The end has come. There will be no post today and I have no plans for future posts.
I want to thank you for your support over the last 4 1/2 years, but it is time to change some things in my life, and unfortunately, this blog is one of them.
I believe that you can still message me and I will do my best to answer in a timely manner.
I may on the rare occasion drop a post or just some photos. Only the future knows what it holds for us.
HOW DO YOU SEE YOURSELF? FINDING YOUR INNER BEAUTY
How do you see yourself? Most of us happen to be our own worst critics. I could list every fault I have without blinking an eyelid. But why do something that will bring you down when in reality you probably have a lot more positives going for you than you think? Take your time!!! I want to make this challenging and allow you to describe yourself in one to two words in positive ways. Some people would think of mental illness as a serious negative, but personally, I find it to be one of the things that defines me and what makes me a strong and grand individual, so I have listed it first. You are free to elaborate why a word fits you, but I really want you to focus on brevity and make it a celebration of everything that makes you a wonderful and stunning individual!
Bipolar
Beautiful
Giving
Unconventional
Cheerful
Kind
Caring
Compassionate
Nurturing
Silly
Humorous
Hard working
Diligent
Tenacious
Seeking peace/calm
Creative
Budding artist
Published author
Creative
Curious
Empowered
Persistent
Adventurous
Emotional
Loyal
Easygoing
Generally introverted
Private
Survivor
Home renovator
Rubber ball (I bounce back)
When done, you can take your list and hang it proudly somewhere where you can readily see it to use it as a reminder every day. Just an FYI, I do not think my list is yet complete, and neither will yours be. Add to it as words come to you, and remind yourself with the mantra, “I am worthy because I am … “
ANXIETY, PART TWO: A LITTLE DISTRACTION CAN GO A LONG WAY
I am incredibly anxious at the moment. I would put it at about an 8 or 9 out of 10, my anxiety baseline being a five. It is the result of a meeting this last week where I received news which I was not anticipating. But I can go into that at another time. All I can say is that my anxiety meds have not been effective so I focused (all day today) on a distraction that took my full day’s attention and ability to focus: building and hanging an IKEA display cabinet over the refrigerator. Have you ever built one of these (or more like me?) If so, you know very well the cryptic illustrations and have suffered the frustration of asking yourself, “Is this right??” I really had to focus as I was perched precariously atop the fridge manipulating cabinet, doors, hanging rail and screws, and lights without plummeting to the floor. My cats were pretty amused and very “helpful.”
The cabinet is now finished, the cats are back asleep in their boxes, and my anxiety has again peaked. It is very hard to concentrate in order to write. Since I already know I cannot do a post next weekend, I will try to put something together for the end of next week, even if it is just an update. I expect to speak with my mother tomorrow, a potential fuel for a good post subject. Wish me luck.
Comorbidity issues with bipolar are pretty much the rule rather than the rarity. Anxiety ranks among the top offenders for those suffering from bipolar and anxiety rates in bipolars far exceed rates found in the general public. I will admit that as far as my bipolar symptoms go, my manic stages have become rare and less intensive since I began medication. I sometimes miss the manic days because I was insanely (no pun intended) productive and accomplished. But I have to believe that this is a good thing, and accept that semi-motivation is an acceptable price to pay for a glimmer of normalcy. I cannot say that about my anxiety.
My biggest conflict now comes from the anxiety I live with as it is more obvious when compared to my medically-diminished bipolar symptoms. It is one of those things that hid just below the surface, but with a new (since spring) therapist and a new psychiatrist, I am acutely aware that the heart-racing feeling I have felt for so long is actually anxiety. Knowing what having no anxiety would probably fee like, and comparing it with the most extreme episode of anxiety I have had, my therapist and I agree that I do indeed suffer from general anxiety, and comparing highs and lows, I function on a baseline scale of 4 or 5 out of 10. That knowledge doesn’t exactly console me. Instead, it actually added to my stress.
I have already been going down the path of prescription medicine to combat anxiety. For the longest time I was prescribed Ativan. Recommended dosage is 2-6 mg 2 to 3 times per day. I was only on 1 mg 3 times per day, but psychiatrist before my current one decided on our first visit, before we had a chance to actually talk about and discuss my medications, that she would not refill the prescription because I “really didn’t need it.” There I sat with no refills for my anxiety and a doctor I had no intention of seeing for a second visit. If you really want to scare the hell out of a person, take away their medication without understanding the patient. But if benzodiazepines are so bad as she said (they “increase the risk of addiction, withdrawal, cognitive decline, motor vehicle crashes, and hip fracture”), especially for those already taking the kinds of “higher risk” bipolar medications I do, why prescribe them to begin with?
My next psychiatrist prescribed Buspirone HCL 10 mg one tablet twice a day. I took that for a couple of months but found no relief with it. The next and current medication in my anxiety arsenal is Propranolol 10 mg three times per day. Once again, it is ineffective, even after increasing the dosage. It might be because I am already function 24/7 on such a heightened level of anxiety that it is probably like putting a band-aid on a volcano in a feeble attempt to keep it from erupting. I meet with her next week and we will have much to discuss. Such as last week when I bolted awake at 4:00 am – something that on my level of medication should never happen – and then I lay there mostly wide awake until the alarm went off. I spent the rest of the day and week, for no reason I could attribute it to, anxious to a level of 9 out of ten, my heart feeling like it was trying to claw its way out of my chest. It has been a very intense week.
Some of my heightened anxiety levels could be from the knowledge that my summer break is more than half over with. By this time during pre-Covid days I would be on a 2-3 week holiday in Europe with family and friends. Aside from the stress of travel, this is time where I drop all of my cares and change my focus to what is around me in the familiar surroundings of Spain, Ireland, and sometimes Switzerland. It is like melting into a puddle of calm. My biggest worry in Spain is do I want to be under or beside a beach umbrella, a walk in the sun or in the Mediterranean surf, do I want fire-roasted sardines or pil-pil for lunch, and what do I want for dinner? Switzerland is about getting to the coffee shop, ordering a Crodino or San Bitter and watching the Limmat flow peacefully by. Ireland is full of endless miles of narrow country roads squeezed between stone walls covered in ivy and miniature tiger lilies, and the hikes punctuated by little stone cottages with window boxes filled with rainbows of flowers. I think that part of reason I haven’t felt a break from anxiety this summer is that the breaks I live for have not happened.
Because the medications to battle my anxiety (which right this moment is a 7 or 8 out 10) have shown so little promise, I have also been working on non-medical methods as well. This first, which I can also practice in the car if needed, is the “4-7-8” breathing technique. You breathe in slowly for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, and exhale slowly for 8 seconds. There are many reasons given for why this works, but the first one I heard when I learned about it is that during those 7 seconds in which you are holding your breath, the oxygen level in the brain decreases and it begins to focus on “when/if” there will be another breath rather than on what had previously been troubling you. That works for me!
Another method involves “cold therapy.” I placed rocks or glass eggs slightly smaller than a chicken eggs (or whatever your palm-size-squeeze size is) in the freezer alongside some tiny ice pack from my joghurt insulators. When I feel more anxious than normal, I would pull one out and hold onto it until the cold wore off. I often go through two or three rocks at a time. The history of hand coolers goes back to Victorian women using small glass egg hand coolers, although for different social reasons. Something for you to look up on your own!
Another therapy, provided by my therapist this week, also uses a cool therapy in the process. She calls it TIPP Therapy. It is “Tempurature,” all of me in a freezing cold shower – I tried it and it brought back a flood of unpleasant childhood memories of showers at camp with no hot water. I have to work on that one. Next is “Intense” exercise, 30 seconds to two minutes to push some adrenaline out of the body. Next is “Progressive” muscle relaxation, five seconds or so of simple neck or body stretches. Lastly, “Paced” breathing. Look a door frame and alternate inhale and exhale in correlation to the four sides (in-out-in-out), the exhale being the tall sides of the frame.
There are also more general organic remedies, but you should always research your find for its safety and for possible side effects or interactions with something else you are taking. Commonly recommended teas include some you already know about: Chamomile Tea, Green Tea, Passionflower Tea, Lemon Balm Tea, Rose Tea, Peppermint Tea, Valerian Root Tea, Lavender Tea. I have also used a vast assortment of essential oils from dōTerra for a wide range of needs. Most recently I tried a combination of lavender and Roman chamomile, taken in a gel cap, but either as a result of my body’s intolerance, or something coincidentally happy, I ended up with extreme stomach distress. I also use lavender oil as aromatherapy, a spray for the side of my pillow I fall asleep on, and sometimes as a “moustache” (under the nostrils) for calming breathing through my nose, dōTerra having a small roller applicator for this one. I also have a full range fragrances which I alternate every day or two to keep from becoming numb to the smell. My two favorites are rhubarb and grapefruit. I know that the scents and the oils in my magic cabinet are on the pricey side, but if you can do it, consider it an investment in yourself, even if it is only one or two oils at a time (btw, dōTerra will charge you $15 automatically for their catalogue on your first order, but it is well worth it). If these oils are still out of range, find alternatives on line and read the ratings and feedback available to you. I usually recommend that you also Google as much as you can. This is all about our health, so due diligence is vital.
The last thing I have which I cannot yet make a recommendation (I only started it this week) is liquid Passion Flower supplement. I take several drops by mouth a couple of times a day. The taste is palatable, unlike some of the oils. It is by Maxx Herbs, and they have other “flavors” available. I just happened to find more positive ratings for the Passion Flower, thus my choice.
Hopefully, if you live with and suffer from anxiety, you will now feel a bit more assured that you are not alone. And hopefully, you will now have a couple of new tools to help you to self-regulate your anxiety a bit. In all honesty, these methods, breathing, aromatherapy, essential oils, teas only bring me very short-term relief, but in the wake of unsuccessful medications for anxiety, I at least feel active in my efforts to achieve some semblance of wellbeing.
How are you with anxiety? Is it comingled with bipolar? How do you manage it? Hopefully these are answers you can reflect on internally to try to bring down your anxiety or the anxiety in others.
WE AREN’T GETTING ANY YOUNGER – SEEING WITH NEW EYES
I just spent a week Upstate with my sister tackling more of the stuff/crap/garbage, whatever you want to call it, up at the farmhouse. This is the third summer in a row where this task has been a priority. This is the third summer where I feel like we are barely making a dent in the job despite obviously slaving away at this. There is just so much stuff/crap/garbage (literally, garbage, especially outside) that even looking at an over-filled dumpster which we filled in five days of hard labor that when you walk in the house or around the grounds you just stand there looking at it all wondering, What the Hell did I actually accomplish?
Front of farmhouse
Keep in mind that it was 90°F or more every day, incredibly humid, and despite allergy medicine and inhalers, my allergies and asthma were in high gear, and we both had to stop for water breaks every 15-20 minutes. To complicate it, I have been avoiding for many years now going to a chiropractor for some serious back issues I have. My sister has had many back surgeries. She says once you have one, they always need to something more, something different, so I am holding out as long as possible. The last time, they severed something in her neck and her brain is no longer able to “connect” to her body in order to moderate or control her body temperature. I do not want that for me.
The West Drive
We talked about this dilemma of heat and pain, the amount hard labor we were putting in, and the vast scale of what was still ahead of us, and for the first time it hit me that I was far from being 15 or 20 years old anymore. Very far. It should have been an obvious observation but I have never cared much about or been aware of physical age the way most people do. Time is a concept I have never had a good grasp on, but the excruciating pain my back was damning proof that I am indeed getting older. In fact, it was this trip that finally and sadly put saving the house into perspective. Had our dad given us the house 25 years ago as he had discussed, we would not be doing all of this now. I would be summering in it now, with a pond, ducks, and fish. Being able to go upstate to work on it for 2-3 weeks every summer as it is now will never be enough. Putting a “tiny house” next to it would be an ideal start as I would have a place to stay and work on it, not have to depend brief hotel expenses, but is still doesn’t address the seriously challenging physical nature of a lot of the work. I will be too old or too dead to keep up the current pace and feel like I have made progress.
Under the 1832 kitchen addition
So what made us feel like we were not making much progress for the amount of work we were putting in? Let’s start by noting that the house is four floors including a massive (and massively full) attic which can only be emptied via a very steep stair pinned in by walls on both sides, only about 18” wide, met the bottom by a sharp left turn for the door, and topped with a trap door and the only two windows in cavernous space. In the basement, there are about seven or eight rooms, only two of which are lit from windows set into the two-foot thick stone walls. The unlit rooms, including an old jail space from the house’s 19thC stint as the neighborhood jail, a walk-in freezer (from when it used ice blocks cut from the pond I played in across the street as a child), my great grandmother Maude’s fruit cellar (complete with preserves and Ball jars of canned foods that were left behind). It is amazing how much family history people leave behind. However, the only access to these pitch black enclaves requires strong flashlights and a willingness to work among the mold.
One of the “walk out” basement windows, door around corner
This was our first trip focused on the 3-acre grounds around the house. We have had a lumbering company in harvesting black walnut trees whose bulldozing to get into the woods at the back of the house has exposed many goods things as a well as many not-so-good problems. Let’s start with the good: They bulldozed a “road” around the heavily-wooded east and south property lines. It was the first time I have ever seen the pine tree borderlines planted by my great uncle Harold when he was a young man. The trees are in beautifully strait lines and well over 120’ tall. We also discovered that we have an old stone farming wall at the back of the property. And we rediscovered the natural spring that gives its name to the west side border, “Spring Av.”
Me before we closed it off for safety issues
What we did not find were the remains/stone foundations of the old grist mill at the spring, nor did we find the one remaining mill stone (the other is at the house my great uncle Harold built for his wife, my great aunt Dot), probably buried under all of the dirt the loggers moved. We also did not find the old open cistern which provided fresh water to farm. These are things that 20 or 30 years ago, I would have grabbed a shovel and taken to task to dig up. Now I would grab a shovel and a phone to call 9-1-1 when “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” (from an American television commercial for geriatric care). But the biggest problem created by bulldozers was upending piles of branches, fields of grass, heaps of stuff/garbage/trash around the house and outbuildings that had been previously disguised beneath wild grasses, flowers, branches, tarps and more. And with so much land swept clear, the piles were all visible from the two bordering streets and needed to be cleared before the city started slapping massive fines on us for abandoned garbage.
Fields to forests
There is a phrase I prefer to live by: “Do not do yourself what you can pay others to do for you.” It has served me well, although I have done quite a few renovations on my own home – things within my skill-set and financial means, but there are things that once they pass my ability, I just pay and it is done. The more I do myself, the more money I have for the “not me” works. Things such me taking down a wall (ok, a few walls) and having the pros do the ceiling. Call it teamwork. But in the case of the farmhouse, it was just me and my sister. We are trying to make a sizable amount of cash to put towards our parents’ care while minimizing farmhouse-related expenses that would have to come out of it. Thus, she and I ARE the manual labor on this task.
1832 main porch before removal
The hardest decisions were with which pile could we make the most impact to appease the city, and the neighbors who now had clear view to the huge heaps of garbage scattered ALL over the acreages. We started with anything that stood out from the views along the roads: white awnings (well, not so white anymore); many, many bright blue tarps which disintegrated as we pulled on them, swimming pool liners, heaps of car tires so kindly left behind by neighbors who thought it a good way to discard them, propane tanks, and all of the shit you could possibly hide under them all. Also standing out once a tarp was removed were the remains of the two circa 1832 porches from the front of the house that had to come down because my father neglected to properly maintain them and they had pulled away from the main body of the house … for me, that day was personally devastating. Worse, he neglected to properly store them, instead having them dragged to a back field and placed under a now disintegrated tarp. They were all rotten, so they will never be reinstalled. I did salvage a few pieces to use as templates if anyone ever gets to that point.
We also had to pull a ton of debris from around two of the four outbuildings. The brick smoke house is stable but the wood framed storage room at the back is collapsing. The chicken house only has three walls now (no roof). We keep it, despite the city asking us to take it down … I coerced them a couple of years ago that we would be restoring it and needed those the walls for historical accuracy (damn! I’m good). Around the east/repair garage there was a lot to clear out and haul to the dumpster. Visible on the second floor of this garage are stack of green shutters original to the house (the shutter hardware is still visible around the house’s windows). The problem is that the center of the garage has collapsed and is being held up by an apple press standing on top of a child’s school desk. I would be surprised if even half the shutters were still functioning.
At the west pole-barn-construction garage, garbage was hauled away from all for sides, as well as mouse-infested furniture, some stored there and then abandoned. Both garage roofs and their ground-level bases have many open holes and passages for weather and animals to enter. The west garage actually has massive boulders in the corners to keep it from blowing away. Very close to the west garage is the back of the house and the dangerously collapsing back kitchen porch, now visible due to loggers clearing. My father had stored an ungodly amount of stuff under this dilapidated porch and against the back of the house. The biggest problem we had trying to clean and throw stuff away was the disintegration and breakdown of plastics, fabrics, rotted wood, rubber, broken glass, bicycles rusted together, and uneven terrain from the loggers’ dozers. And EVERYTHING had to be dragged to the dumpster out front.
Every day is Halloween in the stone basement
We did finally agree that we had made enough of a dent in street-visible garbage and turned our attention the on the last morning to the inside. The dumpster was full by this time, but we HAD to accomplish something in the basement so we kept piling. The basement is the grossest place to work in the entire house, mainly because if it is not in a flashlight beam, God only know what is in there with you. Anyway, we began plucking things from the dark to take driveway to evaluate. A lot of things that would have had monetary or curiosity value were condemned to the dumpster, unable to be salvaged under the layers of disgusting white mold covering them (although I did manage to salvage a few such things a couple of years ago and they now hang proudly in my home). I will say, looking back at it today, we did a pretty good of clearing that one corner this week and does suggest a glimmer of hope for the house. But mostly on the condition of “Do not do yourself what you can pay others to do for you.” Such as, I take a wall out, well within my abilities, and someone else does the grunt work and hauls away the lathe and plaster. Teamwork!!
Weathervane-Flagpole carved by great grandfather George Heinrich Geschke, now in my home
I thought I would share a particularly funny event from early in my week at the farmhouse. It is funny now, but not when it happened. There is a narrow grassy path between the hosta along the side of the kitchen, and the tree row of the west driveway. It was fairly smooth and shady travels by foot, unlike taking the choppy ground the loggers messed up around a motor home used as more storage in that driveway, and in the full blazing sun. By this point in the late morning I had crossed the shady path dozens of times, usually more fixed on the garbage in my hands, juggling enough not to lose anything in slow my process. Suddenly, in my peripheral vision, there was something at my feet that did not belong there …
Here we were, me and about a three foot long garter snake. For any of you who didn’t already know, I am petrified of snakes, petrified to a point that a confrontation with a six inch garter snake a couple of years ago had me sprint about 100 yards to the street in seconds. Normally, I wouldn’t even run for a sale at Cartier! But this new guy, I had no idea I could scream and screech so loud and shrill!!! I also had no idea I could scream so many times in such rapid succession. I also had no idea why the snake was moving, thrashing, attacking my boots, but not going away. For that matter, Why in the Hell weren’t MY feet moving?! I had stepped on him and he was pinned under one of my boots! I swear to God I LEAPT AIRBORNE from the spot as I made way, again, to the safety of the street, nearly running my sister over. Needless to say that my sister and all of the west half of town heard me. I did not used that path again, preferring the “safety” of extra steps and possible sunburn.
I still think the house can be saved, but I now have to acknowledge my physical limitations of what I can and cannot do. “Do not do yourself what you can pay others to do for you.” I wish my father had learned that before he put me, my sisters, and the house in the position we are all in now.
Take care of yourself, take care of your stuff. Don’t let it get to this point!!
I almost titled this post, “Ask me if I care,” because more and more I seem to care less and less about more and more. I want to be less stressed and anxious. I have always been an anxious person, even as a child. I was afraid of my parents, so when I had to ask for something, something that could easily be met with a “yes,” I knew that it would be a “no” and usually with a berating answer asking why I would even ask. I was in fact so afraid of asking that I would often cry in fear as I asked. With my dad, that just exponentially made it worse and would result in a spanking not for asking, but for asking and crying. They say that birth to age five is when life exerts its most influence on our development and when we are formed into the people defined in our adulthood. Maybe that explains a lot of my issues. I remember always being excessively cautious, nervous, and calculating growing up. I was never a risk taker. Instead, every word and deed was the result of careful internal deliberation. If the odds weren’t good, I sat on it and waited indefinitely. I grew up holding a lot in, no wonder I was always jumping anxious out of my skin.
Buttercups from childhood
Anxiety pretty much defines who I am. Although I have learned in my adulthood how to be a risk taker, I still calculate my odds of success. Of course, my life has been full of bad choices, some (or many) of which can be directly associated with my pre-diagnosed bipolar manic and depressive episodes. A big part of my stable and more “wise” decision making skills is undeniably the medications I am on, but a large part of it is the path of personal growth I have been on for many years. I feel more and more over the past couple of years that my ability to make better choices, successful and productive choices, is due to my personal goal to “retrain the brain” and choose the path with fewer obstacles that will result in increased inner calm.
Living in large metropolitan areas as I have most of my life, notably NYC with the 9-11 bombings and the many years of emotional aftermath, I felt like I was always living on the edge waiting for the next big event. Big cities are crowded, dirty, congested, and crowds bring on major panic attacks for me. There are bumper to bumper lines of crawling traffic going to and departing from work. There is the 20 minutes or so of aggravation trying to find parking whether it is to go to the dentist, or to find a metered spot on the Broadway shopping corridor. There is the market where I invariably end up behind the lady buying cases of cat food that need to all be scanned by the individual can. There is – for me – the strain of airport travel, will I be among the first to board and will there be room overhead for my carry-on? Even fun things like travel have an physical/emotional price. I love my holidays, I just hate the to and from part.
The loving feel of sand between my toes
Mitigating stress, anxiety and panic attacks would seem like a Hurculean task. With patience and perseverance, though, progress is being made. The single largest source of aggravation has always been car related … traffic and parking. I have been using traffic slowdowns as moments for meditation. I have come a long way from white-knuckle-clutching of the steering wheel, my heart pounding, and my brain reciting, “Move, move, move!” to traffic that was slow or stopped. It is obvious that I have no control over traffic. Now I acknowledge that there is nothing I can do about it. Instead, I use the tools at my disposal: I have several music playlists , many with calming music, to surf through while I sit and sort of meditate; I take the time to look at my surroundings and note the changes, rather than stare anxiously at the bumper in front of me; I practice 4-7-8 breathing exercises which have an immediate and progressive calming effect. What it all comes down to is that I’ll get where I am going when I get there.
I practice letting go of as many unnecessary things as possible, mostly those things that I do not have any control over. I feel like I have lived my life up to this point as “hurry up and do this and do that.” If I didn’t have something to do, I would find things to add to my to-do list: Go to the store, weed the garden, polish the silver, run the laundry out, trim the trees, organize my book collections, sort my school materials, clean and polish the antique furniture, organize my shoes, organize my shirts, rebuilt a closet interior to house my growing bag and backpack collection, dead-head the roses, learn Instagram, work on household inventory, plan a trip Upstate to work on more family issues (sooner than later), and plan international travel that is currently on hold due to covid and the CDC.
Louis XV Writing Desk (From the Hamptons)
I could go on, but the point is that I am teaching myself that not everything is a matter of urgency. Instead of stores, there are many things I can (and do) buy online from the comfort of my sofa … and when I feel like it. Now I pull a few weeds here and a few weeds there, maybe for a few minutes rather than a few hours … the garden is looking good and I feel better. The silver … if only it would polish itself … can wait, it is not going anywhere. The laundry, ahh, whenever I feel like it. The trees … they aren’t killing or inconveniencing anyone at the moment. The books … well, I need workspace to do this which means working on my school space first … I’ll be working on that tomorrow and all summer long … slowly. Polish the furniture … I will work on the piece I bought on my husband’s and my escape to the Hamptons last week, a beautifully inlaid and veneered with bronze ormolu mounts writing desk. Shoes … done. Shirts … done. Bags and backpacks, done. Roses … let Mother Nature do her thing. Instagram and Inventory, both works in progress. The trip upstate … I’ll plan something over the weekend.
Antique enameled bronze Quan Yin (my collection), my spiritual guide
The point: There has been so much said about the issue of procrastination as a byproduct of life with covid. Maybe it is covid that has been reinforcing my efforts to step back from the sense of urgency in life and just run with the slower pace of things. Am I finding procrastination to be detrimental to my life? I do not think so. Remember the old advice of “stop and smell the roses” and other such lines? When we slow down and intentionally seek peace and pleasure in the world around us, I believe we feel better. I wish I could say that my ever-present anxiety has gone away, but I also understand that it is comorbid with my bipolar. Knowing that makes it easier to deal with, and for the more intense moments I still have anti-anxiety medication. But all in all, I am feeling better and I have a more optimistic outlook on things. Everything will get done when it gets done, I will travel when it is safe to travel, and in the meantime, my primary goal is to be good to myself and to continue to practice the principles and meditations that allow me to function on a higher plane than have done in the life previously.
Hamptons sunset
Where do you find yourself on the anxiety scale of 1-10? What causes the most stress and anxiety for you? Are these absolute necessities, or can you prioritize them lower down the list? Do you practice any meditations? What do or can you do in a sudden moment pf panic? There are a plethora of sites and videos on line that can help you channel calm or productive energy that will best meet your needs or goals. Spend some time surfing on line until you find the ones that best suit you.
Well, it is pushing four in the afternoon and I have not nearly finished my reading and research for this post. I chose a slippery-slope subject based on the ignorance of a mid-western governor (yes, I still wish I could make stupid people like her just disappear from the planet).
I did take advantage of being able to sleep in until almost 10:00 this morning. High levels of anxiety have hindered attempts at good sleep for weeks now. I have had an outrageously intense level of anxiety since long before my trip to Texas and Arizona. The anxiety seems to still have a lethal hold on me. I have resorted to going back to Ativan, a medicine which has a negligible effect on me. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers. The issues with my parents just seem to grow exponentially despite all that I accomplished with my sisters, adding stress. I am apparently so tightly strung that I berated (OK, I yelled fiercely at him) a customer at UPS for cutting in front of me and five other customers who had all been waiting half an hour for our turn. Let’s just say it was not pretty. The others in line turned on him as well, and the man took off running with his package. I think I need to go to some isolated beach for a month and get my frustrations and anxieties under control. The sound of the sea is my friend.
Anyway, I hope your lives are a little less intense.
Well, I am back from my lengthy, mystery absence. But let me just start with a couple of loose ends. First, that psychiatrist whom I spent weeks trying to connect with for my follow up appointment did finally reach out (or rather, the central phone bank for the firm did) after 2 ½ weeks of attempting to contact them, by which point my dates I originally requested for early April were no longer available and my option became the end of April, too late for my needs. I decided to find a more accessible and responsive doctor, which I did. When I went to cancel the appointment with the first doctor (who remember cannot contact me despite weeks of trying), it took her 5 1/2 MINUTES to email me confirmation of my cancellation … the bitch. The other loose end is that I received my second Moderna vaccination on Wednesday. Thankfully, my body responded less severely than after the first … this time just heavy fatique, low appetite, body aches, chills, and a really bad headache. But it is done and that is all that matters.
Now for my secretive activity the last few weeks: I have mentioned in the past how my parents had car and house collections, travelled often, and had plentiful financial means to support this lifestyle. My parents weakness was their inability (or disinterest) in monitoring or maintaining their assets, but they were at the same time incredibly generous to friends and relatives who were far less well off. My parents were followed by these devotees until the money vanished, along with the money of their fellow investors, with their financial planner. My dad had to go back to work out of retirement. Ironically (or selfishly) not one of my parents recipients stepped up to the plate to help my parents in their time of need. That includes the brother we no longer speak of.
So to help our parents cut some expenses, my sisters and I have worked to make two of our family’s long-neglected New York properties (of very minor value) ready for the sales market. One is now set to close, the other we are still trying to clean out (two summers now and counting). But selling the one now takes a mortgage payment, gas, water, maintenance, property taxes off their financial plate. Keep in mind, they are living on Social Security and Medicaid (dad). The big secret two weeks ago was that my two sisters and I were going to Dallas to sort and clear out two very large storage units where my father had haphazardly stored belongings from the Dallas house they sold, with other items already stored there. We chose to be secretive because our brother lives in Dallas and had he gotten wind that we were there (I think he reads this blog to keep up to date on the family), he would have shown up demanding his share of what was actually pretty much nothing.
Tackling the units, we all donned Tyvec suits and white face masks. More than once, we were questioned from afar by frightened customers if there was a hazmat area where we were working. We said no, unless you want to count the dead bright green rat who apparently was a little too enamoured with a bottle of radiator fluid. But in all reality, the suits and cheap rain boots were to minimize getting bitten by creepy-crawlys such as poisonous spiders, scorpions, and snakes. We spent a week there and salvaged a few things which we shipped home. We also sent many boxes to my mother full of things my mother has complained about not having because “Your father” did this and did that. We are so sick of hearing the blame game she dishes towards our father that we tend to shut her down immediately. You want to see my bipolar and anxiety go through the roof? Spend any amount of time with my mother. Just be prepared. You are likely to look for a bus to step in front of. In the end, we cleared out both units, giving six 20’ trailers full to a an American Vets group which they will sort and sell to support their programs. OK, now THAT makes me feel good. In the end, between airfare, hotel, food, car rental, and other incidental expenses, my sisters and I spent around $7,000 on this part of the trip just to save my mother another $500 per month storage fee. Most difficult for me to deal with? The few things of mine that I was expecting to send home (a very valuable stamp collection I inherited from my great grandfather) were not there, meaning if they were, my brother stole them during his couple of break-ins of the sheds.
The final part of the trip was to address the state of my mother’s (and father’s) home in suburban Phoenix. If you already didn’t understand the sheer volume of possessions in the storage units as an extension of hoarding (which defines every home my parents have ever lived in, and how they left them in order to add another house to the collection), my mother’s house spells it out clearly. Every bit of floor is covered in piles of boxes and plastic totes. The dining table and kitchen counters and island are piled with one to two feet of papers, fabric, and who knows what else, and all crowned by a flowing sheet so that the contents are not visible. On my last visit two and a half years ago, my sister and I cleared the table, the counters, the hallway to my dad’s room, AND my dad’s room. My mother had undone all of that work and boxes were piled everywhere. Already exhausted from Dallas, my gut went into an anxious twist and I vomited in the front yard. Despair and disbelief. Sudden depression, anger, futility in our mission. All we were able to accomplish in the three days I planned there (not realizing we were going to have to have to redo my dad’s wheelchair access) was to mostly clear out the garage and rebuild storage shelves to try to provide my mother with places to put boxes rather than in the middle of the floor or on the sofa and chairs. To give you an example, my mother asked me to bring a chair in from the garage. When I placed it in the living room, I DOUBLED the available seating space in the living room.
I know how unhappy my mother was after we left. Like the last time where she accused us of stealing from her (my sister and I are pretty well off so mom’s accusation the last time was ridiculous). Still, the same accusations surfaced after this last visit. It is sad that she doesn’t seem to understand how perilous her financial position is, or the seriousness that the house needs to be handicap-ready for my dad, something were not able to accomplish this time. Anyway, it has put a deep strain on my relationship with my mother. And I have my own very serious issues happening under my roof, so this strain and anxiety is something I will work to minimize. Easter tomorrow. Rebirth. Please pray that something good from all of this.
Well, I am still on the road as expected. I am having a crazy but fab time with my sisters. We have an insane day ahead of us so I am posting this California time.
I have NOT read this article yet, but I am pretty sure it will be a good read. Hopefully I will be able to read it some time Tuesday on the return home. Sorry I cannot find a direct linkI would love to hear your feedback.
HERE IT IS, copied directly from The Washington Post. The irony is that I just spent a week in Grapevine, Texas …
“Demi Lovato holds up a small bottle of coconut oil containing a mix of musky scents — tobacco, vanilla and Palo Santo — with crystals at the bottom. “This one’s my more masculine scent,” she explains. “On days I’m feeling more feminine, I have one that’s amber, lavender and vanilla.”
Crystals and their healing properties are widely embraced in Hollywood, but this — not so much the body oils, but the time to create them for herself — is fairly new to the pop star, who is gearing up to release her first album since she suffered a near-fatal overdose in 2018.
She runs her fingers through her short hair, a drastic change from the flowing style she wore most of last year. Shedding her long tresses was a fresh start for Lovato, who told Ellen DeGeneres in February that the new cut felt “more authentic” than the locks she “used to hide behind.”
She’s still experimenting, and has recently been wearing her new pixie in various lengths and shades of pink: a bubble gum hue in the music video for “What Other People Say,” her collaboration with Australian crooner Sam Fischer; hot highlighter pink on the cover of Glamour; a softer, cherry blossom shade for President Biden’s virtual inauguration party, where she sang a stunning rendition of Bill Withers’s “Lovely Day” against a sunrise backdrop. But on this day in early March, she’s back to her brunette roots, appearing on a video call from her home in Los Angeles for an interview with The Washington Post.
Lovato documents the haircut in a newly released docuseries, in which she opens up about the pain and trauma that led to her overdose. “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil” breaks down the hours before and after the incident in harrowing detail. “I had three strokes. I had a heart attack,” she reports in the series, which also features interviews with her friends, family and team. “My doctors said that I had five to 10 more minutes.”
The docuseries is full of revelations including that Lovato, like many who battle substance abuse, suffered a relapse following her overdose. This level of candor is rare for celebrities. But it’s familiar for the singer, a longtime mental health advocate who has been open about her struggles with drugs, eating disorders and depression. “Dancing with the Devil” is Lovato’s third documentary effort, and the four-part series — directed and executive-produced by Michael D. Ratner — is a window into the pop star’s self-exploration at a pivotal moment in her life and career.
At 28, Lovato has been in the public eye for nearly half of her life. Her childhood in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine offered proximity to her early start in showbiz with the Texas-produced children’s program “Barney and Friends,” which she filmed (alongside Selena Gomez) from 2002 to 2004. Her big break arrived when she was cast as the titular lead in the Disney sitcom “Sonny With a Chance” and as aspiring singer Mitchie Torres in “Camp Rock.” That “was when everything changed for me,” Lovato says. “I hit the ground running — the day I turned 15, I started production on ‘Camp Rock.’ ”
“That was literally like the catalyst for the rest of my life,” she adds. “And I didn’t realize that it would just never really slow down until I said, ‘Slow the f— down.’ ”
Just a few months after “Camp Rock’s” 2008 premiere, she released her debut album, “Don’t Forget.” She’s since packed a lot into her career: In addition to her numerous Disney credits, she has made guest appearances on “Will & Grace,” “Glee” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” and served as a judge on “The X Factor.” Her upcoming album, “Dancing With the Devil … The Art of Starting Over,” will be her seventh.
Lovato’s early rise to fame was rocked in 2010 when reports surfaced that she had punched a backup dancer while on tour with the Jonas Brothers to promote “Camp Rock 2.” She checked into a treatment center, revealing months later that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder (which, according to the new docuseries, her doctors now believe was incorrect). She openly talked about her history with self-harm and eating disorders in MTV’s 2012 documentary “Stay Strong.” But it wasn’t until 2017 when YouTube released “Simply Complicated” that Lovato seemed to put everything on the table: “The last time I did an interview this long,” she noted in that film, “I was on cocaine.”
“Dancing with the Devil” avoids the sweeping proclamations Lovato has made in the past about sobriety as the docuseries finds her reevaluating her approach to substance recovery. She was friendly with director Ratner (who also helmed Justin Bieber’s YouTube docuseries “Seasons”) before working with him, and her manager, Scooter Braun, is an executive producer on the film. That familiarity, she says, made her feel safe while being so unyielding in her discussion of what she’s been through.
It’s not hard to see why Lovato and other social media-savvy pop stars — Bieber, Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga among them — gravitate to the documentary format to communicate their deepest thoughts on the world and their place in it. It gives them creative control as subject and oftentimes producer while they lay their emotions bare, though it’s ultimately up to their fans to decide if they truly have.
Lovato first stepped back into the spotlight after her overdose with an emotional performance at last year’s Grammys ceremony; a week later, she fulfilled her dream of performing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Since then, quarantine has offered her additional time to reflect on her past and to heal — she got into meditation after eschewing it for years, and grew closer to her family — but it was not without setbacks.
Last fall, she ended her brief engagement to actor Max Ehrich, but Lovato — a longtime LGBTQ advocate, who has identified as sexually fluid in recent years — says in the docuseries that the breakup helped her realize that she’s “too queer” to date a man at this point in her life.
Lovato says she still has lingering issues from the overdose, including brain damage and blind spots in her vision. She can no longer drive. But taking what amounted to nearly three years off had another silver lining for the singer: “My voice has never been stronger,” she says.
An internal struggle
The part of the docuseries that’s most difficult for Lovato to watch isn’t about her overdose or its harrowing effects. She says it’s the moment in March 2018 when she was performing at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and Kehlani and DJ Khaled, who appeared as special guests on the singer’s tour that year, surprised her onstage to congratulate her on being six years sober.
Entertainment Weekly and other outlets reported on the “emotional” speech Lovato gave that night. But “Dancing With the Devil” casts the moment in a different light. It was truly a surprise, the singer says, one that played out live (and partly in DJ Khaled’s booming delivery) in front of roughly 15,000 people.
“It’s so uncomfortable to me to watch that part of the documentary,” she says. “But it’s so important because it shows the internal struggle that I’m having.”
Lovato had referenced the same six-year milestone in a tweet just days earlier, and says she doesn’t blame DJ Khaled and Kehlani for the thoughtful gesture. But “it wasn’t authentic to me anymore,” she says. “There’s a part [of the speech] where I’m like, ‘Mental health is so important.’ The tone of my voice just sounds fake.”
“It’s not that I believed that it was fake,” she explains. “It was just that I was preaching about mental health while so active in my eating disorder and so miserable and not even really convinced by what I was doing.”
Mental health advocates have lauded Lovato as a pioneer in her willingness to speak openly about her struggles, and experts say celebrities can be invaluable in encouraging other people to get help when they need it. Lovato’s day-to-day manager, Scott Marcus, says Lovato “knows that things could have gone very differently [for her], and because of that, she is ready to share her story.” That openness has become an invaluable part of her brand.
In “Dancing with the Devil,” Lovato reflects on the intense pressure she felt as a “poster child” for addiction and recovery. One month before her overdose, she released “Sober,” an aching ballad suggesting she had relapsed. “I wanna be a role model, but I’m only human,” she sings on the track.
“ There’s a pedestal that you’re put on when you’re in the public eye and you talk about recovery,” Lovato says. “I was in a position where I was already the poster child for this before I even could collect enough time of sobriety to decide if I wanted that for the rest of my life.”
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As she made great strides in recovery for her eating disorder, following her overdose, Lovato began questioning whether sobriety — true abstinence from all substances — was the best decision for her. She broached the topic with her treatment team and ultimately decided to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol in moderation. “The dogmatic all-or-nothing thinking does not work with food recovery, so why is it going to work with my substance recovery?” she reasons.
Lovato expects backlash from those who believe full sobriety is the only option but says, “This discourse is healthy and needs to be had.” There are people in her own life who disagree with her approach, and two of them — Braun and Elton John — say so in the docuseries. John, who has publicly spoken about his own battle with substance use, tells the camera, simply: “Moderation doesn’t work, sorry.”
“ That is the truth for some people,” Lovato says. “It just isn’t the truth for me, and I can’t worry about what people are going to say because I’m living my truth and that’s what’s important to me. I’m not going to alter my truth for anyone else because when I did that, it almost killed me.”
As part of her quest to have more autonomy over her life and approach to her recovery, Lovato changed management, signing with Braun in 2019. Despite his reservations about her views on sobriety, Braun said he’s “here to be her friend and support system.”
“ I want her to always feel like she’s loved , ” he says. “For me , the conversation is always the same, which is regardless of what comes, you have a safe place here to have a conversation and know that you’re not ever going to be abandoned.”
The art of starting over
Lovato is a singer’s singer. She knows when to belt, when to hold back and when to go for a breathy note. From a young age, her voice had a rock edge to it that set her apart from her peers, even as her music sampled from various genres. When she performed “Hello” several years ago at a Grammys tribute to Lionel Richie, he gave the universal singer’s approval: nodding and swaying his head, leaning into every note, fist-pumping between vocal runs. “Yes!” he cheered at one point.
Emotion runs like a palpable undercurrent through her songs. You feel her heartbreak when she sings about a lover who has moved on in “Stone Cold,” her frosty pettiness in “Sorry Not Sorry,” her playful longing in “Cool For the Summer,” and, more recently, her resolve in “I Love Me.” Lovato says her upcoming album, slated for release on April 2, isn’t officially a soundtrack to the docuseries, but “if you listen to it in order, from top to bottom, that’s the way a lot of my life played out over the past couple of years.”
The album features collaborations with artists including rapper Saweetie and Ariana Grande, another superstar artist on Braun’s roster (and the person Lovato calls her “most supportive friend” in the industry). Lovato says it’s easily her most personal album yet.
“This is my life’s work. All of my albums have led to this … all of my touring, all of my songwriting. This is the first time I’ve ever taken time with an album,” she says, noting that she extended the deadline multiple times. “I really didn’t say, ‘It’s done,’ until I felt like it was totally done.”
Time is also what prepared Lovato to tell her story in unflinching detail — both in the docuseries and in public as her career ramps back into full swing. In one of the most heartbreaking reveals of the series, she shares that she was raped as a teenager before she had even lost her virginity, and that her rapist faced no repercussions even though she disclosed the rape.
She also says she was sexually violated by the drug dealer who supplied her with the heroin — likely laced with fentanyl — that led to her overdose. (“I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me,” she says in the docuseries.)
Lovato says she didn’t talk about her rape for many years because she reasoned she should keep something “for herself” after being so open about her issues. When the #MeToo movement reverberated in 2017, she still wasn’t ready to talk about what happened.
“I needed time to process it. I finally have had time, and I realized that I wasn’t having compassion for myself. I was just trying to wear the fighter identity and bulldoze my way through my trauma, and I can’t do that,” Lovato says. “I have to sit with it, and I have to journal about it. I have to cry it out.”
“I did, and I’m in a much better place, and I feel like that’s why I was able to talk about it,” she adds, “because it doesn’t hold as much weight for me as it used to.”
She has also been open about her ongoing body image issues. Appearing on model and body positivity advocate Ashley Graham’s “Pretty Big Deal” podcast last year, Lovato admitted that she compulsively exercised for years without realizing how connected that was to her eating disorder.
Something Lovato said in that widely viewed conversation has stayed with Graham, who befriended Lovato after meeting her at the 2017 Time 100 Gala, where they were both honored for their advocacy.
“Demi taught me the difference between body positivity and body acceptance ,” says Graham, who made history as the first plus-size model to be featured on the covers of magazines including Vogue and Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue. “I realized that we have to make space for everyone in this conversation, no matter where they are in their journey. ”
Free of the constraints that resulted from her all-or-nothing commitment to sobriety — including, at one point, having to request drug tests from people she hung out with casually — Lovato says she has made newfound connections with people in and out of her industry.
“Women are really coming together to support one another and lift each other up,” she says. “I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had on [direct message] or texting with another female artist … them confiding in me, or me confiding in them, and just being there for one another .”
That’s a welcome contrast from the early days of her career when Lovato — who switched to home school as a preteen because of bullying from her peers — says she was so haunted by memories of being taunted in middle school that she was fearful of her own audience; she knew what girls her age were “capable of.” Bullying was the first issue Lovato ever spoke out about, and she says sharing her experience with her fans was “healing.”
“I wanted to try to reinforce that message of ‘just because you’re bullied doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you’ — that there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Lovato says. “When I learned how therapeutic that was, when I learned how it helped so many people — it gave me a taste for how much I could actually make a difference.”
That was perhaps when Lovato first realized that a personal struggle could not be separated from a public persona, that she has more to gain by sharing the truth than holding it all in. That’s why her songs sound so confessional. That’s why she makes documentaries about herself. Speaking out about childhood bullies came with a reckoning that continues to inform Lovato’s work.
“That’s why ever since the beginning of my career, I’ve never stood down to injustices or quieted my voice in order to stand up for what I believe in,” she says.
“You can turn your troubles into motivation. That’s what I did.”
Bethonie Butler writes about television and pop culture for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2010 as a member of the social media team.”
Finding a doctor, and one you like, shouldn’t be an exercise in frustration. Especially a psychiatrist (but not forgetting general practitioners).
Finding and keeping a psychiatrist has been more than a challenge for me since I came back from Switzerland in 2009 and gave up my amazing doctor there. Even living in such a large metropolitan area as I do, the choices have been very limited. My first doctor was highly recommended, but on my first appointment where I had said little more than hello, he told me I was on too many medicines and he would be taking me off them. Obviously, I panicked at having made a poor choice in doctors: he did not know the first thing about me other than my name and my pill menu. I had to explain that I had only recently achieved a successful combination of medications and that I was not prepared to make changes. After that, I saw him only to refill my prescriptions. Worse, I would show up for my scheduled appointment, yet it would be an hour (sometimes two) before I could see him as I watched a parade of other people simply be shown to his office in front of me. As they went through on a five to ten minute interval, I came to assume they were like me: five minutes was generally all it took for me to walk in, get my prescriptions, and walk out. His office could not even be bothered to phone my prescriptions in to the pharmacy. I had a pill pusher rather than a psychiatrist. It stayed like this for a couple of years.
After I parted ways with him, I used my general practitioner to fill my prescriptions for a brief period. It was tough though as finding parking anywhere near her was impossible and very frustrating. I was becoming incredibly anxious trying to find a place to park before my appointments, aggravating one of the maladies (anxiety) I was seeking medication for. But again, it was always at least an hour after my appointed time that I was able to see my doctor. Why is it that as patients, if we are a little late for an appointment or cancel with less than 24 hours’ notice, we are still billed for it, yet if a doctor is late, “that’s just the way it is”? That has always baffled me.
My next psychiatrist was God as far as I was concerned. He was incredibly professional and compassionate. I looked forward to my visits. He was a combination of psychiatrist and therapist. He asked questions and took the time to listen. As far as I was concerned, I would never have to look for another doctor again. And then he announced that he was closing his practice in order to manage the mental health care needs of several nursing homes near his home about an hour away. He had just started a family and wanted to be closer. Like it or not, I could appreciate it.
It took some time to find my next doctor and I was panicking that I would end up having to see my first doctor. You see, parking is challenging if not impossible in the metropolitan areas of NYC outside of Manhattan where at least there are parking garages every block or so. There might be a doctor to be had here in “off” neighborhoods, those neighborhoods with no parking or deemed unsafe. They generally didn’t include too many choices in doctors anyway, but it incredibly narrowed down already limited choices. My next selection was a NP whom I was randomly assigned to in a large NYC-based mental heath group. She was good and I liked her. However, towards the end, her company decided they were moving away from medication management and patients like me. The nail in the coffin was an email the day before my late January appointment (as if they could not have reached out sooner) where I was informed they no longer took my insurance, a major health insurance company, and wanted to know if I would be paying in full out of pocket for future visits. I voiced by opinion of their timing and cancelled my appointment.
In the age of coronavirus, I next went with a recommended mental health group operating solely via telehealth. I had to evaluate my choice by simply reviewing the bios of a dozen doctors and NPs. Let me just say that reading bios is no substitute for in-person choice-making. On paper, this doctor was more than well qualified, but once again, on my very first meeting, I was being informed that my medications would be changed, reduced, and removed. Obviously a panic attack ensued, ironically because she planned to take me off my anxiety medication. Why is it so hard to find a doctor who understands who and what I am before they start messing with things? My other issue with this new doctor (aside from her being late for the Zoom meeting) is that I have been trying for almost three weeks to schedule my next appointment, a constant volley of exchanged phone calls and email. It probably doesn’t help that she only works a couple of days a week. I may need to re-choose, with the added un-fun of reviewing bios again. Thankfully, the therapist I chose within this medical group is amazing! I think I might ask her help on Monday during my appointment with her.
So, five different psychiatrists in less than twelve years. I would not consider that to be a good average. In that time, it has only once been my choice to change doctors. In that same amount of time, I have only had three GPs, the changes all mine. The first two GPs were great, but my wait time after my appointed time was on average about an hour. The doctor’s time is billable and valuable, but what about my time? It is valuable at the minimum. My new GP, I have only met her via phone, and she seems very nice. But getting a timely return call has been a problem. In all honesty, I am tired of filling out medical forms and questionnaires. I’ll just go to urgent-care on my next crisis.
Medical care shouldn’t be so complicated and frustrating, so why is it? What is your experience and how do you feel about it?
