Navy Yard shooter on medication

/rant on

The lack of attention to this latest mentally ill man's treatment is making me angry. It's also making me lose compassion for my fellow citizens. IF you lack the basic awareness to recognize the utter disregard for common sense solutions that do NOT exceed safe levels that pervades so much of the health care system (at the behest of big insurance & big pharma!) then you deserve whatever lazy method of 'over-kill' that the system drowns you with!

There is this whole mindset of "if a little is good then a LOT is BETTER" that is ruining 1)our minds! 2)our doctors! 3)our health care system!

It's not true!

Think about this with a smidge of common sense - if a tap of the riding crop at the final turn of a big race makes the horse go faster....does that mean beating his skin off with the crop will make him FLY?

That's just silly, right?

So is the idea of giving antibiotics for EVERY sniffle, cough or scrape! In larger & larger doses, too!


So is the idea of treating a mental illness or imbalance whose source or cause is NOT yet clear with heavy doses of mind-altering chemicals!

Really?!?

If a doctor doesn't know what is CAUSING someone to hear voices (or behave aggressively), then would it make sense to prescribe massive amounts of drugs that can, as a SIDE EFFECT, cause one to hallucinate, increase anger or depression, consider suicide, or intensify one's sense of impending doom?!?

Please understand me, I am NOT vilifying the doctors here! They are wrapped ever-so-tightly in a silken cocoon of restrictions & demands laid on them by Big Insurance & Big Pharma. Between the malpractice fees they HAVE TO pay in order to practice, & the hoops they have to jump through in order to bill our insurance for services, it's a miracle we have ANY doctors at all! Let's not discuss the massive incentives laid out there by the pharmaceutical companies that offer easily-gained monetary solutions to the tsunami of fees these doctors face!

But the doctors DO have the education & sense to stand up & be a voice of reason AGAINST all this excess "care" promoted by insurance parameters & pharma's research needs. They face a dilemma & they have to make a choice. They can either take the lazy route & simply follow the guidelines laid out by those who are NOT health care professionals! OR...they can take a stand & raise their voices with the people for whom they seek to care!

That means WE have to educate ourselves & make our voices HEARD! That means we have to let our doctors know that we support them, trust them & NEED them. We need them to make a choice...

A simple choice - speak WITH us or fail to care FOR us!

Does anyone else see what I'm seeing here? Or do I need some heavy doses of mind-altering medications, hmm?

/rant off

Measurements

Measurements

Today I was again surprised at the contradictory nature of most people. We all, as individuals, live our lives in a fairly solitary manner. What I mean by that is that *I* see life & the events around me from *MY* unique perspective. I live, act, choose, & define things based on that singular viewpoint.  While I can, & sometimes do, attempt to explain my individual reasons & motivations for the choices I make, that does not mean that I seek to 1) have my reasons validated by anyone else........or 2) expect anyone else to make *their* choices using MY reasons.

All too often, I see people making statements about what they believe, why they believe it & then they demolish the validity of their personal perspective by insisting that it is the measure of someone ELSE'S validity! These people usually get to pounding that pulpit of condemnation when they feel like they have been measured by another & found to be lacking. What always amazes me is how vociferously they deny the perspicacity of the other person's opinion of them, all while they are insisting that theirs is the ONLY opinion by which ANYone can be measured.

Lemme ask you all this -- IF you feel that no one else BUT you can define you, then how hypocritical is it to insist that YOU can define someone else? Another question -- IF you must repeatedly attempt to tear down the validity of another's opinion, then how can you expect anyone to believe that the opinion of others is SO unimportant to you? If it WAS "unimportant" I'd bet you wouldn't spend SO much energy trying to invalidate it!

I do think it is possible to measure & judge others within the scope of my own experiences. I do not think I am going to be infallible, however. My experiences, like everyone else's, are limited, & hence my understanding is also limited. Does that mean I will abdicate ALL responsibility for my life & just accept anything & anyone on faith?? Absolutely not! I try hard to gather information from as many sources as possible, & from the full spectrum of opinion - good to bad, before I make a choice or judgment. When I am wrong, & yes, I am at times ( I KNOW this is hard for some of you to believe! ;-D), I study my errors thoroughly in an effort to ensure that I do NOT make such a mistake again. To me, those mistakes, from which I have learned, are the marks on MY yardstick by which I can measure my life & my progress as a human being. I wonder about those people who never make mistakes -- what the hell do they measure themselves with? A blank yardstick?? Or maybe they use someone else's yardstick & never seem to measure up? Maybe that's why they are SO defensive when judged by those who have a well-marked yardstick?

Measure your OWN life with your OWN yardstick! Your yardstick cannot measure the life of another. It was not marked by their life's lessons & so cannot measure their life. Another's life can ONLY be measured by THEIR yardstick!

Food for thought:

~"The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else."~Geoffrey Gaberino

Teach a Man to Fish

Teach a Man to Fish....

As some of you may know, I work assisting folks with disabilities.  I thoroughly enjoy this work! I get to promote, on a daily basis, the freedom & greatness in people who have had little to no reason to hope for either.

Most of the people I assist are developmentally delayed in some manner. They are capable of most everything you & I are capable of, however, it simply takes them a bit longer to assimilate the knowledge needed to accomplish a given goal or task. This is the "delayed" part of their development. Most people think of mental retardation as a "medical condition" that requires "treatment". In fact, usually the only thing "required" for folks with M.R. to experience freedom & greatness in their daily lives is a bit of patience & persistence by those who seek to assist them.

I am not a doctor, I do not have a medical degree. I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I do not treat mental illnesses. I do NOT "treat patients", I teach people. That's it, that's all & it's that simple.

I am invited into the lives of people who recognize that they have a vulnerability on which they would like to work. They recognize that this is an obstacle that they are not fully prepared to deal with so they invite me to teach them ways to overcome that obstacle & attain their goal or goals. The weakness does not go away, & our goal, as a team, is not to make it go away. Our goal, working together, is to succeed DESPITE that singular weakness.

I do not "do for them"...instead, I help them to learn how to do for themselves. Much like counselors of all sorts of disciplines, I rarely give directions, instead I ask questions geared towards prompting thought & logic, study & reason. The intention is to essentially make myself, as teacher/guide, obsolete. I work hard to help them attain the level of self-reliance & independence necessary to no longer need my presence & help. Some folks often see that as a tad cruel -- refusing to "give them the answers" to problems. I personally would be insulted by someone who thought I was not worth the time to show me how to problem-solve for myself. I tend to treat others the way I would want to be treated, so I only make suggestions, ask questions & mention alternatives so that those I assist might find their own path to their goals.

We've all heard the old adage: "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man TO fish & you feed him for a lifetime!"

I have often felt that a lot of the people I have met in daily life are also "developmentally disabled", although they have not been diagnosed thus. Just as M.R. can occur through trauma to the brain, so other traumas can cause other delays in development. Anyone who has experienced severe trauma to their psyche as a child can attest to the ways it often hinders the natural process of developing healthy interactions. Traumas, abuses, molestations, & neglect negatively affect the brain's development in the earliest months & years of life. A child whose brain has been crippled in this manner has difficulties throughout the rest of their life in areas such as 1)forming healthy attachments, 2) developing a healthy self-image, 3) normal nurturing of dependents. There are other areas that are deeply affected, but those are the most apparent & far-reaching. 

Many folks who had rough childhoods, marked by traumas & various abuses, are fortunate to have had what professionals refer to as "helping witnesses". While this person may not have been able to protect the child from the traumatic event, they ARE able to mitigate the resulting damage somewhat merely through their care, warmth & compassion following such traumas.

We learn what we live. Thanks to a few "helping witnesses" in my own childhood, I learned to help myself. I then turned about & found a way to help others overcome disabilities & delays. To me, it is important to pass on that spirit of balance, determination & self-reliance. It's rarely "easy" to overcome our flaws, weaknesses & disabilities, but the rewards are worth the hard work.  I am damned thankful that I had some help, a few excellent loving examples & the inner strength to overcome my own disabilities.

Of course.........one cannot begin the work to overcome such crippling beginnings unless one examines their life history & reveals such events, studies them & gets help to restore balance to one's manner of functioning.

Lots of people will tell you that life is too short to spend much time "over-thinking" things.  *I* insist that life is too short to dismiss such all-encompassing handicaps!  Examine your life, deal with the weights chained to your proverbial ankles, understand your own weaknesses & disabilities, then discover ways to succeed DESPITE them! There ARE people who can, & do, help! You just have to ASK!

Food for thought:

~"An unexamined life is not worth living."~Socrates

~"The more internal freedom you achieve, the more you want: it is more fun to be happy than sad, more enjoyable to choose your own emotions than to have them inflicted on you by mechanical glandular processes, more pleasurable to solve your problems than to be stuck with them forever."~Robert Wilson

~"The typical human life seems to be quite unplanned, undirected, unlived, and unsavored. Only those who consciously think about the adventure of living as a matter of making choices among options, which they have found for themselves, ever establish real self-control and live their lives fully."~Karl Albrecht

~"People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally ''being lived.'' They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates and society."~Stephen R. Covey

Survivor

I'm a Survivor

In recent weeks, I have encountered several situations that brought up this concept, in conversation or in my own introspection.  I’m really just hashing out my thoughts on it at the moment & I do that best by putting things into words, as best I can at least. So, here goes…

I’ve written before on the idea of each person living & measuring their life by their own yardstick. It seems to me that as individuals there is no other way for us to view & judge things except through the unique lens of our own experience & understanding.  With that in mind, I sincerely believe that no two people will see, experience or react, to a situation the same way. Too many variables involved for that to occur, so…while we can, will & often must make judgments (from our unique perspective), it seems to me only prudent & reasonable to accept the possibility that we could be mistaken. No one will handle or react to circumstances in the exact same manner that another person would. We are not robots with identical programming, regardless of how many similarities we may share.

With that understood, let me get to the meat of this writing.

I am tired of the “helpless victim” mentality that pervades our world today. YES, people live through horrible, mind-boggling, traumatic events. YES, people are victimized by OTHER people. YES, such things have lasting repercussions, most of which are negative to the extreme. I am not trying to be a foolish polly-anna & insist that all things are rosy. I know, from personal experience, that bad things DO happen to good & innocent people, through little or no fault of their own. This is not my contention.

My issue is with the choices people make in the aftermath of such life-changing events.

I’ll share an example from my own life, to better illustrate the crux of the matter, as I see it. I was molested in my childhood, more than once & by more than one person. It altered my perception of men, trust, & the appropriate sorts of interaction I should seek in my future relationships. Following the final incident, I was placed in foster-care for my own safety & was fortunate to have foster-parents who provided a truly safe haven. I was also placed in several counseling programs, some more productive than others of course, & I participated in them with fervor.

That was the moment of choice. The crossroads in my life that thrust upon me a decision that would forever change the way I viewed others who had experienced similar traumas. I CHOSE to ACTIVELY participate in my own healing.

I’m sitting here wondering if I need to reiterate that….

In the group counseling sessions, I watched many of the others express their feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, & hopelessness. I decided that I was not going to resign myself to the idea that I would never heal, never get past this injury, never know a healthy relationship with a man. I shared my own terrors, my own feelings of helplessness. I also shared my sense of rage, my hunger for retribution, my craving for redress. I shared my need to take BACK power over my life, my choices, my health, be that mental, emotional or physical health. After 6 weeks, I asked my caseworker to permit me to drop the group sessions as I felt they were no longer productive & to her query of why I felt that, I replied that I did not wish to wallow in the pit of self-pity. It was time to climb out of that dark, tear-soaked pile of victims.

I did continue to see a counselor three times a week for nearly two years. In the years (ok, decades ;-D) since then, I have sought out further counseling, at various times, for various reasons.  I worked hard on recovery. I did not want validation as a victim, I wanted to take back my place as a whole person, & the only path towards that goal that existed for me was the path of the survivor.

I chose that path.

Let me assure you, I did not avoid all the traps & pitfalls along the way to where I am today. I fell prey to a few poor choices, influenced by the warping effects of what I’ve experienced. I own those mistakes. They are mine, I made them, & I learned from them. I actually value most of them a great deal, as they are the indelible marks of life’s lessons on the yardstick by which I measure my personal progress. There are some mistakes I even made more than once, especially regarding my relationships with men. However, I was not a victim in any of those situations. I was responsible for my own choice to participate, & good or bad, I learned from it. I also survived.

I look around me today at people who have experienced traumatic circumstances & I see a very stark demarcation amongst them. I look into the many pity-pits & I see the wailing, moaning, teeth-gnashing hordes of victims &  there, scattered among them,  a few brave souls, defiantly clawing their way out of the pit in which they find themselves. I’m astounded to see the many hands that grasp at them, trying with all the repressed fury of a violated human to drag those Survivors back down into the hopeless pit of victims.

I often stop & reach down to pull the Survivor up, lending my own strength, however paltry, to their upward motion, against the weight of their trauma, their scars & the seething minions of helplessness hanging from their ankles. If those few want to survive, then I feel it’s my duty to do what I can, whenever I can, to help them find a moment’s refuge. Someone did that for me, gave me that safe haven where my spirit had the calmness to see that I did, indeed, have a choice in my future. I consider it similar to the concept of “paying it forward”. It’s not because I expect something from those survivors whose hands I might hold so briefly. It’s not about what I get back for my effort. It’s about sharing with others the opportunity that I was given so long ago, the opportunity to choose. The opportunity to survive.

So, when you are there, climbing & clawing your way up out of a pit of pity, & someone’s fingernails are digging into your ankles, pulling you back down. When that feeling of despair wells up sourly in your throat & you want to cry out with rage, kicking at those “poor pitiful, lonely victims”, look up. Call out, ask for help & accept it when it reaches its hand down to you. If you have to kick loose a few victims, do so with no regret. Don’t look back & get caught in the trap of the pity-pit. Kick free, & do like me – listen for those faint calls from the survivors as they climb, & answer them whenever possible.

One day, the victim who tried so desperately to pull you back just might tire of the salty brine of the pity-pit & start climbing out, hoping for help as they feel the tenacious breath of victims on their toes. They may even cry out, & you may hear them. Do you truly think they will refuse your hand because you once, long ago, kicked them loose, in order to survive? Trust me, they’ll be damned glad that you made it! The only people who will reject you are the people who want to remain in the pity-pit. They reject anyone who proves that there’s life to live after victimization.  They reject that choice, they deny that responsibility & they won’t survive.

Make the choice, don’t look back, & pay it forward. I did, & I’m a survivor.

Hummer Wars

VERY cold out this morning - 28degrees at the time of this photo! Note the ice on the pool!

As I took the photo of the icy pool, something buzzed over my head, & I backed up to get the following images of a pair of battling hummingbirds.

Back & forth, they tussled, sometimes facing off...

...sometimes chasing each other around the feeder...

...occasionally one would wait a moment, letting the other grab just a sip...

...before diving in to batter the other with madly whirring wings...

At times, you could actually HEAR the impacts!

At times, one would perch on the rafters, while the other hovered about, searching like a police helicopter!

They chased each other for nearly 2 hours, off & on...

Once settling on the rafters to peer at each other before another round of chase.

Finally, they settled on a wire to catch their wee breaths...

...& the peace talks must have been constructive, because the "no-fly zone" seemed to vanish for the rest of the morning!

...or maybe the colorful male moving in changed the strategy!