The "Wise Mind"

This morning I posted this as my status on Facebook:

“I think I need a double-shot of that 5 Hour Energy stuff...just not looking forward to dealing with my day but I don't really have much choice now, do I?”

We all have “those” days but unfortunately my depression makes me prone to them more often than I like to consider. We just came back from a fun weekend in Minneapolis (including a family reunion on my husband’s side of the family on Sunday) and I think I spent all of my energy…physical, emotional and mental…down there so there isn’t any left for me to use to deal with this week. That was OK yesterday. I managed to put off my 14 year olds pestering to DO SOMETHING and was able to finish a book and hang out in front of the TV. But I won’t be so lucky today. I have to make up for yesterday with him and then “extended family” time begins tonight. My brother and his family are coming from New Jersey and then this weekend we have the family reunion on my side of the family. It all takes energy.

Now I can imagine my family members reading that and thinking, “Gee…we take that much energy to deal with????” Please don’t take it that way. I can’t come up with the energy just to take a shower some days (but don’t worry…I’ll be clean this weekend!). It almost comes down to an art…trying to deal with all the things that are floating around in my head and still be in “the present.” That’s one thing that they are teaching in mental health circles nowadays…being in the present. It’s part of DBT. When asked, I always tell people it stands for Diabolical Behavior Torture. That kind of tells you how I’ve felt about it. It’s actually Dialectical Behavior Therapy and it’s all about staying in the moment and basically balancing your thoughts and emotions.

I’ve gone through two DBT classes in addition to everything they teach when you’re inpatient or in day treatment. My providers know that I’ve been sick to death of hearing about it, but this past winter and spring, I actually began to embrace that which is DBT. I told my psychiatrist not to fall of his chair after I told him that. The two big things about DBT: 1) Staying in the moment, which I’ve already mentioned. It’s about fully putting yourself in your current situation…not letting your mind wander to what is past or future. And you do so in a non-judgmental way…what is happening around you is neither good nor bad, it just is. 2) Wise Mind. Wise Mind involves balanced thinking. Here is the diagram for Wise Mind.

As you can see, the Wise Mind takes into consideration both what is rational and logical and what is emotional. There are times when it’s OK to be totally in one mind. Take for instance, a wedding. Emotions run high…and that’s perfectly acceptable to let yourself feel those emotions and let it show. However, if you’re sitting in court as a witness or for whatever reason, it may not really in your best interest to get all emotional. Wasn’t that Joe Friday on “Dragnet” who used to say, “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”? (You have to be pretty old like me to get that reference!) But that is what the rational mind is about…staying with the facts, what is logical and rational.

But our lives are not simply built on facts…we have these sometimes-messy emotions that make their way in and we have to deal with them. I have had to practice Wise Mind more in these last seven months than I think I ever have. Not only have I had to deal with the ups and downs of my illness, but also losing the person I trusted pretty much the most in this world…and having absolutely no say about it. I have been going through the grieving stages. This included denial, which is a really crappy one to deal with. That is where my Wise Mind has really had to work. I have all these feelings about this relationship and I don’t want it to end…I feel like I won’t even be able to survive it’s ending…but no matter how much my feelings make me fall apart, the fact remains that he is gone. Once I finally started to give up the denial, all I can do is focus on the rational and logical part of the whole situation. He is gone, I can’t do anything about it, and now I have to pick up the pieces of my life. The rational mind tells me that I can’t trust another person so implicitly again because then I start to trust that person more than I trust myself. And I think that’s what happened. When he was ripped away from me, and that’s exactly how it felt, it burned enough to make me realize that even though there may be other people there to help, in the end I can only really count on myself. It’s up to me. As one of my motivational sentences on my whiteboard says, “No one is in charge of your happiness but you.”

This whole entry today went in a totally different direction that what I had planned. A few weeks ago, when we were actually in town on the weekend to go to church, the confession that we read dealt with self-esteem and that’s what I wanted to write about. As thoughts began forming in my mind, I was seeing a connection between DBT and self-esteem...how you can use the DBT skills to work on your self-esteem. If no one is in charge of my happiness but me, I have to take that charge, don’t I? For so much of my life my self-esteem was in the pits, to put it very nicely, but it’s improved and I think the DBT skills can help in that area. And when saying the confession in church, I realized that I don't have to rely on just myself. I have a Godly Father who knows who I really am, without all those messy emotions to cloud the view. Maybe the confesssion will hit home for you too.

Dear Loving Father,
I must confess my self-esteem feels like a bobber in the ocean during a hurricane. It goes up and down, and all around, tossed to and fro, depending on the moment. I try to base it on other peoples’ opinions of me, and those opinions seem to change daily. I try to build it upon my successes and achievements that soon fade with time. My view of self always comes up short when I compare myself to others; my talents, looks, gifts and accomplishments. I’m sorry, Lord, for ignoring and forgetting your view of me. Restore in me a right, clear and true view of who you made me to be in You. Let me build my esteem on the rock of your love, acceptance and forgiveness as a true child of God. Not on the always changing ways of the world. Amen.

That confession involves some Wise Mind too. Comparisons bring up so many feelings about ourselves, but God is not in the comparing business. He loves us equally, fully and individually. If I rely solely on my emotions to tell myself who I am, it’s no wonder I can’t stand myself sometimes. But I am more than a bundle of crazy emotions. When I look at myself rationally and logically…and in a Wise Mind state…I see that I am thoughtful, caring, smart, fun, and a bunch of other things that God made me. I guess that’s the tough part…remembering who I am in God’s eyes...because he has the wisest mind of all.

And they say there isn’t a perfect?

Not surprisingly, we went camping this past weekend again. We went to Itasca State Park for the second time this year. Craig’s best friend Tyler came with so we were a four-person family. That was very different for me…all this testosterone around! We kept busy, I only had about an hour to sit and relax and read, but that’s OK. Friday night we had our usual dinner and since it was such a beautiful night, I suggested we go for a boat ride on Lake Itasca. The water was pretty much like glass and it was almost majestic-like on the lake. We saw a couple of loons, even a deer on the hillside…something we rarely see. And one of the nicest things about the outing was that I think we have finally learned the right way to get the boat on the trailer. Amazing in itself.

Tyler had never been to Itasca so Saturday we went down to the Headwaters of the Mississippi so that he could experience that and after lunch we took the boys to Lake George and did some serious tubing. They had so much fun! I took a few pictures. I haven’t looked at them yet but I hope they turned out. It’s hard to take a picture when the boat is rocking up and down! And of course, I can’t tell you how much I love driving the boat! Allen finally had to ask me if he could drive. When the boys had gotten enough, we headed back to the campsite, and after being asked, literally, about 10 times what we were having for dinner (they were really trying to get on my nerves!), we had our taco hotdish (delicious and easy). Allen and I did the dishes and then we all headed to the beach.

Temps must have been in the upper 70s or low 80s and there was no wind at all. Since it was evening the beach wasn’t very busy. After we unloaded all of our stuff, I started walking into the water and didn’t hesitate a bit. It was just perfect. I kept walking and pretty soon just took a dive straight in. After being hot and sweating from working with the boat, fixing dinner and doing dishes, I could feel the comfortably cool water envelope me as I swam. It was heaven.

It was nearly dark by the time we got back to the campsite and Allen got a fire started. Even though I had been refreshed by the swim, I was too hot to be close to the fire. We threw one of these chemical packets that Craig has in the fire and it turns the flames different colors. It’s really neat.

This time we didn’t have one of our usual sites so we were back in the woods a little. I made the reservations almost a year ago so I don’t always remember what I’ve done…and of course it depends on availability too. Even though we didn’t have any grass, we were secluded and surrounded by shade (and we were able to put our awning down this time). We were afraid we were going to be totally attacked by bugs over the weekend being in that woody area, but we sat around the campfire Saturday night and not one bug or mosquito bothered us. The clouds had disappeared so we could see the stars between the trees and it was cooling off. It couldn’t have felt more perfect.

I sat there in my rocker in complete amazement. We had such a great day…down at the Headwaters, tubing, a perfect swim and now a campfire with no bugs and stars illuminating the sky above. Again…how lucky can I be? So much in my life seems to be falling apart, and even packing up on Friday was getting the best of me, but nothing and no one can take that splendidly contented feeling away from me. It may not come very often, but when it does, I own it and I basked in it Saturday night.

This morning the guys went to climb the fire tower (my bad ankle got me out of that) while I stayed behind and made fresh caramel rolls for breakfast and enjoyed a little quiet time to read. After that, as the mercury began to rise, we started packing up. We rolled out at 2:00 and headed to the beach for a couple hours. We like to do it that way so we can get cooled off after working up a sweat while packing up. It was a nice day although the wind was starting to pick up a little. I managed a bit of a sunburn on my face (I know…bad Mary Kay Consultant…I didn’t use my Day Solution with the facial sunscreen). After a swim and a change of clothes, we headed out. We stopped in Park Rapids at the Dairy Queen for a quick supper. Willy had his supper too and of course he got his small vanilla cup. I was walking toward him and he was just staring at me until he finally realized what I had. Oh, did he get excited! We spoil him, obviously.

So, another trip that has come and gone. Not too many left. Two family reunions, a weekend off (if it’s nice we may still go out to the lake for the day), and then its five days in Sioux Falls for site seeing and the LifeLight Christian Musical Festival—our second annual trip. We haven’t talked about September yet. We’ll have to see what it brings. It’s kind of sad knowing we’re counting down now, though I won’t miss the work. But its weekends like this one that I have to hold onto to bring me through the long no-camping winter. It's good to have the ability to close my eyes and meditate a little, bringing myself back to a campground and a wonderful night like Saturday night. They say there is no such thing as perfect, but Saturday came pretty close.