Working from Home (Sand and the Mindful Mind)

I've been such a neurotic wreck lately - up and down, in and out of depression, shifting being being ok and being a mess. I don't really know why...I know there have been some small triggers lately, things that have upset me, but it is so minor in comparison to how terrible I am feeling. But, I suppose that's how BPD works - the emotional reaction is disproportionate to the cause. I've noticed another aspect of BPD lately too - the edge of my thumbnails and the bottom on my right foot are very uncomfortable because I have been picking and peeling at the skin on them. This is a self-destructive reaction for me, and I'm never quite sure what causes it...but I know when I am biting my nails and chewing my thumbs...and especially when I am picking at my feet until they bleed and hurt...that I am not in good shape.

Yesterday, I had to force myself to get up and get ready for work when I didn't want to...then my shift got cancelled so I got to stay at home and sleep. Then I had to force myself to get out of bed for my therapy appointment, but that ended up getting cancelled too. I tried to cheer myself up by walking around the dollar store and buying a few things, but I don't know how much it helped. I even indulged in some oatmeal cookies last night! But yet, my nerves were so shot last night I couldn't even enjoy my favorite TV shows. I took some sleeping pills and went to bed, hoping to wake up different, but I didn't. I had nightmares all night and woke up still a nervous wreck, so I chose to skip working and stay in bed all morning (I always feel like Esther at the beginning of The Bell Jar when I do that, and for some reason I find the similarity comforting).

As I lay there in bed, drifting in an out of the same nightmares, two thoughts came into my mind:

My first thought was that I need to work on Mindfulness more. Its the aspect of DBT that I least understand, maybe because I come from a conservative Christian background where meditation seems to be a dirty word and participating in the practice would be considered a treason of the accepted theology. But I have found that even the most open-minded of ministers don't always understand the psychology of the human mind, let alone the illness of the human mind. More importantly, I have learned that it is healthy for me to stop and consider where my mind is wandering, and recognize the thought processes that are detrimental to my health is key to my spiritual and mental well-being....and I am not betraying my God by doing this. And after reading Eat, Pray, Love and seeing the variety of people participating the Ashram that Elizabeth Gilbert went to, I know that I am not the only person like me to seek healing through meditation. So I've decided to learn more about the process, and use it is to better myself, and in those times that my mind is going crazy and telling me I am crazy, I will try to use Mindfulness Meditation to shut it up.

The second thought I had was of sand. More specifically, of a prayer-time practice I once did on a retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We sat with a Tupperware bin full of sand, and used a chopstick to write each of our fears into the sand, then we prayed and allowed God to wipe them away, symbolically wiping them out of the sand. I loved this moment of the retreat - I wanted to get my own box of sand when I got home but I never got around to it. SO this morning I was remembering the sand, and relating it to the mindfulness practice of imagining your distressing thoughts written in the sand on a beach, where the waves come and wash them away. So I decided I wanted to finally get myself a box of sand to keep, and today I am planning on going to the store and doing that.

I kept those thoughts close, clung to them like a security blanket, turned them over and over in my mind like beads on a rosary. They comforted me this morning, and when I finally woke up to the day, I sprung out of bed determined to put them into action.

So today, I'm at home, working on things that will make me better...