"We are, each of us, a multitude."

I had my Women's Cognitive Therapy Group tonight.  We listened to a pretty standard type of guided meditation used in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy that had us check in with all the different parts of our body to see where we were holding any anxiety or stress.  If you have not tried one of these, they can be very relaxing... they can also be difficult to do because it requires you to slow down and methodically check in on each area of your body.  I find it difficult and often inconvenient to do this I'm upset about something or feeling anxious.  Sometimes as I try to do it, I feel like a car with it's wheels spinning, trying to go 80mph, with the brakes on.  It's hard to slow your mind when it wants to race around.  But with practice, this becomes a skill that you can eventually use to invoke calmness almost instantly, at any time.

I didn't have trouble easing into this one tonight though, because I had one of those "lost" days today,

TOOLBOX: Psychological Counseling, YES please.

Image from Psychology Today

I wish I had known when I was in crisis in 1997 or so that seeking psychological counseling and even care from a psychiatrist is really just not that big of a deal.  I was all wracked with guilt and shame at concept of not being able to cope well enough with my life,  of needing help.  I saw it as an admission of failure and inadequacy of the mind, of weakness.  I have a friend I am leaning on to seek counseling right now and I'm pretty sure she is viewing the prospect in the same light.  So I thought, maybe others might need to know what I was telling her.  Now, not every person who seeks counseling is in crisis and not every person is in the grips of major depression or anxiety, but I am going mainly from my own experience, and I was a mess.

The Great Cosmic Parking Lot

Los Angeles Times, 10/4/77

OK, people.  It's late at night and I bet there are typos here, but I do want to get this post out, even if it's in rough form.  Let me know where you find inconsistencies and I'll work on them.  I know I'm missing citations and all that, but this is really more like a first draft of where I want to go with discussing my views on these things. 

I got a very interesting comment on one of my blog entries and wanted to make sure that I addressed it within a reasonable amount of time, but the topic of religion is so vast and requires so much context that I think I'm going to have to address it by iterations before linking those discussions with my experiences with mental illness.


Comment on Why Get Out of Bed:  I am fascinated by your claim "If Jesus were real, then you would be willing to get out of bed." I would love to hear more from you about what would constitute Empirical data for the existence of a higher power.