Book List that Inspired My Journey of Life

* 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (for getting it together)
* The Dance of Intimacy (for getting it together)
* Conscious Living (creating the life you want)
* Trauma and Recovery (understanding trauma)
* Emotional Intelligence (understanding the brain)
* Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (facing trauma in the body)
* Trauma Proofing Your Kids (raising a child)
* What Color is Your Parachute (finding your skills for work)
* The Artist's Way (developing art skill)
* Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (developing art skill)
* Deep Play (for the relationship)
* The 5 Languages of Love (for the relationship)
* The Happiest Baby on the Block (for new moms)

There are more, but this is a good start.

Environmental Influence on Suicide

When an individual is in a rigid or chaotic environment, where when the presence of a threat is possible and when is unknown, the result is a person becomes vigilant.  Vigilance results in concrete thoughts, another words a person's brain gets stuck and access to the abstract thinking center gets cut off.  As environments get harsher, there is movement to different stages of limbic thought.  The last stage is terror that results in reflexive thought.  I think the role of environment on the brain in suicidal behavior is important to recognize, as I study a table about children's brain development in Dr. Bruce Perry's book - The Boy Who Was Raised By a Dog.

Harsh environments cause a person's brain to create states of terror.  One can trigger early states of terror in a persons life by a touch, loud noise, yelling, etc.  So, it seems to makes sense that the same would hold true for professions where bodily harm is highly possible.  These professions would include things like police work, construction, the military, and perhaps human trafficking rescue work.  Being able to relax the brain in harsh environments should be a focus, if we want to assist people in extending their lives.  With relaxation, folks can begin to strategize more and access their thinking brain to engage creative vs stereotypic or rigid problem solving.

The threat of cultural collapse, as in historical trauma, could be a highly threatening environment also.  

That's all the thought I have right now.  Off to play therapy with my son.  If you are suicidal and want to engage in therapy or just connection, one can start the journey by calling 800-273-TALK.

Peace, 
Carol

My Courage to Live

I can remember very well my father's response when I was living a life I hated at age 21 about counseling.  He said you can not call the insurance company, my job is not going well and that will cause me to be fired.  I had lost everything I cared about for a man.  I dropped out of school, because he said so.  I took risks that I wouldn't ordinarily take and allowed him to abuse me spiritually and psychologically.  I drank to cope with the daily rage that I felt inside about my situation.  One day was so bad that I just started screaming and could not stop, as a reflex reaction.  I was absolutely miserable.  Then he left me.  When he left, I felt like I had absolutely nothing to offer to life.  Somewhere inside I found more rage and I focused it on getting help.  I reached out to the insurance company told them I was suicidal and got a counselor that week.  We worked for months and in time my life changed.  I started reading books for healing and inspiration, I asked other family members to help me, and I went back to school.  Eventually I took medicines that lifted my mood a bit.  I talked about thoughts and restructured them with my therapist.  I said goodbye to people and places that I felt were dangerous and I didn't want to be in over time.  In time I found peer support that enhanced my self esteem and general self-confidence in my abilities.  The thoughts lingered here and there, coming in and out like an automatic thought even when well.  I have learned that the thoughts get louder and more detailed, when my life is not going the way I want it to.  When I'm happy with my environment and my medication they disappear all together.  Digging in and finding community through creative arts and advocacy has really given me wings.  I wish you well on your journey in finding your wings, you deserve them and it just takes time with baby steps in the direction you want your life to be in.
A great step in starting a journey of life is to connect with counselors by phone by calling 800-273-TALK (The Suicide Prevention Lifeline).

 

Sometimes We Cry and We Can't Name Why...

Today my son cried at a cartoon that seemed really to remind me of a situation he went through as a child before he could talk.  I asked him if he remembered one of his friends from that time and he cried even harder.  He couldn't name why he was crying.  We store some memories of our development in the reptilian brain, the part of the brain that has no words.  It is our primitive reptilian brain and where our earliest memories are stored.  I said sometimes we cry and we don't know why, but it doesn't mean its not really important to cry.  It was an awful chapter in his life.  I thought he didn't want to go to the sitters house, because he didn't want to be separated from me.  I thought after talking with the pediatrician that his sadness at separation was all developmental.  The clue should have been he was always happy before. We didn't learn the truth until a couple of years later after taking to someone who reported abuse to us.  I can't change that time in his life.  I thought he was better off in a home, because he got so sick in daycare.  He wasn't.  Abuse can be prevented by ensuring your child is not left alone in the care of other adults.  Something I learned from the darkness to light campaign to prevent abuse.  I'm just glad we made it through together.

Women and Work

As a woman in the workplace, it has always befuddled me when other women don't like me.  Today I have some clarity after talking to an executive.  We were discussing the general hierarchy of life, how men dominate the workplace usually.  That's not unusual, well except at my job where the executives are primarily female.  We were discussing racial inequities in the workplace and how people protect the status quo.  That wasn't unusual to my ears.  What was really interesting was that she said women attack other women, because they are not male.  Well, this was new to me.  I would think the first instinct of a women would be to support and build.  When this doesn't happen, I have been taken a back.  Like way back.  It makes me quiet and anxious.  So anxious that I try to make myself somehow different, taking that micro-aggression personally.  So, as a woman that has questioned the status quo in the hiring process in general; I wonder how I can push female co-workers to recognize their own biases?  Maybe some environments do this naturally, because I love the way it feels in the workplace I'm at.  It feels equitable and fair.