.

> No one lives their whole life fully in touch with reality. Lifelong

> " sane " people still show little blips in their awareness. People

> show mental confusion when first waking up or when very

> fatigued or sick. A group's consensus about what reality is can

> have profound influence on the perceptions of an individual.

> Anyone who is in a rage is not in touch with reality—they just

> hear their own story of what is wrong and are no longer open to

> input. People can get drunk or on drugs, too, which is another

> way of getting out of touch with reality. Our whole culture could

> be analyzed as having little aspects of insanity, which may

> contribute to some people becoming the " identified patient " , just

> as in family therapy one child may be identified as having a

> problem whereas the whole family may be living some kind of

> lie.

>

> Yes, the illness puts me in the same world as those around me.

> It is part of being a human to go out of balance. People get

> extreme to greater and lesser degrees in many different

> terms—getting really angry, getting really anemic, getting really

> smart, getting really weak, getting really funny, getting really

> obese, getting really high blood pressure, getting really

> delusional. Here we all are, doing the human thing.

>

> new TA: It puts me in the same world as those around me,

> because then I have a verifiable " problem " and finally people are

> concerned about me, bringing me into their world.

>

>> Does my illness really stimatize me? No, I do that to myself.

>

> new take on the above

> The illness represents to others the ability to be out of touch with

> reality—an ability that all people have to some degree. Most

> people are frightened by the fact that each person has some

> ability to become out of touch with reality. Some people wish to

> deny this, and so they do actually stigmatize those with the

> illness. However, I may or may not agree with or accept their

> stigmatization in my mind. What they are doing is pushing away

> something that is inside them, too. You could argue that

> beneath it all, they love themselves and they love everyone with

> mental illness; they just don't know it yet.

>

>> My turnarounds. I put myself into a different world from other

> people

> ÿ when I tell myself my illness must never recur.

>

> Good one! Would you require someone who got pneumonia

> never to get it again?

>

> ÿ I need for my denial of my illness never to recur.

>

> How about: I need for my denial of others' illness never to recur.

> I need for my denial of the variety of perceptions of reality that

> occurs in society never to recur.

>

> Many people who have a taste of " mental flu " begin to see that

> " consensus reality " is not as solid or clear as they assumed

> earlier. Having perceived things in a radically different way than

> ever before, they suddenly realize that others may not be

> perceiving in the way the person always perceived before. If the

> person stays open and does not slip back into denial, they stop

> assuming so much when they communicate with others. They

> can listen more carefully to the perceived realities that people

> refer to in their speech.

>

> new TA: I need for my illness to recur.

> Yes, what if it is supposed to happen?

> What if in dealing with repeated illness you can find some kind of

> spirituality that you said you missed this Christmas?

> Perhaps the illness is your style of sickness response to the way

> you think and feel about some life stressors. Perhaps the

> illness is getting you to face the way you think and feel about

> these life stressors, giving you a chance to finding another way

> of being in the world. Perhaps if you managed to stop the illness

> from occurring without any new insight, you would instead

> develop a heart attack and die—in which case you would have

> no second chance to find a healthier way of being in this world.

>

> How about: I need to be OK with it, should my illness happen to

> recur.

>

> I hope this was more food for thought.

>

> Working on--

> Loving What Is

>

December 29, 2003

Hi, .

On Sat, Dec 27, 2003 at 07:11:28PM -0500, wrote:

> ...

> It puts me in a different world that those around me. Is this true? No,

> I am still in the same world, just in a different role than I might

> normally choose.

One point of view says that we each inhabit our own world, or universe

all the time. I can tell you about my experience, but I can't share

with you the experience itself, only the words I use to describe it.

Thus, you can't come into my universe and I can't get into yours. All

we can exchange is information, through words.

> Is it true that the illness really comes out of the blue? No, I do get

> prodromal symptoms and so far the illness seems to correlate with my

> menses.

> Does my illness really stimatize me? No, I do that to myself. (this is

> almost a turnaround in itself).

Yes, it is. Another possibility might be, " My thinking stigmatizes

me. "

> ...

> My turnarounds. I put myself into a different world from other people

> when tell myself my illness must never recur. I need for my denial of

> my illness never to recur. I am a robber, when I deny my illness. I

> betray myself when I deny my illness by saying it must never recur. I

> am my own enemy when I deny the reality of my illness.

>

> These are more like twistarounds than actual turnarounds. Feel like I

> had to go all over the board to come up with these, but they rang true.

How about...

- My illness is not what makes me feel out of control. That's the job

of my thinking.

- My way of perceiving reality is unique, just like everyone else's.

- My thinking should/should not recur.

- My illness is very honest and reliable -- it does exactly what it

claims to -- changes my perception of reality and generates out of

control thinking. I can count on it to be true to itself.

- I am willing...

- I look forward to...

I think it was very courageous of you to share this particular work,

. Thank you.

Tom

December 29, 2003

I thank you redwoods24, for taking the time to help me reconsider my

turnarounds in a new light. Very insightful for me!

Best, I've made a few comments below....