Find Your Spot

Find your Spot

Last week I had a meltdown. It was 10 minutes before my husband arrived home from work so when he greeted me with his usual, “Hi, sweetie!” and I greeted him with, “We have to send this dog back. I can’t do this. We were stupid to think we could. I cannot do this,” he took me into his arms and let me cry into his shoulder.

I have had a dream for most of my life to have a German shepherd like my Uncle Mike had and I have been unwilling to give up on this. It wasn’t until Friday, when mid-meltdown, in front of my kitchen sink, watching the last of daylight drop beneath the pines behind my now-empty flower garden, that I began to weigh the cost.

I have been certain that if I just give a little more of my time, read enough dog books, spend more money and drop a few more blood-soaked Band-aids into my scented garbage bags that I hate, I will have my dream of the pet German shepherd that I viewed my uncle’s dog to be.

 I have been asking myself over the last few weeks whether I should give up on this dream or keep working- because I love training these dogs and loving these dogs and it gives me something to do and I can think of a dozen more reasons to keep moving or give up.

I have been battling a vicious cycle of getting angry and subsequently hating myself for my anger, which makes me angrier and around and around I go. Some people say that depression, my own included, is caused from anger turned inward. Of course, no disease is as simple as that, but I have wondered, over the last year or so, how much of my own anger at myself has caused an avalanche of hatred to bury me so deep that I cannot pick myself up and decide whether this is a ridiculous or real dream or whether to keep moving or give up.

A little over a year ago I began again the arduous, often-hated task of counseling in my seemingly never-ending journey to conquer, or at least deal better, with my chronic anger and depression.

I have gone through several counselors in over 30 years. I rake them over the coals, attempt stare-downs and dare them to help me as I carve notches above my closet door representing yet one more person who helped for a bit, said a smart thing or two, charged me money or not, and then I go back to my usual way of dealing with life.

Last February I was having coffee with a counselor from a local horse therapy center when she told me about Brainspotting.  My first thought is that this all sounds a little “woo-hooey.” She told me stories about people who have tried it and been helped. I stared a hole through the middle of her forehead and determined that this sounded like a dare. I slapped my hand down on the table, spilling my now cold chai tea, and said, “You’re on!”

Counselors who do Brainspotting, discovered by a man named David Grand in 2003, are licensed professional counselors,  trained by Grand. A lot of big words are used to describe this therapeutic tool, most of which are unimportant to us lay people. Basically, it can be summed up like this: “Where we look affects how we feel. When a Brainspot is stimulated, the deep brain appears to reflexively signal the therapist that the source of the problem has been found.”

If you are under the impression, as I was, that this is the easy way out in terms of counseling choices, you are wrong. Sometimes I leave my appointments, slouch into the driver’s seat of my car, and let the agitation ooze out my ears.

The appointment starts with my counselor asking me to choose, with or without her help, an area I would like to work on. I usually choose anger, mostly because I can almost always think of a red-hot instance, from one appointment to the next, that caused me anger. It’s important that I can feel the emotion inside myself – my chest, my stomach, my head, etc. -  because my counselor will ask me to think of a time when I felt anger and where, in my body, I presently feel it. She then holds a pointer in front of me and moves it to the left and the right, and up and down, asking me, as she moves it slowly, when I notice my angry feelings the most. 

The first time we did this I agreed to play along, thinking, again, that it was all a bunch of hocus pocus. Only it’s not. Regardless of what I am working on, I can feel it more, or less, depending on where the pointer is. My counselor then holds the pointer, sort of like a famous conductress, only with fewer arm swinging movements, in this precise place, and I stare at it, and she stares at me, for most of our appointment. 

Having someone study my face, while I study the pointer in front of her, mostly feels really disturbing. My counselor studies me for more frequent blinking, brow furrowing, nose wiping, eye darting, tears…well, you get the picture. I dislike a lot of talking and re-focusing from my counselor and she honors that. If I decide I want more, she will give it; I am not hypnotized. I can talk whenever I want and ask for what I need in the moment.  We have worked this out over the months. 

I try to have one appointment a week. Aside from the discomfort of the Brainspotting itself, an hour a week is easy because I know that regardless of what happens between appointments, we will always have something to work on. There is a lot more to Brainspotting than this, but I usually lose people if I go into too much detail.

Typical “talk” therapy, to me, has always seemed dependent upon having something to talk about. I don’t need to keep re-hashing abuse stories or what happened when someone “wronged” me at the ages of 12, 16 and blah blah.  It’s not that I can’t talk about these things, and my counselor has needed to hear them so she understands where I am coming from, but I have found, over dozens of years of counseling and handfuls of counselors, that simply talking about what hurts has not, over time, brought about the changes I need to sustain healing and contentment. And sometimes it is just resignation that things will remain the same unless I work on changes myself and allow myself to be changed.

My counselor has said we will likely need to Brainspot the hell out of my anger and she is probably right. And rest assured I have more than just anger to Brainspot the hell out of.

Several months ago, when I confessed that I wanted to deal with a new, difficult issue in an old, unhealthy way, my counselor told me that I am not that person anymore and I don’t need to do things the way I used to. I can tell myself a new story and do things in the “new me” way.

We have often talked about the story that I am telling myself. The story I tell myself if I continue working on pursuing this dream of having a perfect German shepherd for a pet and companion is that I will lose the people in my life and be left with only my dog, in the woods, alone. But I guess that is my fear, which feeds into my anxiety, which is what we are working on next in finding that not-so-elusive Brainspot.

If, like me, you often tell yourself old stories that bring more pain, try something new…or keep working on something old that brings about new joy. That’s a dream to keep working towards.

Well Worn Paths

Well Worn Paths 

Winters never hold much promise for me. Oftentimes the anticipation of a warm weather vacation is about all that keeps me moving as the long days of summer turn to the short, darkened days of Wisconsin winters.

This year the change of living in a new home in a new city are the twins of confrontation I have been unable to defend. Most mornings I awaken to darkness and crawl out of bed through quicksand and glue, remembering that the first few moments of each new day are the hardest.

It has been many years since I have felt this low as I wait for medications to spin magic and faith to lay footprints. I long to know the reasons and the whys and as I struggle to create an agenda in my mind of sameness and predictability, I remember that it is my own creation of well-worn paths that lead the way to longer days of springtime sun.

The first time I decided to take a hike in the woods with my German shepherd puppy, Aero, I couldn't get my feet in my snowshoes, I could not snap the clasp over the toes of my Danner boots, and when my heel came loose and I dropped my gloves, they were quickly snapped up by puppy teeth. Tears of anger slid down my cheeks as I struggled not to lose my temper, again, only to breed more hatred of the moods I could not control inside the person I do not want to be.

I shuffled forward several hundred feet, not caring if Aero followed or not. When I stopped and looked behind me to see if my forced companion was following, Aero was sitting at the edge of our yard as though he was contemplating his next move.

I called his name and Aero burst forth through fresh snow, following behind in my trail. I rewarded his eager obedience with a handful of treats and we kept moving, plodding, plowing through snow.

Over the bridge that my husband built and up the hill by our large apple tree, we reached the border of our land that leads to more woods to the left or turns to the right into our neighbor's acre upon acre of rows of evergreens. One step, two step, one step, two step. I looked behind me and saw the satisfying path in the freshly fallen layer of snow.

Down one row of trees and up the other, one step, two step, one step, two step. I have been longing for another dog that stays beside me like my last black beauty, Otto, did. Aero does not disappoint. Sometimes he stays so annoyingly close to me that among over 60 acres of forest he finds the most comfort on the backs of my snowshoes, allowing me to make the path so he can follow behind.

The next morning I check the temperature before getting dressed and I already feel the comfort of habit: fill pockets with dog treats, snap on snowshoes, follow path - one step, two step, one step, two step. 

Our second morning out we stand still and watch two deer before us digging through the snow to reach the grass. This is the first time Aero has seen a deer and I wait for him to take chase and leave me. As the deer finally notice us, they turn and bound through the deep snow. Aero stares and I wait. He will leave me, I know he will.  I close my eyes as I start walking forward and I am weighted down by two doggy paws, on top of my snowshoes, behind me.

And the next day is the same, and the next day is the same and the next day is the same: one step, two step, one step, two step.

 It is only by doing the same thing over and over again that you become good at it.  Practice and repeat. Just keep moving, just keep moving, just keep moving. I think that is the way most people get through hardships and pain and suffering. You find what works and you do it again and again.

I will never grow used to feeling low, no one does. But in the midst of my daily repetition I find a pattern and I repeat it until I find contentment and my mind finds wellness again. Sometimes the well-worn paths form channels that lead to pain and we need to find a new route. Here in the woods, in the winter, I have had to find a new route, around the trees, one step, two step, one step, two step.

 

Butterflies Pause....or Not

When my boys were younger we collected monarch caterpillars from milkweed we found in vast quantities in the ditches by our cabin in northern Wisconsin. Well, O.K., more I am the one who began collecting the caterpillars and my oldest son enjoyed watching me care for them.

We ate a lot of Prego that summer as I saved jars from our recycling bin and when that wasn’t enough, I encouraged neighbors and family to quickly consume their extra Concord grape Smuckers and chunky Pace salsa, poked holes in the lids and deposited caterpillars inside.

We never tired of watching the monarch caterpillars, hanging in a “J” from the underside of the lid, transform into a chrysalis. Seven-10 days later when the chrysalis darkened and a crumpled butterfly emerged, my son would let their fragile wings dry while hanging from his sock on his nine-year-old foot, resting on a finger while he read a book or sitting on his arm while eating his morning bowl of Cookie Crisp.

There was always something joyful that bubbled forth within me when my sons eagerly soaked up an experience and joined me, or was it me joining them, in learning. We bought butterfly books and learned about host plants and nectar plants and the names of every butterfly that frequented our area. To this day my oldest son seems to have an uncanny knowledge of butterflies.

My boys are adults now but this summer, our first at our house in the woods, I planted milkweed and butterfly plant. By late July I was finding monarch caterpillars and eggs and I carefully pulled each leaf from the plant and brought them inside to watch them grow and change and emerge as something new.

While my husband and boys were building our new deck, my oldest, the one who still has not lost his love of butterflies, noticed a swallowtail laying eggs on my parsley and dill plants that I put into the earth close to our house early in the summer to hopefully attract the swallowtails. He carefully located the eggs – 12 in all- and brought them in to me. Later we found four more caterpillars already growing on the dill.

We carefully laid the eggs, upon the plant, into a container and waited. After about five days we had 12 tiny caterpillars no bigger than a hangnail. To keep track of them I had to use a magnifying glass. 

We had only raised a few swallowtails before so mostly the experience was new to me. They seemed to grow painfully slow and I struggled for ways to keep track of so many tiny caterpillars. For a part of their lives I put dill and parsley in a vase and set it into a large, clean garbage can and let them crawl around wherever they liked on fresh plants. Eventually they all had their own jar with holes poked in the tops in various shapes artistically created by my husband.

As August lengthened I began to wonder if they would have time to emerge from their chrysalis before colder days set in.

I began to research the swallowtail and learned that oftentimes they enter what is called “diapause.” Here is how Wikipedia describes this:

“Diapause, when referencing animal dormancy, is the delay in development in response to regularly and recurring periods of adverse environmental conditions. Diapause is a mechanism used as a means to survive predictable, unfavorable environmental conditions, such as temperature extremes, drought or reduced food availability.”

Hmmmm……what a wonderful thought to contemplate. What if, as humans, we could enter diapause for a season? This stormy winter, all cold and frosty, windblown and uncertain, oblivious of its’ end. When spring comes with early sunrise and warming noonday and a slowly setting sun at the close of a day, then I arise, a human being again.

Extremes of pain like illness and death, the loss of friends and growing sons that leave the nest. I think these certainly count as “unfavorable environmental conditions.” My means to survive an extreme drought would be to crawl into bed, cocooned around my Company Store blanket and artificial down pillow in queen -sized bed.

This summer, taking care of my caterpillars has been an unexpected calm in the midst of what, at times, seemed like a lot of unknowns. Waking up in the morning I knew I would find hungry caterpillars waiting for parsley or dill or milkweed planted outside my front door. I knew their jars would need cleaning and that I would be checking them again at 10 and noon and 3 and 6 and again before bed, when I would once again, clean their jars. In two to three weeks they would stop eating and spin their silky string and enclose themselves all snug and close inside a chrysalis to decide to come out, or not.

There is differing advice about what I should do with my swallowtails that have entered diapause. Some people put them in their fridge, taking them out when spring arrives. Some people put them on a front porch where they withstand the environment in which they were born as caterpillars. And some people put them in an unheated garage, protected from raging wind and icy rain and blowing snow. It seems no matter what the choice, everyone has success with some method.

Pause or take a longer diapause. It seems either choice involves a pattern, an extreme and then again bursting forth from enclosed shell to engage in a comforting pattern of living life.