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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Dark thoughts and happy-place Arkansas

Tonight brings the dangerous feelings of contagion and apathy.  Everything seems catching and deadly and I really don't care enough to prevent it.  A dream I can't wake from.  The feeling of deja-vu of lightheaded-ness as if coming from under a mild anesthetic all day now just milliseconds prior to the next catastrophe that is about to happen yet having no way to stop it.

Apathy brought about by conditioning like a rat in a metal cage.  I scurry to a from being shocked and popped and made squeamish regardless of my response now.  My fate seems sealed and I await the fianl dropping of the blade albeit a long and boring while, of years and perhaps decades, with my hooded head across the chopping block.  I spend my life waiting for the executioner to arrive and it rains cold.

Anyway that's about the most cold blooded thing I could think of to write about.  It is not cold in here.  I am feeling pretty good tonight because I am safe and warm at home and it's almost time to retire for the evening.  The above vignette is about the feeling I have had in the past.  About the inability to get things going in a positive direction.  Thanks to CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) models I have been able to slowly but surely turn my thinking around.  I am still working on this but getting some of my most troubling thought down on paper and sharing them here in the blog makes me feel a lot better.

Basically I just learn to watch my thinking as a form of meditation.  Slowly  I replace the negative thinking with more positive thoughts.  When I am doing things during the day I try the same thing.  I remember watching certain ideas that I would like to change and when these ideas crop up during the day I remember how relaxed I was when I watched thee negative thoughts during meditation.  I visualize the thought changing from a negative idea to a positive idea in my mind.  It is a little like watching clouds change from one form to another.  I have to admit that I don't always know what I am thinking.  Just like one doesn't always know what a certain cloud looks like all the time.

The really difficult part is maintaining a relaxing happy place in the mind.  Seriously.  And then in a troubled moment remembering to go there when things get difficult in the real world.  I mean I get so upset sometimes.  Like this morning as I was returning from grocery shopping.  Steam was probably rising from my bald head and I had forgotten to think of being in my happy place (somewhere in central Arkansas.) As soon as I did that I regained control and stopped freaking out.  Within 30 seconds I was beginning to relax and I could feel my blood pressure returning to normal.