strategies and therapies

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Analysis Paralysis under the duvet

My duvet – the one I was under..

Packing…errands…sorting… exercise… healthy eating choices…

communications… personal development… professional work…

Aarrgghhhh! Back under the duvet…

 

 

 

I began to think, “I can’t stay here all day!”   So I Googled how I felt (as you do)… Came up with this blog by Becky Kane:

The Science of Analysis Paralysis: How Overthinking Kills Your Productivity & What You Can Do About It

https://blog.todoist.com/2015/07/08/analysis-paralysis-and-your-productivity/

A good read,  well placed resarch to back up the article, great visuals, and…

Practical suggestions of how to overcome the problem.  Excellent!

One that really helps me is this tip:

“The next time you catch yourself thinking over a particularly issue again and again, schedule a meeting with a coworker, supervisor, mentor, or friend.”

Sometime if I am on my own, and paralysed by ‘all this to do’ I will write to myself.  Writing to God is even more helpful. Did  you know He likes conversations as well as prayers?  Well, He does.

My husband, Brian, is a master of thinking simply – no he’s not ‘simple’!  He is able to clarify what needs to be done and then does it.  I am the more creative thinker and communicator but can be stymied by overthinking.  If he is around, then I can present my ‘all this to do’ frantic thinking and obtain his simplicity of thought.

Blog writing is good for people like me.  So much going on in my brain how to start an article, that book, that project…  Never get round to it.  But a blog? I can take the Nike approach:  just do it!

Another of Kate’s tips:

Structure your day for the things that matter most.

Hmm… Ah!  Get up and get going!

Just about to get out from under the duvet…

Have a good day everyone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Never mind dear, learn to type.”

first typewriter lookalike

My education had to stop when I was 15 as our single parent and elderly person household was not able to manage without a little more income.

In preparation for NOT going to 6th form at the Ilminster Girls’ Grammar School, I was advised by my head teacher (wonderful but scary woman) to take typing and shorthand lessons and get some sort of qualification suitable for a working class young woman of slender means.

I remember the strain of carting my typewriter – similar to that in the photograph – across Chard, typing for the evening and then carrying it back home.   I did get both 25 and 35 wpm RSA typing certificates.  Shorthand – it didn’t happen. English is a struggle and being dyslexic and dyspraxia means that any symbols do not dig themselves into my memory very well.  It was the same with music theory…

However,  I am very glad indeed that I did get typing lessons as well as exercise for my bicep muscles.  Touch typing is a great skill to have in this computer age.  Upgrading to 60 wpm audio typing also got me a job when I desperately needed to put groceries on the table. That speed wasn’t achieved on an upright typewriter I hasten to add!

Computers have also supported me in my quest in my mid forties to upgrade my education.  Various software programmes have helped me organise myself, remember things and be able to get my thoughts out in some semblance of clarity.  Although being rather unhinged when numbers and arithmetic come into things, I took like a duck to water on the software for analysing social sciences data and I loved the graphics I could produce to visually explain my findings.    Nowadays, I can even speak into the computer and it types up my words (although my lingering Somerset accent with  soft consonants and broad vowels gives it a few puzzles…).  I still prefer to type though – I don’t misunderstand myself.

Out of need, in my late twenties, I learned the therapeutic value of writing out my frazzled emotions and tangled thoughts.  In the last five years or so my fingers and hands have decided to become tiresomely lacking in strength making it difficult for me to keep my hand-written journals. Hyper-mobile joints with lax tendons and ligaments rather than arthritic stiffness is the problem apparently. I have adjusted to writing my journal notes straight onto a keyboard with those touch typing skills coming into their own yet again.

I must admit that am glad that I do not have to haul a huge upright typewriter around with me anymore. It was hard when I was a teenager let alone now I am approaching my mid-sixties! I have a smallish bag with my iPhone, iPad, Bluetooth keyboard, various chargers and wifi equipment.

I remain grateful for the advice given to my 15 year old self, although I don’t think my head teacher expected me to go any farther than the typing pool and certainly not to a doctorate and private psychology practice!

 

 

 

A place of serenity, cleansing and escape.

A place of serenity and escape.

A South Coast Beach ( taken by Steve Jenkins): we all need a place to go to ‘be’, to think, to explore our inner world. Living near one of these beaches 15 years ago, the beach was that place for me and for our children. They still come down here from wherever they are living now and recall those times of hanging with friends, chilling, crying, escaping from being ‘grounded’.

All my senses loved the place: the salty smell, the sounds of lapping waves and seagulls calling on a calm day or the crashing of rollers at high tide on a stormy night, could all match my mood and draw me inside myself.

Such a vivid place could also draw out the emotions I didn’t realise were lurking beneath my surface and, as the seaweed and rubbish werer left visible after the storms and tides, so were my deep hurts, confusions and pains.

The cleansing and visibility of what needed to be revealed, no longer stored up clogging my emotions and thinking, would leave a peace, freshness and joy.

It is probably time for me to take a trip there again or to find another such place…

Maybe it is ALWAYS time?

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Peace Roses, aging and a mind that is like a Zoo

A Peace rose, lavender and thyme in our garden (C) Sharman Jeffries 2013

A Peace rose, lavender and thyme in our garden (C) Sharman Jeffries 2013

Everything in our home says ‘calm, rest here, be at peace’ – it was designed that way as we renovated our old property.  Even the roses in the garden are ‘Peace’ roses and there is a Quiet Room (summerhouse) at the bottom of the garden.

People come here, walk in the door and say “It’s so peaceful here.  Wonderful.”  Guests come to retreat with us and remark of the restfulness of the entire property.

I am so blessed to live here and offer the serenity of our home to others.  Do I feel that way though?

Not always!  It can be busy running a home and family, several businesses and the retreat.   But the busiest place has been in my mind …

I have attention deficit hyperactive asset (according to Dave Gilpin – see his Twitter page and Hope City Church UK) and have some amazing gifts and abilities but these need some good support to keep them positive.

The actress Betty Davis said: “Getting old isn’t for wimps” and how true that is!  I am now able in the UK to get free prescriptions (very useful – read on…) but have to wait another year and a month to be eligible for free bus pass and state pension (ouch – now you know how old I am!).   Things don’t work as well as they used to.  My slightly off beat brain needs a bit of support, my body needs regular exercise and it likes pretty sensible food and levels of alcohol.

Anywhere, where was I?  Oh yes, that happens too… the old cognitive processing systems seem to need a bit of oiling. I have always had ‘dyslexic moments’ where I could tell you the first letter of the word but not recall the word itself until after four or five shots of trying different ones out.  Now that has increased to a word or a name itself.

I don’t think I am at the stage yet portrayed so honestly in the film about literary and philosophy genius Iris Murdoch.  That was quite upsetting to watch yet so beautiful at the same time. I don’t think my loving spouse need worry about having to run down the road after me quite yet!  

However, back to main topic.  A busy mind, neurodiversity for the aged, and revelations…

I am planning to write up some academic papers long outstanding to submit for publication.  Am I up to the job given my present state of mental health?  Here is where the free prescriptions being so helpful comes in…  I take medication to calm my brain down and medication to calm myself down.  I am not however in a state of lethargy or vagueness… I feel more… LIKE ME!

Unlike Kay Redfield Jamison the fine author of a fine book, “Touched By Fire” (her autobiography “An Unquiet Mind” should also be read -or listened to as it comes on audio book also), I do not have to take and balance levels of Lithium for manic depressive illness (also called Bi polar disorder).

Stephen Fry has done excellent programmes on this illness, which he himself has, interviewing celebrities like Robbie Williams and Carrie Fisher (others are listed on Google: Vivien Leigh, Catherine Zeta Jones, Jean Claude van Damme,  Van Gogh to name a few ) .

I am not having the level of struggles of those creative wonderful people. I am hopeful that my support strategies and my medication can offset my busy mind, my post menopausal weird hormones and my tendency to collect gadgets and any form of information and knowledge indiscriminately – and thus I get all my filing systems, book cases, computer filing, email accounts clogged up.

Stephen Fry also collects gadgets … and sports cars apparently… out of my league!

I am very hopeful and quite excited to enter a new phase in my life and would offer you a poem written about my life without my strategies and supports:

My chattering mind.
It does seems to me that strange animals live inside my brain:
Some are woolly, jittery and ‘tiggerish’, others are still and wise.
 
It’s a funny thing to hear them chattering away to me, some contradicting the other.
There are times they all manage to be still when I’m without distraction or urgency
 
But this doesn’t happen often and extremes of noise or quiet may cause some of them to take fright, some become tired and confused, others begin to rant and rave.
 
Those tell me horrid, depressing things about myself that I don’t think are true. But they do make me doubt and I begin wonder if I am as awful as they say.
 
If I could choose, I would have just one animal in my head, perhaps an owl crossed with a worker ant: one useful, helpful creature instead of the cacophony of my zoo.
 
Imagine how wonderful a person I would be if I just had one crossbreed of practical and wise in my conscious mind, and not this contentious menagerie?
 
Ah well, I suppose I should just accept the diversity of my personal zoo and make sure I don’t pay attention to the wrong animal at the wrong time in the wrong situation. 
 
(c) Sharman Jeffries  19.6.02
 
 
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Bubbling?

I’m so glad for my mate Godfrey Birtill’s songs – not bubbling myself this morning (viral thingy still around) but Godfrey’s Facebook link to the old traditional Pentecostal song he has updated (sounds like Lonnie Donnegan! – oops, age alert) made me smile and had me jigging around!  The old Pentecostals must have really enjoyed expressing their faith…

Music calms the troubled breast – as someone said.   It is also something that I forget when I am locked into a ‘downer’ or OTT time.  So, memo to self: “music is therapeutic, you know that Sharman – so PUT THE MUSIC ON!  NOW!”