Journey

It has been a really long time since I watched the movie Castaway, but I know Tom Hanks was on a plane that crashed, leaving him the lone survivor on a deserted island. He befriended a volleyball, which he called Wilson, and he spoke with it as though attempting to hang on to sanity while also losing what little sanity he had left. I was just discharged after 3 weeks in a psychiatric hospital. The census was low (sometimes down to 5 when the unit holds 22), and that made it seem as though we were on a deserted island. We were unable to leave the unit so that there would be no chance of cross contamination between units if someone was diagnosed with COVID-19. This meant no trips to the courtyard, no trips to the cafeteria for meals (to also obtain unlimited quantities of coffee), and no use of the recreation room. For entertainment we were given a red soccer ball and Cornhole. Ironically, we named our red soccer ball just as Tom Hanks named his volleyball. "Corona" provi...

In 1998 I went to a summer camp in Northern Michigan where I tried a rope course for the very first time. The camp counselors running the course asked me to think about one thing that I wanted to do in my life that would take courage. Once I chose that one thing, I was told to ride the zip line down to the bottom. I could not do it. At that point in my life, I did not do heights or drops. I had to climb down in defeat. It wasn't just embarrassment that I had to climb the ladder back down. It was that the zip line was a metaphor for doing the difficult things in my life, and I could not do it. If riding a zip line to the ground was impossible, how could anything in my life be possible? When I started Cognitive Processing Therapy, I used the analogy of one of my road runs. My run allows me to make 2 choices. I can run to the stop sign at the two-mile mark and turn around for the easy way out, or I can keep going past the stop sign and run up a long, steep hill. Turning aro...

I was probably in kindergarten or first grade when my family decided to dig a big hole in the backyard to put in a pool. I learned over the course of that first summer to swim and became a great swimmer throughout my remaining years at home (we lived in four different homes with a pool at each place). I could swim laps with the endurance of a marathon runner, hold my breath under water for an extended period of time, and experiment with several types of dives or jumps from the side of the pool or the diving board. One thing I discovered was that doing front flips into the pool left me extremely disoriented for around 30 seconds. I would make this leap, flip through the air, slip into the water, and hope that I had adequate air in my lungs to float me to the top rather than sinking. Oddly, I really enjoy that feeling even if I can't swim immediately after hitting the water. Either way, being a great swimmer means nothing if you cannot figure out which direction to swim to get to...

My first experience with roller coasters was in 5th grade. I went to Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH with my best friend and her family. I hopped on this tiny, simple rollercoaster called the  Iron Dragon . Seriously, watch the video to see what a pansy I was. A couple years later I ended up at Cedar Point again with my sister and her family. I ended up riding on the Iron Dragon again, and I managed to venture to the  Blue Streak . It seemed so scary at the time, but it is literally a down and back wooden rollercoaster that goes up and down a few times. It wasn't a particularly rough or scary ride. After my experiences with roller coasters at Cedar Point, I managed to avoid pretty much every ride that required me to drop quickly. I don't particularly like the feeling of the contents of my stomach wanting to exit, and I certainly do not want to do something to intentionally cause that feeling! One day, to my horror, my brother told me that the freshmen trip during the fi...

I thrive on competition, and I get really discouraged by comparing myself with others. It can be psychologically excruciating. Striving for perfection throughout my entire life stems from the feeling that I have never been enough; I have never met my own expectations or my perceived experience of what I think others expect from me. Perfection certainly runs deep in my family. My husband still laughs about an incident that happened with my dad the week before we were married. I think it was my husband's first glimpse at what he was REALLY getting himself into with me (with the exception of getting mooned at the table on Thanksgiving before we were engaged). About two or three weeks before Tim and I were married in Michigan, there was a torrential downpour at my parents' house. A recent leveling of land two lots away from their house to rezone for a development had changed ground water drainage and flow, and the result was a river flowing into the backyard. The in-ground p...

I started my first ever intention in 2019. I wanted something more for myself after spending the past several years in hospitals. I did not want to set a resolution to be happy, lose weight, drink more water, or any of the other ridiculous things people come up with. I wanted to be kind and compassionate with myself. I wanted to understand what it is like to treat myself the way I try to treat others. The day I went public with my intention, I was sitting at my dining room table in misery. I was drinking cold coffee and thinking about how uncomfortably overweight I felt. I was hungry, but I refused to eat.  This year has been a spiral staircase of sorts. Each step is a step of progress because I am moving upward, but each step also brings me back around. Kindness, trigger, hatred, hard work, kindness, trigger, hatred, etc.  Six months into my intention I was able to highlight several areas in which I was making an effort to be kind toward myself: 1. I was spending m...

Have you ever eaten something so dry that it seems to get stuck somewhere in your esophagus? The esophagus starts to spasm to get the food down, and it is painful. You have to wait patiently for it to move back up the esophagus or all the way down to the stomach for the pain to stop. My Relationships with People and Myself It is no secret that I have been fighting with myself recently. My fight (or lack of fight?) seems to be a roadblock to CPT, and I have been chewing on this for a few weeks. This Tuesday, we stepped away from the script. We discussed which direction we need to move toward. The door was open to me for discussing my feelings. The problem is, the pain feels so intense I have no idea what I am feeling. I know I am sad. Really, really sad. I have a constant lump in my throat begging me to release the pressure valve. I also have this weight in my chest from not letting it go. I avoided that like I avoid the stomach flu: staying far, far away. I was also given the oppor...