Christmas Eve from house to house, meditation and focus

 It's somewhat hard for me to decide what to write in an online blog. When I write in my diary, there aren't many rules but online it's hard to know who my audience may be (if any) and what my main topics should be.

Lately I've had a main goal, being focus. I've been listening to a few audiobooks on the subject. The one I'm currently listening to is called "The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in your life." I'm an avid follower of any and all self-development books I find meaningful. There's a healthy way of doing this and an unhealthy way but now I'd consider myself on the healthy end of the spectrum.

My problem is that I want to succeed in everything but I spread myself too thin or get too preoccupied with things that don't need as much time, although recently I've gotten better. This can be useful in a way like when the excessive thought and staying in the head leads to creative ideas and analyzing a situation & seeing little details in a social interaction, etc. This isn't useful when I don't get into a task because my mind is elsewhere and therefore don't receive benefits from the task & lose time or when I get stressed out.

My current solution: Instead of working in a bunch of random life observation based documents but not moving forward (like personal goals, notes on books I read, book I'm writing, some memories I wrote down, etc) I want to form goals and focus on them, specifically.

Does anyone want to partner up with me in this aim? I've learned a lot on my own but find that when I have some back and forth feedback with other like-minded people we both learn faster, and are motivated to stick to a goal.

If anyone is interested in any one of the things I'm doing and want to share their own ideas, I'd be open to that...

• Practicing mindfulness meditations on a regular basis (rather than dissociation meditations to take an emotional break). My current favorite is a "Brief Mindfulness of Breathing" by Dr. Miles Neale which I bought on youtube
• Sharing one or two projects currently in their lives & getting into them while
• Creating loose daily planner 
• Writers? Anyone? 
• Taking Supplements: B-50 vitamins and seeing any changes (for neurological health) as well as multi-vitamin and fish oil
• Synchronizing growth- related books, currently The Practicing Mind
• I occasionally listen to affirmations, depending on what they say... It seems like it could become delusional if affirmations are too far from the truth. I've sort of developed an intent on working towards something without constantly holding it in my attention & inducing worry. I want to focus about as much effort into something as I'd like in the long run & getting into life activities as they are  (for example, I can hold the intent/ affirmation of seeing the world in a realistic way, without anxiety and dissociation, but just go about my everyday business... spend time with friends... do homework& what not)
• 20 minutes of exercise (I've always been fit but find this little habit useful)

Right now I'm focusing on my highly creative nature & loving relationships and working on concentration/ attention which can be difficult at times... I'll get more into difficulties that arose another time. I could keep writing forever lol.

Specific actions today: Today was kind of a lazy day. I woke up at my boyfriends house. He's a wonderful, silly & loving man who I've been with slightly over a year after meeting at an Engineering Internship. We packed up our things & I went over my Dads for some Family Guy and gift wrapping. I arrived at my mom's around 10. This whole weekend was sort of similar, more social than productive, not too much tension & some fun. I have a lot of family obligations coming up but there's a few projects I want to work on:

1. building a website with one of my best friends... we consitered buttmunchers.com, buttmunchingchristians.com, and friendsofbuttmunchers.com but settled on something related to the site itself which is aimed towards people who seek personal growth (nothing to do with buttmunching ...yeah our humor is a bit fucked up)

anyways... I'm not going to reveal too much until we make more progress but if you are like-minded, feel free to reach out. I'm also going to work on staying in the moment, one personal project (either working on a nonficiton book or a story I had started a while ago), perhaps keeping a planner, meditation/ exercise, spending time with friends and perhaps blogging. No more unnecessary docs... I want to just play around with things I like before heading back to Engineering school.

Well that is all for tonight,

Best,

Jen 

Written Sunday, Dec 7, 2014 for Depersonalization site

Hello friends,

For those of you currently at University, finals are going on which can be extremely stressful for any average person, not to mention anyone going through depersonalization. I've been reading lots of stuff online, listening to audiobooks, and watching videos... as usual.

One thing that I am going to try and do is the following:

Remove all resistance.

A boy on one of the youtube videos I was watching (HelpwithDP) said that he stopped trying to fight against the condition one weekend and even said "c'mon, give me all you've got!!" I mean I don't believe any method 100% until I see proof in my own life but I'm willing to remain open minded. My personal challenge to myself is that whenever I feel depersonalization happen, I will not automatically try to force my thoughts somewhere else, I will just let all dep related thoughts and feelings happen until my brain gets bored with that topic and the thoughts pass, eventually the feeling following.

I'm going to try to trust myself in this area of my life & hold the overall general belief that "I will get to the point where my brain is wired to feel consistently real, no matter what & life experiences and emotions are, with no connection to the condition" hold this as an intention, even if you don't continuously think about it often. I don't want to avoid strong emotions, I'm okay with experiencing emotions as, simply, emotions. I want to live life to the fullest, enduring stress and hard work to have the career and experiences that I love rather than staying "safe and stable."

I have personally overcome another "mental illness" in the past which seemed very difficult at first but I learned so much from the experience. I'm not going to go into the full story now but I had bulimia nervosa. My body has always been fit, eating disorder or not but at my worst, I had overwhelming urges to binge and purge that I wasn't sure were ever going to go away. I couldn't keep down one meal & had to seek the resources out there. Now that I think back upon the condition, it seems so strange because my relationship with food is so different now, it's so easy. But anyone who has ever experienced an addiction of some kind can relate to these strong urges and my experiences have given me empathy towards other issues, even though I don't feel them in the current day.

My solution was the following:

1. stop going to nutritionist/ therapist because that wasn't how I wanted to spend my time

2. stop fighting urges, give myself full permission to eat when I wanted food without feeling like everything was off limits & observing urges, I ate less and less during binge each time

3. holding the intent that I would have a natural relationship with food and my urges would return to serving my body

4. trusting myself during the day rather than living in constant fear of the next time my body would produce an urge or planning out all of these rules for things I needed to do surrounding the condition

5. remembering that I didn't have to fix every single trauma or psychological issue before re-wiring my brain (looking around me I saw lots of anxious/ depressed people without it being associated with food... emotions are emotions and I wasn't going to let this delay my response)

6. This is my responsibility, I trust myself with my life because I care more than other people, don't get trapped in limiting beliefs

The payoffs? I barely think about food but when I do, I'm happy and proud because I know my relationship with this area of my life is truly positive. I eat when it's time to but I can take my time, it's not urgent. Most normal people don't have a relationship this good. Even if I'm stressed out or whatever, this area remains constant. ^^ So as you can see, I'm not going to pretend that I know everything about this condition but I do think that all conditions of the psyche have patterns in common. I think that allowing dep thoughts/ sensation to play out fully relate to me stopping fighting against my urges to binge and purge (as long as you feel more peace and trust towards this area- specifically & hold the intent of eventually feeling fully real)

This is why I am trying this technique.

**Another technique I am trying today is to randomly jot things down in regular life activities that I'm thankful for. At first I was afraid of this (is thinking too positively keeping me from being realistic, processing trauma or therefore being centered in reality?) No, feeling thankful for legitimate things that are actually going on/ have happened is recognizing reality and feeling safe in the life you are living.

I got this idea from the book I am reading called the vortex which can get a little abstract and spiritual (mentions the law of attraction) which I try not to get too much into at the expense of real life, but this idea (above) seemed like a good one.

Also, anyone have thoughts on meditation & whether it works for you, harms you, or seems irrelevant?

Sidenote: being thankful/ focused for your life as it is should increase feelings of focus on what's going on in your life, or at least that's what I think. I haven't had too many sensations today because of this technique & I will keep you updated in the future.

So I've taken enough of another break. I'm going to get back into studying differential equations and physics and mechanics & save the rest of my writing for later. Again, please wish me luck on this endeavor.

Please write back and tell me if my ideas are dumb or if you have other ideas or if something really worked for you!

Love,

Jen

study break number 999999 and introduction to community

Why start a blog? It may be due to the fact that everyone around me is cramming into our school's tiny library, frantically flipping through pages to squeeze out the juice of an entire year's worth of lessons. I'm the most hard working person when it comes to my personal projects. I have hundreds of pages of google docs of notes on books I've read, observations I've made. I've come to many conclusions about how relationships work, how to create new habits, and am probably more qualified than the average practicing psychologist, via google (I'm sure many of you are professional googlers) I'm sure if any of you are like me, you spend a lot of time analyzing how things work, behind the scenes, rather than diving in and living life first hand, experiencing the colors, sensations, and daily interactions first hand, as so many seem to do.

I am an obvious writer. I write every day in a worn blue journal with pen marks accidentally scratched onto the back and a worn out elastic band that was intended to keep the thing closed. I write in my google docs whenever inspiration strikes me. Perhaps adding a chapter to the document titled "book" or a few bullet points to "how learning works" or maybe a sentence or two to "affirmations" if I'm feeling ultra positive. Most of these documents are between me and me. I plan to try to publish them once I deem it good enough and complete. I kind of want some feedback now & some thoughts back. There are friends that I can have really cool conversations with and one of my best friend Sean wants to find a website with other thinkers out there. This seems like a cool place to start. I'll try not to be overly particular about which word I use first or whatever.

This blog won't be dedicated to a certain topic. It will be about the living in general. My intent is to live life, apologetically, learn lessons in hard ways, in soft ways and to reach out to people who care. I want to feel everything firsthand, and be honest about what is really going on instead of clouding my head with half-assed theories. I'm not willing to give up my analytically nature and personal projects for good, I just want to use them in a way that helps other people. I also want some back and forth conversation & advice because I value all of your ideas, especially since I know all of you are rather deep thinkers that spend time in the abstract noticing why people react the way they do and if there are patterns to it. This doesn't seem like too much commitment, which is good. If you follow me on the DPD site, I want to say thank you for thinking what I have to say is worth hearing and responding to. We all have a connection on here that is quite important to me. We've experienced something quite unlike any other feeling and it feels good to be known and have someone understand that what we have gone through is confusing, lonely, and scary. But I don't want to dwell on that, we will find a way out & if there's not a way we will make one because I'm not giving in & I'm also not waiting years for it to happen, I want life back ASAP.

I believe in change. I've made several big changes in my life before for the better, which will come out along the way. I think big life changes all have certain elements in common. If doctors tell you something like "this will always be a part of you" or "they are wrong. I'm all about taking things into my own hands and not taking something at face value until it "works." Other people don't get to decide how I live. Seeking out information and making life changes almost secretly behind the scenes is a lonely task but it makes one incredibly wise and smart. I want to find like minded people to share ideas with and chat a little. I believe in living a life worth living. I don't think we should be limited to getting to the point of feeling real like everyone else but limiting ourselves to an average and conventional life in a cubicle, a family, whatever... I think since we've experienced a setback, once we find our way back to stable reality, we deserve to live a fucking awesome life of passionate romance, fulfilling careers, understanding others with the increased empathy we have had since we don't take emotional stability and a comfortable childhood for granted. I promised myself that I will get sometime meaningful from every hard part of my life I've had to go through and I think everyone with DPD really deserves that.

Well I'm going to go stick my face in a textbook now...I've taken enough breaks, going to get into some work. If someone is reading this please wish me luck. I'm taking my differential equations exam next Tuesday, then mechanics and electricity and magnetism on Wednesday. I'm not going to lie and pretend I know what the fuck is going on lol. I can catch onto concepts pretty good but I tend to be a bit distractable when trying to stick to practicing all of the chapters & doing hours of work (this blog for example). My goal is to get into some hard work and let go to any associations between work stress/ bordem and feelings of unreality dissolve (I'll let you know what the results of that are).

Thank you for listening.
Much love,
Jen