10 Items Or Less -- Shedding And Keeping

Archetypes For The Turning Of The Year

For some people, New Years Day means the Rose Bowl.  For others, black-eyed peas.  For my mother, that was the day we were required to organize our clothes drawers.

Where did that come from?  You got me.  But it must be an archetypal response to the turning of the year.  Right now advertising is crowded with sales on organizational supplies.  If you don't know how to organize your sock drawer, surely there is one of those Dummies book to tell you how.

I just looked it up on Amazon.com.  Sure enough, here it is.

Responding, I suppose, to that archetypal imperative, I am currently recycling meeting agendas, staff reports, conference handouts and class notes, things I no longer need since I have become unemployed.

You know me.  Overboard is my middle name.  At 100.4 pounds and still shedding -- make that shredding now -- old checks with my social security number on them, I am well on the way to my goal for the week: to shed my weight in discarded paper.  I am not even counting paper clips and empty three ring binders. 

Benzos

The process is alternately liberating and anxiety-producing.  I dispose of old grudges, and then panic about what I might need after all.  I celebrate, and then I grieve.  I really did do a lot of good work.  And I left important things undone.

It is good that I refilled my prescriptions before I started this project.  Valium is my current best friend. 

Diets Are Hazardous To Your Health

I do not recommend shedding body weight as a New Year's resolution.  I say this every year, because it is one of the most common New Year's resolutions and it is wrong, wrong, wrong.  Dieting is the first step to gaining weight.  You know this.  You take this course every year and you flunk it every year.  When will you ever decide you have paid enough tuition for this lesson?

Yes, I know.  Having put the word diet in my blog, the mindless web crawlers will signal the advertising gods to place ads for weight loss programs on this page.  I do not endorse them.

I did lose weight a few years ago, which makes it thirty-five pounds easier to meet this week's goal.  I did not diet.  I repeat, I did not diet.  I changed the way I eat.  I changed my eating habits.  I still eat anything I want.  It's just the quantity and the frequency that changed.  I love my food.  I did not diet.

But this is not a dieting blog, and you can go searching for a better way to eat somewhere else.

This post is about shedding. 

Ten Items Or Less

My cognitive therapist is big on distraction.  So I watch a lot of movies.  A lot.  Many are movies that did not exist until they jumped off the library shelf at me.  A recent example was 10 Items Or Less.  Filmed in just fifteen days, it was an exercise in shedding all by itself.  It stars Morgan Freeman and Paz Vela, with Rhea Perlman and Danny DeVito in a drive by cameo.  And I do mean drive by.  They were on the set for all of fifteen minutes, during which time they asked for and received a couple of Starbucks lattes.  Then the director told them their lines.  Then they said them.  They never got out of their car.

So at one point Morgan Freeman, playing an actor, asks Paz Vela, playing a grocery clerk, If you could keep just ten items or less in your life, what would they be?  After she names her list, he names his.  That's eleven.  You just have to push it, she says.  This is the theme of her life in the express checkout lane, people who want eleven items when the sign says ten.

Later they change the exercise, If you could get rid of ten items or less in your life, what would they be?

Dinner Party New Year's Eve

I just got home from a dinner party with dear friends and we played that game, 10 Items Or Less.  We never got to the items we would get rid of.  The ones we would keep had so many stories behind them that we had to leave before we could finish the keepers so the restaurant could turn the table.

The right ten items can make a person rich enough, not only for a dinner party, but for a lifetime.

We will get to that other list at the next dinner party.

Ten Items Or Less

So that is my gift to you for the start of the new year, those two questions.  What ten items or less would you keep?  What ten or less would you discard?

Choose well.  You may not need wishes for the new year after all.  You may find you are already rich.

Winter sunrise by Stefan Mayrhofer, in the public domain 

shelves of file folders by Alex Gorzen, licensed under the

Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Cashier at Register by Young in Panama,  licensed under the

Creative CommonsAttribution 2.0 Generic license.

Happy Christmas to my Readers

Feliz Navidad



ميلاد مجيد



圣诞快乐




С Рождеством Хрисовым




Vrolijk Kerstfeest



Feliz Natal




One Last Song -- Joy To The World
This one is signed, as well.

Holiday Shopping for Loonies and Normals Alike

Last year I got an earlier start with my efforts to help you purchase the perfect Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Christmas present.  Here are the links, one for your favorite loonie, the other your favorite normal.  The first is even diagnosis specific.  The most popular pick turned out to be a bluetooth phone for the one who talks back to his/her voices, but is trying to pass.

This year, regular readers know that I have been living and breathing gingerbread.  So this post, like my own shopping, comes late in the season -- Chanukah has passed us by.

Internet.  God bless the internet.

And what with last week's post on happiness fresh in my mind, this year's holiday shopping picks combine the two issues -- where to get what makes for true happiness on the internet.  No, really!

The Sources Of Happiness

Martin Seligman's Authentic Happiness identifies three major sources of happiness, pleasure, engagement and meaningfulness.  So here are suggestions to enhance all three for your favorite loonie or normal.

Let's address one issue first.  Life circumstances, beyond having the essentials, are not really that important an influence on the measure of ones happiness.  But poverty does matter.  If the one you love lives in poverty, go to Amazon.com's gift card section, where you can find gift cards for clothing stores, restaurants, general retail, entertainment and more.  Give us bread, but give us roses are lyrics of a working women's song from the early 20th century.  It's nice, when you are poor, to have the opportunity to choose which is the higher priority this week.

Pleasure

Well, yes.  Feeling good makes you feel good. 

On the other hand, have you seen that bumper sticker, The one who dies with the most toys wins?  That bumper sticker is an example of irony.  I hope it is an example of irony.  I am sure the person who came up with it meant it ironically.  It is possible that the person on whose Lexus SUV you saw the bumper sticker might have missed the point.  That would be sad.

Irony means that the bumper sticker is not true.  The one who dies with the most toys does not win.  I just wanted to make that clear.  Of the three top sources of happiness, pleasure, engagement and meaningfulness, pleasure ranks lowest on the list, happiness producing-wise.  Our mindless pursuit of it notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, perhaps the heart's desire of the person for whom you are shopping is toys.  There are all kinds of toys out there.  Almost all of them, you can find, again, at Amazon.com.  I thought they were a book store.  No, from Automotive to Watches, with books, electronics, movies and even musical instruments between.  If you know what that heart's desire is, you can probably find it there.  If you don't know what that heart's desire is -- are you noticing a theme developing here? -- gift card.

Yes, I know.  This reads like an infomercial for one particular corporate giant that is destroying local businesses across America.  But give me a break.  And give yourself a break.  Your Chanukah presents are already late.  Christmas and Kwanzaa are bearing down like a runaway train.  I don't have time to look up a bunch of choices for you.  I have my own shopping to do.  Internet.

Who am I kidding?  I can't go into stores anyway unless medicated.  Maybe you can relate.  At least I have the Rx!

Engagement

Engagement means being absorbed in the here and now, whether in family, romance, work or hobbies.  That being absorbed is the key, because the wandering mind is an unhappy mind.  Gifts that bring the family together, or send your recipient out on a date or relate to his/her interests can enhance that person's happiness.  And you can find just the gift or gift card at... what has evidently become the Shameless Commerce Division of Prozac Monologues.

Meaningfulness

Okay, all the above is filler.  Here is what I really want to sell this season.  Making a difference.  What makes for meaning is using one's personal strengths to serve some larger end (Seligman's definition.)

One kind of strength is passion.  So let's start with a question.  What is the passion of your gift recipient?

I knew an old lady once who absolutely would not deal with that word passion.  It's a wonder she reproduced.  Like Queen Victoria, she probably closed her eyes and thought about England.  Or, being American (and Episcopalian), she probably thought about The Book Of Common Prayer.

So here is an alternative for Thelma, God rest her soul, and for you if you can't relate to the word passion.  Determination.  What is the determination of your gift recipient.  What is he/she determined to support/challenge/change/make possible in the world?

Now let's go shopping for meaning.

Clean Water For Africa

Here is my passion/determination/story.  The Episcopal Diocese of Iowa has a companion relationship with the Diocese of Swaziland.  Swaziland has had a drought for a decade or so.  There are things that could be done.  But the king has about a hundred wives, and he can't play favorites, can he?  If one has a Mercedes Benz, then each have to have her own Mercedes Benz...  So who can afford to dig wells?

But then this guy in Southeast Iowa developed this technology that turns table salt into chlorine.  For $150, we could get this thing called a chlorinator that produces enough chlorine to give clean water to an entire village.

Well, heck.  I'll buy two!  (The price is now $300).


We took a lot of them over.  Now the Swazis are making them in country.  One year a mission team came back from Swaziland with the story.  An elder from one village had told them, 


Since we got the chlorinator, not one child died last year.

Not one child died last year.

I have never spent any amount of money that has ever given me and will forever give me as much happiness as those six words.

Not one child died last year.

Give your mother or your father this story and clean water for a whole village in Africa right here.  Now we are doing Haiti, too.

So that is how this year's holiday gift-giving guide is going to work, using one's personal strengths/passions/determinations to serve some larger end.

Shopping To Serve A Larger End

UNICEF

Now you can go back to those pleasures.  Do you have a friend who loves camping?  Insecticide treated mosquito nets are a bargain for $18.18, delivery included to places in Africa where one person dies of malaria every 30 seconds.

How about a friend who bakes?  High energy biscuits will feed young children in disaster sites, 1200 for a mere $49.10, again, delivery included.

You can find these and a whole assortment of Inspired Gifts for the health, water, nutrition, education and emergency needs of children around the world at unicef.org.

Heifer International

How about a gift that keeps on giving?  Heifer International provides livestock and training to improve nutrition and generate income, lifting families out of poverty.  Recipients share the offspring with others in the community, multiplying the impact of each gift.

So do you have a friend who wants a pet but is allergic?  Three rabbits, $60.  Aaahh, aren't they sweet?!  We bought bunnies for China one year.  Hunger has been wiped out in China.  Heifer International has moved on to another country.

Do you know a cowboy wannabe?  One heifer, $500.

How about a whole ark with two cows delivered to a Russian village, two sheep to Arizona, two camels to Tanzania, two oxen to Uganda, two water buffalo to Cambodia...  There are fifteen pairs in all for $5000.  For your friend who is delusional?  (Noah/end of the world/delusional -- get it?)

We are just getting started.  Knitters, a knitting basket (llama, alpaca, sheep, angora rabbit) -- $480.  Gourmet, cheeses of the world (how cool is that! heifer, goat, sheep and water buffalo) -- $990.  Homesick Iowan, pig -- $120.  Let's not neglect our vegan friends, trees -- $60.

If you are shopping for me, I have long had my eye on that water buffalo, a mere $250.



All of these are available in shares, by the way, if that fits your budget better.

Seriously.  Water buffalo. 

Habitat For Humanity

Now let's return to where this series started and my life for that last two months, Habitat for Humanity, building affordable housing by using volunteers, including those who will own - and pay for - the houses.  Whether your designated gift recipient is Martha Stewart or Frank Lloyd Wright, Habitat has its own gift catalog with everything from light switches to flooring.  One year my sister-in-law gave me a kitchen sink. 

One.org

If I haven't hit a bulls eye yet, one.org is the meaningfulness equivalent of amazon.com.  This one may appeal to the rockers in the crowd.  Cofounded by Bono, Bob Geldof, et al, one.org created a partnership of all sorts of groups working to eliminate world poverty by 2015 -- the Millenium Development Goals.

Here you will find more about one.org.  Here you will find the partners (Bread for the World, Oxfam, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, various churches, etc.)  Each one has its own focus, allowing you to find your perfect match.

And since this is my blog, after all, I will put a word in for Episcopal Relief and Development, ER-D.  When earthquake or hurricane strikes, ER-D listens to local people to determine how best to help.  Then they stay with it after the cameras move on.  For example, ER-D is still working on economic redevelopment in New Orleans.  And this is one church organization you can support that will NOT ask potential recipients where they go to church.

Joy That Lasts

So there you have it.  Without leaving the comfort of home, without even having to change out of your jammies, you can find the perfect gift, one that will give joy beyond the end of the year.

Not one child died last year.

clipart from Microsoft

cotton candy photo by Maggie D'Urbano,

used under the Creative Commons License (cropped)

child with unsafe water by Pierre Holtz - UNICEF, licensed under Creative Commons

child drinking well water by Scott Harrison licensed under Creative Commons
mosquito netting by Tjeerd wiersma, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
photo of rabbits by Kessa Ligerro and made available under the GNU Free Documentation License 
Entrada dos animais na arca de Noé by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglioni, public domain
photo of water buffalo by Da and made available under the GNU Free Documentation License
GNU -- somehow seems appropriate, doncha think?  

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy -- Gingerbread Style

First Cognitive Therapy Technique -- Distraction

My therapist said Think of something you might find enjoyable.  You don't have to do it.  You don't even have to enjoy it.  The goal is not to move your mood from 1 to 10.  Any mood change is a bonus.  The goal is simply to give you something else to think about [-- besides what I had been thinking about.]

Distraction is one of those really irritating CBT techniques.  I am traumatized and can't stop thinking about this.  Okay, so think about something else.  I pay money for this?

But my other therapist, totally different method, said pretty much the same thing.  And I was six weeks from a major project I had promised for the holiday season.  And I am not sure it would have worked except that the wheel was ready to turn from early autumn danger to late autumn hypomania.  But he did and it was.  So...

She said think about it.

I guess I overshot the mark.

Ya think?

To Diagnose Hypomania -- Pay Attention

I used to churn out 10-12 gingerbread houses each season, back in my undiagnosed days.  I used the Joy of Cooking recipe and floor plan.  But each and every one was one of a kind: a log cabin made of pretzel sticks and peanuts for the chimney, another with candy canes on the roof for a chalet effect... No, I wasn't manic.  I was excited...

It could be said I don't know when to quit.  So a simple suggestion, think about something you might enjoy instead of what you are thinking about right now, became a fourteen inch high, furnished gingerbread house.

See what I mean?  Once I decided to tile the kitchen floor with candy corn, I was gone.  Note the faucets for the aluminum kitchen sink.  And the handles on the refrigerator.  There is a fireplace hearth down there, made of a Milano cookie.  Even as I was installing these things, I knew I was out of control.  But I could not stop.

Here is a nine patch quilt, made from fruit rollups.  Plus a teddy bear on the pillows.  Should you decide to start quilting with fruit rollups, here are my methods.  Unroll them a few days in advance to dry a bit.  Don't overreach.  Let the materials tell you what they are willing to do.  Use liberal amounts of vegetable oil on your fingers and cutting utensils.  Keep the knife clean.  I recommend an exacto knife, under supervision if you have a problem with sharp objects.  Place your product between oiled sheets of cling wrap, then between sheets of paper.  Iron at LOW heat for five seconds.  Breathe.

I refer to this as my diagnosable gingerbread house.

By doubling the dimensions, I had introduced engineering issues.  I needed weight bearing walls.The closet was designed for that purpose.  I made a double wall facing the living room.  But I failed to double the wall with the door.  Two by twelve inches, it was the first piece to break.  The pretzel sticks inside the closet hold it together.


Metaphor Alert -- Community

If I were to get philosophical -- and while I bent over this project, holding my breath and waiting for icing to turn to cement, I had plenty of time -- I would reflect that sometimes things or people are created that do not have the structural integrity to withstand the pressures to which they will be submitted.  Nevertheless, they can get by with a little help from their friends, even friends that brittle themselves, like pretzel sticks.  This is the essence of support groups.  Get into one.

Some of us are not particularly unstable, but we collapse under pressures beyond normal experience.  If we don't have to bear the weight by ourselves, we can make still our own creative contribution to the whole.  The fireplace wall fell into three places.  Twice.  It stood, once it received a full back brace.  The brace is not flashy.  It is not even visible, covered by the outside of the fireplace.  But it is essential.

This is the essence of community.  Christians call it the Body of Christ.  If the house were all ribbon candy, how would it stand?  If the house were all support, what would cover the kitchen floor?

Anyway, diagnosable.  The roof also collapsed, the weight bearing walls notwithstanding, because I pushed too hard while attaching it.  Be gentle with yourself, my friends.  The stronger parts can injure the weaker.  Self-restraint is especially important where you are strong.

But we can learn from our mistakes, and turn them into more creative opportunities.  The roof went for snacks to a bible study group.  I replaced it with a lighter version.  And then I broke one side again.  This time I finally listened to my spouse, and put up just half a roof, so people could look in on that nine patch quilt.  None of us has all the answers.  And sometimes irritating advice is good advice.

Even if it is irritating.

Another Cognitive Therapy Technique -- Dialectical Thinking

Even in the midst of this craziness, I kept aiming at sanity.  My mantra was Prototype, prototype.  The point of a prototype is to make as many mistakes as possible, in order to learn, and not make the same mistakes while doing the real thing.

I was making a lot of mistakes.  Boy, was I learning.

Dialectical thinking means that life is not divided into black and white.  One can hold a painful thought and a positive one in the same brain at the same time.  That and valium got me through.

I learned not to use a double barrel aged single malt scotch as a brace to hold up a wall while assembling, like the soup cans above.  The bottle was missing only as much as is pictured here before I made that particular mistake.  Sigh.

After mopping up the nearly full bottle of scotch and as much shattered glass as I could find, it was time, it was time to stop working on the prototype.  Well, after I built the fire in the fireplace.

Two hot tamales, cut on the bias, a couple little pretzel sticks and a sprinkling of ribbon candy crumbs.  The back of the fireplace is the inside of a mint Milano with the white frosting scraped off.

Like I said, diagnosable.

It wasn't finished.  It still isn't finished.  But the time for prototype was at an end.  The time for the real deal had begun.

To be continued...

all photos of gingerbread houses by Helen Keefe 

photo of scotch by Suat Eman

Summer Reading Picks from Prozac Monologues

Last winter I did the blog piece on movies for surviving the family holiday scene.  With or without family issues, here come my picks for summer reading.  This is an all purpose list, for normals and the mentally interesting alike, and just for fun.   Books to take to the beach -- or the backyard, should the beach be out of reach.

The following is my opinion.  Strongly-held, but my opinion.  Feel free to have your own.  That's what comments are for.

I asked friends for their input in two categories: lovable loonies and alternate worlds -- fiction, unless they could make a very compelling case otherwise.  Now I have a new reading list, too.

We begin with lovable loonies.  My all-time number one favorite book, perfect for beach, book club, hospital bed, you name it, is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore.  You know, there were other gospels that didn't make the original cut.  I don't think this one would have, either.  Nevertheless, it had me at this sentence: The first time I saw the man who would save the world, he was sitting near the central well in Nazareth with a lizard hanging out of his mouth.  It seems Joshua (Jesus) was entertaining his little brother, who kept smashing the lizard's head with a rock, whereupon the savior of the world would put it in his mouth, bring it back to life, and hand it back to his little brother.  Practice for later.  This gospel fills in the missing years of Jesus' life and explains the invention of cappuccino, judo and grace.  A loonier evangelist you could not find.  So that's number one.

Another Christopher Moore pick, though out of season, is The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror.  It reintroduces a character from Lamb.  And boy, is he stupid.  The lovable loony is the sheriff's wife, a former actress who played a Xena-type warrior and never quite got out of character.  In a sub-plot and nod to O'Henry, she quits her meds to save up for her husband's Christmas present, while the sheriff plants an acre of pot.

Actually, the whole purpose of this blog piece is to get more people to read my second favorite book, Lucky Dog by Mark Barrowcliffe -- a talking dog named Reg who helps a helpless loser win at poker -- the helpless loser being the only one who can understand what Reg is saying, of course.  After first meeting him, Dave goes on meds.  So Reg gives Dave the silent treatment, because his feelings are hurt .  Notice the running theme, meds.  This is a Prozac Monologues list.  Eventually Dave misses Reg's conversation, quits his meds and figures out that Reg gives him an advantage at the gaming table.  It's all about smell.  You've got the mob, a rich old lady, a love interest, the world from a dog's point of smell and redemption.  What more could you want for summer reading?

A friend reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut -- whom I already started rereading a few months ago.  Vonnegut makes reference to his lovable loony, Eliot Rosewater in a couple of books.  Rosewater gets his own book in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.  Maybe he has a touch of psychosis (but only some of the time.)  Maybe he is a hopeless idealist.  Maybe he just needs to say no.  But he is indeed lovable and a volunteer fireman.  Bonus loony: Kilgore Trout.

Also in the lovable loony category is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe by Douglas Adams.  Couldn't we all use a book with Don't Panic on the cover?  Hitchhiker's Guide is the first of a triology with five books.  I think the second volume, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is where I learned that every planet in the universe has a drink called gin and tonic.  You make it differently on every planet.  But there you are.  You can get the perfect beverage to accompany your summer reading, assuming the ingredients don't mess with your meds, on any planet in the universe.

I haven't read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde.  Yes, I spelled his name correctly.  Another friend, a bookophile who knows loony recommends it.  It is the first of Fforde's loony alternate reality series, starring Special Operative Thursday Next, a literary detective who is chasing down the evil Acheron Hades who has stolen... It's a Lost in Austen/Inkheart kind of alternate reality, blurring the boundaries between the world of normals and the many worlds of books.

Hitchhiker's Guide and The Eyre Affair are my segue into alternate worlds.  I was heartbroken when we got to the end of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling and lost that annual Hogwarts fix with its witches and wizards, port keys, Marauder's Map and all the rest.  According to a Face Book quiz, if I were a Hogwarts teacher, I would be Remus Lupin.  I may reread all seven books in preparation for the last two movies.  And I am delighted that seven books became eight movies.

Another friend fave and mine, too, is The Wrinkle in Time series by Madeline L'Engle.  These are cross-over youth/adult sci-fi, but you don't have to be a sci-fi fan to appreciate them.  One summer vacation/road trip, my six-year-old listened to Wrinkle on tape.  Every time we stopped for lunch, he wanted to discuss it.  Every time he got to the end, he started again at the beginning, and I was happy to listen with him.  I wonder if this was the root of his vocation as a philosopher.  The misfits are the heroes who save the planet from IT, the force that wants to eliminate unhappiness by eliminating deviance in the universe.  (I suspect that IT really just wants to get rid of deviance.  The unhappiness thing is just part of the sales pitch.)  In the first volume Meg figures out, same and equal are NOT the same thing.  Bonus: it turns out that It was a dark and stormy night is a great way to start a book, after all.

Michael Chabon rewrites history in The Yiddish Policemen's Union.  Imagine that at the end of World War II, Jewish people went to Alaska instead of Israel.  Fifty years later, Alaska is about to revert to the United States.  Enter your basic hapless detective.  Combine a murder mystery, political intrigue, orthodox Jewish mobsters, chess and a red calf.  Shake vigorously.  Serve on the rocks.

Chabon provides another alternate world in a tale of two Jewish adventurerers, Gentlemen of the Road.  Set in 10th century Khazaria, two con men/bodyguards/swashbucklers star in a dime store novel with elegant prose, inadvertently fighting for justice and the rightful heir to the Khazarian throne.

Not all alternate worlds are fantastical.  Like Gentlemen of the Road, books set in real times and places can sweep you up so that you leave your own world and enter the author's.  The day my mother left her third husband, the good stepfather, separating hers and theirs from his, I postponed going crazy by moving to China via Pearl Buck's The Good Earth.  Never mind the 1931 copyright.  It won a Pulitzer Prize, and seventy years later, Oprah made it a Book Club pick.

Lately I have been living in nineteenth century England.  Jane Austen's biggest hit is Pride and Prejudice.  I haven't tried the graphic novel nor the sequels it inspired, including one with zombies.  You're on your own there.  Currently I am doing the Bronte sisters.  Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights.  That link takes to you the edition that is easy to read in bed -- whatever that means.  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte has inspired the same kind of take-offs as Pride and Prejudice.  All of them have been made into multiple movies and mini-series, if you want to extend your reading experience into other media.

Rounding out our alternate world category, Ellis Peters takes us to a Benedictine monastery in twelfth century England, in the midst of a civil war.  Cadfael is a second career monk, a crusader turned herbalist and forensic scientist detective. The series starts with A Morbid Taste for Bones and goes on for nineteen more volumes -- God bless Ellis Peters.  This series has also been filmed, with Derek Jacobi as Cadfael.

Douglas Adams and Hebrew poetry have both inspired me through the years.  I told you I had two categories.  So here is a third -- compelling nonfiction.  These two are on my own to read list:

The first is friend-recommended The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. It is a tragic story of the clash between two cultures, that of the Hmong and that of Western medicine. The parents say Baby Lia Lee's soul is outside her body, captured by an evil spirit.  She needs a shaman.  The doctors say she has epilepsy.  She needs medication.  The doctors win.  The results are not good.  I haven't been reading biographies of people who live with mental illness lately.  But I might make an exception for this one.

The second and last is Invictus: Nelson Mandela and The Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin.  This edition has pictures from the movie.  The original edition is titled Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.  Combine the typical sports narrative structure: loser team triumphs, with that incredible, grace-filled moment in human history: oppressed people triumph and don't wreck vengeance on the oppressors.

So there are more than enough books to fill out my local library's summer reading club requirements.

What are you reading this summer?  Enjoy.

photo by Molku, who placed it in the public domain

NAMI Walks -- We All Win

This is my second year for the NAMI Walk Johnson County, Iowa.  It's how people across the United States raise money for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an organization whose mission is support, education and advocacy with and on behalf of people with mental illness and their families.

National Alliance On Mental Illness

I became passionate about NAMI when I learned about its origins.  Once upon a time, not so long ago, the holy writ on schizophrenia was that it was caused by overprotective mothers and disinterested fathers.  Wow.  In 1979, a bunch of these mothers started to push back.  They organized and demanded better research, better treatments, better treatment.  Would there ever be any progress in the world if it weren't for uppity women?  A new documentary, When Medicine Got It Wrong tells the story, coming soon to a PBS station near you.

NAMI has grown into a national program, built on local chapters.  It fights stigma.  It advocates for funding of services, research and rights.  It provides information about mental illnesses and medications.  It offers a variety of educational programs and services.

Peer To Peer

Prozac Monologue followers read with some regularity what I have learned from NAMI's Peer to Peer program.  In Peer to Peer, those who have a mental illness and are in recovery help others learn about recovery, living to the fullest while managing a mental illness.  I drove (my wife drove -- my meds won't let me drive anymore) 120 miles round trip every week for nine Iowa winter nights so that I could attend this program.  It was worth every mile.

Make A Difference

So here's the deal.  Every year NAMI raises money through local Walks.  My local chapter will walk on May 8th, rain or shine.  Last year was my maiden voyage into NAMIWalks.  I went with some trepidation, wondering just how bleak and weird a walk for mental illness could be.  Instead, I discovered a registration process that reminded me of summer camp, belly dancers leading the warm up, pep talks from the Hawkeye football team, a balloon arch, kids, dogs, food, t-shirts and more t-shirts, displays that kept falling over in the breeze, and chalk drawings along the trail made by the Girl Scouts.  It was a party!

I did not do a shabby job raising funds my first time out.  I knew I would do well, because I know my friends.  This year I decided to co-chair a team called, wouldn't you know, Team Prozac Monologues!  And right there, on the name, is where you can go to support my team.  Giving online is safe, easy, fast and tax deductible.

Team Prozac Monologues is about halfway to our goal so far.  Any amount you can give is important.

And as Hoops and Yoyo say,

The Miracle of Gheel -- Humane Treatment for Mental Illness

It was seventh century Ireland.  The Queen died.  King Damon's grief was so deep that it moved into depression and then psychosis.  He thought his daughter Dymphna was his queen.  Rather than submit to his advances, Dymphna fled to Belgium, to the town of Gheel.  But her father followed.  When she again rebuffed him, he killed her, cut off her head.  Dymphna was buried in the local church.

Six centuries later, her coffin was found during renovations.  Signs on the coffin demonstrated her holiness.  She began to be venerated.  Cures of the sick were attributed to her.  She was canonized in 1247 as the patron saint of the mentally ill.

Okay, here the one last bit of unrecovered Catholic in me demands to be heard, to note Rome's fascination with girls who prefer death to rape.  Even as a nine year old, that made me uncomfortable.

Moving on.  People came to Gheel for healing.  Many brought family members who were mentally ill.  Sometimes they left them there.  The priest housed these abandoned ones next to the church.  When the job of caring for them became too much for him, townspeople started bringing in food.  They built a hospital in the 14th century.  When it was full, the real miracle of St. Dymphna occurred, or rather, began.  Townspeople took some of the patients into their own homes, reserving the hospital only for those most ill.

All across Europe, people with mental illness were thought to be possessed.  They were exorcised, tortured and burned at the stake.  But not in Gheel.

Imagine it!  A psychotic foreigner commits a terrible deed.  But the townspeople do not close the borders.  No, they open their homes.

And they still do.  Through plagues, wars, revolutions, recessions, depressions, during the Napoleonic "Reform," when all the mentally ill people in the country were ordered into one big hospital, during the Nazi occupation, with their "final solution" for mental illness, during the latest reform when the U.S. of A. was/is dumping all our mentally ill people out of the hospitals, onto our streets and into our jails, the people of Gheel developed and continue genuine community-based mental health care.

Today, there are 700 foster homes for 1000 people with mental illness.  A person will enter the hospital for evaluation and stabilization.  S/he meets the psychiatrist, psychologist, nurse, social worker and family practitioner who staff one of the five neighborhood community mental health centers.  Each of these staff people spends half a day each week in the hospital, so everybody gets to know everybody.  The potential foster family and patient meet at the hospital, then over tea at home, then over a meal, then over a weekend before placement.  Outpatient care, medication monitoring and therapy continue at the neighborhood center.  If possible, the biological family participates in the treatment plan.

Once part of the family, the person shares in family activities, chores and church.  The church doesn't have special bible studies, services or programs for the mentally ill.  They are fully integrated, regular readers, members of the choir, ushers, etc.

What if the person's symptoms flair?  "We say s/he is having a bad day."  Because the person lives in a family, not on the streets or alone in an apartment, problems are caught and addressed early, not after getting fired or evicted or arrested or in a bloody mess.  If needed, s/he can go back to the hospital for a while.  In fact, the hospital is not the place of last resort.  When the foster family has to go out of town, say, for a funeral, the person can stay at the hospital.  There is continuity of care.  There is care.

Three years ago I wrote a chapter for Deep Calling called, "If This Were Cancer."  I detailed all the ways that hospice patients receive the support of others, and that people who have suicidal depression do not.  "If this were cancer, there would be casseroles..."  I imagined the total collapse of care for the mentally ill, under the weight of our crazy health care system.  In fact, it's happening as I write.  I imagined that the Church would step in to meet a desperate need, to create hospice for the mentally ill, as the Church originally created hospice and hospitals.  I claimed that the Church has the resources to organize for such care on a local basis.  It has the faith to imagine such a thing, the love to cast out fear, and the values to demand it.  I will have to rewrite that chapter.  I didn't know it had already been/is already being done.

I am ever so grateful to Janet, whose last name I don't remember, who gave me Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Healing and Home on the Streets by Craig Rennebohm, the source of this story.

Lord God, Who has graciously chosen Saint Dymphna to be the patroness of those afflicted with mental and nervous disorders, and has caused her to be an inspiration and a symbol of charity to the thousands who invoke her intercession, grant through the prayers of this pure, youthful martyr, relief and consolation to all who suffer from these disturbances, and especially to those for whom we now pray. (Here mention those for whom you wish to pray.)

We beg You to accept and grant the prayers of Saint Dymphna on our behalf. Grant to those we have particularly recommended patience in their sufferings and resignation to Your Divine Will. Fill them with hope and, if it is according to Your Divine Plan, bestow upon them the cure they so earnestly desire. Grant this through Christ Our Lord. Amen. 

Dymphna's feast day is May 15.

Prozac Monologues at the Movies

Oh, boy!  Butter up the popcorn, slip in a dvd, relax.  This is one very safe and friendly way to spend time with people during the holiday season, and my final installment of this year's Prozac Monologues holiday survival series.  I want my doc and everybody else to notice the implication, that I will survive to do another series next year.

Well chosen movies can fill time, avoid awkward conversation, provide common ground and keep you in the present, always a good thing for the mentally interesting.  Here are my selection criteria for holiday diversion movie viewing:

Movies For Fun

Tips for Surviving the Holidays: the Prozac Monologues Version

Ah, the holidays!  Time when far flung family members travel home and grow close around the Christmas tree.  Time to renew friendships in a round of parties and frivolity.  Time to go crazy?

There are stresses this time of year.  Routines are disrupted. People stay in crowded quarters. Those who have reason to avoid each other are thrown together. Negotiations between exes require professional mediation. Alcohol is consumed in greater quantities. Expectations for love and good cheer are bound for disappointment. Loonies and normies alike need to tend to their mental health.

So Prozac Monologues continues your handy holiday guide, with an assist from NAMI's Peer to Peer class and the University of Iowa Adult Behavioral Health department, covering the basics, planning ahead, mindfulness and quick getaways. 

The Basics:

Keep to your routine as much as possible. If you can't eat like you do at home, get at least one nutritious meal every day. If your family of origin was a little whacked, and your root chakra could use some assist, concentrate on protein (meat, fish, tofu, beans), root vegetables (carrots, beets, onions) and red stuff (beets, strawberries, cranberries, cherries -- jello does not count.) Don't go to parties without some protein already on board. At the buffet table, carrots. Skip the dip, limit your lipids. You will sleep better for it.

Remember Lloyd Bridges in Airplane? The holidays are not a good time to stop sipping, smoking, snorting, sniffing... You get the idea. On the other hand, ultimately substance abuse is more a hazard than a help in negotiating tricky family dynamics. So keep it under control.

Sleep -- not so easy if you get the couch in the family room. Borrow somebody's bed for a nap. If you anticipate a problem, I'm all for an occasional pharmaceutical assist, as an alternative to the straight jacket, which is where you may be headed if you don't get good sleep. This is true for everybody, essential for people with bipolar.

Safety -- no, you do not have to hang around anybody who is abusive. If that is an issue, have your escape plan ready, your keys and your credit card in your pocket, your alternative crash pad arranged.

Oh, and water -- with all your meds, you are probably supposed to push water, as it is. Even more so in the dry winter air. Even more so when dehydration can be mistaken for hunger, leading to more cookie consumption, requiring more water. Especially even more so with greater alcohol consumption. Be kind to your liver. Drink water. 

Planning Ahead:

Many a family feud could be short circuited with some conversation ahead of the storm. Which chores does the host want or expect help with? Which chores does the guest want to volunteer to do? In any relationship, 50/50 does not work. You have to give at least 60%.

Is there any tradition, activity, food, game that will blow your anterior cingulate cortex if it doesn't happen? Take some responsibility for it. Laugh about it, and let people know. And if it doesn't happen, well, that will give you material for your next therapy appointment. And you already know what your therapist will say, don't you.

How many events are planned? Which ones can you skip? Is there room for negotiation? What would you like to do in a group? When will you want to go off by yourself? When will the one who abused you as a child be around? Where will you be instead? 

What are your needs? What are others' needs? Talk to each other. Listen to each other. Remember, there is no Hallmark Family Christmas, except in Hallmark commercials. These are ads, people. They are not your family, and they are not mine, and they are not anybody else's, either. Give yourself and your family a break. Your relatives, your tree, your cookies and cocoa are infinitely more entertaining, anyway. 

Mindfulness:  

I am here, this is now. That's my chant, accompanied by some deep breathing, calling me out of the unhappy past and the uncertain future. Look up, listen up, and notice. You don't have to participate. Just notice. Concentrate on the senses, smells, touch, hearing, sight, taste.

When things get especially bleak for me, I go outside, regardless of weather, and try to replace the running voices in my head with a minute description of what I see around me. There is a little girl. She has pink leggings on. Her hair is in ponytails on either side of her  head. The woman is pushing the stroller. The tree is a pin oak and still has its leaves. The passing car is a Volvo. We used to have a Volvo. It always... -- no, that's the past. This Volvo is dark green... You get the idea.

When you can't get outside, like during Christmas dinner, become an anthropologist. Like Margaret Mead. Who are these people? What do they think? How do they treat each other? What are their eating habits? What happens after three beers? You are not responsible for any of it. You do not have to stop what you don't like. You don't even have to like or not like. You are simply an observer.

Mindfulness is a practice. Practice is what people do when they want to get better at something. Remember, if you can't pull off mindfulness every time you need it, that's okay. You just need more practice. 

Quick getaways: 

There is one more thing you need, some handy lines to get you out of the inevitable spot. Let's see how many of these you can anticipate.

There you are, being Margaret Mead, mindfulnessing away. And Uncle You Know Who turns to you and says... What will it be this year? Immigrants? Climate change? What he thinks about all this therapy you're doing? He knows your triggers like the back of his hand, because he trips them every year. Well, write this one down on the back of your hand, That's very interesting. I'll have to think about that. That one can get you out of all kinds of arguments. Sometimes it even gets my therapist off my back.

Or there you are, seated next to the cousin you haven't seen since she tried to drown you in the pool when you were kids. Remember, you are here, this is now. Try, Seen any good movies lately? It matters not a whit if that line is a dud, because it sets up your next line, What do you do with your time nowadays?

Then there is the open-ended How about them Hawks? Or Vikings, or whatever. Do a little research ahead of time, so you know a team near the person you are addressing. For the sport challenged, here is a starting point: it's football season. And if that line is a dud, follow with... are you with me yet?  What do you do with your time nowadays?

When you must escape the person or the room, there's: 

• Excuse me, my drink needs more ice
• I'm going out for a smoke/some air/to make snow angels
• and, Do you know where the bathroom is?

And when you have had your limit: I really must go. Thank you so much for the party. Merry Christmas. With a normal host, I mean really normal, not undiagnosed normal, you don't need to explain anything.

If the host is in the undiagnosed category, try: 

• My puppy/probation officer/Nurse Ratchet is waiting up for me.
• Or: I'm sorry, suddenly I'm feeling flu-ish. You can play the flu for all it's worth this year. 
• Or even, Oops, my meds are wearing off. Gotta go!

• If somebody else in the room should be on meds, a simple I'm outa here will suffice.

Make yourself a crib sheet, and these few lines will help you navigate a wide range of social situations. Do you have anything else you want to recommend to fellow readers? Make a comment!

There is one more strategy, diversion. I will cover diversion, in the form of recommended movies for the holiday season next week.  Put your recommendations (and reasons) in the comments this week.  I am happy for all the help I can get!

Families -- you gotta love 'em. And you can always laugh. It really works better if you do. Happy Holidays!

clipart from Microsoft online

photo credit Edward Lynch

popcorn credt Francesco Marino

Holiday Shopping for Your Favorite Normal

A friend once described what it was like to have cancer.  Like having a paper bag over your head, you can't see anything outside the bag.  It's all about you and your cancer.

Mental illness can be like that.  Try it for yourself.  Put a bag over your head.  Make sure it's not plastic!  Our issues can be all consuming, our fears, our doubts, our grief, our hysteria, our voices...  We lose track of the world outside our paper bag.

But outside that bag are friends, family, allies.  There are more of them, and they are truer to us than we can imagine when inside that paper bag.  The bag, our absorption in our own concerns, makes certain life skills difficult.

Like holiday shopping.

To do a good job at holiday shopping, you have to pay attention to something, or someone outside your own inner world.  So before I give suggestions to loonies about what normals like for Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, here are first steps.

The first step to successful holiday shopping is to turn your attention away from yourself.  Remove that bag from your head.

The second step is to focus on the person for whom you want to shop.

The third step is to pay attention.  Engage your eyes and your ears.  Watch and listen for clues.  If you want to please this person, you need to find out what would please this person.  Write it down, if you have memory problems.  I assume that you have memory problems.

I have a hard time paying attention to the world outside myself.  I pay so much attention to my world inside that I trip over cracks in the sidewalk, bump into furniture, nick myself with a knife (but not on purpose!)  I bruise myself and don't even notice until my wife sees it and asks me what happened.  I have no idea.

When I decided to write this post, I realized I would have to follow my own advice.  I had to pay attention.  Actually, given the time constraint, I took the direct approach.  I asked Helen, "What would be a good gift to give a family member of somebody with a mental illness?"

She said, "A cure."

Such is the love available to me every day outside my bag.  Five years after Prozac, I can cry again, and I almost did.  I wrote "a cure" on my list.  Then we went on.

Of course, I got a list of things that Helen would like.  That is the point.  The people who love you are just as unique as you are, you little snowflake.  We got a catalog from Target today filled with gift suggestions.  Some of them may work for the person who loves you.  Some of them won't.  You can't trust the catalog for good guidance.  That is why I gave you the technique for figuring it out.  Talk to them about what's in the catalog.

Having observed your loved ones, so that you know their interests, having paid attention so that you might even have heard, "Gee, I wish I had...," or seen them pick up something at a store, then you are ready to go out shopping.

No, those of us with PTSD or OCD or whose meds wear us out or who feel like whale shit at the bottom of the ocean do not want to go out shopping.  The internet is our best friend, at least for the length of time it takes us to do our shopping.  Internet shopping does require a credit card, so those with bipolar might need supervision.

Simply google the source of your desired gift, Williams Sonoma for all things cooking, Eddie Bauer, Old Navy, Victoria's Secret, etc. for clothing, Cabela's or Scheel's for all things sporty, Amana for meat, See's or Godiva for chocolate.  See's makes the gold foil chocolate coins for Hanukkah's dreidel game.  Chocolate is also a fabulous Christmas gift, or for any occasion whatsoever.  [Does anyone know a tie-in to Islam?]  And it stimulates the production of dopamine.  So you might want to order some for yourself, while you are at it. Oh, and Amazon for just about anything.

If all the choices are just too much, get a gift certificate.

If your meds or your disease has destroyed your credit, so this is a cash deal, and if you can bear the public appearance, you can now buy at the grocery store gift certificates for all kinds of other stores, restaurants and websites.  Purchase your chocolate and do all the rest of your shopping in one stop.

If you are having a good day, head out to the mall for baskets of bath salts and candles, next year's calendar, movie coupons, cheesy popcorn, that toy workbench that I recommended your normals buy for you, and a truly amazing assortment of gadgets that you never knew anybody needed and that nobody will use by December 27, but it is the thought that counts. That "thought that counts" thing only works for your mother, by the way, and not really for her, either. Play with the worthless gadgets in the store.  Then give them a pass.

Weekdays, mid morning are safest for the mall.  I wouldn't dream of going there unless pharmaceutically protected.  Bring a friend who can drive after you collapse.

But if the cost of meds or the consequences of your disease (you know who you are) has destroyed your credit, you might like a more personal (read:cheaper) approach.  Write a poem or a story.  Draw a picture.  Make a collage.  Frame a photo.  Knit a scarf.  Bake some cookies.  Remember that thing about chocolate and dopamine.  Fudge!

I don't believe in those homemade coupon books filled with promises you can't keep, like how you will do your own laundry or cook dinner once a week, walk the dog, smile once in a while.  Don't promise.  Just do something that your normal has been begging you to do: make that doctor's appointment, attend that group, remove the leftover pizza from your bedroom, wash your hair...

Write a letter of appreciation.  That one works especially well with your mom.

clip art from Microsoft.com

Thanksgiving and the Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Did anybody decompensate at your Thanksgiving Day feast, when there were no pearl onions in cream sauce, notwithstanding the fact that nobody has ever eaten a single pearl onion in cream sauce, since Great grandma Libby died forty-five years ago?

Was it you?

I think I figured it out. Unfortunately, this flash of brilliance came to me yesterday morning, in my hypomanic surge that prepared me for my speed pie-making. Not in time for you to prevent the scene by preparing said onions.

Somebody's anterior cingulate cortex blew a fuse.

Of course, I don't know for sure. It is one more hypothesis that I would like to test in that Million Dollar fMRI machine that I am not getting for Christmas. But here is the hypothesis:

The bad economy, the fear-mongering health care debate, the single-payer stillbirth, the war in Afghanistan, global warning -- your anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is doing all that it can to calm your amygdala. That is one of its jobs, partnered with the prefrontal cortex, to exercise executive function over your amygdala, which is convinced that you are about to die and is sending out messages to your adrenal gland, telling it non-stop to keep pumping out those glucocorticoids that are destroying your hippocampus, not to mention your heart. The amygdala must be brought under control! So your ACC has plenty of work to do already, and needs for you to help out by deep breathing. And yoga. And crystals.

But it also has another job, which is to detect abnormalities in patterns. You know those games where you are supposed to find five details that differ in two nearly identical pictures? That's a job for the ACC. But what with global warming and all that other stuff (and we still don't have any snow in Iowa the day after Thanksgiving, so my amygdala keeps telling my ACC, "I do so need to worry"), when somebody's ACC detected a variation in the Thanksgiving feast day table, i.e., the missing pearl onions, that was just one thing too many. And it blew a fuse, releasing the amygdala from its cage. And this time, the amygdala did not send out the message to freeze. It came out fighting.

So now you know. Or would know, if somebody who does own an fMRI machine would construct the experiment. Any takers?

Holiday Shopping for Your Favorite Loony

The Day after Thanksgiving, traditional start of the Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa shopping season is just around the corner.  You Hanukkah people better start cracking!  It is Prozac Monologue's attempt to be ever helpful to my dear readers. As my therapist says, " Virgo -- your destiny is service.  Get used to it." (I have a therapist who says stuff like that. The following is a holiday shopping list to guide normals who want to please their loony loved ones.