Category Archives for Mental Health

Cleaning For My Cleaner

Every once in a while, I do something that makes me question how rational, maybe even how sane, I am. Friday was one of those times. On Friday morning, I had my first appointment with a new cleaning person who came highly recommended by my friend R. She works with the cleaning staff at R’s work site. A few months ago when I told him what happened with the woman I hired to clean my place and do my laundry, but who chose to take advantage of my situation instead, he put out some feelers to see if there might be someone willing to work for me on a casual basis. Lucky for me, someone on his staff responded to his request. After playing a long round of phone tag, we finally connected, and I laid out for her the kind of things I need done and the rate I’m able to pay. She accepted my offer then we agreed on a day of the week that works best for both of us.

Here’s where my insanity kicked in. Before she arrived on Friday morning, I felt panicked. My place was what I consider a disaster area. Although, to most people who come to visit me it still looks clean and organized, I can’t cope with the mess I see. I got out of bed earlier than I needed to and started cleaning up. I put away the pile of clothes that had grown on the side of my bed I don’t sleep on either because they were not put away the last time my laundry was done or because that’s where they land when I decide an item of clothing isn’t what I want to wear. I rolled up my yoga mat and put away my sneakers. I washed the pots, measuring cups, utensils, and bowls I used a couple of days before to cook asparagus and mushroom risotto, but then didn’t have the strength to clean up after eating what turned out to be a delicious meal. Then I turned my attention to the growing assortment of art supplies I have, which I packed into one of the many boxes they arrive to my home in that needed to be put out for recycling.

I know how this sounds, but I couldn’t help myself. The clean freak that’s been living in my head since I was a little girl insisted that I make a good impression on the person who was coming to clean my home for the first time. I still can’t believe I did that: I staged my home to look less messy so I wouldn’t be judged. Even pain can’t override the unachievable expectations and rules hardwired into my brain that make me behave irrationally. I’m so embarrassed that I did this I haven’t told any of my friends or family. The funny thing is that if one of them told me they did this I would laugh at them and tell them how ridiculous it is to do something like this when the purpose of paying someone to do it is so you don’t have to. DUH!

Being a perfectionist has been a significant issue throughout my life that stems from a need to control things. Even though there has been an upside to it, like having a strong work ethic and being independent, the downside is tremendous. Feeling that other people in your life can’t live up to the standards you set for yourself is one of them, especially when it’s impossible for you to meet them yourself. It also becomes a problem when, like on Friday, you hire someone to do something for you but question whether he or she will judge you because you can’t do it yourself or if they are competent enough to do what you need – she did an outstanding job by the way.

One of the things I’m learning about perfectionism is that even if you don’t ask the questions out loud, your actions ask them for you. I clearly still have a lot of work to do to overcome the need to control my environment and my image; and I must let go of this need soon because the potential downside now is the added harm to my health.

 

Enchanted – Happy Working Song

Gratitude and Creativity: Low Emotional Valley

I’m just realizing that I spent the better part of the past month in a low emotional valley. The failure of my acupuncture treatment hit me hard. I know this because of the smatterings of energy I managed to invest in anything that resembled something creative, including how little I wrote. The recovery from the pain flare up caused by the acupuncture has been slow – I haven’t been able to reduce the doses of my pain medications. The frustration and disappointment of another treatment that doesn’t work for me is becoming hard to bear. As much as I try being positive, the melancholy found its way in and decided to hang around as I drank copious amounts of tea and binge watched TV while sleep eluded me most nights.

My uninvited guest sapped me of so much energy that I became too tired to sleep. Too tired to feed myself properly, and barely able to meet the few commitments I made to family and friends. The strange thing is while this was happening I didn’t recognize it because I was still moving, still breathing, and still feeling pain. I’m not numb, but I was enveloped by whatever the opposite of being mindful and aware of oneself might be. Then, this morning, as I turned the corner on another sleep-deprived night I flipped through a few pages of my art/gratitude journal and saw how little my brain and hands have produced because of my low energy and sinking emotions.

What was I trying to find in the pages of a sketchbook at 6:45 on a Saturday morning? I was looking for a blank space to teach myself how to draw a new, to me, Zentangle pattern. The space was easy to find because, as I said, I haven’t done a lot of creating lately. I keep saying that I’m teaching myself how to draw. However, at the rate I’m going I may not reach that goal. I have the books and the art supplies I need, but without motivation and a positive mood, that amounts to a lot of blank paper and unused pens, pencils and paint.

I noticed that the time I spend in these emotional valleys seems to be getting longer each time and my awareness of that space is losing its sharpness. This morning, wanting to draw a new combination of lines alerted me to the presence of the current valley. I wanted to connect with one of the things that help to stop me from falling down the steep slopes and that desire, that smallest of desires, pulled me upward.

Last night, while sleep stayed far away from me, I spent time on Adele Bruno’s website Tickled to Tangle. She’s a Certified Zentangle Teacher (CZT) from whose posts I’m learning a lot. She writes a series called “Tips for Tangling” where she shares great step-by-step information about how to draw Zentangle patterns that makes drawing them a lot easier. Because of her posts, I’m becoming more comfortable and confident about drawing in ink and not worrying about making mistakes. After all, in Zentangle there are no mistakes. It was one of her posts that made me reach for my sketchbook: Tangling Radiant Sooflowers. I wanted to try creating my own radiant drawing but I first needed to learn the tangle pattern, Sooflowers created by Livia Chua, which luckily wasn’t at all difficult. After a quick practice, I worked on my tile and made one change to customize it. Instead of stippling the white spaces with dots, I filled them with small Tipple circles.

Sooflowers – Livia Chua
Radiant Sooflowers – Inspired by Adele Bruno (CZT)

My tired eyes and shaky hands aside, I’m happy with the result. I’m also happy that although I didn’t sleep at all last night, Adele Bruno’s creativity alerted my awareness to my low emotional valley and inspired me to start climbing out.

 

Ed Sheeran – I See Fire

Gratitude and Creativity: Drawing Myself Out Of Heaviness

I’ve been writing about such heavy feelings and topics lately that I felt the need to lighten things up. It helps that the sun has lit up the otherwise overcast winter skies for a few minutes each afternoon this week and that I got some unexpected rest while meditating yesterday morning – I fell into a deep sleep for about an hour with my face planted in a pile of pillows. Not getting sleep tends to fry my brain and has a dampening effect on my moods. Even though I try to sound and act cheerful, the weight of fatigue drags me down like an iron anchor. I have to work hard not to succumb to the tug of depression, which only adds layers to my fatigue.

To counteract the heaviness I’ve been researching different art forms to figure out which one suits me best and what I might be able to achieve on a larger scale if I teach myself how to draw and paint. I’ve encountered some interesting artists. One artist whose gallery and website I really enjoyed exploring is Sandrine Pelissier. She’s a mixed media artist who creates beautiful paintings using acrylic paint, watercolor, dry pastels, graphite, oil sticks, and vibrant inks on paper, yupo paper, and canvas. She incorporates things like string, plaster, and paper to create interesting textures. She even incorporates life drawings and Zentangle patterns into her work. I’m considering taking one of her online classes to add some structure to my learning.

In the meantime, I started a small project. I’m making Zentangle tiles using a single tangle pattern (monotangle). It’s intended in part to make me practice drawing the patterns and steady my hands that tend to shake when I draw, while helping me to relax because I don’t meditate as much as I should. This is becoming a helpful practice because I realized that once I draw the patterns in my Zentangle notebook I may add the ones I like to something I draw in my art/gratitude journal, but the others never get drawn again. I also need to practice shading the patterns, which isn’t something I do in my notebook, and I’m not terribly good at right now. To make the project more challenging, instead of drawing random strings (guide lines) on each tile, I’m using the strings from the Tangle Patterns web site. There are currently 196 strings and tangles beyond that number in existence, so I should be busy for a while.

 

Don McLean – Vincent (Starry Starry Night)