OCD Counting Poetry

One time
in a row
putting on
my favorite
mismatched
orange
and purple
socks

Two times
in a row
changing which foot
the orange sock
is on
and off
and on
and off

Three times
in a row
walking back up
two flights of steps
to my apartment
to check
to check
to check
That the iron was unplugged

Four times
in a row
unzipping my wallet
to see
to see
to see
If my credit card is there

Five times
in a row
checking my purse
for
The first most critical
The second most critical
And
The third most critical
Bottle of pills

Five times
in a row
checking
my shift schedule
posted on the wall
at work.

And one
additional time
calling from home
to have someone
at work
read it to me
over the phone

Seven times
in a row
checking my alarm clock
To be sure
To be sure
To be absolutely, positively sure
That I set it
For 11 am and not 11 pm

And so—
Eight anxiety books
Nine blogs
Ten prescriptions
Eleven Youtube videos
and
Twelve Yoga postures later

I am saying
good-night
to all of you
And wishing you a
Peaceful Sleep

Healing Requires Feeling

Healing requires feeling

It is nature’s only  way

Of disinfecting

the mental wounds

And closing them to stay

It seems too much to bear at first

Sometimes we want to quit

We regress to places past

And fear the future trauma

But healing always means feeling

There is no other path

That really grows our hearts

And makes us strong at last

Body Image and Eating Disorders, Young Women and the Media – Let’s Be Proactive for Our Girls

Body Image issues seem to be part of life for women and girls these days. The magazines still show these anorexic looking models. They should know better than to only show the super thin models.

There are plenty of perfectly beautiful girls and women that are a size 9 , size 12 and size 16 and more.

Magazines create the illusion that the perfect body image is thin. It has been proven that girls look at these models as a role model for body image.

There has been an increase in eating disorders over the last several decades (research by Pyle, Halvorson, Neuman and Mitchell). Research shows that there are 10 times the amount of articles and advertisements promoting weight loss in women’s magazines as compared to men’s.

In a study by Irving in 1990, there was evidence that women exposed to pictures of thin models experienced a drop in self esteem and a dissatisfaction with their body weight.

Young women ( and some young men) are becoming ill and some are dying due to the irresponsibility of the media to show the truth. Internalization of a thin ideal weight has a direct correlation with body dissatisfaction and consequently eating disorders.

The young girls see the super skinny, computer enhanced images and think this is normal. They wonder what is wrong with them and think they need to starve themselves to be beautiful.

The results of this are malnutrition, inhibited development, slower cognitive function, lower test scores, severe anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, suicide and other co-morbidities. Anorexia can cause muscle tissue loss, heart failure and brain damage.

There becomes a tremendous sense of lack of control of their bodies which turns into mental illnesses. In their attempt to match these super skinnies, they end up losing their beautiful figure and becoming a malnourished person who has a lower resistance to infection and disease.

Is this how we want things to continue?

The media needs to take some responsibility and be held accountable for the unrealistic body image they are portraying.

Be vigilant with your daughters, sisters, friends and students. Point out the pictures of the skinny, anorexic looking models and tell your them that it is unhealthy and not the norm. The average size of adult women in the US is size 12, not size 2.

The girls think that men only like skinny women. This is not true. Men love women of all shapes and sizes. Men have individual preferences. Let the girls know that there are lots of men who love curvy women.
Protect our young women with awareness!
God Bless,
Namaste,
Annie

Mental Illness / Emotional Healing – The Poweful Effects of Human Electromagnetic Fields on the Nervous System

“The human nervous system can create electric energy waves that can be measured with scientific instruments. The human body produces infra-red radiation that, with night vision equipment, can be seen from miles away.”
Human Electricity

Spiritual garden.com

Scientists have proven that all people give off an electromagnetic field. The nerve impulses in our bodies are actually electric signals. These occur inside of our bodies but they also project out of the body. They create a magnetic energy field that radiates out into the air.

Positive people will radiate a positive energy field and negative people will send out a negative one.
When you are in the vicinity of another person, you will be affected by the energy field that radiates from them.

When close to some people, you may feel as if your body and mind becomes more energised, more hopeful and optimistic.
When close to other people, you may feel as if your energy drains away, a depressing or lazy feeling.“
Human Electricity Spiritual garden.com

When we are trying to heal from a mental illness and addiction, it is critical that we surround ourselves with positive energy fields. If we are made to feel depressed and discouraged, then our self-esteem will go down.

We need our self-esteem to be high in order to have healing in our minds and our bodies.
Low self-esteem is counterproductive to our personal healing and peace of mind.

It is extremely important for our self-esteem that we are around people that radiate positive energy fields. Our bodies will be affected by the other person’s nervous system and the resulting energy field.

When we are around people that are mean, judgemental, vindictive, violent, depressed etc, it sends that exact feeling into us. When you are trying to get better from depression , it is not a good thing to be around people who emit negative energy.

As part of the healing process of mental illness, please surround yourself with healthy, compassionate, kind people. It will help your nervous system to feel calmer. Your nervous system will regulate itself with the other person’s.

*This is similar to the way a newborn baby’s heartbeat and breath regulates to its mother’s when they are cuddled together.*

It is dangerous for us to be around a person with a negative spirit about them. Their nervous system is full of negtivity. This negativity will be felt and absorbed directly into our own personal nervous system.

This is a tested scientific fact. The energy fields have been measured and recorded. This is the reason why you feel bad when you are around a selfish, unkind person.

I know that sometimes we live with someone who is like this. It happens to the best of us. We meet a beautiful man and he seems so great in the beginning. After we move in together then his true colors show themselves. I have done it myself.

If you are stuck in a house with someone that emits negativity then you have a problem. The only thing I can suggest is that you try to spend some with other people who are good for you. Think about your physical proximity to this person and try not to sit close to them all the time.

If you have severe anxiety, PTSD or another mental illness that invades your mind with negative intrusive thoughts, then you need to regulate your nervous system with someone else’s as often as possible.

If you are near someone who is calm and patient, with a kind personality, your nervous system will regulate with theirs and you will feel calmer. It is amazing but it is true.

All the work we go though to become sober from alcohol, quit drugs, control intrusive thoughts etc, we don’t need to be going up the down escalator by sucking bad energy into our nervous systems.

Check out the article called Human Electricity, at spiritual garden.com
I found this article and the web site very interesting and informative. I stumbled upon the site this evening.

On a personal note, I find that I feel my nervous system calming down when I pet my bunny rabbit. I think that animals must also emit energy fields that can be calming to our nervous system. So spending time with your pet be may be helpful. I have not researched this yet but now I have something to do while I am up with my insomnia tonight. LOL

Peace be to you all.
Namaste,
Annie

Equal Rights for Anxiety Disabilites

It is amazing how anxiety can infiltrate your day to day life. I did not used to be aware why I was feeling the way I was feeling. I just felt invaded by everything. I was not aware that certain things were triggering anxiety, OCD and post traumatic stress.

The bunny cage needs to be changed. I feel tremendous anxiety in the house now. All I have to do is change it but I don’t have the bunny litter. I am getting ready to go get that now.

But the feeling of anxiety and the path it follows is horrible. It is just a smell and it id very easily fixed. But that is not where the anxiety is coming from. It is not my sweet, cuddly bunny or the smell at all.

It is what that smell is triggering in my poor brain. Triggering is so severely that I find myself walking back and forth and back and forth. I am straightening things. Putting things from one place to another and then changing my mind and putting them back again. I am looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and wanting to cry rather than put them away.

I feel the house will get dirtier and messier against my will. There will be nothing I can do to stop it. It feels like the house and the mess are enemies and it will grow and get worse even as i am out of the house with no one here

The thoughts are  irrational and I know that. I keep trying to figure out what is wrong so I can make it stop.

The problem is that this type of anxiety does not have so much to do with what is right here in front of me. I can straighten the mess and clean the bunny cage. But I will still feel this trauma when I am done.

I will feel that it will just keep being messy, dirty and smelly, no  matter how many hours I spend cleaning, which is so hard because I have chronic pain from herniated discs, arthritis and scoliosis.

The process of cleaning is painful because of my spine injuries. I feel like the house knows this and it creating the mess so I will have to bend and reach and hurt. I feel like the house knows that I will give up and just leave it and then the mess will eat me alive or cause social services to put me in a mental ward.

But all of this is irrational and I am aware of the irrational thinking. I am a very educated , professional person. I am perfectly intelligent and I know the house won’t bury me in my sleep.

But the smell and the mess are triggering a severe buried memory of a horrible traumatic situation I lived in long ago. So traumatic that I can’t remember pieces of it. There are blacked out spaces of time in my brain. I do not have any desire to open them up either.

I think if your mind blacks things out, that is its way of protecting you. Your brain knows you would not survive remembering those things, considering how severe the anxiety is with the things that you do remember.

So recognizing the fact that my current anxiety is being caused by past abuse, is helpful. I am not crazy or too picky about how the house smells.

The fact that my tolerance for smells like that is more intolerable to me that to other people is just a symptom of post traumatic stress.

We have to be tolerant of ourselves. We have to be forgiving and kind to ourselves about these attacks. Especially because other people are less than patient with us about it. If we tell someone we have to clean up this thing right now, they don’t understand why it has to be right now.

They may want us to do something else now and clean the mess later. They think  we are being uncooperative with them that we have to do things “our way.”

The truth is that we are NOT really demanding to do things our way. We are not trying to be difficult or ruin the other person’s schedule. Sometimes we HAVE to do something right now. If it does not get rectified right now then the anxiety will continue to increase to an unbearable level.

If we go with them to do what they want without taking care of reducing our anxiety first then we will not feel good at all while we are with them. We will get more and more traumatized by the things going though our mind.

Somehow it has to get to a point where people will be understanding of severe anxiety disorders and tolerate letting you perform your rituals that help reduce the levels. They should tolerate and understand if going out to a social activity is simply intolerable to us on a particular day.

We are expected to be tolerant of all kinds of differences in people. We are even ordered by law to not discriminate against people for color, sex, or disabilities. But mental illness like anxiety, depression, and OCD are not tolerated or sympathized with.

We have to make allowances for others that require unique understanding or adaptations. There are handicapped access ramps, translators an interpreters etc.

Where is our handicap ramp that will allow us to be 10 minutes late for work because we were having a severe panic attack? Where is our interpreter to translate what we are going through to someone who does not understand our language? An interpreter for what is going on in our brains and how it affect us in a physical way?

Who will advocate for us with our invisible disability?