[Closed] How to Get through these times without going crazy

The past few days have been a bit surreal.  When I was a teen, I spent a good part of my life with my father who lived a short drive from Thousand Oaks.  My Grandmother lived in Camarillo.  My husband grew up not far from the area as well.  We have many friends who live there currently. I happened to be up late at night watching tv when the Thousand Oaks shooting occurred and thought there was a good chance we would know someone connected to the event. Unfortunately, a childhood friend of my husband from church and boycotts lost his son that night.  Ironically he was a survivor of the Vegas shooting but murdered in Thousand Oaks. I am friends with way too many people grieving with other connections to the shooting.

And then the fires came.

A clergyman friend was in the process of providing  counseling to the families and victims of the shooting Thursday at an emergency center when he was re-routed in the afternoon to help evacuees from the fire.  He later needed to evacuate his own  family from their home and went back to counsel  evacuees.

Another friend on Thursday received an evacuation alert for her home in the evening and fled with her family to her parent's home.  Her sister received an emergency alert at 3:00am and evacuated her family as well to her parent's house.  Her parents then needed to evacuate themselves.  Additionally, this same  friend happens to work as an administrator at a Jewish resident camp and institute in the Malibu mountains.  The camp needed to evacuate on Friday. Staff,  horses, other animals and their 2 torahs made it to safety out.  Saturday she found out there is substantial damage to the camp, the extent not fully known because they have not been allowed back in.

Many other people I know have fled their homes and are awaiting word on when/if they can go back home.

So. Much. Heartache.

However,  the beauty of the human spirit shines  as well.   People volunteer their land to house horses, their temple to house Torah's, their homes to house friends and their arms to supply hugs.  They supply trailers to pull Alpacas stranded on beaches and arms to rescue bunnies surrounded by fire.  They help  strangers hose off their  roofs, feed  first responders and rescue someone's family portrait from burning houses.

I will say it again because I see it once again.  We are all connected.  

I now know how I will honor my friend Jackie's cousin who was killed in the Pittsburg shooting. In his memory I will donate to help rebuild Camp JCA Shalom in Malibu. 

We are all connected and love binds us all.

Lovendures... How my heart goes out to you. I am a native Californian, although now I live in New Mexico. When I was a child growing up near beautiful Yosemite, I delighted in the diversity of the landscape and the great wide-open beauty of California.

And now, with 40+million people living there, it has really become someplace that I don't even recognize anymore. The fires from '17 and through today are heartbreaking, the loss of life and home.... devastating.

But yes, as you said, people are really coming together to help each other and that is the single most factor in coping with all the trauma that will be the saving grace for everyone.

Angels of love all around you dear...... walk in your strength.

Stargazer thank you. Angels of love,    I am humbled in ways I really can't describe .   Though I am not the one dealing with this tragedy first hand, I appreciate your thoughtfulness and message..

How blessed you were to live near such beauty.  I loved my visit to Yosemite 25 years ago.  40 million nearby people now?  Wow.

Here is another "we are all connected "moment.  A friend who had evacuated Thursday (she is back home now) just posted on FB about fire crews heading over to her neck of the woods to help fight fires.  Where are they from?  My city in AZ.   Possibly from just down the block from where I live.

 My firefighters are helping my friends in another state.

I just heard from a friend that she saw one of our firetrucks.  How awesome is that??

Disgusted!   I just found out the mother of one of the victims of the Thousand Oaks shooting was labeled a "crisis actor".  Her husband ( father of the vicim) was a Boy Scout/ church friend of my husband while growing up.  I CANNOT imagine the added horror this evil act has caused this poor grieving family.   I don't understand why someone would create these horrible conspiracy lies again and again.  

A few days ago, in another thread, some body said  Don Jr, and Jared Krushner , being Capricorns were  headed into troubled waters. I am a Capricorn and have had pretty bad month and a half. I had to have a pulley and both ball joints  replaced on my car,. Then  I stepped on my glasses and broke them, my monitor went out, my bedroom TV went out. My living room Tv got blank circles and lines running down it, so I'm sure it will be gone soon. I had another scare with my car, but it was minor, so maybe things are starting to ease up.  It's mean, but I hope  Don Jr. and Jared's troubles are ten fold what mine have been.  

Want to share this fifth skill for dealing with these times and with the ups and downs of your life:

5. Learn to accept, not judge, and listen to your negative emotions. 

Being happy all the time is not normal, especially these days. Our emotions rise and fall throughout the day like the weather. They are messages from our psyche that something is not right with us.   If we ignore them or cover them up with fixes, then they don't go away, but just stand there behind a closed door shouting louder and louder to be heard.  The longer we put them off, the bigger they get until they become the elephant in the room.  

If we listen to our emotions rather than smother them, we will see that the  psyche is talking to us about what it needs from us in that moment.  So listening to negative emotions provides valuable inner guidance for our lives. 

Sometimes, however, we don't even know we are feeling  a negative emotion.  We reach for a fix before we ever know we were upset about something.  There are so many fixes these days that it is easy to keep avoiding bad feelings.  

I know I'm having a negative emotion when I start craving sweets. I get sick when I have large amounts of sugar so I have to sit with the cravings, and up come the negative emotions like methane gas rising from the muck. It's always old stuff, old undigested or partially digested material from early life that comes up.  

If I indulge my cravings, I feel temporarily lifted but, like all addictions, other problems arise and worsen and I never feel really better.

But not indulging my cravings brings  guidance about what I was doing that led to the craving and what was that bad feeling underneath it all.  This practice teaches and heals.   

So if you've suffered from cravings or other forms of addiction or you just have some bad feelings you don't know how to handle take a moment to breathe and ask yourself, "What is coming up if I don't do anything to make these feelings go away? 

When you do sit with those feelings, here are some tips for dealing with them:  

a. Accept the negative emotions.

Breathe them in.  Feel them as you breathe, but do this without judgement.  

b. Don't identify yourself with the negative emotions.  

Instead of thinking, "I'm an angry or sad person," think, "Anger or sadness are happening right now."

When we identify with our emotions, then we add a double whammy to our pain- -that we are bad because we have these emotions. 

c. Know that the feelings will not last.  

Like the weather, they come and go. Even serious depression doesn't usually last.  Suicidal people often report that they feel nothing would ever improve. Yet depression does lift and is treatable. 

This article from Happify.com also lays out these first three points very nicely

d. Recognize the Three Poisons in your Emotions

One of the most valuable lessons I ever learned on emotions came from the Buddha's teachings called The Three Poisons.  These behaviors, said the Buddha, cause us immeasurable suffering:   (1) anger or pushing something away which he called aversion, (2) craving or I-gotta-have-that, which he called clinging; and (3) denial or ignoring the feeling, which he called ignorance.  

(1) Anger is a healthy emotion except when it is constant. If someone is angry a lot and the anger pervades their thinking then there's something underlying, usually going back to childhood that they are not dealing with.  

(2) Craving or clinging is also normal until it become constant and excessive.  I must have a new house, I must have that person, I must have...(fill in the blanks).  Don't ignore these feelings but instead ask your psyche what is beneath them that you need to deal with.  

(3) Denial takes a lot of forms.  Addiction is a biggie and blaming another person is another.  I'm fine as long as I have my fix.  But without that fix, I get depressed, angry, clinging, hopeless, or some negative emotion. Or, it's so-and-so's fault that I'm angry or sad.  

Any thoughts?  

A message for handling the dark visions: I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars. --Og Mandin

Very nice message. Thanks for posting. It is really very helpful.

Lovendures, I realize it's been a while, but I was rereading your beautiful words written in November of love and solidarity you felt in the midst of so much pain and tragedy.  Restores my faith. Thank you.

Jeanne, thank you .  What a beautiful surprise to see your words when I came here today.

This community you have created uplifts and restores us all.

It allows us to be lights and receive light, offer words of wisdom and  hear words of wisdom, comfort others and be comforted.  I guess one could say it offers balance in an unbalanced world.  

The blessings I have received after becoming actively involved here continue to multiple and grow.  As I visualize this community, it reminds me of  a thriving community  garden.  

There are the seeds and bulbs which lay in the rich earth waiting for the sun and rain to foster their growth.  The trees. bushes and flowers grow in their own time, sharing their gifts throughout the changing seasons.  They are aided by the earthworms and ants aerating the soil, the bees and butterflies pollenating flowers, and wind and birds transferring seeds to new soil, spreading beauty beyond the community base.

 The caretakers nurture, while weeding, and cultivating.  Hope abounds that the fall bulbs planted before the first frost, bloom gloriously in the spring, That the spring vegetable plantings bring forth rich summer and fall harvests.  There may be damaging winds, flooding rains, and parched dry periods, but the caretakers continue to tend to the gardens with love, faith and hope, for the  garden gives back what it receives and even astonishes from time to time with the gift of unexpected surprises.

Jeanne Mayell, just look at what your garden is growing.

Love your metaphor. I love gardening too. 

Nathan Phillips. 

When I first read what happened to this beautiful Native American, on Friday in DC ( link at bottom of this post) my soul hurt.  I was also pretty angry, for  a short period time.  But then I thought about his character and all he has done over the years and my emotions been to shift.  

He is  an Omaha Elder, Vietnam Veteran ( Marine), former director of the Native Youth Alliance, Keeper of a scared pipe, and Water Protector at Standing Rock.  Every year he honors Native American Indian Vietnam veterans in a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.   

As I watched videos of how he was taunted and mocked, and read accounts of what transpired, I thought that he must have been guided by Spirit.  He must have had a reason to have been there at that moment, in this time we are now living.  It was soon after this thought  (which began to warm my heart)  that I read an account from Marcus Frejo, a member of the Pawnee and Seminole tribes and Elder Nathan Phillips:

"They went from mocking us and laughing at us to singing with us. I heard it three times," Frejo said. "That spirit moved through us, that drum, and it slowly started to move through some of those youths."

Eventually a calm fell over the group of students and they broke up and walked away.

"When I was there singing, I heard them saying 'Build that wall, build that wall,'" Phillips said, as he wiped away tears in a video posted on Instagram. "This is indigenous lands. We're not supposed to have walls here. We never did."

He told The Washington Post that while he was drumming, he thought about his wife, Shoshana, who died of bone marrow cancer nearly four years ago, and the threats that indigenous communities around the world are facing.

"I felt like the spirit was talking through me," Phillips said. https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20190119/news/301199883

Once again, the light shines bright when there is darkness.

Loveendures,

Thank you for sharing this!  The article expressed so much more than just a news event.

Shining light on so many shadows of our collective and our growing awareness that we are all connected as a nation in so many ways beyonce even racial, cultural, and political division.

Nathan Phillips has a strong connection to spirit and his role in this time in our changing world 

May we all send him love and support in the days ahead that he may continue to grow in purpose and direction.  We have not heard the last from or about  him. 

Scottish Doctors Are Now Issuing Prescriptions to Go Hiking

"For everything from high blood pressure to diabetes, anxiety, and depression, the medical community is learning (though lots of us have always known) that many ailments and diseases can be treated with activities like birdwatching, maybe a little kayaking, perhaps combing a beach for shells, even skipping pebbles across a slow-moving stream. Even just sitting silently in a forest, meditating (see: Japan, forest bathing)."   https://www.adventure-journal.com/2018/10/scottish-doctors-are-now-issuing-prescriptions-to-go-hiking/?fbclid=IwAR2X29-T4HdLNMnRmnLm0oNgoFmVYspJxp7oMn0HVMyHS6zq348UKUPf_0s

Love this!  I'm getting a picture of life down the road that is simple and preventive healthcare cheap and effective. 

Oh Cdeanne, 

Thanks for bringing this up! I love forest bathing. It's the most intense but right to the core natural energy I've ever felt. The trees and other life forms become one. Walking under a waterfall is similar as is (I've heard) swimming with whales, dolphins and other sealife.

But for housebound, elderly or city dwellers, at least breathe in fresh air and the sun and stroke a pet in a meditative and calming energy of that life and heart connection. Or holding a new baby and it doesn't even have to be your own or even related. Any oh yes, laying in the grass and connecting with the clouds, angels, and all of their messages.

Just love everyone and everything and connect with that deep inner smile we all have. See, feel, appreciate the true innate beauty of life.

But trees, especially old growth, or 100 year old trees are just the best!

I'm glad to see I'm not the only fan here of shinrin-yoku (forest bathing). In fact, I'm in the beginning stages of training to become a licensed forest therapist through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapists.

Coming from a background of medical complications stemming from a pre-existing condition, I alway intuitively suspected that something was missing in the conventional model of modern healthcare. Even observational studies have show that hospital patients with a room overlooking a garden will heal faster than patients who only have views of a parking lot/built environments. Happily, those Scottish doctors are not alone. Health professional in Nordic countries and East Asia have been increasingly turning to nature therapy as a supplement to treatment plans, and I hope to do my part to carry that cultural shift over into the US. 

Coyote, I'm very appreciative of your thoughtful and inspiring message, and for the link: https://www.natureandforesttherapy.org

Living where I do, I find near-daily beach combing and ocean gazing are essential for me to feel and re-feel deeply and joyfully calm and connected.

Michele, I love your nature reverie.  Lying in the grass and looking at clouds and sky is guaranteed to be uplifting!  

One of my all-time favorites while out hiking is to find a kinda flat-topped boulder (or even a cluster of large stones) to lie face-up on and feel myself relaxing into...the combo of stone upon ground beneath me, and open sky above, never ceases to remind me how deeply good this life on Earth is.

Speaking of stones, and because it is raining hard in usually too-dry SoCal today, here's one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, "Lingering in Happiness," from her book, Why I Wake Early.  The last two lines always knock me out:

After rain after many days without rain,

it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,

and the dampness there, married now to gravity,

falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground.

where it will disappear--but not, of course, vanish

except to our eyes.  The roots of the oaks will have their share,

and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushions of moss;

a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel;

and so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,

will feel themselves being touched.