Blog your way to happiness and improve your coping

I’m currently as I am always working on ways to be happier and help others become more fulfilled people.  I’m currently working with two books, Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness and The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris.  The suggestions based on practice and research I will summarize here, with an emphasis on my own situation but hopefully also useful for others.  I therefore will not include everything that may be helpful, but rather the things that I find most helpful.

Step 1:  Incorporate happiness interventions into your life.  

 These interventions are proven to raise mood and happiness scores.  I have created a chart of the interventions I find helpful and how to implement them into one’s personal blog writing.  One reason I do it this way is because I have two personal blogs, one called DysautoBot Diary dysautobotdiary.blogspot.com and the other in the works.  It will be a work of fiction based on a conception of my best possible self, which is one of the interventions listed in my chart.  Take a look at the chart and see if it may be useful for you to make your own chart.  The idea is simple:  to take happiness interventions and use them in your blog.  The hope is that people who are sick, or bed bound, and can’t do a lot in the world can become happier through writing.  So I combine elements of writing therapy, happiness research, and narrative therapy.  But it’s all for fun so do enjoy.

If you write in your blog everyday and need to find a subject matter, take one of the interventions and do your writing based on it.  If you don’t understand the chart or need more information, page numbers to the explanations in the two books mentioned are provided.

I am also going to use ACT therapy, Acceptance and Commitment therapy as one of the interventions.  I am not an advocate of ACT therapy, I don’t know how appropriate it is, but I’m giving it a try because it combines a lot of things which I believe to be helpful.

Here’s the chart.  Try your own chart.  Copy paste mine then delete my interventions and put your own, or use mine.  You might also want to get the books if you would like to take a similar journey as I.

How to Incorporate Happiness Interventions into your Personal Blog

Based on Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness and The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris

Happiness Activities	Intervention	Refer to
1.  Expressing Gratitude	Gratitude Journal within personal blog	p.96 HH
2.  Cultivating Optimism	Best possible self diary in blog	p.108 HH
3.  Practice acts of kindness	Motivational writing or to provide comfort	p. 132 HH
4.  Nurture relationships	Write letters, poems, to loved ones	p. 147 HH
5.  Develop coping	ACT therapy	THT
6.  Increasing flow	Add motivational speaking videos to blog	p. 186
7.  Savor life’s joys	Add pictures of pleasing events	p.200 HH
8.  Committing to goals	Post goals and progress	p. 215 HH
9.  Meditation/Spirituality	Research, post on techniques	p. 240 HH
10.  Exercise	Record goals and progress	p. 244 HH

Step 2.  Know your values and pursue your goals.

From The Happiness Trap  p. 183  I’ve filled out my own personal chart but left this one blank so you can put your own goals into it.  Copy paste it into word and fill it out for yourself.

Goal Type	Long term	Intermediate	Short term	To Do
1.  Family
2.  Romance
3.  Friendships
4.  Employment
5.  Education
6.  Leisure
7.  Spirituality
8.  Community
9.  Environment
10.  Health
11.  Material

Step Three:  Have a coping strategy

How To do ACT Therapy

A.  Know the happiness MYTHS – NOT TRUE ASSUMPTIONS

1.  Happiness is the natural state of human beings (THT p.9) – Vigilance and variable mood associated with survival is the natural state.
2. If you’re not happy, you’re defective (THT p. 10) – Natural thinking processes will lead to psychological suffering.
3. To create a better life,  we must get rid of negative feelings (THT p.10) – It is natural to have negative feelings.
4. You should be able to control what you feel and think (THT p. 11) – In reality, you have much less control over your thinking than you would think, much of it is automatic.

B.  Six Core Principles

1.  Defusion.  Realize thoughts are just often automatic depressive stories from a mind built to survive a dangerous environment.  Defuse from them by saying “I am having the thought that, or I am having the feeling that I will feel sad if the dog remains ill (for example).  Realize the brain will do what it does but it doesn’t have to affect you.  Put the thoughts in the voice of a cartoon character so that you can hear that they are just thoughts, not reality.

Try thanking your mind as it comes up with threatening stories, simply say, Thank you.

Imagine troublesome images have a musical soundtrack in the background to see that they are only images.

2. Acceptance.  Make room for and breathe into the bodily sensations that represent pain and see that they are just physical sensations.  Accept and embrace reality.
3. Connection.  Practice mindfulness in daily life.
4. The Observing Self.  Learn to observe life without judging.  Practice mindfulness meditation
5. Values.  Know your values and work toward them regardless of your feelings.
6. Committed Action.  Take actions toward your values to create a rich and meaningful life.

In general in this therapy, you will practice mindfulness in everyday life, learn that negative thoughts and feelings are not reality by defusing them but allowing them to be, not fighting against them.  You will learn to accept all of life including the negative thoughts and feelings.  Breathe or meditate into negative bodily sensations to expose them as sensations that cannot harm you.  Finally, identify your values and work towards them to create a rich and meaningful life rather than being controlled by your feelings, let them be yet take effective action.

I find this therapy to be acceptable.  You can do it yourself.  I recommend you get the book to help.  This therapy, I will use to help with coping.  It is not a gospel, and it is not necessarily the best therapy ever made, but it is sufficient and a good fit for me personally.  It was recommended by someone in a Facebook group associated with EDS or POTS, conditions that I have.

This focus on coping is not a replacement for those with pain and depression for medication.  I am well medicated and at this time, successfully treated for both pain and depression.  I believe the correct medication is crucial for those with pain and depressive conditions.  This has been a very technical post I know.  It is some organizing that I needed to do for myself, but I hope others will also find it useful.

Have fun, be safe, and get better sooner!

DF Seldon, Dysautobot

BpainFree

 

A few days ago, I published the chart at the end of this page here:

BPainFree: Mood Map

The idea simply put is that after attaining the prerequisites, the changeable part of our day to day mood is determined by certain cues.  I think they evolved to help one find his place in a hierarchy and other evolutionary reasons we are generally uninterested in.  Our interest is in having a positive mood, so we want to get positive mood cues.  See if you can navigate the chart and tell me what you think.  It's very simple once you get the hang of it.

 

What I found when I used the mood map on myself is that I have generally little problems with self-esteem as far as self-efficacy or self-worth, that means I generally think I am competent and worthy.  However, on the last 3, environment, philosophy, and work, I found myself greatly lacking.  

 

Being in a bad environment is basically a side effect of living on disability.  The streets here are mean and largely deserted.  The only good thing is that no one lives next to me or across from me, so my little squalid space is fairly peaceful but when I walk up the street and turn left to exercise, some drivers seem to think I'm a new male prostitute, and when I walk down the street to the left, they think I have crack cocaine to sell them so I have to go up the street and turn right and cross Wynnton Rd to 'the other side of the tracks' out of East Wynnton.  There have been two murders in my neighborhood the almost 2 years I've been here, both on my old walking/biking routes.  Anyway, to change that situation would require Jesse Jackson to come down here and get us all together for a revival of some sort or, I could move, which I don't have the funds to do now so I'll have to wait till around February.  So I guess I can start preparing for the move by removing my things from the yard and collecting nicer furniture.

Another thing I struggle with is pessimism.  Try as I might to be an optimist, I am a natural born full-fledged pessimist.  I think it's born from expecting to be able to have faith in man, in people, and being disappointed by our joint, natural stupidity.  So instead, I will try having faith in the truth.  The truth will always be the truth, it will sometimes prevail but whether it prevails or not, it will be the truth.  I guess that's not faith at all, but confidence.  Confidence in 'what is'.

Lastly, I need engaging, meaningful, novel work so I've started a semiautobiographical fiction blog to complement this blog that I will launch soon.  Anyway, that got real personal but that's my take on the mood map I've created.  I went mostly on introspection but it's heavily influenced by evolutionary and social psychology.  Tell me what you think, how to the cues affect your mood?  Are there powerful cue types that I'm missing?

Mood Map

*Prerequisites: Food (healthy diet), shelter, sleep, baseline wealth, and baseline health.

Cue Type	Affect spectrum/feels like (negative)	Affect spectrum/feels like (positive)	Cues (negative)	Cues (positive)
1.  Self-esteem/power	Weak/ fear	Invincible/ confidence	losing	winning
	Incompetent/ fear	Efficacious/ confidence	demonstrating weakness	demonstrating strength
	boredom	flow	Laziness	engagement
			Social cues
	shame	pride	shunning	respect
			Non-confidence	confidence
2.  Self-esteem/value	Unworthy	Worthy	Dislike (from self and others)	Like (from self and others)/ affection
	Unloved	Loved	Revulsion (from self and others)	Affinity* (from self and others)
	Ugly	Attractive	Dislike (from self and others)	Like (from self and others)
			Looking unkempt	Looking good
			Self-neglect	Self-grooming
3.  Environment	Impoverished	Enriched	Squalid	Beautiful
	Disgust	Comfort	Bland	Stimulating
			Poor	Wealthy
			Plain	Decorative
			Unimaginative	Artsy
			Uncomfortable	Comfortable
			Dirty	Clean
			Bad luck	Good luck
4.  Philosophy	Pessimism	Optimism	Bad luck	Good luck
	Heartless universe	Caring universe	Bad luck	Good luck
	Fate	Freewill	Selfishness, brutality	Altruism, charity
	Humans basically bad	Humans basically good	No reward	Rewarding
5.  Activity	Boring	Engaging	Ineffective	Effective
	Meaningless	Meaningful	Old	Novel

Update

9/1/2012 

Today it’s been a week and two days since my hemorhoidectomy and the pain I can tell would be tremendous still.  But I have totally blocked it out with dextromethorphan, and now gabapentin.  The dextromethorphan is an absolute lifesaver right now, and it’s available at walmart as a generic cough and cold otc treatment for just $2.  I take 5 pills, 150mgs of dextromethorphan and 20mgs of chlorphenirmaine.  The clorpehneirmaine is the limiting substance.  I am afraid to take more than 20mgs of it as recreational users have reported bad side effects from taking too much, but at 150mgs of dextromethorphan, the post surgical pain is much more bearable.  I cannot express how much of a lifesaver it is.  I wouldn’t be able to walk without it.  Instead I’m not only walking but exercising.  With the gabapentin added, I’m totally insensiate, i.e.  I can feel almost no pain at all.  I can still feel the sensations of where the pain is and even the intensity that it would be, but it doesn’t quite reach me and I am inexpressibly thankful for that because it is intense.  My first bowel movement after the surgery was so painful it was like shitting a crown of thorns.  My only concern is the pain meds might lower my platelet counts and thus make my recovery take longer, but all in all, I’m doing well.  My father and sister had the same surgery and they both that horrible complications and had to have a second surgery.  It doesn’t seem so far that that will happen with me.  The bleeding is minimal, not even as much as before the surgery, but it’s definitely there, especially as the stitches are dissolving.  All in all, I’m hopeful that the procedure will help catapult me back to my functional self.  Able to work and stand all day and be productive without my guts trying to exit my body.

In other news, I’m trying to buy a bike because I can no longer afford the insurance payments for my van so I’m going to have to retire her.  We’ve had some good times.  All in all, buying a conversion van was a fantastic idea.  I went to Miami beach in it, then to twice as far as the great lakes, once to go to truck driving school and once to get diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome by a nationally renowned specialist.  I found him to be rude and snobby but he did at least diagnose me and give some treatment recommendations and that has been a great help when I gave the recommendations to my primary care.

Looking objectively, things are going quite well.  I am getting the treatments I’ve been needing for a long time but I am right now in a precarious situation financially.  If I can get through the next week without being pulled over by the cops basically, I’ll be good to go.  But until I get this bike and finish all my doctors appointments and getting my medications, I’m gonna be riding dirty.  It’s still too hot outside for me to switch totally to bike riding, not to mention I obviously can’t sit on a bike seat right now while I’m wearing old people diapers.

Next week I have 3 doctors appointments.  If I can get through those with the right medications added, I know I will be 100 percent for a while and I desperately need it right now because my funds are running low and I need to make some money.  Good luck to me on that count. And good luck to yall, whatever you’re going through.

Update 9/11/2012

Everything went smoothly, completely healed, lucky me.  100 percent, here I come.

Multiple Universes

Multiple Universes

I wish perhaps, like others do, that this was a more perfect universe. But if you believe in multiple universes, there is little denying we were born in a Hell universe. Nothing makes sense. We are born for no reason than to die a generally horrible, pain-ridden death. And people are so hateful, instead of wishing others peace if there is a next life, they wish the great majority suffer eternally in a Hell worse than the one they were born in. As far as universes, I really doubt it gets very much backward as ours without becoming as unintelligible as a massive DEX trip. Our universe can only support intelligent life for a few decades, one worse than this would probably only support it for a few minutes. You’d realize you exist, then like Schopenhauer, realize you wish you’d never existed, then you’d be dead. Maybe that’s not the worst fate. What if you lingered for decades in the company of hateful, spiteful people, who wished only that your suffering was greatly improved?

I’m not always this pessimistic. It’s just a universe I’m passing through where I see clearly its evil designs. I’ll pass into a better one and hopefully into one where I am healthy and happy. The chances are better than not in multiple universes, possibly. You must really win a shit lottery to end up in a Hell universe because most Hell universes probably end up with you dead before you’re even conscious enough to realize it. The ones where you linger for 80 years then suffocate to death on your failing heart must be rare. More common are the ones where you are made of some material that does not wear out so easily, or where the sun isn’t going to explode and the whole solar system isn’t one gigantic toilet bowl, the planets, pieces of debris waiting their turn to get sucked into the sun turned into a black hole. But we will be dead as shit before we have to worry about that, and in this universe, that is comfort.

When Did This Start

Friday August 17, 2012  How This all Started

I think I remember when these episodes of depression started.  The seed was in a decision I made and I remember thinking it might lead to chronic depression, though not in those words.  I was a toddler.  And my older siblings had discovered something about me of which they were pleasantly surprised, that I could talk.

I had been thinking in words in my head for quite some time and every now and then I would speak a word or phrase but I had not yet committed.  I was either a precocious toddler learning to speak early or a developmentally delayed kid who still couldn’t talk yet; I no longer remember the details but it turns out there’s a thin line anyway.

The decision I would make would be to enter the social world by speaking words rather than gibberish.  I previously spoke a type of gibberish that was full of energy, drama, personality, and mirth.  What I had to give up was the freedom to blab and spit out any sounds the mind and body desired to instead form my lips and thoughts to those confined terms that everyone else uses, called language.  And I was aware that the necessary self control might deplete my ego reserve and leave me chronically depressed.  But it was becoming lonely speaking gibberish.  Being the youngest, it wasn’t long before I was the only one who spoke it.  So I conformed and luckily before being labeled developmentally delayed or another of those self-fulfilling prophecies we force on youth.

The lack of freedom, energy, and vitality of this new way of communicating had the effect of making me sarcastic.  I thought everything I said should at least have a second layer of meaning.  Who could stand to be literal?  Reality already offers readily the prospects for emptiness, boredom, and depression without us making things worse by asking everyday for a drink of water meaning only to literally drink a cup of water as needed until the day we die.  Is not water the life-force.  Were not the slaves brought across it, did not the savior walk upon it?  Or is it just that floridated chlorinated draft from the tap.  How unpoetic to add fluoride and chlorine to water, outright blasphemous!

Being In The Moment

To be in the moment, fully aware, not trapped in the past of the future, has become a goal of mine.  It’s amazing how much time we spend in the past.  We build our lives around the past.  We doom ourselves to these tiny, enclosed patterns of acting and doing, barely venturing from the chair we sit at the type or the couch where we watch TV.  It’s those habitual patterns that are literally like a prison.  A lot of us intentionally confine ourselves to a small room where we do most of our activity, be that an office or a living room or a bedroom.  How is that not like a prison?  It is a prison made of the past.

To be in the moment means to seek out new experiences and not live in those preconceived mechanical patterns of acting.  It means each day is a mystery, each moment is new, and there is no telling what will happen. 

Consider this, how is it that we are all born babies, totally helpless and with no money.  We undertake to obtain things in the world having no guarantee that we will get anything.  It is only by the grace of others, loved ones that we even survive.  And in our turn we will take on some wealth but it is only to borrow, we can’t keep it and take it with us after death.  So we are born broke, we borrow some money from others, then when we die, we pass it on to someone else.   And none of this is planned in advance.  We simply have faith and hope that we will be capable of obtaining at least the means to survival and in that game we suffer all kinds of tortures and humiliations or for some of us it comes easy.  The point is life is uncertain.  We must not live to plan for the future, but rather in the moment, taking it as it comes, each moment being totally new.

The catch is how do we live in the moment and still get the advantage of planning for the future.  How do we dedicate our mind and feeling to what is happening in the moment and still mechanically plan for the future?  We most often do it the opposite way, spending our minds worrying about the future, about contingencies most of which will not ever even happen.  How do we instead devote our feeling to the moment and still plan for the future without becoming emotionally involved with the planning as we understand that the future is uncertain and why be in fear or misery over things that might not even happen.  And is there not always something in the past of future to worry about?  Could you not always dream up some terror or final reckoning in the future?  Instead we plan for the future but understand that it is uncertain and focus our mind and feeling on the present moment.  This is easier said than done.  How do you do it when you are able to accomplish it?  Say you have a speech to give and you’ve already practiced it and right now there is four hours until the speech.  Can you live those four hours in the moment, as it unfolds, rather than spending it worrying about the speech you have to give?  That is the challenge.  We sometimes accomplish it.  How do we do it when it works out for us?  What do you think?  How do you do it?  Please leave a comment.

DF Seldon

MS, NBCC

Longevity, Job

Longevity has been one of my recent interests if for no other reason than I have been pleasantly surprised how potentially easy it might be.  The holy grail of longevity is simple: caloric restriction, simply eating fewer calories.  It will only get you a few extra years of life, but potentially lots of extra years of health.  Some other tricks, lithium and anticonvulsants (structural relatives of gabapentin).  I even found a nice source of natural lithium that comes from a town near Atlanta, Lithia Springs, GA.  It's like a fountain of youth. http://lithiamineralwater.com/

In other news, I’ve been looking for a job, the type where I can transition from being disabled to working in an environment not so hectic and dog-eat-dog.  I’m a little nervous about the prospect of getting back to work.  I understand how not to take a failure personally because it’s a matter of fit.  If a job doesn’t suit you, you don’t need to be there.  But I’m running out of options.  I’ve worked everywhere, done every kind of job, and they’ve all had their ups and downs but fit…I wouldn’t say any of them fit like a glove. 

That may have been a side effect of having been ill most of the time or it may be in the very nature of ‘job’ jobs.  They are strange creatures.  To show up and do over and over again some task with very little relevance to your existence except that you need the paycheck.  I’ve had some jobs that were inspiring but the mechanical part, the profit motive, always overwhelmed my desire to do something meaningful.  Even in counseling, the bosses are crunching numbers, not meaningful realizations and progress.  I’ve even seen it to where the bosses didn’t want progress because that would mean the client could stop coming to the methadone clinic and that’s just an ugly situation to be in.  My desire to do something meaningful unfortunately put me at odds with the establishment.

It doesn’t pay, literally, to turn out to be right in those tug-o-wars I’ve discovered.  Just last year, I fought the truck driving school and won.  I can say no more about it because I’m legally bound never to speak the details but I will say it was not a satisfactory victory.  I would rather have gotten my CDL even if I did nothing with it but hang it on the wall and dream of getting an RV.  So many jobs are set up to take advantage of you and if you’re an ultra conscious person, you figure that out pretty quick.

It goes without saying in my mind that I have to get back to work, but under much better circumstances than my previous forays.  It’s not even a matter of pay this time.  I’ve fried burgers at McDonalds, jogged paper at a book binder, shipped pesticides, taught high school, substituted for grade school, counseled persons addicted to cocaine and heroin, run an after-school program, tutored college students, moved furniture on a military base, worked for Parks-and-Rec, worked from home selling trips to Israel, worked at a wastewater treatment plant in Atlanta, worked as a forklift driver on the loading docks, and worked on an assembly line putting together gas grills, among other things and I’m only 30.  I often worked two jobs at a time while going to college; I really wore myself out no doubt about it.  There was usually the manic phase of getting the job and being very productive, then getting no sleep, and finally crashing into a bipolar depression.  Then it was time to leave till I recovered and get another job or two.

It is hoped this time around I have better doctors, better understanding of my conditions, and a much better medicine cabinet.  So I’m going to apply for some jobs, write a business plan to start a business, and write another novel for good measure.  This time I have a treatment team to fall back on so hopefully I won’t crash.  Wish me luck and longevity.

DF Seldon

http://bpainfreetherapy.hubpages.com/