Healing Truth Artistry
Quiet peace
Silent mind
Still body
Calm breath
Self Acceptance
Self Forgiveness
No guilt
No debt
No attachment
No bereavement
No fear
No remorse
No regret
No torment
No violence
No pain
No depression
No anxiety
No confusion
No shame
Just quiet
Just peace
Simply Being
Pure Existence
Good night my friends. It is time to sleep.
Good night
Good night
It is time to sleep
Good night
Sleep tight
Your anxiety will keep
It’s time to rest
Our tired brains
We’ve done our best
Now our minds are drained
The daylight will come
A few hours from now
Sometime after noon
I’ll get up somehow
I fear the morning trauma
Of the first realization
That I’m still in this reality
This tormenting situation
It’s worse than I say
Maybe worse than I know
I don’t process each part
Only what my brain lets me know
My morning mind is foggy
My memory is slow
It will take a few hours
To be get moving and go
Then slowly I’ll recover
By nighttime I’ll be Annie
My brain will be clear
For a few precious hours
When the chemistry is ok
And the nervous system is regulated
I won’t want to sleep
because I won’t want to wake
And I’ll fear the morning anxiety
So much that
I’ll stay up too late
I’ll force myself beyond limits
My poor body can take
Because my brain and my body
Will wake up in torment
Just like before
And before
and before and before
The night is my ally
The morning my enemy
I’ll hold on to Annie
As long as I can
Till it’s 3 am and 4am…
Tomorrow night will get here
I will be so thankful
To connect with all of you
But the morning attacks
Like a tidal wave of fear
Of going out into the world
Without anyone near
So goodnight for now
I might survive tomorrow’s day
And hopefully you will too
If together we all pray
Well it is time. I am tired now. I had terrible pain from the arthritis today. There were points where it was a little less than horrible, when the meds kicked in and then it would come back worse each time, It was very hard to get through work.
I came home and I read a blog I came across about suicide. The person was planning their suicide and posting their near to last post. Lots of compassionate bloggers reached out to this person. I read through so many comments by various bloggers who were each reaching out to this person , in their own way.
By the end of the page of comments, the person felt enveloped by all these strangers who took time to talk to talk back and forth with them. They decided to get help for their depression and they are still posting weeks later.
I felt very proud of all the bloggers that reached out to this person.
I was inspired to write a blog about suicide and see where it lead. I thought doing research would be good for me anyway, because it tends to take my mind off the chronic pain.
I ended up spending about an hour and a half doing research on suicide and suicide prevention. Also on survivors of suicide. I took another 45 minutes or so writing the post.
People started reblogging it within 5 minutes of my posting it. I felt very good that I had done a small part to help to create awareness of this problem.
I had also been able to distract myself from my own pain.
I liked it that in thinking of others, I was able to take the focus of my brain off of my own pain and torment. I think there is a positive energy that comes from connecting with others and that positive energy is healing to both sides.
I will see you all tomorrow. My head and neck need to rest on the pillow now.
Namaste,
Anniw
I feel that I should start this post with the following information.
Lifeline, the national suicide prevention hotline for USA
Phone: If you are in crisis you can call anytime 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Website: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention http://www.afsp.org/
Below is a link for the National Institute for Mental health , section on suicide prevention
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/suicide-prevention/index.shtml
If you are not in the USA then there are international suicide hotlines to call. The responders to the calls are trained in suicide prevention and know about mental illness.
Suicide is in the top ten list for causes of death in the United States. Unfortunately, it claims more lives each year than the year before. This is an epidemic which deserves attention and research to find solutions.
There are about 1 million suicide attempts each year in the US and the numbers continue to rise. If you feel alone in considering suicide, you are not. There are people right now, like you, that feel alone and do not know how to reach out to for help.
Many suicides are people who had a mental illness that was not being treated. It is possible that treatment could have saved their lives.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, someone commits suicide about every 14 minutes, in the United States. This is about 40,000 lives lost every year.
Adolescent suicide is a reality that many people want to ignore and pretend that it does not exist.
According to the National Institute for Mental Health,
” Suicide is the second leading cause of death among teens aged 12-17, accounting for about 1,000 deaths in 2011 . A 2013 survey indicated that as many as 2.7 percent of high school students nationwide made a suicide attempt”
It is difficult to gather exact statistics about self harm because many people, including teens and preteens , do not tell anyone about their self harm behaviors. It is their way of feeling some power over their circumstances, when they otherwise feel powerless. It is often a secret kept from family and friends.
There is research that estimates that 14-24 percent of adolescents have self harmed at least once. Many of them have done it many times and continue to do so.
Make no mistake, self harm is a big red flag! If someone you know is injuring themselves then they are at risk for suicide.
A recent study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration found that one in five Americans is living with some type of mental health condition. Mental illness like depression, severe anxiety, PTSD , bipolar disorder and many others can be a risk factor for self harm or suicide.
The stress response known as fight-or-flight is driven by the stress hormone cortisol, which is regulated by a part of the neuroendocrine system called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.
There is research that shows that there can be a genetic predisposition to suicide and suicide attempts. There is a great article which gives all the specifics in the link below.
http://www.afsp.org/research/research-connection/stress-and-genes-linked-to-suicide-attempts
If you are wondering about the symptoms of yourself or someone else, there are some suicide warning signs that are critical to know.
Someone who talks about the following things, is a possible suicide risk:
Each of those people leaves an average of 6 family members and close friends who are traumatized by the suicide. So if you are a survivor of the suicide of a loves one, you are not alone. There is help for you.
Suicide of a loved one is extremely traumatizing and can cause PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), depression, and severe anxiety. In another words, you may be suffering from mental illness now, if you survived the suicide of a family member or a friend.
The links below will give you a beginning to finding ways to get help for your trauma. Find a way to seek help if you feel like you need it.
http://www.afsp.org/coping-with-suicide-loss
http://www.afsp.org/coping-with-suicide-loss/find-support
http://www.afsp.org/coping-with-suicide-loss/find-support/join-the-survivor-e-network
There are medications for depression and other mental illnesses. There are many kinds of therapists. For some people , therapy is very helpful.
There are many people on wordpress.com that really care about you. We are the “wounded healers” The wounded healers have experienced severe trauma, mental illness and abuse. We are compassionate about the suffering of others that we can relate to.
You can search by tags for suicide, mental illness, depression, ptsd, bipolar disorder, and other mental illness related tags.
Read people’s stories. Comment on their posts. Keep reading and searching until you find someone that will understand and will reach out to you. There are many in this community.
I have seen people become suicidal and post their feelings and even their plans for suicide on wordpress. It was their only outlet because at this point they had cut off family and friends.
So many bloggers responded to these suicidal posts that the people felt enveloped in care and concern from strangers who really reached out to them. Many people had a change of heart after reading all the comments that other bloggers wrote.
The same goes for survivors of suicide. There are wounded healers that are survivors of suicide here as well. If you search the tags and keep trying, you will find someone that will listen and understand. Sometimes the best first step to healing is to find someone that will understand and validate your suffering.
I hope this post has provided some helpful information for you. If anyone wants to put a link to their mental illness blog in the comments , as a way of adding that information to this post, feel free to do do.
If you are reaching out for help, please also feel free to put a link to your blog in the comments below. If you are viewing wordpress from a google search and do not have a wordpress blog, it is very easy to set up a wordpress account. You do not have to post a picture in your profile. You can always use an avatar.
That is about all I can think of to say at this time. We were brought into the world needing the community of others. There are people in the world that will understand you. Don’t give up until you find them.
It is time to go to sleep for those of us that stay up too late.. One way I can sometimes help myself let go of some of the anxiety, depending on how bad it is, is to think of a funny story from work.
As some of you know, I work with elderly dementia patients. They have various levels of Alzheimer’s Disease or other forms of dementia. (I will do a post about types of dementia and the stages of dementia sometime. )
So, now for my story. ..This is about a feisty old lady, let’s call her Marla. So, Marla never wants to go to bed and if she does go to bed before 11 pm, she always gets up again, She is not allowed to walk by herself because she is very shaky and could easily fall.
She does not understand this and we often find her walking without her walker or wheelchair . So far, someone has managed to catch her before she falls.
So, tonight , she was half way up the hallway, no walker, sliding herself along the wall. I got to her in time and had someone else bring a wheelchair to put under her. We brought her into the living room and wanted to keep an eye on her there for a while.
She decided that she wanted to leave and she to walk back to her room. She stood up from hr seated position in the wheelchair, still holding onto the armrests. Holding tightly to the chair , she began walking and trying to drag the 40 pound, wheelchair along with her.
I looked at her with great curiosity, as I had never seen anyone try to walk and drag the wheelchair along behind them.
She was fairly safe because if she lost her balance, she was going to land in the seat, which was just behind her. But I stayed as close as she would allow, just in case the chair would roll back as she was landing.
She gave me a disgusted look and announced , “This chair is too heavy! Why did you give me one that is so heavy! How am I supposed to carry this?”
I smiled at her, “Well, Marla, most people do not carry their wheelchair. I’m fact I am certain that the wheelchair company does not take that into account, when they decide on the weight of the chair. They are not expecting you to carry it”
Even more disgusted than before, Marla furrows her brow and says, “Well how else am I supposed to get this thing to my room?!”
“Marla,” I am trying not to laugh at this point “you can sit in the chair and roll in it.”
“How do other people carry this chair?” she demanded.
I said , ” Other people sit in the chair and roll it with their feet. That is what other people do.”
“NO! ” She said. They should not make things so heavy that I can’t carry them. I do not want to leave it here.
She continues standing, walking and holding onto that wheelchair , to drag it along behind her. She is making about one millimeter of progress every couple of seconds.
I tried to reason with her. I tried to get her to sit. But she just kept on at it… mumbling… “These damn wheelchair makers! They don’t know what they are doing. How the hell do they expect a woman to carry this damn heavy thing all that way…”
Other people came in to assist at that point. It was late and the girl who works midnight shift said she would take over. I think they got her to sit just before I left. Or her legs gave out and she sat kn her own.
I still can see her in my mind, dragging that damn chair. It is a good thing she did not actually try to pick it up. I was half expecting her to try that next. Well…tomorrow is another day…
You’ve got to give her credit though. She doesn’t give up easy! She probably has more determination that most of us.
Good night. I am thinking of all of you and hope you sleep well. I am also thinking of Marla and hoping she is not up at 3am trying to drag that damn chair from her room, out to the living room.
🙂
The time has come
It’s 3 o’clock
Throw out the gum
I lost my sock
I think I’m done
With all this fun
A poem here
A comment there
I found my sock
I brushed my hair
This poem rocks
I set the clocks
Please don’t judge
This terrible sludge
I’m overtired
My brain expired
Two posts ago
Thoughts are slow
Sometimes I write funny
Sometimes I write sad
Sometimes I feel torment
Sometimes I feel glad
This is my good night
I don’t know if it’s right
To torture my victims
With horrible lines
If someone reblogs this
I might lose my mind
They’ll say
This is an example
of Annie’s best work
I would have to hunt them
And wipe off their smirk
I don’t really know
Why bad poetry flows
From my fingers right now
Where is my stuffed cow?
I need my soft blankets
To cuddle myself
The laptop must go
Back up on the shelf
The bunny was fed
My words were all said
Till tomorrow again
I’ll pick up my pen
And write something fun
To make up for this one
Good night all my friends
Please come back again
🙂
Good night,
sorry about that poem LOL
Annie
Don’t open the envelope…
There might be
numbers
in black and white
showing
a negative balance in your account
Don’t turn on the radio…
there might be
that song…
that reminds you of
that person
who abused your tortured brain
Don’t leave the house…
there might be
people
that are judgemental
and will trigger you
into post traumatic stress
Don’t dial the phone…
There might be
a computerized voice
that will tell you
your health insurance is cancelled
Don’t text your family…
they might respond
about how they
never hear from you
even though
they
have your number too
Don’t stop by the job…
to check the schedule
They might see you,
(really see you…)
and decide to..
replace you
with someone saner
Don’t call ahead to the pharmacy…
to check on the refill
for your pain medication
they might hear it…
in your voice
and tell your doctor
you’re an addict
Don’t open the door…
it might be someone
wanting to visit
and
ask you
how you are
Don’t close your eyes..
There might be
your brain…
just waiting for you
with something terrifying
a whole new
mental torture
Wow, I was so tired around 5pm, I almost fell asleep. Then I slowly got more awake. So now it is very very late , even for me.
I had lots of fun today on wordpress. It saved me from falling into a depression. I could feel myself spiraling down around 4 or 5pm. Then I had interaction with cool people on here and I got my mental energy back. It is very nice and amazing that some of the bloggers on here will have each other’s back, so to speak. We support each other, laugh with each other and support each other when the world tries to beat us down with a baseball bat.
There are some amazing “wounded healers” on here . People that understand other people’s left over trauma because we have been there ourselves. I read that term on silver girl’s about page today.
Let the wounded healers unite. We can do amazing things to heal the world if we are able to keep each other from falling into the dark valleys too far.
My thoughts are with the couple of wounded healers that I wrote to because they are suffering today.
My amazement is with the person that spent so much time helping me today to think of ways to help me change my living situation,
My laughter is with the one who always laughs at my jokes and always makes me laugh. Besides we both have to wake up to pee in the middle of the night. Damn overactive bladder!
My joy is with the newest followers of my blog who have said encouraging things to me.
I feel supported and I am glad I can be myself somewhere.
Good night
Annie
Good night and merry christmas
Annie
I brought you into the world
For my own reasons
I wanted a friend
A playmate
A confidant
I taught you the things that I thought
Would inspire you
to learn
to create
to love
I never thought of the pain
The world inflicts
On everyone
Even you
my creation
my child
I never meant to see you feel
The pain that I have had
From the others
So callous
So Cruel
I hope you can forgive me
For not being able to protect
Your heart
Your body
Your mind
I brought you into this world
To love you
Protect you
I tried
I tried
My heart breaks every time
I see your heart break
From those
Unworthy
Of you
You will always be the child
I wanted by my side
To care for
to protect
to love
Soul mate
Where are you?
Are you in my home town?
Are you in New York?
Are you in Oregon?
Are you old or are you young?
Are you looking for me?
or are you done?
Are you black or are you white?
Are you Into video games….
Or having sex all night 🙂
Maybe you are far away
In England or in France
Maybe you are just next door
But tell me, what’s the chance?
I think that there are many of you
Some nearer and some far
That makes the chance much better
That I’ll find out where you are
Doesn’t that make more sense
Than to think there’s only one?
That makes a lot of pressure on my brain
and that pressure is no fun
Maybe I’ll find all of you
and pencil you all in
Would I be such a angel?
Or would that be a sin?
LOL Smile
GentleKindness 