Tonight's picture was taken in September of 2008. It was Mattie's first month in treatment and it was a hard adjustment going from being free to do what he wanted to do at his home, to being confined and limited living in a hospital. Sound and confusion were sometimes too much for Mattie, so that day he built a hiding space out of a large cardboard box. As you can see, he and his IV went into the box and he did not want to look or interact with anyone. There were many, many emotionally painful times in the hospital and as Mattie's parent it was heart breaking to witness his transformation and worse, it was hard knowing there was NOTHING I could do about it.
Quote of the day: Love is never supposed to hurt. Love is supposed to heal, to be your haven from misery, to make living worthwhile. ~ Mia Asher
Today was a total blur. I have been dealing with COVID isolation since last Thursday. On a good day, I face incredible challenges, but I assure you any more isolation and confinement at this point are enough to put me right over the edge. I was flooded with all sorts of emotions today that I had to walk in the backyard for about an hour and pull out weeds. That wasn't my intention for the day. My goal was to sit down and go through another three more hours of continuing education. But there was something inside of me that prevented that from happening. I was too wound up, too upset, and too agitated. My mind is desperately trying to understand and make sense out of what has happened to my marriage.
By 3pm, I decided to go back to my computer and began another training course. This one focuses on Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). It is a crash course with 15 core competencies, and it is 6.5 hours long. Though I have heard of this therapeutic philosophy and technique, I have never studied it before. However, what caught my attention is it is used for a variety of mental health issues, and focuses on regulating distress.
The word dialectical is interesting in and of itself because it basically means two opposing things being true at the same time. For example, in my role as a caregiver... I can feel HAPPY to be assisting my parents and at the same time FRUSTRATED/STRESSED to be performing this role alone. Happy and frustrated may not sound like they go together, but this is actually spot on for human emotions. We are complicated beings who don't just have one emotion at a time! Yet having all these emotions can be overwhelming and can make it difficult to cope. Therefore, we learn to accept that we will have multiple emotions at once and can get overwhelmed, but at the same time we can also empower ourselves to take all these feelings and change our outlook about them.
I went through about an hour of training today. I thought I wouldn't be able to concentrate, but I LOVE the clinician. She is witty, engaging, high energy, and honestly she reminded me of me when I was her age. She even introduced us to her dog, Mimi! Though this presenter is young, you quickly realize there is a reason she is doing this six hour presentation. She is very knowledgeable, has wonderful real life examples, and encourages audience participation. Literally she sucked me into her presentation and it was a positive DISTRACTION.
After sitting for an hour, I got up to make dinner. However, her content was whirling around in my mind, especially mindfulness and distress tolerance. I always thought mindfulness was equivalent to mediation. IT IS NOT. It actually requires one to actively pay attention and be in the moment without judgment. While reflecting on that the moment, you can ask yourself questions such as.... what are your thoughts, what are your feelings, what are you seeing and hearing? Not ten minutes ago, not an hour ago, BUT RIGHT NOW. She is 100% correct, when you stop and reflect in the moment and ask yourself these questions, it triggered for me a moment of calmness. It caused me to slow down.
Distress tolerance involves managing a tough moment without making things worse. She suggested that distraction is one of the ways to help us manage distress. As soon as I heard this, I immediately said.... OF COURSE! I learned this by happenstance when Mattie died. I would get so overwhelmed with emotion and that the only way OUT OF this terrible negatively and stress, was to do art projects or other activities. I referred to these activities back then as DIVERSIONS, and in essence diversions are distractions. My point to sharing this model is that besides just taking the course, I am trying to apply it to my own life, and though I may not have known the modules by name and the specifics behind this intervention model, I AM LIVING IT! I have lived these modules with Mattie's cancer diagnosis, through Mattie's death, and now these modules give me the language to help communicate the great distress I am living with each day since September 23, 2023.
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