That was proof enough for me that the stigma of mental illness still exists.
My husband complied with his request; however, I openly discussed my grandmother’s, uncle’s, mother’s, and cousin’s mental illness in my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On; A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide. I truly believe that their genes passed on bipolar disorder to my son.

My son was a young adult, age twenty-one, when he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And throughout the seven years he struggled with the disease, I thoroughly believe the stigma of his mental illness stopped him from a treatment program that might have saved him from his destiny, suicide. He worked during the last two years of his life for a internet service provider, and when the people in the company heard of the reason for his death they were shocked to find out he had any illness whatsoever. He was a master at hiding his bipolar symptoms. He didn’t want to take his meds, he didn’t accept needed hospitalizations, he just tried to act as “normal” as he could. If he had followed the advice that is currently offered, such as admitting something is wrong, not feeling ashamed, seeking and following treatment and support, accepting help from family and friends, he might still be alive today1.

Stigma can be exhibited in several ways: bullying, physical violence, harassment, negative remarks, calling a mentally ill person crazy, portraying a mentally ill person as a sociopath or violent in films and television, or characterizing a mentally ill person as weak and stupid. And some of the harmful effects of stigma can include, according to the Mayo Clinic staff:
• Lack of understanding by family, friends, colleagues or others you know
• Discrimination at work or school
• Difficulty finding housing
• Health insurance that doesn’t adequately cover mental illness
• The belief that a mentally ill person will never be able to succeed at certain challenges or that you can’t improve your situation1.
Knowing the causes will help erase stigma and enable a search for ways to get help if needed. Mental illness is caused by a disease of the brain, actually a chemical imbalance in the brain, much like a physical disease such as asthma or diabetes. Physical illnesses need treatment, so do mental illnesses.

Since genetics is one of the biological causes of mental illness, find out if there is any mental illness in your family, because if there is, you could be at risk. Other causes of mental illness could be brain defects or prenatal damage. There are also psychological and environmental causes that can trigger this illness if a person is susceptible. I believe that stressors in my son’s life triggered his first manic break. So, the more we know about the causes of mental illness and the more we are attuned to the fact that the unusual behaviors of mentally ill people are symptoms and not the cause, the easier it will be to erase the stigma associated with it.

The most important way to erase stigma is to open the conversation about mental illness. As Glenn Close, who has a sister with bipolar disorder and a nephew with schizoaffective disorder, says, “What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well.”

So for us to converse about it intelligently, we must know what mental illness looks like. Here are a few aspects of it, according to Hugh C. McBride :
• Mood swings, agitation, and anxiety
• Altered sleep patterns (excessive sleeping or insomnia)
• Loss of focus or inability to concentrate
• Drastic weight changes (either gains or losses)
• Fatigue or exhaustion
• Loss of interest in hobbies, sports, school or work, or other activities that previously were important
• Decline in academic or work performance, frequent absences from school or work, and skipped classes or important meetings
• Thoughts of death, expressions of wanting to die, discussions of suicide
• Substance abuse (including the abuse of alcohol, illicit drugs, and prescription pills)2

Contrary to the misconception that mental illness cannot be treated, therapy, short or long-term hospitalizations, and prescribed medications specific to the type of mental illness can help. Mental illness cannot be cured, but it can be treated. Unfortunately if it is left untreated there are many dangers. These include addiction to alcohol and/or drugs for those who are self-medicating, and the one I am most familiar with, the risk of suicide.

Since my son died by suicide as a result of his bipolar disorder, my mission has been to erase the stigma of mental illness and to discuss mental illness and suicide openly and often. Only then can we hope to save some lives.

1Mayo Clinic staff, “Mental Health: Overcoming the Stigma of Mental Illness: False Beliefs About Mental Illness Can Cause Significant Problems. Learn What You Can Do About Stigma”

2Hugh C. McBride, “Stigma Keeps Many Teens from Getting Mental Health Treatment”

Madeline Sharples has worked most of her life as a technical writer and editor, grant writer, and proposal manager. She fell in love with poetry and creative writing in grade school and decided to fulfill her dreams of being a professional writer later in her life. Madeline is the author of Leaving the Hall Light On, a memoir about how she and her family survived her older son’s suicide, which resulted from his long struggle with bipolar disorder. She and her husband of 40 years live in Manhattan Beach, CA. Click Here to read more about Madeline Sharples

“Leaving the Hall Light On”

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​However, it is also a time to think about the gifts I’ve received as a result of the greatest tragedy of my life, the suicide death of my son Paul. Though Paul’s death has been a horrendous loss, he has left me many wonderful gifts.

​Paul left us with his music. The first of Paul’s things we discovered after he died was a little black suitcase filled with the music he composed, played, and recorded. Soon after his funeral one of Paul’s friends transferred it all from cassette tapes to CDs enabling me to listen to it on my iPod with just a click. I also have it posted on my blog, and it plays in the background of my book trailer. Listening to Paul’s music is like having him playing here at home. And even though it still makes me well up, it provides an inspiration for my writing work.
I became a much stronger and fitter me. I became stronger because I had to. I had to show my husband Bob and surviving son Ben that I was okay – even at times when I wasn’t. I didn’t want them to worry about me.

It was as if I accomplished getting stronger through brute force. I met and interacted with people who had been through similar experiences; I took writing classes and workshops; I went back to work outside my home with my usual verve to compete on the job and to excel in my work, and I received my company’s Women of Achievement award for my accomplishments as a result. I was obsessively persistent in dealing with my grief and becoming a productive person again.

I also became physically stronger. At first exercise was one of the things that kept me sane. Now it keeps me healthy both physically and mentally. And the payoffs have been terrific. My body is trim, I have an athlete’s heart rate, I have a lot of energy, and I don’t have a lot of aches and pains. The only thing exercise hasn’t done for me is make me taller.

My marriage survived. We’ll be celebrating forty-second anniversary in May. Another gift is that our marriage survived, probably by a combination of my drive to deal with the pain, suffering, and loss, and Bob’s willingness to wait until I got better. We realized early on that our grieving processes were different, so we were patient, we gave each other a lot of space, and we respected each other. A big plus is we don’t get into arguments about the small stuff anymore. A loss as great as ours definitely put what’s important into perspective.

Another big factor in the survival of our marriage was that we decided to stay in our house. We moved into it in 1979. It is where our boys grew up. Even though the house was where Paul died, we have always found a lot of comfort in it. Our relatives and friends come and go as if it were their own. They call it The Family House. Plus, I couldn’t find a better place to live. We’re six blocks from the beach. How could we leave that?

Most important, we are still very much in love and best friends. I can see that love in Bob’s face. His eyes and whole face soften when he looks at me. He just exudes love from every pore. This love has been the glue that has kept us together – a glue stronger than the trauma of Paul’s death. We’re together in it for the long haul – richer, poorer, sickness, health, and a son’s death.
I created a wonderful relationship with our surviving son and his wife. I now have a terrific bond with Ben. Once Ben settled in the Los Angeles area and found happiness with a woman in his life, our relationship began to thrive. I no longer had Paul to worry about.

Now, I can be completely devoted to Ben, and I love it. We spend time together. We support each other’s work – I’m even helping him with his scriptwriting. And that he and Marissa wanted to have their wedding in our family home meant so much to me. That created a very special bond between us and provided a very happy memory to replace the bad memories of the past years.

I discovered poetry writing. In a writing workshop just four months after Paul died I found that poems just came spontaneously out of my pen. Since then I’ve honed my skills by participating in workshops and poetry groups, resulting in many of my poems being published. Though I write prose more than poetry, poetry is my love. I always say, “Now there’s a poem.” I feel that anyone, any situation, any place is possible poem material. Writing poetry never leaves me lonely. My poetry writing has become my companion and my savior – something I can turn to any time, any place.

I moved on to a career I’ve always wanted to have. Paul’s death has given me the gift of a new career and mission in life. I created a book with the goal of helping others who have experienced a loss like mine, I have a new writing career as a web journalist, I’m busy writing a novel, and I discovered my mission for the rest of my life: to work to erase the stigma of mental illness and prevent suicide. If my writing helps attain that mission, it will all be worth it.

Of course none of these gifts can replace what my family and I have lost – our beloved son Paul. However, discovering the gifts that followed such a tragedy has enabled me to move on and still keep Paul’s memory alive in my heart.

Madeline Sharples has worked most of her life as a technical writer and editor, grant writer, and proposal manager. She fell in love with poetry and creative writing in grade school and decided to fulfill her dreams of being a professional writer later in her life. Madeline is the author of Leaving the Hall Light On, a memoir about how she and her family survived her older son’s suicide, which resulted from his long struggle with bipolar disorder. She and her husband of 40 years live in Manhattan Beach, CA. Click Here to read more about Madeline Sharples

“Leaving the Hall Light On”

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So many people get stuck when it comes to comforting someone who is grieving. They don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to do. So they send flowers, they bring over a casserole for the already filled-to-the-brim freezer, they send a sweet card, or they sometimes just avoid the issue entirely, thinking maybe it will just go away. Some people even go away.

Almost immediately after my son Paul’s funeral, people began to disappear. Perhaps they were threatened or couldn’t face the realities of my life. Maybe my loss and grief brought too many reminders of the losses and grief in their own lives. Maybe they thought what I had just experienced was contagious.

For someone who is grieving, any kind of human contact and kindness helps; on the other hand, avoidance and disappearance hurts.

A death by suicide makes the situation even more touchy, because people don’t even like to say that word out load. My own mother couldn’t say the word “suicide” after my son took his life. When people asked her what happened, all she could say was, “something terrible.” And she criticized me for being so open when she heard me telling friends any of the details. Her behavior during the early months after my son’s death was more a hindrance than a comfort to me.

Ironically, my greatest comfort after our son’s death came from my next-door neighbor Patty. My husband and I had had her family over for dinner when they moved into their house, and we had gone out to dinner with her and her husband once in a while, but she and I were just a bit more than cool acquaintances.

I had always found her too loud – I could hear her yelling at her stepson and son through both our exterior walls. And I thought she was too nosy – she always seemed to poke her nose outside whenever I was in the garden. She was just too domineering and much too pushy for my taste. I couldn’t believe her chutzpah when she appeared at our door with her oldest daughter and a six-pack of beer as soon as she found out we had two young, handsome, male houseguests – my nephew and his friend – staying with us for a few weeks. That was the end of my tolerance – for a while.

After Paul died, Patty really came through. She offered to put up our out-of-town relatives, she brought over bagels and cream cheese in the mornings, while we had hordes of people in and out of our house, and she supplied the coffee for the open house after the funeral. She was just there in a very quiet nonintrusive way – a way that I had never seen in her before. And, thankfully, the word “suicide” didn’t make her back off.

Just before our first Thanksgiving without Paul, Patty left a basket on my doorstep. The note she wrote said that following her mother’ death she had dreaded the holidays, so she hoped these few items would ease the holiday season for me. As I read her note and looked through the basket, I cried, not only from the sadness of not having Paul with us on Thanksgiving, Hanukah, and his New Year’s Eve birthday, but from the generosity and caring being offered me by a person I hardly knew and had never liked very much. In such a quiet and unassuming way, she showed me real human compassion and understanding. And most important to me at that time, she never asked me a lot of questions or intruded on my privacy. She just let me know she was there if I needed her.

Among the items in the basket – each one separately wrapped – was a poetry book about coping with the loss of a love, and that was the first book after Paul’s death that I managed to read. There was also a journal, a sweet smelling candle, a box of delicious chocolate covered graham crackers, and a smooth gray stone.

This stone became my biggest comfort. Just large enough to fit in the palm of my hand, it feels the perfect size when I close my hand around it. One edge is round and the other is triangular. One side is plain; the other has the word “son” carved into it. Right after Patty left the basket on my doorstep, this little stone became my friend.

I took it to bed with me. Once settled, I placed it on my chest just between my breasts. I liked its coldness on my heart. It helped me relax. Holding it in my hand and reading the word with my thumb also helped. I carried it around in my pocket for a while during the day just to feel it close to me. And then, I began to wonder about my own sanity. Was I trying to exchange my son for a stone?

When I began to feel better, I let go of it and let it rest on another item from that basket – a little, silk-covered, lavender sachet pillow with butterflies and the word “heal” painted on the silk. These two gifts from Patty are still there on my bedside table after all these years.

I’m sorry to say, Patty died this year after a two-and-a-half year battle with pancreatic cancer. Now I miss hearing her voice from the other side of our fence. I miss seeing her out in her garden from my office window. I’ll always remember her kindness and understanding at my greatest time of need.

Madeline Sharples has worked most of her life as a technical writer and editor, grant writer, and proposal manager. She fell in love with poetry and creative writing in grade school and decided to fulfill her dreams of being a professional writer later in her life. Madeline is the author of Leaving the Hall Light On, a memoir about how she and her family survived her older son’s suicide, which resulted from his long struggle with bipolar disorder. She and her husband of 40 years live in Manhattan Beach, CA. Click Here to read more about Madeline Sharples

“Leaving the Hall Light On”

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The day my son Paul died I couldn’t even put my underpants on right side out, and in the days that followed I had to retrain myself to do what I needed to do just to appear alive. I had to walk myself through the steps – get up, go to the bathroom, brush teeth, go into the closet, and pick out something to wear. It was as basic as that. I couldn’t stay focused on anything. I was always on the verge of tears. I had to keep reminding myself that he was really gone – that it was true, that I would never see my oldest son again, that I would never hear him play the piano again, and that I would never have another chance to have another conversation with him as I did the night before his death.

When my sister-in-law wrote in a recent email, “It doesn’t get any better, does it?” I had to answer, “No, it doesn’t.” But writing about his death and its aftermath and the steps I took to live a full and productive life after the worst tragedy that can happen to a mother and family helped ease the pain and enabled me to survive. Paul killed himself in our family home twelve years ago after a seven-year struggle with bipolar disorder.  And in those twelve years I have learned to live with and survive this loss.

Early on a friend encouraged me to try traditional therapy, but after one visit I was convinced that a therapist who hadn’t lived through an experience like mine couldn’t begin to relate to me or help me. So, writing about my son’s bipolar disorder and death became my therapy. Writing in my journal became an obsession and a balm.

Writing was healing because it allowed me put my pain on the page. Instead of carrying it with me every moment of the day and night, I found a place where I could have a little relief. There was so much I couldn’t say out loud to anyone. I couldn’t even cry in front of my husband or he would think I was having a breakdown. And since there was so much anger and grief in me, I needed a place to put it.

Writing in those early days after Paul died was like repeating a mantra. I just kept moving my pen across the page. I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of my writing time. The page was always ready for my tears, my rants, my sorrow, my complaints, and my thoughts and ideas. The page never told me what to do or how to handle my grief. The page never told me it was time to stop grieving already. The page became my everyday friend – a special place I could go to empty my full heart.

For me just the act of writing is helpful – yes, after twelve years I still need to write. Early on I wrote with pen in hand in a journal notebook – the classier the paper the better – and I wrote until my hand cramped. Now I type, sometimes pounding my fingers on my computer’s keyboard. I find this works better for me because my typing fingers can keep up with the speed of the words in my brain. The faster my brain works the faster and harder my fingers press down. And I don’t stop until I’m finished, sometimes finding I’ve typed one thousand words in less than thirty minutes.

Little did I know at the outset that my journal entries, pieces written in the many writing workshops I’ve taken in the last twelve years, and poems would turn into my recently published memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide (Lucky Press, May 2011). Using my source documents helped me create a raw and honest book that offers parents and siblings who have experienced a child’s or a brother or sister’s death ways to get out of the deep dark hole they are in. Writing my story has also helped me keep my son Paul’s memory alive.

Madeline Sharples has worked most of her life as a technical writer and editor, grant writer, and proposal manager. She fell in love with poetry and creative writing in grade school and decided to fulfill her dreams of being a professional writer later in her life. Madeline is the author of Leaving the Hall Light On, a memoir about how she and her family survived her older son’s suicide, which resulted from his long struggle with bipolar disorder. She and her husband of 40 years live in Manhattan Beach, CA. Click Here to read more about Madeline Sharples

“Leaving the Hall Light On”

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In Psychological Defenses in Everyday Life, (1989), I described a patient who complained that her husband was habitually late for dinner. Dinner was ready at 6:30, but he often came in as late as 8:30 without calling to let her know that he would be late. She asked me, “Is that right?” in a tone that implied that she was the victim of wrongdoing. I tried to explain to her that the key question wasn’t whether it was right or not, although one would tend to agree with her in principle. What she said may have been correct, but in any case, it was irrelevant. I wanted her to see that she was viewing the situation as a passive victim, which was neither productive nor adaptive.

Many people think they are entitled to good treatment. The truth is that they are neither entitled nor not entitled to it. The significant issues are what is going on and how do they feel about it. This woman would have been better off actively facing the facts of the situation and acknowledging her emotional reactions rather than personally judging it and feeling victimized by it.

If you are being robbed, you don’t sit around thinking, “This shouldn’t be happening to me. It isn’t right.” Instead, you react. You may defend yourself, call the police or try to run away. Constructive action is the opposite of victimized brooding.

The woman whose husband was late for dinner had every right to feel angry and to consider practical ac¬tion if she wished, but to try to justify feeling victimized was maladaptive and ultimately meaningless.

Even in the most extreme situation, such as a concentration camp, feeling victimized is not adaptive: Feeling your anger, planning an escape, attempting to survive any and all of these courses of action are preferable to indulging powerless, victimized feelings. Your attitude is a vital factor in determining whether you will survive or perish, succeed or fail in life. Viktor Frankl contended that many of the survivors of German concentration camps were able to endure because they refused to give in to feeling victimized. Instead, although stripped of all their rights and possessions, they used one remaining freedom to sustain their spirit; the freedom to choose what attitude or position they would take in relation to the horror they faced. “It was the freedom to bear oneself ‘this way or that,’ and there was a ‘this or that.’” (Frankl, 1954/1967, p. 94)

Maintaining a child victim role leads to chronic passivity. Victimized feelings are very often appropriate to the child’s situation. Children are without power, are helpless and are at the mercy of their parents. Later as an adult, things happen that are sometimes beyond your control and understanding. However, the adult who is still playing the child victim role responds like the deer that sees a mountain lion approaching and instead of fleeing the danger becomes paralyzed. This person just keeps noticing over and over that the situation is unreasonable, unfair or threatening but doesn’t make the appropriate adaptive responses. In the case of the woman mentioned above, the tip off to the fact that she really preferred the child victim role was that she never made any substantial attempt to change her circumstances. Like so many of us, she would rather feel justified in complaining endlessly about her unfortunate cir¬cumstances while passively registering her dissatisfaction than actively changing her situation.

In facing one’s feelings, it is important to note that feelings do not require any justification. They are automatic responses to favorable and unfavorable events, and people’s feelings cannot be judged as right or wrong. Clean anger is merely proportional to the frustration experience regardless of any rational considerations. It is more advantageous to experience feelings than to deny them or cut them off. However, actions, unlike feelings, have consequences and must be considered in relation to both moral issues and rational reality concerns. Therefore “acting out” emotions, particularly angry emotions, must remain under a person’s control. For example, a feeling of murderous rage can be considered innocent, but to make sarcastic remarks has consequences.

“Victims” deal in judgments and “shoulds” in interactions with others. They operate on the basic assumption that the world should be fair: “I should have been loved by my parents.” “My children should call me or write to me.” “After all that I’ve done for her, the least she could do …” This type of preoccupation with “rights” and “shoulds” is irrelevant to the real problems that we are all faced with; it leads to inward brooding, righteous indignation and vengeful feelings. Worse yet, angry, victimized feelings are bottled up inside, contributing to depression and psychosomatic disorders.

In conclusion, playing the victim is maladaptive. Even though passive manipulations may occasionally work, taking this powerless position hurts the perpetrator and is never in one’s best interests. In the long run, it does more harm than good. People can control their destructive urge to play the victim by acknowledging that their personal world and the external world contain many inequities and social injustices that are discriminatory and unfair to individuals or groups of people, yet they can take power over their lives. Despite these negative circumstances, there are active remedial solutions available to make an effective adaptation.

Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author, theorist and artist. He is the Consulting Theorist for the non-profit,The Glendon Association. He is author of many books including Voice Therapy, The Fantasy Bond, Compassionate Child-Rearing, Fear of Intimacy and Beyond Death Anxiety among others. He has published more than 30 professional articles and chapters for edited volumes, and produced 35 video documentaries. His art can be viewed on www.theartofrwfirestone.com.

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All right, so that title is probably a tad misleading. But how many of you thought, “Really? Great! Sign me up!” I did, and I wrote it. Recently, success has been on my mind. Not so much the I’m-going-to-strike-it-rich-quick variety, but the how-can-I-feel-most-fulfilled-in-the-life-I-am-leading sort. As a single mom, building a private practice in psychotherapy (during a national recession, no less, when therapy is generally viewed as a luxury), financial concerns are, best-case scenario, hovering in the back of mind, and, worst-case, screaming in my ears. It’s a situation to which I’m sure many of you can relate.

However, having experienced my fair share of adversity, having made maybe more than my fair share of mistakes, I am now at a point where success means something much more to me than simple financial security (though I would, by no means, turn up my nose to such a blessing). I want to fully understand what I am most passionate about and spend a decent amount of my time engaging in it. This is something I’ve actually been thinking about in earnest since last Christmas.

I was sitting in the back of the church where my father is a pastor, listening to my beautiful friend, Chris, sing. Now, if you have ever had the good fortune to hear this woman sing, you know what a spiritual experience it can be. I don’t remember the song, but I remember being moved to tears. Then a thought hit me, “What if Chris never shared her gift?” Like, she was paralyzed by stage fright or listened to a little voice in her head that told her she wasn’t good enough to sing in front of an entire church. We would all be missing out on an incredible blessing.

Singing is one of her God-given gifts and she honored that by sharing it. Then I realized that we all have God-given gifts, natural passions that connect us to our true selves, part of our core identity, but I would venture to say that a good majority of us never realize what it is or choose to share it with the world. And the world is poorer for it.

Conversely, what if we all took a little time (OK, probably more than a little time) for introspection and allowed ourselves to dream about that passion that stirs deep down every now and then? And then, what if we actually did something about it? Acted on it in some way – big or small – to share it with others? My guess is that a world full of people discovering their passions and sharing them with each other would be revolutionary.

And because you are already love this thing, you don’t really have to try – it naturally flows out of you. I also know that acting in line with your true self positions you to succeed – to come into that place where the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place. So, in this way, you truly can succeed without really trying. Challenge yourself to head down this path and be open to loving where you end up.

About the Author
Meredith Watkins, M.A. is a CA licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with years of experience working with women, teenagers, couples and families. She has worked in many settings, including an outpatient psychiatric clinic and a residential eating disorder treatment center. She is currently in private practice in Carlsbad, CA, specializing in individual therapy, Christian therapy, parenting, relationship, and women’s issues. Ultimately, her desire is to equip her clients with the tools they need to manage their own feelings and issues more effectively, creating space for joy and fulfilment in their relationships and lives. Learn more at www.meredithwatkins.net.

Other Posts by This Author:
Peace on Earth Begins with Peace of Heart
Making Peace with Our Bodies
More

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Part II: Understanding the Elements of Mindfulness

Mindfulness: The Non Judgmental Awareness of the Present Moment.

In Part I we explored how to find more choice versus reaction in daily moments of stress, beginning with understanding the first element of Mindfulness: Non-Judgment

First Step for practice was learning how to inquire into our present experience with Curiosity to dampen our reflexive attitude of rejecting ourselves, another, or our circumstances. In cultivating Curiosity, we are learning to create the possibility of an openness toward our circumstances.

Moving on toward an understanding of the other elements of Mindfulness: Awareness and Present Moment

Awareness: Usually when in a stressful situation, we are aware, or focused on, what we don’t like about that situation, ourselves, or another. In Mindfulness, the challenge is to expand our awareness beyond the story, beyond our ideas, beyond our judgments, in a sense, giving more room for our experience. When our attention is narrowed, and our mind consumed by our evaluations, we can begin to feel very claustrophobic, propelling us into reactive states to fight or flee. It is the quality of our attention that requires our cultivation. We can be aware that the other guy is a jerk, or aware that once again we messed up, but Mindfulness holds a more generous quality of Awareness. This Awareness allows, accepts, attunes, approaches, and appreciates the entirety of experience. This all sounds quite nice on paper, but the actual practice of turning toward what hurts or irritates, requires great courage, which literally means “with heart”.This quality of Awareness is holding a context for experience with a very big heart. The space is opened to allow what is, (the content of experience), to be.

Think of our emotional reactions like wild horses, and our judgmental awareness like too small a paddock, with barbed wire and electrified fences. Those wild horses will buck and fight, or eventually shut down. But with the quality of Open Awareness, we create a context for exploration, opening the gates of constriction and expanding the paddock into a “field” of Awareness. In a larger field, there is more to be Aware of, decreasing our identity and focus on what is wrong. Moreover, within this larger context, movement occurs, we get unstuck, less fixated, less limited, allowing more options for response. Seeing our experience, or in this case, our emotions, our “ wild horses”, outside of the constraints of judgmental awareness , they can move freely, and if allowed to be as they are, they will shift, and our identity with them will diminish, illuminating that we are more than this momentary reaction.

Present Moment: When our judgments come rushing in, and our awareness becomes limited, most often we are being fueled by past experience, and/or, anticipation of the future. So much anxiety comes from our inability to Be in the Present. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist Teacher, has often stated that if we take care of the present moment, we take care of the future. Our lives are made up of many present moments all strung together. We often miss our lives completely lost in the past or anticipating the future. This is not some trite understanding, but at the heart of our suffering. We get caught in our regrets, or in our idea that once we achieve this or that, then we will be OK. We are either grasping at something, or pushing it away, creating a state of agitation, operating from a sense of insufficiency.

We now have all the elements of Mindfulness: Non-Judgmental Awareness of the Present Moment

Step 2: Working with the Quality of Awareness within the Present Moment.

Simplify your present moment by becoming aware of your five sensations. We often get lost in our heads, but if we can come back to what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, we come back to the present. Once there, notice your immediate evaluations or judgments. You will like some things and feel aversion toward others. It is a natural tendency to try to secure our comfort, but this tendency limits our experience. Remember you are attempting to cultivate a quality of attention that might expand your capacity to allow, accept, attune, approach, and appreciate the totality of living.

You will have your “content” of experience, like what just happened to me while writing this: I hit a button on the computer and suddenly the screen went blank, and what I thought I saved was no longer available to me. My “content”, is my story, my sensations, my images, my thoughts, my emotions (our continual experience to return to, easy to remember acronym SITE: S=sensations, I=images, T=thoughts, E=emotions). Immediately, my heart raced, my stomach tightened, I was seeing the clock in my mind and all the time lost, I was thinking in expletives, and thinking I was certain that I saved  my work, I felt anxious and angry! I was not a happy person, and certainly did not want this situation, but here it was. The reactive “context” would berate myself, or blame someone else, shutting down choice.

Shifting quality of Awareness allows availability to more possibility. I brought my focal attention to my breath, not changing it, but just becoming aware, I noted my thoughts and feelings of frustration, I did not suddenly become angelic and full of light heartedness, but through my practice, I could shift my attention, create a “context” of openness to the situation. I became aware of the sensation of wind coming through my window, the taste of the glass of cold lemonade I had on my desk, and by becoming present to sensation, I created more “space”, for the situation and my reactions.

This shift can be explained in neurobiology, and for now, if it helps you, the science shows in functional MRIs, that by “labeling” experience, we decrease the activation of the amygdala (within emotional center of the brain that registers fear), and with Mindfulness, we increase our Middle Pre Frontal Cortex functions, one of which is our ability to respond versus react. My response was to take a deep breath and begin again, and in fact, the experience allowed me to write from truth, to walk my talk, and helped me to write from the reality of experience versus abstract notions. (There was possibility in the pain).

The more you Practice Mindfulness, you can create states of openness, non reaction, non judgment, the ability to witness, label, describe your experience and increase your identity beyond thoughts and emotions, giving yourself a wide pasture in which to roam, where you can begin to choose your response to both your internal and external world.

Diane Renz, a licensed psychotherapist, founder of Your Gateway to Healing, writer, workshop facilitator, utilizes both her academic background and personal experiences to explore how pain can become our possibility. She currently studies with Dr. Dan Siegel integrating the latest scientific understandings on neuroscience and Mindfulness within her work. For more information feel free to visit www.yourgatewaytohealing.com.

© 2011 Your Gateway to Healing™, Diane Renz, LPC.

To read more from this author, visit her bio page.

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There is so much talk about Mindfulness these days. It has become trendy–this ancient, over 2000 year old practice of attuning to the present moment. Trends don’t last but real wisdom can seep into our everyday lives and become, as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “A way of being.” It is like the difference between two motivations for going on a diet: making a real lifestyle change that is fueled by love of yourself versus one that is based on rejection and fear of who you have become.

What is Mindfulness?

Simply, it is the non-judgmental awareness of the present moment.

Sounds pretty basic right? But how, in the middle of strong emotion or circumstances that seem unjust, relationship struggles, physical disease, pain, both emotional and within our bodies, can we develop Mindfulness?

Let’s break it down.

Non-judgmental: we are judging all the time. This is intelligent; a way of discerning what is good or bad, assessing situations and people to assure our safety. Mindfulness is not an attempt to get rid of any parts of ourselves but to find our choice versus reaction to emotional content, people, circumstances, etc.

To begin to practice non-judgment, watch your typical reaction to less intense situations. It could be as simple as you are late for an appointment, racing around, and spill your coffee in a mad dash for the door, staining some paperwork you need for an upcoming meeting. UGH! The tendency here might be to berate yourself, “You idiot, now look what you’ve done”, or some similar self-talk with a harsh quality. The challenge is to begin to practice right there in the middle of the chaos. It might go like this: you begin to notice your self attack, “I hear myself;” already there is a witness.  If there is a part of you who is witnessing, then there is more to you than this experience.

Through practice, overtime you cultivate more identity with what I call, the essence of your being, (learning how to separate Awareness and Mental Activity), and you can learn not to get swept away by the waves of immediate experience. For now, the beginning practice, is to simply note I am aware of my negative self-talk. Non-judgmental attention loosens your grip on holding tightly to your evaluation of the moment. Non-judgment allows what is, to simply be as it is. It is coffee, the heat, the color, the papers wet and stained, and you rushing, heart beating fast, thoughts, feelings, sensations. By attacking, we don’t improve the situation, but only add fuel to the fire, or pile more suffering onto an already difficult situation. How would you support someone you love in a similar circumstance? Extend your own heart to yourself; this is the beginning of practicing self-kindness.

Here is one key to a non-judgmental state: Try on the attitude of Curiosity. There is an open quality to curiosity versus the shutting down of judgment.

In examining this first element of Mindfulness, non-judgment, we are not attempting to shut ourselves down and suddenly become light and bright spirits that think only good thoughts. We are attempting to become conscious of our reflexive tendencies, so that we might then be able to choose to set down any fixed ideas that imprison us and create additional suffering. We are cultivating openness.

Notice I keep using the word Practice or cultivate. We have spent a long time practicing the way we think and approach our lives. It takes time and commitment to try on new ways of being. This is not a quick fix, which is what trends are made of, quick fixes that do not last.  Mindfulness has stood the test of time and recently has been validated in scientific research as a way to create lasting positive changes.

Step 1: Practice becoming aware of your internal dialogue, notice what you accept and reject in yourself. When you are able to become conscious of self-judgment, see if you can apply the quality of curiosity. Curiosity is being interested, like you are studying something never seen before and beginning to describe your experience, not explain (this is not about analysis), by looking at yourself and the situation with a kind eye. What might be the opposite of your self attack, how might it sound, what action might you take? Experiment in each moment. Don’t wait for the perfect moment to sit in silence and meditate upon a mountaintop. Integrate Mindfulness within your day, and you might begin to discover the possibility in the pain or sense, where calm exists right there in the chaos.

I will continue further into the other elements of Mindfulness: Awareness and Present Moment, with tips on practice in my next blog.

Diane Renz, a licensed psychotherapist, founder of Your Gateway to Healing, writer, workshop facilitator, utilizes both her academic background and personal experiences to explore how pain can become our possibility. She currently studies with Dr. Dan Siegel integrating the latest scientific understandings on neuroscience and Mindfulness within her work. For more information feel free to visit www.yourgatewaytohealing.com.

© 2011 Your Gateway to Healing™, Diane Renz, LPC.

To read more from this author, visit her bio page.

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It’s an interesting irony, I think, that in our modern day and age of convenience and streamlining, we are under more stress than ever before. If asked, I think most of us could agree that our ancestors endured true hardship, including immigrating to a new land, travelling under uncomfortable and even dangerous conditions, surviving diseases that sometimes had no cure and simply putting food on the table every day. And yet no one spoke of “stress” or being overwhelmed. Being “stressed-out” is a relatively new term, incorporated into our cultural vernacular only in the last half-century or so.

So what is the difference between then and now? Why are our heart disease rates increasing and our sense of overall wellbeing declining? I think the answer lies within. It is we who perceive our circumstances to be unjustly difficult. We have become so accustomed to certain areas of our lives being convenient that when real challenges come our way, and the demands on our time pile up, we feel unprepared to adequately handle them. Coupled with rising expectations to achieve more and more (because we have so many nifty gadgets and conveniences that allow us to), the stress escalates. Our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing suffers and we wonder what the purpose of all of it is.

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is much beloved for the wisdom and humor she imparted in her writing. In her book, You Learn By Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, she devotes a chapter to “The Uses of Time”, and the keys to finding contentment in an exceedingly busy world.

“We have all the time there is. The problem is: How shall we make the best use of it? There are three ways in which I have been able to solve that problem: first, by achieving an inner calm so that I can work undisturbed by what goes on around me; second, by concentrating on the thing in hand; third, by arranging a routine pattern for my days that allots certain activities to certain hours, planning in advance for everything that must be done, but at the same time remaining flexible enough to allow for the unexpected. There is a fourth point which, perhaps, plays a considerable part in the use of my time. I try to maintain a general pattern of good health so that I have the best use of my energy whenever I need it…

First of my own personal requirements is inner calm. This, I think, is an essential. One of the secrets of using your time well is to gain a certain ability to maintain peace within yourself so that much can go on around you and you can stay calm inside…

I have learned that the ability to attain this inner calm, regardless of outside turmoil, is a kind of strength. It saves an immense amount of wear and tear on the nervous system. In the oasis of peace you are better able to cope with the noisy and conflicting demands of young children [or co-workers or deadlines] without irritation or impatience.”

Cultivating this spirit of calm takes discipline and focus, but the payoffs far exceed a nose-to-the-grindstone mentality of merely surviving the task at hand. It is through this perspective that joy can creep back into your daily activities.

Of course, it will never be perfect. As Mrs. Roosevelt admits after recounting instances in which her plans to manage her time with others most efficiently simply failed: “Even with planning, no one ever has much defense against the time wasters.”

About the Author
Meredith Watkins, M.A. is a CA licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with years of experience working with women, teenagers, couples and families. She has worked in many settings, including an outpatient psychiatric clinic and a residential eating disorder treatment center. She is currently in private practice in Carlsbad, CA, specializing in individual therapy, Christian therapy, parenting, relationship, and women’s issues. Ultimately, her desire is to equip her clients with the tools they need to manage their own feelings and issues more effectively, creating space for joy and fulfilment in their relationships and lives. Learn more at www.meredithwatkins.net.

Other Posts by This Author:
Taking the Competition Out of the Holidays
Peace on Earth Begins with Peace of Heart
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But for those times when we can legitimately say, “I am depressed,” the weight of our emotional state feels as if it might swallow us whole. We can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and aren’t particularly interested in trying to move in that direction anyway. Some see depression as a punishment for some prior action, or an affliction from which to be cured as quickly as possible. And while medication has its place in alleviating some emotional pain, it often acts as a Band-Aid to quickly cover the pain, without really looking at the nature of the wound. This is when depression returns again and again, or simply stays with us, always just beneath the surface, threatening to leak out and expose the darkness that swirls within.

And yet there is a unique gift that only depression can offer. The catch is, we must spend time with it, get to know it, understand why it has chosen to show up at this time, and why it insists on sticking around. This is completely contrary to our instincts, when all we want is relief and escape from the abyss.

Philip Martin writes about depression’s gifts in his book, The Zen Path Through Depression, encouraging a somewhat paradoxical approach to this emotional state:

“Depression is in many ways like suffering from a broken heart. Indeed, when you slow down and begin to pay closer attention to the depression, the physical symptoms themselves may often center in the chest. Anxiety is the fast-beating heart. Hopelessness is the tired heart. Sadness and grief are the pained heart…

For many of us in these times, mind and thought are considered to be useful and valued, while heart and emotions are seen as obstacles. We don’t really know how to grieve and feel pain, but we definitely know how to think…

In the experience of depression, this mind we have depended on so much fails us. It is difficult to make simple decisions, to remember small matters. We feel slow and stupid. Depression in fact magnifies many aspects of our personality and our thought process. Our mind becomes preoccupied with judgments and comparisons…

Meditation helps with this, as it can foster real detachment from these thoughts and moods. We can then begin to disentangle ourselves from our pain. We can begin to move away from what Zen teachers call small mind. We begin to be less impressed with our thoughts.

As the grip of this small mind is lessened, the feelings and emotions of the heart are increased. For a person who has ignored the heart, its calling is persistent and unfamiliar. There are sadness and grief over the past, over all the fleeting moments behind us. We feel all the mistakes we have made, all the hurts we have caused. Depression can be a door into an exploration of our grief. This may be the first time we have faced our grief and honored it, rather than running from it…

Our hope is to practice compassion and kindness toward all. We must practice in this way toward ourselves and our own uncomfortable emotions as well…

In the strong and sometimes overwhelming sadness of depression lies the opportunity to face these difficult feelings with tenderness and compassion, rather than turning away from them.

Another new opportunity can be the experience of empathy. In the depths of depression, a woman I know found she could not watch television, because she wept at almost everything… Opening ourselves into the greater world, we may be feeling for the first time the grief of that world. In that feeling, we can find a compassion within ourselves that is as natural as breathing, a compassion that is always there….

The experience of grief and sadness in depression can be our hearts calling us to listen to suffering and impermanence in our lives…

The open heart sees that there is nothing to protect itself against, that safety is an illusion. In this seeing lies true fearlessness. For as we may find when faced with a physical danger, sometimes the safest place to be is as close as possible to what we fear.”

About the Author
Meredith Watkins, M.A. is a CA licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with years of experience working with women, teenagers, couples and families. She has worked in many settings, including an outpatient psychiatric clinic and a residential eating disorder treatment center. She is currently in private practice in Carlsbad, CA, specializing in individual therapy, Christian therapy, parenting, relationship, and women’s issues. Ultimately, her desire is to equip her clients with the tools they need to manage their own feelings and issues more effectively, creating space for joy and fulfilment in their relationships and lives. Learn more at www.meredithwatkins.net.

Other Posts by This Author:
Peace on Earth Begins with Peace of Heart
Making Peace with Our Bodies
More

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