Mind over natter ... sorta ...

Going through a breakup.

It hurts.

Racing thoughts ... obsession sessions ... ruminating ... the whole deal.

Aha, think I -- I should be practicing mindfulness.

So I picture myself lying on soft, green grass of a quiet field.

I picture my thoughts and feelings as soft, puffy clouds ... just moving across the blue, blue sky.  Try letting them appear ... and move across the sky ... and disappear, unjudged ... untouched by me....

Suddenly, the clouds begin to change shape.  They become ... airplanes ... airplanes with the rotund contours of World War II planes in Warner Brothers cartoons.  More and more clouds become airplanes ... and then they start dropping bombs on me -- hundreds of tiny bombs falling from the sky and exploding all around me as I lie on the grass.

Hmmm, I think.  That's pretty funny. Not particularly mindful, granted, but still, actually pretty funny.

Then I remember what my therapist said the last time we talked.  What should I do, I asked, when I am trying to sit with thoughts and feelings without following them ... but without running away from them, either?

Ask yourself, he said, What do I need to do to take care of myself right now?

Answer: laugh.
Answer: invent funny methaphor to impress therapist.
Answer: Remember to ask the question.

Done and done.

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It's here! It's here!

Let's face it -- clinical depression is nothing to laugh at.


It's pervasive.  It's all consuming.  And these days, frankly, it's kicking my ass.


But if there's anything other than the annual library book sale to proffer a little bit of sunshine in my life, it's this:  the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

The 2008 results are in! And the winner is ...........

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

Garrison Spik

Washington, D.C.

The winner of 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Garrison Spik (pronounced "speak"), a 41-year-old communications director and writer from Washington, D.C. Hailing from Moon Township, Pennsylvania, he has worked in Tokyo, Bucharest, and Nitro, West Virginia, and cites DEVO, Nathaniel Hawthorne, B horror films, and historiography as major life influences.

Garrison Spik is the 26th grand prize winner of the contest that began at San Jose State University in 1982.


An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."


Most entries are submitted electronically through the Contest's Web site: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/. A new collection of previous winners was published in August 2007 by The Friday Project. It is available through Amazon.com.uk.




Runner-Up

"Hmm . . ." thought Abigail as she gazed languidly from the veranda past the bright white patio to the cerulean sea beyond, where dolphins played and seagulls sang, where splashing surf sounded like the tintinnabulation of a thousand tiny bells, where great gray whales bellowed and the sunlight sparkled off the myriad of sequins on the flyfish's bow ties, "time to get my meds checked."

Andrew Bowers

Nope, don't even THINK of navigating away.  How can you before you've read the winning entries in the "Adventure," "Children's Literature," "Purple Prose," "Detective" and more categories!


Read on ... and enjoy!

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Gazette.net: Peer support offered to those suffering from mental illness

from Gazette.net:
by Kristi Tousignant

When JoAnn Anderson feels like laughing, she buys DVDs of comedians’ stand-up routines for $5 at Wal-Mart, finding a release in the comedic punch lines and witty jokes.

For Anderson, however, it is not just about entertainment. Anderson has bipolar disorder, and the videos allow her to feel good as a way to deal with her mental illness.

‘‘If you can laugh at something, maybe it’s not that bad,” Anderson said.

Anderson, 49, of New Carrollton and friend Regina Prophet, 47, of Temple Hills, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder, have reached out to those suffering just like them. The two lead a mental illness support group as a part of the county’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, based in Greenbelt. New to the county, the group started in March with the goal of offering a safe place for participants to discuss their illness.

Read more ...

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Beyond Blue: Five Humor Strategies? Make That Ten ...

Therese Borchard recently posted this item on her blog, "Beyond Blue."

I love Therese and her blog, but I realize first of all, she's a nicer person than I am, and secondly, that the mentally ill mind works in strange and mysterious ways.

So with that in mind, here is my AMENDED list of five humor strategies to help you find laughter every day ...

In the "America Fitness" article I quoted yesterday, I found a list of humor strategies by Joyce Saltman, a Gestalt therapist from Southern Connecticut State University, who believes laughter is a prescription for survival. Here are some of her recommendations on how to find laughter everyday.

1. Have a place devoted to humor. Designate a section at work as a place for a new joke of the day, everyday.

I have whole areas of my house that make me laugh. The kitchen. The laundry area. The spare room stacked floor to ceiling that's just "one good afternoon" away from being transformed into a beautiful den.

2. Surround yourself with positive people. Avoid people who are constantly negative. They can diminish positive energy.

Or people you can laugh at. They are usually easier to find, too.

3. Buy clothes that make you smile.Wear the brightest clothes you can find to brighten your day and others around you.

Clothes that make you laugh work. Twenty years later, my mother and I are still cracking up about the time I brought her this beautiful sweater to try on but it had this weird ... bulge in the front. Our hilarity knew no bounds when I discovered I'd grabbed it from Maternity by mistake!

Clothes that make other people laugh work, too. So does laughing at other people's clothes. See #2.

4. Have a VCR readily available. Make tapes of the funniest TV shows you can find. When you or a friend need a pick-me-up, play them.

Watch the recordings of all the soap operas you made in the '80s. Laugh at everyone's clothes and hair. See #2.

5. Make a list of 20 things to do in a day that make you happy. Every couple of months, update this list and make an effort to do at least 10 of these items each day.

Make a list of 20 things in a day that make you laugh. Look in out-of-the-way places. Count the number of times the local news anchors stumble over words. Watch their graphics, note all misspellings, and email the station with your edits. Turn on your set's closed captioning and watch the voice-recognition software struggle with proper names. Read along -- out loud.

More suggestions as they occur to me ... this could be good.

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FINALLY figured out where I have been going wrong!

In retrospect, it seems so obvious.

Match.com? Nope? Yahoo personals? Uh-uh. E-Harmony -- puhleeze.

All this time, as Johnny Lee sang, looking for love in all the wrong places.

Here they all are, ripe for the picking, emotionally available, willing to relocate, tall, dark (or light) and handsome.

And gelded.

One of the best sites for true love you will ever find:

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McSweeney's: A Word to the Graduates

BY DAVID HOLUB
- - - -
Friends and family, faculty, and, of course, the graduates: I am honored that you have invited me to be your commencement speaker.

If you would have told me five years ago that I'd be where I am now, I would have said, "Why don't you back up and give me some personal space?" Why? Because I didn't know you then and what was it your business where I'd be in five years? It still sort of makes me mad. And, knowing you, you would have persisted, and I would have said, "Why are you so infatuated with what I'll be doing in five years?"

Honestly, when I was asked to be a commencement speaker, I thought, "What's the use?"
No one remembers their graduation speaker. Ask your parents. Graduation speeches are usually some old man pontificating about following your dreams and setting your sights high and roads less traveled. Bull roar.

For one thing, dreams can be tricky, because there are dreams where you start a revolutionary computer business, or where you're at your parents' house but it's not really your parents' house and they're having a garage sale and you're sitting in a bathtub full of cupcakes. So just forget the dreams thing.

My point is that commencement speeches tend to be dry and forgettable. I feel like it's my obligation to make this commencement speech something you won't ever forget, and doing that with mere words and wisdom and funny stories is, frankly, impossible.

And that's why I've decided to release a family of lions into the audience. Granted, some of you will lose your lives and some will be mauled to that icky point where you'd rather be dead. Some will lose limbs but go on to secure respectable employment with reasonable wages, assuming you've retained the use of at least one arm. Others will mark great achievement in the artificial-limb industry—if not for yourself, then as a tribute to a fellow graduate. For the rest of you: Congratulations, you've made it. Welcome to the real world.

This isn't some world where you can goof off for four years guzzling beer and stuffing your face with pizza. Because when you order pizza in the real world, you'll find that the deliveryman has rigged a shotgun to fire when the pizza box is opened. And, as you bleed from the abdomen, you'll hear the deliveryman say, "Welcome to the real world."

The real world is a place where you go on a mountain retreat and stay at a charming cabin with a gurgling stream and a herd of deer grazing on the mountain grass out front. You'll spot one that is tamer than the others, so you approach him, and he lets you scratch behind his ears and pat him on the head. After you've patted him three times, you find that the reason he's so tame is because he's plastic, and on the fourth pat his head explodes. And, as you wait in vain for your hearing to return, the cabin manager, standing nearby, says, "Welcome to the real world."

Today, your world is a world of books and study, but tomorrow those books won't mean a damn thing. Indecipherable. You'll stare, trying to make sense of the pages, and, just as you feel your knowledge returning, slowly, painfully, there will be a knock at the door and a man in a hobo costume.

"Remember me?" he says. "We went to college together."

"I was in college just yesterday," you say. "I think I'd remember you."

"Yesterday?" he says. "We graduated 27 years ago."

And, looking around, you realize he's right. You wonder where it's all gone and realize you've been asleep, dreaming. Of what, you're too embarrassed to say. Cupcakes, perhaps. As you begin to sob into your hands, you say to your college buddy, "I'm so sorry, Franklin."

"Actually, no."

"Hayes, is that you?"

"No."

"Salazar?"

"No."

You go back to weeping into your hands and he embraces you. From the smell, you determine the hobo costume is no costume at all. But just as you begin to feel comforted—poof—he's gone, and he took your watch. On your wrist is a blue plastic replacement watch from a cereal box. The time reads, "Welcome to the real world."

There's a lesson in that. Unfortunately, we've run short on time.

If I could give one piece of advice, it's this: Don't throw your hats up into the air, because eventually they'll fall back to the earth and likely hurt somebody. And if you've been maimed or killed during my speech, then I apologize. It turns out I probably could have made my point without lions.

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How I Spent My Nervous Breakdown

In her column this morning, Therese Borchard of Beyond Blue talks about the importance of humor in healing. I think you can tell you're on the road to recovery when you can find something in your circumstances to laugh about.

With that in mind, here is how I spent my nervous breakdown last year. Handwork helped calm me down ... and the pictures I designed helped me find something to -- if nothing else -- smile grimly at ...

The "Snap Out Of It" picture came out of a book of Mary Engelbreit cross stitch. The folks at group loved it so much I still think I need to make one for the group room/s!

The one below I designed myself. I saw the quote on a bumper sticker and it cracked me up so throughly it was the first project I started on. Which is pretty astonishing, actually, when you consider the only thing keeping me alive at the time was that I couldn't stop crying and shaking long enough to kill myself ...



My dad's been quoting this line from "The Last Angry Man" for years, whenever it seems the universe is conspiring against you. I designed this one myself, too ...



This one's not funny, but I did design it and stitch it up for the people in the outpatient program that saved my life ... and the folks that had yet to come in and sit in those chairs. The quote comes from Joshilyn Jackson's "Gods In Alabama":


And I made this for my therapist -- it's a favorite quote of his:

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Superlative In All Things: 26-Week Fetus Diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder

from Superlative In All Things:

COLUMBUS, OH. –Jake and Mandi Donaldson were overjoyed when they learned that their dream of building a family would soon be realized. That joy rapidly turned to concern when the fetus began to exhibit bizarre behaviors that kept Mandi Donaldson awake late into the night. Doctors could not explain these episodes, despite numerous ultrasounds and maternal serum testing. The expectant couple finally found answers to their questions when the fetus was diagnosed with Fetal Bipolar Disorder.

The fetus, who Mandi Donaldson has named Piper, demonstrated extreme mood swings as early as 20 weeks. “Sometimes she would just lie there for hours, and other times she just couldn’t be still. She was completely erratic.” The symptoms worsened as the weeks went by with Piper’s agitation growing progressively stronger. “She started kicking me in the kidney over and over again. I knew something was definitely wrong, but I never suspected mental illness. I thought she was just a little shit.”

Dr. Matthew Pearson, chair of the newly developed Fetal Psychiatry Department at Johns Hopkins, says this type of behavior is characteristic of Fetal Bipolar Disorder. “These fetuses are very sick and very difficult to care for. They rapidly cycle between depression and mania, causing extreme distress for their mothers, including heartburn and frequent urge to urinate.”

Read more ...

Comments to original post:

This is really well-written, and you scared f*** out of me.
How sad that the way things are going, I couldn’t tell if you were kidding until the end.

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Pressconnects.com: Mental health is serious business -- except when it's not

Pressconnects.com reports:

Programs to offer education, laughs

One in four adults suffers from a mental disorder, according to the National Institutes of Health.

For something that's so common, it's hard to understand why it's so stigmatized. That is, until you think back a few decades, when the "c" word -- cancer -- was taboo, too.

Mark your calendar now: The Mental Health Association of the Southern Tier has a full palette of programs coming up for the public in May, which is Mental Health Month.

The Mental Health Players will kick off the month with their presentation of the hit Broadway play "Beyond Therapy" written by Christopher Durang. The play revolves around the quirky lives of Bruce and Prudence, a couple who meet on a blind date. They are both deeply involved in therapy with hilariously incompetent psychiatrists, says Brian O'Connell, Self-Help Independence Project assistant director. It's meant for an adult audience and space is limited, so call ahead, he advises.

Read more ...

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Born Animal: Rats That Live in the Moment

Discovery News reports:

In other news, it appears that rats live mostly in the moment. A study on rodent memory, conducted by University of Western Ontario researchers, found that rats remember, but they do not seem to store memories with a "date stamp" the way that we humans do. This suggests they don't know when the remembered event happened, or how much time has passed since the episode. Perhaps such info wouldn't be helpful to them? Animals evolve what they need to survive, so recounting the exact time and date of a past event probably just wasn't very useful in the rat world. (Although I bet it would be now, such as if a rat could remember the exact time a person puts out yummy dog or cat food each morning.)

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From The Windsor Star ...

Comedy helps group to cope with their demons
Doug Williamson
Windsor Star

Depression. Alcoholism. Chronic pain. Failed relationships.

Serious subjects, but fair game for a group of budding standup comedians who showcased their talents Monday night.

After practising their routines for two months, seven people suffering from mental illnesses took the stage at the Caboto Club for the kickoff of Mental Health Week, organized by the Windsor-Essex County branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

"I went a whole year without laughing or smiling, I just wanted to die," said Denise Jackson of Windsor, one of the neophyte comics who performed at the Caboto Club, and who is being treated for bipolar disorder.

"The message I'm trying to share is there's hope," said Jackson, 45. "Whatever people are experiencing, people have experienced it before. I'm just doing what I need to take care of myself."

People with mental illness also suffer from the effects of misplaced public perceptions, said Vancouver comedian and counsellor David Granirer, founder of Stand Up for Mental Health, a group which advocates using comedy to empower the mentally ill.

Read more ...

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Prometheus Keeps A Diary

Day 1What an awful day. Chained to a rock, my liver ripped out and eaten by an eagle, and I just bit my tongue! That's gonna be a canker sore for sure. But I know I did the right thing. Those poor people needed fire in the worst way. Besides, how long can Zeus hold a grudge?

read more | digg story

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And then I ran across this ...

And I sent out the link to everyone on my "Mental Health Team" email list. These e-cards are wonderful!

There's my motto for 2008 right there!

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The only thing I like better than my new calendar is my Pessimist's Mug ...

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Shaping up to be a good year for the mentally ill ...

At least, if having a sense of humor about your illness is a good thing (which I obviously think it is).

This is the image I've chosen for January 2008 in my personalised despair.com calendar.

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