Video for Depression and Anxiety

Awakening to Your Sleep Reality

image from Pinterest– link HERE

A great percentage of your life is spent sleeping. This feels like a waste of precious time to some people. To others it is a escape  from an otherwise unbearable existence. 

We try to find ways to avoid sleep, in order to get things done that we deem more important. Or we self medicate ourselves by sleeping, and think of it as an escape from being in reality. But sleep is a reality all its own, that it intertwined with our waking reality.

 The sleep states are a natural part of our existence. There are different stages of sleep that each serve important functions.

.

.

image from Pinterest – link HERE

The subconscious awakens and exists in a different way during sleep, than it does when you are awake. The processes that the subconscious parts of the brain need to do, are an important part of your maintaining your emotional, mental, and spiritual balance.

.

Sleep deprivation will cause deterioration in your mental state, your emotional state, memory, and cognitive functions. It effects your ability to have a clear continuity from one day to the next. Over time, sleep deprivation can cause a breakdown of your mental state, resulting in mental illness.

image from pinterest – HERE

Sleep can be affected by various things. If you are unable to sleep straight through for 8 or 9 hours, then it is critical to your mental health that you make up the missing sleep hours at another time of the day.

This is not laziness. You are not being unproductive when you are sleeping. Lack of proper sleep will cause decreased productivity and poor efficiency. You will have memory problems, especially related to spatial and time memory.

The sleep states are a part of our reality. Your subconscious brain exists just as much as your conscious brain does.

Your core beliefs, your memories, your perceptions of reality, and your emotions are all functions of your subconscious brain.

Your conscious awake state cannot exist separately from your subconscious reality.

Sleep is critical to make sure all these realities, and the different parts of your brain are working both together…and independently… in a way that best supports you.

image from Pinterest – link HERE

Spirituality… higher consciousness …and your perceptions about the nature of your reality…are all intertwined with what happens in the brain while you sleep.

Your mental and emotional health are dependent upon your getting proper sleep.  This is also true about  your immune system and your physical health.

Your spiritual health has to do with believing in, and perceiving something beyond the reality of the five senses.

Spirituality gives you a greater perspective about your existence.

Being able to perceive your higher consciousness… and spiritual realities… is also intertwined with your brain being able to experience the sleep states. Your spiritual health is dependent upon letting your conscious brain  rest, so the other senses can awaken.

You are not wasting time by sleeping. You are allowing an important part of your reality to exist. You are increasing your brain’s ability to function well during your waking hours.

We are more than drones or robots. We need more to our existence than just survival. …something more to living than just paying the bills.

Treat your body’s need to sleep with thoughtfulness.  The sleep states are the interconnecting path between realities and levels of consciousness.

What happens when you are awake affects your dreams, and what happens in your dreams affects your consciousness.   🌷

Sleep well tonight,

Annie 💕

 

 

Self Love and Restoring Balance

Life needs balance. Our bodies are systems of balance. We need a balanced diet or we become sick.

We need balance between work and play, rest and activity, and focus vs. relaxaxing the mind.

We need balance between socializing and time to ourselves. Too much of any one thing throws off something else that is equally important.

Our physical and mental health are dependent upon this critical balance.

We should not negect nature for technology. Nor should we forget about our family and friends because we become too focused on work.

The reverse of any of these statements is also true. We should not neglect our work, our dreams and our vision for our family.

It is a constant struggle to keep things in balance. Every physical problem has to do with something being neglected for the sake of something else.

On-going, extreme imbalance will cause disease, illness, fatigue, and a lack of wellness.

Ancient Chinese medicine was based on the idea of sickness and disease being the result of imbalance. This was an entire system of trying to connect certain health problems with particular imbalances.

The ancient Chinese medicine developers believed that by identifying imbalances early, you can prevent serious illness and diseases.

There are entire health arts related to identifying imbalances, and restoring imbalance in the body. Acupressure, acupuncture, yoga are all about restoring and maintaining the fine balamces within the body.

These arts also restore balance between the mind and the body. It is clear that physical health is intimately intertwined with mental and emotional health.

At any given time, something is bound to be in an imbalance. Our goal should be to look at imbalances if we feel like something is wrong.

Moderate to severe mental health problems can be your body’s way of communicating to you that it needs something. It could be that something is in starvation.

We can become emotionally starved for love and compassion. We can become starved for physical touch.

Emotional starvation can cause every system in the body to suffer. The mind will suffer as well and cognitive processes will slow down.

We were also made to be able to think and create. Being stuck in a routine job and living on autopilot can cause imbalance in your life.

We were made to have a balance, which includes variety and change, as well as the comfort of some predictability.

Remembering the importance of balance will help you to be able to identify and restore balamce to yourself. It is also something useful to pass down to your children or teach others.

Whenever you feel like you are having trouble keeping up with something in your life, or that something is being neglected, see what might be drinking too much energy and time from you.

If something is being neglected, it is due to something else taking too much of your time and energy. We do not always want to admit what that something is.

Even if you are not ready to make a dramatic change, yoi may be able to make smaller ones. Without change we cannot move forward.

Staying stuck in the same unhealthy routine will slowly starve your body and your mind.

Accept your tre self and nurture yourself without judgement. Restoring balance is not about self judgement. It is about self love.

Self Love – Reach for Your Potential

You are special and unique. 

You have just as much of a right to happiness as anyone else. 

Self love is not the same as selfishness. In order to follow your calling and use your gifts, you need to love yourself for the unique spiritual being that you are. 

You can become depressed from having to resist your natural gifts and skills.

Others will attempt to suppress you from moving towards a higher spiritual state because you are a threat to them. 

When they put you down they are just trying to keep you under their foot. The stronger they react to you asserting your independence, the more of a threat they consider you. 

Do not think of their words as truth, if the words go against what you believe you can do.  Some people will lie and tell you that your dreams are wrong or that you do not have the skills to do things. 

Their words of discouragement are to make you disbelieve in yourself. Don’t let people like that tell you how to live. 

Be introspective and sit silently or however you can interact with yourself.

 See what gifts are inside of you.

What purpose do you feel called towards?

What values are the most important to you?

Follow what you believe in and put your gifts to the test.

You will be surprised what you can do when you go in the right direction of what you really believe in, rather than what other people want you to do.

gentlekindnesscoaching.com

Depression Feels Like it Surrounds You – Some NLP Techniques Might Help

Depression can feel like there are dark storm clouds all around you. They feel like they are closing in and there is no way out. Depression can feel like it is coming in at you from the outside, although we know the feelings are being generated from the inside. 

There is no way to see the sun or any hope beyond the heavy feeling of the depression piling on top of us. This depression can feel like an ominous being that had captured us in its clutches. It can feel like the clouds of darkness are choosing to surround us rather than the people around us. 

It can feel like the depression is settling upon our home, our bedroom, our brain, our heart or around our body. It is perceived differently by different people. But there is often this feeling of the depression being around us, on top of us and putting weight in us that makes it feel hard to move our bodies in space. 

One idea that sometimes can help is to take ourselves out of the depression clouds by changing our point of view and perception just for a few minutes.

We can detach from this picture we have of the depression surrounding us by taking ourselves out of the “first person” of our story. 

We all tell our own story every day. There is a kind of narrative playing in our brains. Each thing that happens in our narrative had a meaning to us. 

There is a type of NLP technique that we can try which is to make ourselves the observer of this narrative.

Picture that you are watching the story from the outside. You are watching it as you would watch a tv show or a YouTube Video. For this few minutes you are in within the clutches of the depression all around you, but you are without ….you are outside of the entire story all together. 

Emotionally Detach From What You are Watching So You Can Observe

In order to detach from feeling too much negative emotion while watching yourself in the story, you can control the volume, the vividness of color and the distance this “tv” or “Movie screen” you are watching this on. Reduce the volume, make the colors different, and push the screen away from you until you feel more detached like an audience, rather than the main character in the story.

From this outside, detached point of view we can see what meaning we assign to different things is our story. Let’s say that in our story we lost our job or were yelled at by the boss. As an outside observer of the story we can see what meaning the main character (that is us) is attaching to these events of losing our job or being yelled at.

Look at the main character as if you are not emotionally attached to them. You are seeing yourself as a neutral character in a story. But observe how this character assigns meaning to these events. 

What meaning did she assign to losing her job? Does she feel this means she is worthless? Does she feel this means she will continue to become more financially devastated and that it was her destiny to become financially devastated?

What meaning does he assign to getting yelled at by the boss? Does he feel he is inadequate? Does he feel that he was yelled at because he cannot fit in with other people?

Once we see what meaning we are assigning to events in out story, we can question these meanings. Did we assign meanings to these events that are accurate? Are we sure these meanings can be proven? Can they be disproven? Has there ever been any evidence in this main character that they are not useless?

Has anyone ever told this main character that they were useful, wanted or skillful and intelligent? Is there any way we can counter the negative meaning the main character in our story has assigned to different things?

This practice of coming outside of our narrative can help our brains to get out of certain learned behaviors. Our brains will go into the usual behaviors that they are used to but these are not always helpful behaviors for our brains to do. These are learned behaviors and are sometimes developed out of post traumatic stress. 

Our brains are designed to scan for danger and to take us away from what the brain perceives as danger. When that danger seems to be all around us, our brain has  no where to take us but deep inside of ourselves. There is no where else to run away to.

So this practice of mentally removing ourselves from the “first person” in the story and taking the point of view of the third person, can make us an audience to our own brains and what our brains have been wired to do. It is good to ask questions about what thoughts our brains are thinking.

Sometimes thoughts are reactive, which means they are reactions to triggers.

These are learned brain behaviors almost like an addiction. The brain has been used to thinking certain kinds of thoughts in response to certain kinds of triggers and feelings of threat.

Practice this technique for five to ten minutes, a few times a day. Ask questions about the meaning that you attach to events and other things in your life. If you are living below your desired living level..what meaning does your brain assign to this? Then ask if it is necessarily true? Why is it true? What other meaning might you be able to choose to assign to this?

This practice is cognitive work. This cognitive work can take you out of the feelings of depression while you are doing it. The brain cannot focus on more than one thing at a time with a lot of power.

There is a primary focus of the brain. If your primary focus is on this cognitive kind of practice then some of the fuel will be drawn away from the emotional overload that the brain was caught up in.

The more we question our own thoughts, the more we can seek truth. The truth about ourselves is that we have innate value. Other people do not assign value to us. They have no control over our actual value. 

Our actions and accomplishments do not determine our innate value either. So question the meaning you have been used to assigning to things in your life. Things that happen do not take away the fact that you are valuable and special because of the person that you are.

Blessings,

Annie<3

Music and Art Activities for Alzheimer’s and Dementia

I had a resident in the dementia unit at work. She never spoke more that one word at a time. She rarely spoke at all. She was sweet and used to like to come along with me, as I did laundry and other tasks. She would hold my hand and come along, wherever I went.

I used to sing to her and sometimes she would sing along with me. If I got lucky and found a sing she knew, then she would sing all of the words with me.

This made her very happy and I could see her self esteem go up, because she was able to do something well, and she was able to communicate with me through the music, in a way that she could not do with her words.

One day after we sang a song, she looked at me and said “Well what shall we do next?”

It was amazing. It was like the music stimulated something in her brain and made the circuits connect. After this, I sang with her as often as I was able to.

Sometimes she would sing and then not talk. Other times, she would say entire sentences to me, but only right after she had sung a song. I strongly believe that there is a connection between the singing and the ability to connect words together into a sentence.

Being as that I have lost my job, due to an error with the licensing department, I have decided it is time to start my own business. I have wanted to do this for a while now. My degenerative bone disease has been getting increasingly worse, and I can barely get through the shift at work anyway.

I have a few different ideas for businesses which I can do. I am an eclectic person and would be happy doing more than one type of service for my business.

I am going to post some of my ideas as I work on them and see what you guys think, so that you can brainstorm with me.

I love working with dementia and Alzheimer’s sufferers. I have developed some activities using  music, art and cognitive stimulating games. I may try to make some videos showing what I do. I have done some of these activities with the dementia residents at the assisted living and also at the nursing home i used to work at.

I had really excellent results from the activities that I designed and I felt that I was able to get people to connect socially and cognitively, in ways that were special and meaningful. I have a great passion for this work.

I did not have a lot of time to work with the residents when I worked at these jobs. Only small sections of time. I feel that if I could work one on one with people, for a half hour or an hour at a time, once or twice a week, that the results would be even better.

I could work well in people’s homes or as a one on one companion at nursing homes, as hired by the individual family.

I also could teach my techniques to family, or healthcare workers, who were interested in maintaining the highest quality of life for their loved ones and patients. Maybe I could make some youtube videos and then offer a course that could be downloaded.

The pain in my neck where the herniated discs are, makes it very painful to lift people in and out of wheelchairs and showers.

My foot has gotten very bad and I am now using a cane to walk on uneven ground, like the parking lot at the grocery store. I have PTTD which is posterior tibial tendon dysfunction. It causes severe bone changes, flat foot, and a collapsing arch. which causes pain when walking for long hours and also trouble balancing.

So, as my time working on me feet for 8 hours is about over, I am excited to get into what I have dreamed of doing for some time now. My skills and ideas would be more valuable for one on one clients. At the nursing home, I am mostly doing basic daily activities like dressing, toileting , bathing etc.

I will keep working on these ideas and show you what I come up with. You never know what kind of ideas you might have, as you see mine. It could be helpful to get some feedback. Thank you all for always being supportive. I look forward to your thoughts, as I develop my ideas for dementia activities.

Blessings,

Annie

This is the link to my Go Fund me Account.

http://www.gofundme.com/anniemichele

NOiSy CLocK…Spoken word Poetry

The clock ticks on

tick tick

The hands

go round

round and round

The time elapses

tick tock

‘Till I feel drowned

That heartless clock

Tick tick

I turn away

tick tick

To make it stop

Stop. STOP!

I want to rest

And

what  I want

is…

for time to stop!

Just for an hour

Let me catch up

I need to rest…

I have  become

tick tick

Simply exhausted

tick tock

This linear time

tick tick

Torments my mind

tock tick

I want to change

tock tick

 I know it’s strange

tick tock tick tock tick tock

For god’s sake! , Enough already, with the tick tick tock tock

Tock tick tock tick NOW STOP!

SSHHHHH!

sshhhh!

shhh!

shh!

Quieter

Be very quiet

whisper

very

very

very

softly

s  o   f   t   l   y

Be very still

Untie your mind

Just turn away

Pretend you’re blind

Pretend you’re deaf

Become oblivious

and now…

you will find…

The clock has stopped

{finally)

I made it so

(I think I did)

It needed a “time out”

(time out)

to save my soul…

(my tortured soul)

Just let me rest…

I’m very tired

No tick , no tock

No tock , no tick

no tick tock tick tock tock tick tock tick

Universal silence

Universal bliss

Be very still

Shhh!

Don’t wake up

the clock

Don’t wake him up

I don’t want to hear

That NOISY CLOCK

Prey

You told me tales of your ex

How she abused

your poor little mind…

Threatened you 

Tormented you

Used you

and Discarded you

Like a chewed up piece of meat

Then you …

Used me

Threatened me

Sleep deprived me

Deranged my reality

Brainwashed me

And otherwise played

Your Game…

Now I am the ex

you are talking about

Who tormented you

Hurt you

And broke you down…

But the one who abuses

Is behind your dead eyes

The stalker

The confuser

The tormentor 

is you

Your words are all lies…

Your ex was abused

I see through you now

And your predatory ways

You claim to be the victim

While setting up your prey

Let Your Personality Shine Right Through Your Mental Illness

Pretend Reality

You left your voice playing in my head

You left a part of yourself in my brain

What was your purpose in leaving it?

 Was it all part of your plan to search and destroy?

Get in as close as possible and then

Reprogram the other person’s brain 

So that they…

 Believe in your pretend  love and grandiose plans

To trust in intimacy that is laced with lies

Give them the illusion that they can trust you

When all the while you are leading a double life?

You needed me and then suddenly you were gone

Once you hung up the phone you moved on

How long had you been setting up your new prey…

While you strung me along like a play thing?

What is there left of your soul?

Or did you lose track of it very long ago?

Without your gracing me with goodbye… I’ll never know

Without any closure from you…These thoughts will twist my mind 

But you already knew that

 before we started to play

Your game of reality confusion

And you knew I would still love the one

You pretended to be

The one that you made just for me…

While I would despise the one

that took him away

When you were done using me as a game piece