I love to write. I need to write more than I realize. I want to work towards writing every day. It’s one of the best ways I can process my emotions and thoughts. I excel more at doing so through writing than I do through speaking, and since I’m an introvert it works better for my needs than it does through speaking. My inner life is so rich that I should definitely be writing the stuff down that goes on inside my head. My inner life is much more active than my outer life so it’s best if I make use of that through writing.

I frequently think about how I want to want to improve myself. I frequently think about how I want to get back to having good, productive daily habits that are in line with my values and strengths. I was reminded of something I learned about years ago when I went to the training I went to last week. The speaker brought up “Flow Experiences” and I was reminded of how they really do increase your happiness levels.

Flow experiences are experiences in which you are fully engaged in what you are doing because you love whatever you’re doing. You end up losing track of time and are completely in the moment. Typically flow experiences result from doing things that you are passionate about or strong in, and so they are truly fulfilling experiences. Multiple Positive Psychology books talk about how the more often you engage in Flow Experiences in your day to day life, the greater your happiness levels will become. This is one way to slightly improve your baseline happiness levels.

My flow experiences include hiking, writing, reading, creating music, making art, and meditating. If I were to do these six things regularly, or atleast a few of them every day, I know I would feel happier. I would be doing the things that I truly love and am good at, and would be living a life that’s more congruent with my values.

One good thing is that for the past several months, whenever I have a day off, going hiking is a priority of mine. I don’t always make it since the daylight is gone by about 4:30 pm lately and I have a second-shift schedule, but I atleast have the internal motivation to atleast strongly want to go hiking on my days off. I also want to get to a point where I go hiking or atleast walking before I go to work too.

I forget what year it was in college but I think it might have been my first or second year when I started to really get into meditating. What motivated me to do so was when I start to get panic attacks a lot, and I also had tripped not long before then so that reminded me of just how spiritual of a person I truly was. Before then I was an atheist. During that trip I was opened up to the spiritual plane and it was the most amazing experience of my entire life. I actually saw energy itself, in everything. I saw the energy fields around the people I was with, I saw how people had different aura colors that were more predominant than other colors. At the time I didn’t really know what energy fields or auras were but I got really into them after that.

Everything in the room I was in, which was filled with creative/abstract/psychedelic art, was alive. All of the pictures were animated. The room itself was filled with this translucent yet multi colored goo type stuff that filled the room starting from the ceiling and was formulated in large cylindrical coil shapes. I understood this as matter itself, which I then learned that matter itself was composed of energy, which is primarily spiritual. This experience felt more real to me than any other “sober” experience I had ever had before. My ego was torn away and I was exposed to the spiritual realm, which was directly in conflict with the reality that the ego had formulated and controlled for all of my life before this.

I did experience “ego death” before the highly positive/spiritual part of the trip began. The ego death was the scariest experience of my life. It was like a panic attack times 10, and when I looked in the mirror I felt completely dissociated. I was sure I was going to die, so my panic got worse and I puked a ton. I didn’t know it then but what truly died at that time was my ego, and it’s scary as fuck when it happens because it questions your entire perspective and understanding of reality. The ego convinces you that are in complete control, that you are the center of everything, and that nothing is real except for concrete/factual based information. Ego death reverses all of that programming and so your mind and emotions are given a complete shock. The ego re-gained control later on, but this trip changed my perspective on life for good.

A bit later I went to get Reiki done. Reiki is a spiritual practice in which imbalanced chakras are balanced, blockages are opened up, and repressed emotions are brought to the surface. Your spirit is interacted with in a way that can be felt strongly, even physically. During this Reiki session my Reiki practioner told me that I was an Indigo child. At the time I didn’t know what that meant but I looked it up later and it made *so* much sense. The way that I had experienced my entire life was finally clarified and so instead of feeling like an outsider/alien, I felt like I was here for a reason, for spiritual and healing based purposes, and so I felt special. Again this was a complete turn around from how I felt for all of my life until I was given this information and this experience. After this session I started to meditate daily or every other day for a few months. I felt amazing and my external circumstances didn’t control my emotional state anymore. I felt at one with everything and that was exactly what I needed.

I want to start meditating every day again. I want to start writing every day. I want to start making art every day, like I did after my trip for awhile. I want to hike as much as possible, in as many new places as I can possibly find. I want to re-remember that these are the things that I am here for, these are the things that truly matter, and these things are what make life worth living. Of course having deep connections/relationships with others and spreading as much love and understanding as possible are equally important, but the aforementioned passions are all internal/individually based things that fulfill me the most without depending on any other people to do so.

    There are a few lines/thoughts I had over the past week or so that came to me at times when I wasn’t by a computer or a notepad. I told myself I’d write them down when I got back. In fact I think I was on a long walk by myself both of these times I’m thinking of. I was just reading about introverts yesterday (again, I do frequently), and I think I remember the article saying that introverts have their best and most creative ideas or thoughts when they’re alone. That is very true about me. I still feel like I fall somewhere between the two extremes but I do have a lot of needs that are the same as the ones most introverts have. Now I’ll get into those two different thoughts I had. They came on as somewhat of a writing inspiration in that they were relatively poetic, but mostly they came on because I had some time to have some clarity and space to gather my thoughts. I’ll just write them both down now without writing anything other than the thoughts.

1.) Sometimes I just want to lay down and curl up with the earth, pull the grass up out of its roots in the soil, and lay under it. A blanket of earth. A place of serenity and a place to connect deeply with the element that is undoubtedly real in the most fundamental sense. 

2.) Relationships enrich our lives. They bring comfort and understanding. A real sense of belonging in the times that we spend with those we relate to and share a deep bond with. Relationships lighten the weight of life, yet they deepen our lives as well. We find what truly matters, what is essential in life. We find that place where we are genuinely loved and accepted. These connections remind us that even though we often feel we don’t belong, we really do belong with others that we have a mutual understanding with. We find that we are free to share our thoughts and feelings and they will be listened to, they will not be judged. Often not much will be said back, but simple expressions and gestures let us know that they understand. And that is enough.

 

 

So this morning I went to my new Psychiatrist (well he’s actually one I was seeing in the past but then switched to one at umass). Now that I’ve graduated I can’t continue with UMass Mental Health Services. I realized I definitely miss my therapist and I need a new one for sure. I haven’t had therapy in probably a few months and I can tell I’m not doing as well as I was when I saw mine every couple of weeks.

So yeah this Psychiatrist is a SUPER Irish dude, I mean his name is Killian O’Connell, you can’t really get more Irish than that. He’s got the accent and everything. Wicked cool. I love Irish people haha and I always feel like I’m more than just a quarter Irish. So anywho I made this appointment because I needed a new script as the last one ran out and I can’t go back to my previous med doctor. He agreed to write me the script and he asked me a bunch of questions since the last time I saw him was two years ago when I was severely depressed.

I like the guy I mean he boosted my mood a lot just by being his jolly hopeful Irish self and I felt like he’s really accepting of me for some reason. I guess I just felt comfortable and that had to do with his warmth. So I asked him a bunch of questions too about my med and other stuff, especially because he was suggesting I increase my dosage from 300 mg to 450 mg. I have read things before about Wellbutrin becoming more of a risk when you go above a certain dosage, which I thought I remembered was anything above 300, but I guess not. Apparently after 450 mg that’s when the seizure threshold lowers. He asked me about my current energy levels and how I sleep and things like that. I said my energy levels are ok, and my sleep is ok, but when he asked if I had trouble getting up in the mornings, I went on to tell him how I’m a night owl and I stay up really late and sleep really late. He also asked if I “take caffeine” haha. I said on and off. And then he asked if I noticed any interaction between caffeine and my med. I said yeah I definitely feel a boost from it.

I wasn’t immediately going to be like “OH SURE I’LL TAKE 150 MORE MG of what I’m already taking, and increase that much in just one day!” I happen to know a fair amount about psychology and psychiatry and I’m also a skeptic/someone who questions things instead of just taking it at face value. So I asked him a bunch about the possibilities of that dosage increase and he later went on to tell me he could tell I was anxious and that’s another reason I should increase my dosage. I said how can you tell I’m anxious and he said well you asked me a lot of questions and you were pretty concerned about that 1% seizure risk (? or something). This is actually kind of hysterical to me that he said that. He can tell that I’m anxious just because I asked a lot of questions. I don’t get how that makes me anxious lol. It just makes me someone that is cautious and thinks things through a lot before just jumping into them. Especially when it comes to something serious like pharmaceutical drugs.

Basically Psychiatrists are just swanky drug dealers with PHD’s. It’s pretty funny how differently they are viewed from regular drug dealers simply because what they are doing is legal, though it really is no different than what a drug dealer does. Psychiatrists are such med pushers, they will prescribe you any and all drugs they think could possibly help you, and they don’t take very long to make that decision. You could easily totally fake a condition or disorder and in a heart beat they’d prescribe you with some super strong drug. They fucking love drugs lol.

Another thing that was funny was that he told me that if I went up to 450 I’d be having a lot more fun. !! hahah that could mean so many things. To me that comes off as “If you increase your med which is between a stimulant and an anti-psychotic, you will be HIGH off of it”. Basically I felt like he was saying I’d be inducing a hypomanic state, though I don’t think he realized what he was communicating to me hah.

So he was pretty convincing and his whole delivery I guess worked on me because not only did I essentially agree to the dosage increase but I also walked out of there in a mood that was atleast 5 times as good as the one I went in there with. I feel like I got amped off of his energy and I think also what he said gave me some insight into why my med doesn’t affect me as much as it used to. I think I got pretty used to it and I can tolerate a higher dosage so I actually required a higher dosage to maintain the same effects. When I first started taking it, for the first like 3 months or so, I felt hypomanic. And this happened DIRECTLY after I had been in the most severe depressive episode of my life. The med worked so fucking fast and all of the sudden my thinking was really sharp again, my head was clear, my energy levels skyrocketed, I felt elated, and I could finally sleep again, the severe insomnia finally faded into the background.

Of course at this time in my life it was a BEAUTIFUL summer, really great sunny/hot days and I had just met Zak, who I started dating not long after that. And I got a job at Target then. So basically at that time I went from utter despair to total elation. In the course of like 2 weeks. After being severely depressed and an insomniac for about a year before that. It was fucking sweet to be pulled out of that and to be sent all the way up in the other direction. But then I got fired from Target at the end of September so I had only worked there for like 3 months, and things started to go downhill. I was really torn up over being fired because I felt like I had finally found a place I could succeed at or atleast a shitty job that I could atleast maintain, only to find out a few months later that I “wasn’t a good fit for the job”. And I had some bitch who was barely around from management proceed to tell me how I worked and where I fucked up. After that I started going into a mild depression, and if it weren’t for being with Zak at the time, I probably would’ve gone down way deeper.

Anywho I feel kind of hopeful right now because I feel like this med increase might actually get me back to the good spot I was in that summer. I have felt like I’ve been depressed for the most part for like a year now, not the entire time but for a lot of it. I also felt good after the visit because it made some things clear to me. Which may or may not be the truth, but it explains some things that I had been just internalizing/blaming on myself. If my med essentially dissipated, that explains why I went back to a depressive state, atleast in part. Of course other circumstantial shit is part of it too, but I’m glad to know it wasn’t *entirely* my fault. And regardless it always feels better to know *why* something changed or what the reasons are behind a complicated issue, because it clarifies it. And it makes it more possible to be understood/dealt with.

So he wrote me up that script, which of course I can barely read because apparently like all doctors and psychiatrists have the worst chicken scratch ever. I don’t know how pharmacists can read that. I will bring it in soon, I have a few meds left, maybe i’ll bring it to a pharmacy tomorrow because I think I want to try going to 450 mg tomorrow. I forget how that process works, I forget if they have to take the script paper thing first and process it or something and then have you come back later to pick up your first refill. I hope they can just process it there, but I suppose they’d have to get the pills all together and whatnot.

I’m still a little hesitant about upping my dosage that much but Killian made the choice more up to me by prescribing me 150 mg pills, which I would either take 2 at once to maintain my regular dosage, or I’d take 3 to get to 450 mg. So basically he left it up to me. He said he’d ask me if I tried the higher dosage but that’s about it. There wasn’t any additional pressure. And he told me that I would know in 48 hours if the dosage was too high, because I’d feel like I drank a whole pot of coffee ha. So then I could just go back to 300 mg.

He said that caffeine is not normally tolerated along with Wellbutrin but since I can tolerate it, that means my dosage isn’t high enough. He said that at the proper dosage caffeine can’t be tolerated along with the med. So that would be good too, if I could feel as energetic as coffee makes me feel without having to drink it anymore. I don’t know which is worse for your system though- caffeine or Wellbutrin.

He said a few other things that I didn’t necessarily agree with because they are too black and white. He asked about my sleep and when I told him I’m kind of nocturnal he said that Wellbutrin is supposed to make you “like all the rest of us” in terms of the sleep schedule. He said it is supposed to make you wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night. That may be true but he’s kind of ignoring the fact that there are plenty of other influences behind why people have more night-shift type sleep schedules. My reasons are that I 1) Started staying up a few hours later than usual because Zak wasn’t getting out of work until 11:30 at night, and I’d start hanging out with him after that. 2) It is in my genetics to be really awake/creative late at night and really…not in the mornings. I have my Dad’s biorhythms. and 3) I am a creative type/right brained person. I am certainly more right brained and so that means I am primarily emotional, creative, holistic, visual, artistic, etc. And it is really common for creative types to be at their best mentally/artistically in the late night hours. and 4) I am essentially choosing this sleep schedule in a way too, because it’s not that I can’t do a ‘regular people’ sleep schedule, it’s just that I need to be in a routine and to be working or going to school to be able to maintain it. And if you are choosing to stay up even later than you normally would, of course you aren’t going to be able to wake up early in the mornings, and then when you sleep late, you stay up late again the next night. That’s just the way it goes.

Hopefully this whole post hasn’t been disorganized as I have a feeling it has been a bit. I’m just feeling more mentally active right now than I would be at this hour (lol meaning like 2 pm). I slept pretty badly last night, couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, then slept lightly, then was woken up several times by noise. But I didn’t feel too bad when I got up via alarm at 10 strangely enough. So I’m kind of proving what I just said before. I’m more alert now at 2 pm than I normally would be because I have been awake since 10 am. But on the usual when I sleep till 2:30 pm, I’m not really mentally alert until like 6 or 7pm . Sometimes later than that.

There was some drama this morning having to do with my mom’s lovely notes but I’m in too decent of a mood to write about that now. I think it would only make me feel all pissed off and down again to write about it at the moment.

So I hope everyone has a good day, even though I don’t think many people read this! Ha

Today I finally had some very anxiety-provoking things all sorted out (having a hold on my account at college, not having enough financial aid coverage, not being able to add/change any classes, possibly being withdrawn from college if everything wasn’t sorted out by this coming Tuesday). It took a few hours and working with 3 different departments/ladies to get it all fixed up. I had my Mom with me too so I think that helped in them respecting me and whatnot (sometimes I feel like if they’re just dealing with a student, they are less respectful because they still think of them as only a kid still). Both yesterday and this morning, the first thing that I thought when I woke up was that I needed to fix all this stuff up, and quick. I only have like 3 more classes left to take before I graduate with my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and an Art minor. So, I only have this Fall semester left to complete. I’m so relieved that it’s all set now financially. Now I have to figure out what classes I need/want, and once that’s all done, deposit the only money I have (my savings bonds), into my bank account so that I can use that money to buy books. Hopefully I won’t have to spend it all on books, but it’s a possibility.

Now, on to what I actually intended to write about.

I think that there are many reasons to exist and many reasons to like life, even if you are in a rough patch. Even if life is going very badly at the time, or has been for awhile, just know that that isn’t all there is to life and that you won’t be in the state of mind or circumstances you’re in forever. Things are always changing, in one way or the other. So here’s a list of some sort to explain what I believe the reasons to exist are.

#1) Love : To give and receive love, to have the experience of being in love a number of different times, to care for lovers, friends, family, pets, nature, etc. To always try to express love or atleast remind people that you love them, even if you aren’t totally on good terms. Love has the ability to give life, energy, happiness, security, and healing to nearly everything it comes in to contact with. I believe it to be the best feeling in the world and I believe that it is what we are all here to do and to share with others.

#2) Empathy : This is more of a subcategory of Love but it isn’t exactly the same thing. Empathy is feeling what another person is feeling, or atleast feeling very similar to another whether it be through interacting with them, reading their story, etc. It is an incredible feeling to not only be able to sense another’s feelings but to take it on as if it were your own (even if it’s a negative emotion, it’s still an incredible experience). If people could spend more time paying attention to their own emotions and to other people’s emotions, or atleast to their body language, they’d see that within them, they have a natural ability to share a part of another person’s emotional experience. Being empathetic expands the experience of your life and can really help other people too. Also, being empathetic allows you to be more aware of everything around you, especially to the people or things that need help. It can be very useful for helping a person or animal that cannot tell you in words about their feelings. Basically, you become more of a healer the more empathetic that you are.

#3) Spirituality, The Larger Picture : Spirituality is a more holistic term to describe a person’s deepest sense of connection to every living being, and to life on the whole. It’s a term that describes what a person believes about the greater meaning of life, why we are here, what is in store for us after life, what we really consist of at the deepest level. The existence of energy between all living beings is something that isn’t often seen by the eye but it is certainly felt in one way or the other. Some people feel it deeper than others because they spend more time working with this area, or because they are more sensitive. We all have the ability to feel energy. The main thing is that it’s nearly impossible to feel something if you don’t believe that there’s a possibility that it exists. The physical world and the typical materialist view of life that is common and constantly pushed on us by the media and society is not important. The closer you come to realizing that you are much more than your physical body and that by nature you are a spiritual, divine being, the more your life will tend to feel meaningful. As much as the outside world tries to push the idea that you are only worth as much as you can produce or attain in the material world, know that this is not true. Know that just by being, you have a lot of value and you can still affect people and things to a very large degree. How much money you have or how high your financial status is has nothing to do with whether or not you are a good person. It has nothing to do with your character, and your character is what is important. The type of person you are, the degree to which you try to do good in this world, is much more important.

#4) Finding Your Purpose : The journey of self discovery is often a life-long search. Sometimes it feels clear, sometimes it’s hard to be sure of what it is. Discovering what you are best at and what you feel passionate about is one of the many reasons to exist. Learning who you truly are and what qualities make you, you, help you in your journey. It doesn’t matter how much time it takes you to do this, it only matters that you try. Finding out what you have to offer the world is just as rewarding as it is frustrating. Whatever you feel comes natural to you, whatever you feel are your strongest abilities and qualities, is most likely what your purpose is. No matter what anyone tells you, just know that you are here for a reason. Some of those reasons are innate, and some of them are ones that you yourself have to define.

#5) Learning, Experiencing : Everything that I mentioned above has to do with either learning about things or experiencing feelings or events in life. You never really stop learning things in life, and learning is not only about getting an education or going to school. It is about a lot more than that and everyone has their own types of learning to do, at their own speeds. Simply taking part in the emotional experience of life is a huge reason to exist. Taking part in whatever events you are curious about are as well. Their is value in learning and experiencing all types of things. Everything that you experience or learn from in life is here to lead you down your personal life path. All of these things happen as lessons and whether or not they feel helpful to you now, they will be helpful to you eventually.

There are so many reasons to live life and it is valuable. Many of the things I’m thinking of writing about are more of sub-categories to the things I put in the above list, so I’m just going to write more generally about the rest of them here.

Self exploration and general exploration are other valuable and engaging journeys. It’s an ongoing thing and I don’t believe that either of them are fully finished, atleast not in just one human lifetime. Existence goes on forever. It just alters in style. Continuously trying to understand yourself and why you are the way you are, is rewarding in and of itself. The more you do of it, the more ease you will have in interacting with and exploring the outside world in ways that suit you personally. Exploring various ideas, concepts, activities, and perspectives help to open you up as wide as you can get to all of life.

I know that everyone has a different take on what their reasons to exist are, and so I hope that no one takes the style in which I wrote this as me trying to tell everyone what their reasons to exist are. I just wanted to share my perspectives and invoke responses from other people. I’m also hoping to lift people’s spirits because it’s not very often that you hear someone commending another person. I just wanted to express that no matter what people say to you or what you hear, your life has value and your existence matters. Everyone matters and makes a difference simply by existing. It is your choice whether or not you want to focus more on making a stronger impact on the world.

For me one of the most important areas of self-improvement have to do with working on becoming a better person. I think that this is an extremely important but commonly overlooked type of improvement. From what I can gather, it seems that a lot of people are focused on economic, financial, and status-based improvements. They seem to look at life as all about becoming “higher” up than others, and in a very superficial way. Now I’m not saying that all people are focused on such things but I am saying that I see examples of this very frequently. It seems that when people lack fulfillment in their lives or are unhappy with themselves at the base of it all, they revert to talking badly about other people. They revert to criticizing others, mocking them, and judging them. Again, I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite here because I know that I too criticize people. I guess I’m talking more about awareness of doing such a thing, and awareness about whether or not it is wrong.

In general I am fascinated by human beings and the workings of their psyches and minds. I am most concerned with the deep connections that humans can develop with others. I am concerned with individual perspectives but also with much larger group interactions. All of it is fascinating to me- be it good or bad. I guess what I feel like I’m noticing (and have been noticing a lot in the recent past), is that many people have a lot of conversations about other people, and they don’t even seem to have any feelings of remorse or awareness that this is a low way to act.

A couple of times I have actually spoken out to these people when I find myself being among a group of people that begins to discuss such things. I have actually said things like “I don’t think that this a conversation we should be having between us as a group”, or “I don’t want to talk shit about other people”, or “I think this should be more about understanding people than it is about making judgments”.

Every time I’ve said such things, the group or couple of people I’m talking with, basically disregards the message and continues to talk shit. They usually defend this choice, too, as if it’s something that can be rationalized into being a good thing to do. Then they have the tendency to start trying to attack me or get me to think the way they do, out of what I am pretty sure is straight up insecurity and defensiveness. Actually, I think that insecurity is a large reason why many people talk a lot of shit about others. So, they leave me with no choice but to exit the conversation. In a way, I feel I am forced to alienate myself because I resist going with the group mindset. It’s so high school in this way that it’s still about “Are you in or are you out?”

It’s hard for me to constantly be noticing the negative ways that people act, especially because it seems to be so often and so widespread. I really love people, but I have before and still do isolate myself frequently primarily because I don’t act or think the way that most people do. I also have low tolerance for putting up with such behavior because I don’t feel that it’s justifiable. And because I’m so concerned with wanting to improve myself and wanting to improve the type of human I am, it’s very hard to relate to the average person. I suppose it could have something to do with the fact that I live in a very small town, which is in a small, very rural setting.

People seem to be very nosy and gossipy around here because frankly I think they are bored out of their minds and they also spend most of their time working too, so they don’t have much time or aren’t often in the mindset of true self-improvement. It’s basically entertainment to them to talk about others at the expense of the pain that can cause. I guess I find it ironic that the people that seem to talk the most shit seem to have the most “friends” and are more social in general. It seems ass backwards to me but I suppose it makes sense in that a lot of people seem to enjoy having such conversations and they want others to join in with them on it.

I really want to be close with others and to have a solid group of friends or atleast live in an area where I feel accepted and where I feel like others have mutual respect for one another. I don’t like that I have no choice but to isolate myself here because most other people are only accepting of one mode of living and one mode of thinking. And they sure as hell don’t want to hear any perspectives that are opposing to these things.

I don’t know, you’d think by now that society would be improving in the ways that truly mattered but it really doesn’t feel that way around here. I feel like most everyone is falling for the bullshit that the government is constantly trying to feed us and force us to believe. I feel like so many people are actually asleep in the matters that are truly important, but are very awake to the superficial and the “normal”.

Maybe there are more people than I know of that feel the same way that I do, but maybe they are afraid to be that person that stands up to the group opinions. Maybe they are afraid they will be alienated. I wouldn’t blame them for having such fears- but I do wish that there were more people who openly try to help others. I wish that there were more people who primarily provided emotional support for others, even if they didn’t immediately understand their feelings or thoughts. I wish that there were more people who emphasized speaking of people’s GOOD qualities and GOOD actions. I wish there were more people that thought more about how other people might feel or pondered how they might feel if someone was talking shit about them.

The first step is becoming AWARE of our flaws. The second is being able to ADMIT them. The third is working on trying to CHANGE or ALTER them.

Maybe if we could be truly honest with ourselves and allowed ourselves to see our flaws, we could then stop having so much to say about other people’s flaws. Maybe we could then try to help one another become better people by spreading good energy and love.