10:08 AM: Anxiety and self-questioning FTL.

About 5:00 PM: NERVES.

Nothing I did made it better.  I took my daily meds. I exercised. I completed a few menial tasks. I didn’t stop and do deep breathing exercises, because I didn’t remember that it might help (even though someone did remind me to BREATHE).

But in the end, it was fine. I survived the anxiety and everything else I had to do yesterday. I’m still feeling a little tension in my shoulders, but I made it, and I know I can make it today, too.

So why don’t I just do them?  Well, I know I won’t be able to get all of them done satisfactorily, which is so depressing that I just don’t even bother to start.  Also, some of them are unpleasant, so I just don’t want to.  So I’m depressed because I’m so freakin’ lazy, too.

What to do?  I finally finished reading The Mindful Way through Depression today (it was on my to do list, and it was do-able).  Here’s what the book had to say:

It is not so much making “to do” lists that is the problem. The problem is our sense of impending doom if we don’t get through the list.

OK.  So don’t take the list too seriously. Don’t feel like you have to do everything in one day.  Good advice, but easier said than done.  I can’t just turn off the part of my brain that feels guilty about not getting things done.

The book also says that we should practice living in Being mode instead of Doing mode. However, as you may have noticed, the world pretty much runs on Doing mode.  If I don’t pay my bills, utility companies and creditors will not care that I was embracing Being mode.  If I don’t find the extra paperwork that the State of Oregon wants to prove that we were both working and paying for child care, we’re going to end up owing the state money.  If I don’t clean the kitchen…well, you get the picture.

That said, I guess doing things in Being mode doesn’t mean they will never get done — assuming I do something more than hang around on the computer all day.

I’ve also recently been doing Getting Things Done (GTD).  GTD involves collecting all of the things you need to do (in a list, file, etc), and developing a regular review system to make sure that nothing gets forgotten.  This is supposed to allow you to relax, because your “stuff” is all in a safe system where it won’t get forgotten, and you don’t have to keep thinking about all the things you have to do.

Ha. Once again, easier said than done.  I got a system set up, but somehow the daily processing and weekly reviews rarely get done.  And that list of Next Actions is pretty much getting ignored.

Why is all of this happening?  Well, every time I think about getting close to that list, I panic.  I can feel it in my body.  All of my muscles tense up, my stomach starts to turn, my head starts to ache, and I want nothing more than to run away, or maybe to curl up in a little ball under a table.  Why is that happening?  I don’t know.  I just know that it does.

I’m missing something here.  I can feel it.  The mindfulness philosophy says that I should gently and lovingly acknowledge the negative feelings and move on.  It’s the moving on that I haven’t got yet, though.

So now I’ve decided to just read through the rest of the book.  But today, I can’t concentrate on the printed word!  I’m feeling a combination of sleepiness and distraction.  A quick body check reveals that my back muscles are tense right now, too.  If I follow the mindfulness philosophy, I shouldn’t be upset with myself about these things, though.  I can examine and accept these feelings in a nurturing way.  Today’s Sunday, and I have nothing urgent going on, so I have no problem accepting this.

But what if it were a work day?  Say, Tuesday, when I have back to back classes, ending with the difficult (for me) kindergarten and first grade classes?  I can’t just stop the world so I can accept my feelings.

I can take a few moments if I need to, though.  I’ll remember that for Tuesday.  For now, I think I’ll take a walk.

This is, of course, different from how I normally walk. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t really enjoy walking around the neighborhood, as there’s nothing to see and nothing for my brain to do. I also don’t really enjoy walking on pavement. It emphasizes that my legs and hips are uneven (I have a slight scoliosis), and is often uncomfortable. In fact, I’m often concentrating on those unpleasant sensations (and how best to relieve them) the whole time.

Today, I walked up to the next stop sign and back again, slowly (about 10 blocks total), which took less than the recommended 10 minutes, but seemed sufficient to me. My mind wandered, of course, but I followed the instructions and gently acknowledged the wandering and redirected my attention to my feet.

It helped to keep my eyes on the pavement in front of me, rather than looking up and around. I’m realizing now that perhaps my problem isn’t that there’s nothing to see, but that there’s too much to see, and it’s overwhelming. By keeping my eyes on something neutral, I was able to relax and let go.

There’s a labyrinth down at Parkrose High School, not far from here, and I think I might try that for a walking meditation as well. It sounds perfect for this type of walking.

ADDITION: I was so engrossed in writing this that I forgot to share a quote from the book that I found especially helpful.  Here it is.

The intention in mindfulness practice is not to forcibly control the mind but to perceive clearly its healthy and harmful patterns.  It is to approach our minds and bodies with a sense of curiosity, openness, and acceptance so that we may see what is here to be discovered, and be it without so much struggling.

I think mindfulness is going to take a lot of re-training for my brain. Author Jon Kabat-Zinn says “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.”  It also involves using all of your senses to pay attention to what you are experiencing.

I’m not used to taking life one thing at a time; or to concentrating on my physical senses.  I keep my brain constantly busy; I read, listen to music, watch TV, or use the computer, and if I have to do something else, I usually add those other things to it.

For instance, taking a walk around the neighborhood is horribly boring.  There’s nothing to see, and nothing to do with my brain.  Music helps some.

If I have to do housework, I’m usually pushing myself through it using the computer as a reward.  It’s something annoying to be gotten through so that I can do more enjoyable things.  And so I continue to hate it, and to become depressed over having to do it, and over my not doing it well enough.

If I were practicing mindfulness while doing housework (and I’m not, at least not yet), I might concentrate on the sensations of what I’m doing; what it feels like physically to bend over and pick things up (wait, that might not be good), or to sweep floors clean.  I might pay attention to how the hardwood floor looks, and to its texture.  I might enjoy the change in how things look and feel as I clean.

I don’t know what I might experience; I haven’t bothered to notice yet.  But I suspect it might help to see the housework as a valuable experience in and of itself, rather than as an obstacle to other things.

But meanwhile, I do have a clean floor, because I promised myself a little time with the computer after I cleaned it.  Yay, me!

I saw a counselor recently, because I have been feeling significantly worse this fall and winter. She was terrific.

“What do you do for self-care?” she asked. “When you’re starting to feel down.”

“Well, usually I’ll try to find a quiet place and time to read,” I responded.

“Oh!” she said. “So if I asked you to read a book…”

“I would read it!” I replied, nodding.

So, instead of asking me to talk things out (which I hate), she prescribed a book, and actually put it into my after-care orders. It’s called The Mindful Way through Depression. I ordered the book through Amazon, but it’s somewhere on a UPS truck right now, as far as I know (it was supposed to arrive by December 23rd, but we had a little thing called a snowpocalypse here in Portland).

I’ve been feeling so down the past couple of days that I really need to do something about it. So I’ve located the book on Google books, and I’m going to start reading it. I may be neglecting a few other things today, but if the depression is starting to take over, I think I need to devote some time to that, and find my way out of it, or perhaps through it.

“Feeling glum, disgruntled, and snarky. Watch out,” I tweeted late this afternoon.  Why so glum?

Well, there was this over at George Fox University, here in Oregon.  It wasn’t so much the actual incident involving racial slurs as much as the comments on the article.  Too many of them were ignorant and/or hateful, and left me feeling less hope for the future of our country.

And then there’s the general state of the economy, and the prospect of a $700 billion Wall Street bailout and/or a full-blown depression.

McCain wants us to think that he thinks this is so important that he and Obama should suspend their debate to resolve the issue.  What, Congress can’t handle this one without them?  And they can’t do anything long-distance?

And then there was this, from Democracy Now!, letting us know that a military unit, for the first time ever, is officially being deployed to keep the peace here at home in case of civil unrest.  They start October 1.  There’s also a detailed article on Salon.com.

No wonder I’m depressed!

Depression or not, the family still needs to be fed.  I was off early today, and we have no evening activity, so I had time to put together a nice lentil soup.

I don’t know whether it was the physical act of chopping and sauteing vegetables that helped, or whether it just feels good to be able to provide a good meal for my family despite all of the bad news.  Lentils, carrots, onions, a few herbs, and we’re set!  Frugal and sustainable.  If necessary, we could probably even grow our own lentils!  I know they sprout and grow easily, although I’ve never tried actually growing and harvesting the beans.

So, even if everything does go to h— in a handbasket, we can make it.

Now I’m going to see what the dude in the White House has to say to us.