Focusing on the emotions that are

I am afraid of snakes. Very afraid. I’m so afraid of them, I have a hard time looking at pictures of them. I feel anxious just hearing other peoples’ stories about encountering them.

Larry has found about five snake skins in the yard this summer. For a few days after he finds them, I move carefully when I go outside. I examine every stick from afar before I venture into the yard.

When he saw a live snake in the side yard near his truck, I could barely listen to his story. I thought about it later, feeling anxious and worried. I wished for winter.

So why am I including with this post a photo of a snake skin?

I made myself take the picture. Though I felt fear, I made myself walk up to the skin. I held up my phone and took several photos. I made myself look at the photos.

I’m not sure if this “exposure” did much good. When I was flipping through the photos on my phone earlier this week, I shuddered—I did that “jump out of my skin” move—when I unexpectedly saw one of the snake skin photos.

But still, I keep looking at the photo. And I’m sharing it with you.

I’ve been dealing with anxiety over life issues in a similar way. Life has been hard lately, as you know. Bedtime is probably the hardest time because I have less to distract me.

I decided that I would try an experiment. Instead of trying to immediately change my thoughts or cover up the bad emotions with visualizations or calming recitations, I would focus on experiencing the anxiety.

I feel the anxiety the most in my chest. It’s like a weight in the center of my chest. When panic comes, my chest physically hurts.

I have focused on the hate I’ve felt, too. I’m not proud to say that, but that’s what I’ve felt at times. It, too, is a heavy weight.

Anxiety, hate, anger, hopelessness—they all settle in my chest. I feel like it’s going to burst.

I want to get up and move or talk or read or listen to music.

But I try to lie there and be mindful of how I’m feeling, even for just a short while.

My hope is that the more I face my emotions, the less afraid I’ll be of them and the less I will do to avoid facing the issues that are causing the emotions in the first place.

My focus on emotions is not a new idea. There is a lot of good information out there about living mindfully and accepting our emotions. I did an online search and found some good, science-based information HERE and HERE.

One good thing that has come out of my experimentation with this is that I’ve become less afraid of being still and alone with my thoughts and emotions. I hope this leads to more calmness and peace.

And the snake skin photo? I hope from now on the only snake skin I see will be in a picture. That’s about as far as I want to go with that exposure.

How do you deal with uncomfortable emotions?

When life seems to fall apart

So much has happened since I last posted. I have struggled with the best way to write this post.

What has guided me in writing it is my belief that I must be honest with my readers, and I must also be honest in order to chip at the stigma that surrounds what I’m about to tell you.

About 10 days ago, my mother attempted suicide. She is 86 years old and lives in an assisted living home with her own room. She took what she described as a handful of sleeping pills on a Thursday night. She was found unconscious by the home’s staff the next morning and taken to the hospital.

The assumption was that she had had a stroke, though when a neurologist examined her, he thought otherwise.

All through the day that Friday, she became more and more conscious. That evening, she told me, my husband and my oldest brother what she had done.

My mother has been depressed for my entire life. She has mostly been untreated. She has taken antidepressants off and on, but she always stopped taking them.

With this incident, she spent three days in a mental health ward. She was diagnosed as depressed. She was deemed not to be a danger to herself and released to go back to her assisted living home. She is not seeking additional help.

Why she did what she did, what she wanted to do—all of that is her story. I can only truly tell you my story.

I have done a lot of reading about the aftereffects of attempted suicide and suicide. But this is not a post about how to care for the one who attempts suicide. It is not about recognizing the signs that someone is contemplating suicide.

Frankly, I’m not in the position to be able to write such a post.

But you can find information about suicide and suicide prevention HERE.

This post is about the messy, emotional aftermath of a suicide attempt by a family member.

Even though I have been familiar with the world of mental health issues for years, I still had a hard time imagining that someone in my family, someone that I knew, would attempt suicide. So I was first shocked. Then horrified and afraid.

Over the last 10 days, I have had a lot of conflicting emotions swirling through me. But the main one has been anger. White hot anger that has made my chest feel like it’s full and about to explode.

And hate. Hate and resentment and bitterness and anger have filled me up.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know my relationship with my mother has never been easy.

Even with that history, my emotions have surprised me and made me feel guilty. I don’t want to be a person who hates. I don’t want to be a selfish person.

Thankfully, I have talked with some wise people who have reminded me that it’s OK to feel this way and that it’s best not to deny the way I feel. I won’t always feel these emotions.

And perhaps others who have been in this situation have felt the same way as I have and felt the same fear about revealing that to others.

So I am revealing it to you.

I’ll be back on Wednesday with a better explanation of what some wise people and some quiet contemplation have helped me to understand.

Covering court

A caterpillars' nest in a tree near my house. A walk outside, noticing the details of nature, is a balm to me.

Until I started working for the newspaper almost five years ago, I had been a part of a court proceeding twice. Once when I was 16 and got a ticket for improper driving for hitting a mailbox during driver’s education training (Yes, embarrassing. No one was hurt, thank goodness). And once nearly 20 years ago when I was a victim of a crime.

One of my regular beats since I started with the paper has been covering the courts. I’ve covered all kinds of crime: murders, drug crimes, burglaries, robberies, assaults, and on and on.

One thing I’ve discovered is that if you want to see drama, a wide range of the human condition, sit in court for an afternoon and watch the cases that come up.

I’ve heard wailing, laughter, defiant words. I’ve heard pleas of innocence, apologies for horrific crimes, promises to live in such a way as to never have to appear in court again.

I’ve seen family members of victims and defendants bend at the waist, crying in sorrow. I’ve seen law enforcement officers stand around the victim’s family protectively as the convicted defendant leaves court.

I’ve waited in the courtroom after the hearing is over so I wouldn’t intrude on family members standing outside in the hall, consoling each other. I’ve taken the stairs instead of the elevator so I could have a moment alone. I’ve sat in my car outside the courthouse crying too hard to drive.

The last several weeks, I’ve been in court a lot, covering cases for the paper. The tragedies I witness are not my tragedies. I don’t have the pressures that the prosecutors and law enforcement officers have.

But my time in court takes its toll.

One way I’ve coped it to write about it. Of course, I write the stories about the court proceedings for the newspaper: man found guilty, judge sentences defendant to 25 years, mistrial declared.

And that writing is a way of coping because I’m taking what I’ve observed and learned, and I’ve told the story of what happened in the community. I’ve documented a piece of the community.

But I’ve also been writing on my own, typing out thoughts I’ve had about my experiences in court, what I’ve learned, what I struggle with.

I’ve been holding on to these thoughts and feelings for nearly five years. I’ve made little notes of observations in the backs of my reporter’s notebooks, but I’ve never sat down and written with purpose the things that weigh on my after a difficult hearing, that have kept me awake many nights.

That’s where I’ve been mentally and emotionally lately. I’ve taken few photographs. I’ve been visiting my blogger friends’ sites less. I’ve been contemplating the unanswerable questions more often.

I think the writing is helping. And I have to remind myself, with deep breaths, with thoughts of Larry and Chase Bird, that my life is not the courtroom or the cases that I cover. 

Letting go of emotions that feed my OCD and depression

As I wrote about in my last post, I have made “letting go” the theme to guide my goals in 2013.

I have some heavy, serious emotions to deal with and to try to let go of: anger, sadness, resentment, despair, even hate.

I don’t like to admit having these feelings and emotions, but they are there, sometimes lying underneath the day-to-day feelings, sometimes rising to the surface.

I have found myself lying down at night, unable to go to sleep because of the thoughts running through my head, ruminations and obsessions that make those negative emotions rise to the surface and feed my anxiety, OCD and depression.

I want to be free. I want to be light and free of the tears that come when I contemplate all the junk inside me.

In a recent guest post linked to from her blog, Shirley Hershey Showalter wrote about two verses from the Bible to help guide her through 2013. In a comment, I told her how she had inspired me to find words to help me in my theme of letting go. And she offered this link to a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver.

Inspired by Shirley, I will take Oliver’s poem with me through the year.

In addition, I will take my favorite prayer, which, to me, is all about letting go of what we don’t need to hold us back, and taking on and passing on what is important: peace, pardon, faith, hope, light, joy and, most important, love. That is the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

I’m not looking forward to the work that will be involved in letting go of these emotions and of bad habits that I’ve taken on through the years. But letting go will surely help me with my mental health issues, and with that, my whole life.

  What are you trying to let go of?