Make Room for Love

      Just under a month ago, I made a decision that created a ripple effect of positive energy through all aspects of my life: I adopted a cat.  In recent days, I had become increasingly jealous of one particular Facebook friend as she posted photo after photo of her wedding, her gorgeous husband, her new home, her beautiful honeymoon in Costa Rica and ultimately her brand new kitten.  I found myself longing for the beauty and love that she had in her life and began feeling frustrated that these things felt so far out of reach.  In a moment of clarity, I realized that if I wanted to have love in my life at that very moment, there was indeed something I could do right then: adopt an animal. 

     My friend Aly had recently taken me to the local animal shelter where the cats are kept in a large community room where the public can walk in and interact with them. Within minutes of our arrival, a sweet, lovely calico had come up to me, placing her paws on my thigh as she gently attempted to befriend me.  I fell instantly in love and spent the entire next day thinking about her, however I still had much resistance to overcome: I had sizable fears about causing issues with my landlady and my allergies. The lease on my apartment specifies that no animals are allowed, but I had a feeling that my landlady might be open to the idea of me having a small cat.  Terrified, I broached the question and she enthusiastically agreed!  Next, I researched how to keep my allergies at bay and found some great recommendations that would allow me to live a sneeze and allergy pill free life with my new friend. 

     I went back to the shelter to work out the details of the adoption.  I was surprised to find she was already spayed and ready to go. I only needed to pick up food and supplies from the pet store before bringing her home.  I had believed the adoption process would take a few days so I was both excited and a little intimidated by the speed at which things were moving. Overwhelmed, I slowly made my way through aisles of cat food with a million questions running through my head. What would she like to eat? What is healthiest for her? Will she recognize pine pellets as litter and use them accordingly? Will she want treats or toys? If I get her a scratching post, will she be disinclined to destroy the furniture?

     Armed with all my purchases, I went back to the shelter to pick up the cat.  I was provided with a ventilated cardboard box with a carrying handle in which to carry her home.  I put her box down on the floor of the front seat and drove home as gently as I could with tears streaming down my cheeks.  Would I be a good caretaker for this creature?  Would she like me?  Would she like my house?  Would I like her?  Would we make each other mad?  Would she be happy?  Would she miss her cat friends at the shelter?  Does she miss her kittens? Should I keep her shelter name or give her a new one? Had I made the right choice?  Would my allergies cripple me? Doubts and fears crowded my thinking as I questioned whether or not I had been too impulsive after all.

     I got the kitty up to my apartment and set her free from her box.  Curious about everything, she slowly moved from room to room, getting the lay of the land.  I followed her around, observing her reactions to everything.  I felt nervous, as if I had brought a date home for the first time, hoping to meet with approval.  For the first few days we were completely captivated by one another.  I was so unused to sharing my house with anyone that it felt a little crowded and overwhelming in the beginning.  She was acting super needy, demanding attention every few minutes.

     As the days passed, I started noticing some dramatic shifts in my mood.  I was excited to come home so I could see my kitty.  Every day when I walked through the door, we would check in with one another.  I’d ask her how her day was and lie down on the floor next to her, stroking her head as she mewed back in reply.  Every day I felt my heart open a little more to her.  My home used to be a place that I would go when I needed to retreat and close myself off from others.  Suddenly it became a place where I would open up and let my guard down completely. 

     Then a funny thing began to happen; I found myself opening up my heart in other areas of my life as well.  I started communicating more with people and regained interest in activities that used to bring me joy, but had become sources of pain.  I feel that I’ve experienced more healing in the month that I’ve had the cat, than in any other month since my heart had been brutally shattered.  Adopting an animal is a tremendous act of love and commitment.  In that sense it is a bit scary.  You only have a short time to interact with this creature before bringing it into your home, and from that moment on, you are responsible for its well-being.  In the past year I have been so afraid to love anything or anyone that I’ve led an almost solitary existence.  I have been able to make one exception for my best friend that I met as I was going through emotional chaos, but aside from her, I have been quite closed off to the idea of letting any new love into my life.  I had love too deeply associated with pain. Finally, I felt my heart healing in a sudden and drastic way.  I felt I had manifested a little bit of that love that I had been so envious of.  The jealousy completely dissipated.

     Then another funny thing happened; I met a man.  The change had been almost instantaneous.  Within a week and a half of adopting my kitty, I had attracted a completely different type of person than I had been traditionally pursuing.  Gone were my crippling fears and insistence on being single for the rest of my days.  Gone were my excuses to not make a move.  Gone were my inclinations to play hard to get, or to wait to be asked out.  I felt like my old, brave and empowered self.  Oh how I had missed her!  I had believed that my trauma was going to overshadow the rest of my life and inhibit my ability to experience real love ever again.  For the first time in a long while, I have hope that love is something that I will be able to experience in my life because I AM experiencing it my life.  My heart is finding love all around as I reconnect with the other beings sharing this planet.  The yogis sum it up with the word “Namasté” which according to Aadil Palkhivala, writer for the yoga journal, “represents the belief that there is a Divine spark within each of us that is located in the heart chakra. The gesture is an acknowledgment of the soul in one by the soul in another.”  I have been using this concept as a point of focus to ensure that I don’t allow my previous traumatic experiences to flow over onto this new person, while reaffirming my own sacred divinity.  As it turned out, the lack of love in my life was not caused by my own unloveableness, but rather my inability to love anyone else due to fear. My cat provided me with a safe creature to practice love with, and the ripple effect of that love is spreading far and wide.

Change Your Vibration

     Last month I discovered a community meditation studio in Orlando, FL called the Community Center 729.  Every Sunday they host a non-denominational crystal bowl meditation.  The session usually begins with some pre-recorded meditation music playing quietly to set the mood as people settle themselves into a semi-circle around the bowls.  Dave, a thin reddish haired man with an English accent, enters and lights incense as he begins guiding everyone through a few breathing exercises. 

     As everyone begins to calm their energy, Josh, Dave’s musical counterpart, begins to gently tap the bowls with a mallet, each one of the seven producing a clear crystal tone attuned to a specific chakra.  After Dave completes the guided part of the meditation, his voice drops off and is replaced by the sound of a slowly crescendoing hum, created by the mallet being stroked around the edges of the bowls.  The sound is reminiscent of a wet finger circling the lip of a crystal wine glass, but more deep and intense.  The sound fills the small space of the meditation studio, driving out all other sounds in the room.  It even seems to drive all stray thoughts out of my mind.  The sounds seem to have a circular shape as they pulse against one eardrum and then the other.  I imagine I am inside one of the bowls, experiencing 360 degrees of sound as the mallet is dragged across the outer surface.

     Eventually the vibrations die down and Dave begins to speak again, gently instructing everyone on how to bring their consciousness back into their bodies.  It takes a few minutes before I truly feel awake.  The bowls have a tendency to put me in a trance-like state that feels very similar to dreaming.

     I have tried some other forms of meditation, but often I find it hard to quiet my chaotic mind, especially at times when I most need it.  The penetrating sound of the bowls frees up all the mental space I usually fill with worry, and opens me up to a different experience.  It allows me to reset my vibration to something more in tune with nature, rather than the unnatural hustle bustle of modern life.  After one of these sessions, my foremost desire is to sit under a tree in the sun, feeling at one with the planet.

     Since attending weekly crystal bowl meditations, I feel a definite shift in my energy for the first portion of the week, and by the time Sunday rolls around again, I’m anxious to go back and reattune myself for the start of a new week.

     I specifically recommend this type of meditation for people dealing with intrusive thoughts due to PTSD due to the “thought drowning” nature of the sounds that are produced.  When I was going through the initial stages of PTSD, I found that this type of meditation was one of very few things that could stop the intrusive thoughts for a short amount of time.  During a period of constant struggle, that brief reprieve was most welcome and did much in the way of protecting my sanity.

     12SoundSolutions' youtube channel is a great playlist that will give you an idea of what each of the 7 bowls sound like when played separately and the video below demonstrates how the bowls sound when played together. It’s of course, not the same as hearing them in person, but it gives a pretty clear idea of the type of sounds they create.

Just Show Up

      A few weeks ago I was feeling very overwhelmed and uninspired about this semester. I was not producing any work and I was feeling like I may not ever have a creative urge again in my life. There was one event on my calendar that I was truly looking forward to, but I was a bit anxious at the same time. I wanted to attend a meet and greet for all the students at UCF that were producing student films this semester. I’m not really a film student, but I had just completed my first video project last semester and I was HOOKED. I was excited at the prospect of being a part of a film crew and working under a director. This meet and greet was designed so that student film makers could meet potential crewmen to work on their productions. New situations where I’m required to talk to people make me super nervous but I knew I couldn’t pass this up, so I just went. I walked onto the sound stage having little idea of what to expect and I tagged along behind a group of people, listening to producers pitch their film ideas. Eventually I got brave enough to approach the film students by myself and make conversation about what they were creating. It felt great to talk shop with fellow creators, hearing about their different ideas and shooting styles. I had walked into that room feeling scared and insecure and left feeling like a professional with great things on the horizon. It completely changed my mood from just hours prior.

     The phrase “just show up” has been key for those days when I begin over thinking every little thing. I have a tendency to get overwhelmed easily and “wake up and go to school” quickly transforms into a harrowing to-do list that looks like:

• Crawl out of bed
• Desperately search for matching clothes
• Put on socks
• Stare into the fridge for awhile
• Find the coffee
• Make coffee
• Put sugar in coffee
• Put cream in coffee
• Find the bagels
• Cut open a bagel
• Toast the bagel
• Find the cream cheese
• Open the cream cheese
• Find a knife
• Cut a chunk of cream cheese
• Spread the cream cheese
• Find a jacket
• Put on the jacket
• Zip up the jacket…etc.

     I think you see where I’m going here. When I’m depressed, every single nuance of the most basic task becomes its own line item on a foreboding to-do list. When I’m in a positive mental space, this entire list gets summed up as “get ready for work” and it seems like one simple task. There are many days during my deeper bouts of depression that I cringe at how many steps are involved in cooking scrambled eggs, so I choose to lie in bed for hours to avoid the insurmountable task of preparing breakfast.

      Now, apply this same model to a higher order task such as attending an art school critique and you have the ingredients for an epic meltdown, or in the best case scenario, an anxiety attack coupled with severe aversion techniques. Not only must I go through the above mentioned to do list, but the end result will be me sitting in a class, having the work I have half heartedly created (or in many cases, not created at all…meaning I get to spend the entire 3 hours feeling guilty for my failure to be a useful participant) being subject to the criticism of others. Some days it feels easier to just not go. But then, the next week I feel even more behind and upset.

     When I feel myself starting down this road of total avoidance, I have learned to employ the “just show up” rule. No matter how I am feeling, whether I have done my homework or not, whether I think I will have a good time or not, I just show up. I try not to have any preconceived expectations for what my experience will be like and I have found that often times, my worst fears are not realized. In fact, in most cases, I leave feeling better than when I got there. This works for my job, school, and even social events. It’s true that sometimes I will just show up and have a severe anxiety attack or feel overwhelmed, so I just leave. But compared to the times where I feel affirmed, connected, joyous, relieved, and inspired, it seems worth it to keep putting myself out there to see where the road takes me. When I stay at home in my mental space of avoidance, it sometimes takes days for my mood to shift, but often times when I leave my house to do something positive for myself, the mood turns around much more quickly.

     This tactic keeps me putting one foot in front of the other no matter how depressed I get. You just never know what person or event will make your entire perspective shift, but one thing is certain: if you stay at home out of fear, you will never find out. So the next time you find yourself coming up with fifteen thousand disaster scenarios of what might happen if you go out to catch a movie with your best friend, just show up and don’t hold yourself to the expectation of having a great time. Show up knowing it could go either way, and just notice how you feel once you get there. If you have a crappy time, so what? Is it really that much worse than staying home alone? And maybe, just maybe, you will have a nice time and remember why this is your best friend in the first place.

The List

    

      I obtained the list from my friend Bryan Childs, creator of NineBullets.net, who is also battling Depression.  He had watched his father slowly die from cancer along with watching his marriage crumble.  We bonded over the course of a few weeks this past summer, swapping coping strategies and commiserating about how painfully slow progress can be at times.  He has a list that he found in The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression taped to the mirror of his bathroom so he can see it every day.

  It reads:  

12 Steps to defeating depressive thinking: Avoid depressive thinking-traps. Exercise Eat healthily. Get adequate rest and sleep. Use downtime constructively. Maintain positive relations. Resolve conflicts quickly. Get fresh air and sunshine. Stick to priorities. Each day, do something novel. Make a daily change in routine. Persist.

     I’m putting this list up here first because it really gets to the crux of battling depression.  It’s so easy to get stuck in the mud that just making one small effort each day can be enough to make a huge shift in thinking.  So often, I will be cooped up in my apartment feeling so anxious and unable to concentrate that I forget that simply stepping outside is a cheap and easy way to completely change my mood.  I printed out my own copy of this list and put it on my refrigerator for convenient reference so that when I am having a particularly rough time of it, I can pick just one thing to start with. 

     When followed daily, this list outlines a pretty effective plan for living a depression-free life, or at least one that is manageable.  With future blog posts, I will go into more detail about some of the items on this list as well as adding some simpler, in the moment strategies for shaking free from catastrophic thinking.  The idea is to compile a resource of things that WORK, so that on those inevitable bad days, there will be a myriad of choices. 

Welcome

     For people that live with Depression, daily life can become a constant struggle just to maintain the status quo.  Bathing, eating, and showing up for work can become enormous undertakings when living in the shadow of this disorder.  A few months ago, my therapist diagnosed me with Major Depressive Disorder, something I have been dealing with since the age of 16.  Over the years, I had always turned to weightlifting for its depression fighting side effects, and alcohol for its ability to take me into another state of consciousness.  After a psychologically traumatic event, these avenues were no longer available to me.  The breaks between weightlifting sets proved to be enough free time for my mind to delve back into my problems, often leaving me crying at the gym.  Alcohol became a poison, crippling my ability to socialize.  Rather than giving me the confidence to interact with strangers, I would often be reduced to tears when men approached me in public if I was under the influence.  With Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) and recovery from alcohol addiction added into the mix, and without weightlifting to provide relief, I finally turned to counseling and began exploring other ways to find peace.

     The purpose of this blog is to detail the various strategies I have explored for combating depression as I slowly try to dig myself out of this hole in hopes that it will bring some insight and light to others who are suffering.  Please read, explore and share your own personal insights that you have discovered on your journey.  For those who are curious about the events leading up to my current mental state, I refer you to my other blog: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Deconstructing a Relationship with a Narcissist.