Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Mindfulness and codependence thread
Hopalong:
What Tupp said. Plus:
Lighter, I think one healthy thing to do rather than allow yourself to directly face all the ugly just because you are bold enough to (your children need you safe and sane, not testing the limits right now), perhaps you could express that courage and compassion in ways that don't threaten you or add to the agitation, which I believe is revealed class conflict right now. Going out unecessarily has its messages.
Maybe one way of making that difference, while releasing any guilt you feel about your own safety and comfort, would be to donate. The energy and/or money you'd spend trying to directly and personally intervene in the disaster could be channeled instead into an effective local organization that is trying to supply and organize to help the most desperate in your community, whether they are outsiders or locals.
Does that make any sense?
hugs
Hops
lighter:
Tupp:
I looked up Youtube vids for Yoga with Adriene. She's adorable and her dog is pretty relaxed fellow. Her voice is really soothing too. I'll select a couple of her workouts and begin. Thanks!
Tupp and Hops:
I haven't sought out rough hoods. Rather, I've tried to support businesses I used to support weekly..... I've been to the one downtown ONCE in 2 months, and only bc it was close to the lab. I really don't want it to go out of business. I don't.
I have to say this..... my gut says I'm more likely to use this as a jumping-off point for showing the girls where to find and how to deploy and use the pepper spray in the car door, rather than skirt around our regular stores. We're NOT in what's considered a dangerous city BUT times they have changed.
How much will I let these changes.... change me/us? This is something I'm considering right now.
I'm not fearless.
I'm proactive.
I don't want to have regrets in either direction.
Lighter
lighter:
Tupp:
I loved the bedtime yoga with Adriene. I'm going to do the entire thing tonight before bed.
Also considering the 30 day yoga workout she does!
Lighter
Hopalong:
Hi Lighter,
Here's what floats up for me in case it resonates. I may be waaaaay off base. Probably am, in fact.
I know you are bold, have done martial arts for years, lived through big trauma, have had many threats from males. All that is real and ongoingly healing for you.
What comes up for me sometimes is a sense that your language over time reveals intensity about threats in many directions. So I wonder if teaching your girls to find and "deploy" pepper spray might carry, FOR THEM, a kind of fear-teaching? A threat-based orientation to life? I'm just wanting to imagine them safe and happy and still enjoying some sense of trust in the world. And maybe of confidence in themselves, which I know rationally you're also trying to teach them. And knowing how to use pepper spray certainly makes sense. Maybe it was the word "deploy" that got me. (Irrational language triggers in me.)
I don't know what it would be like to have powerful self-defense skills. If I had young girls I might enjoy letting them take judo if they sought it out (I did and it made me feel more powerful). But unless there truly is apocalypse or zombie time, which I don't think there is so far anyway, I wonder if it'll be anxiety-producing for them, to pick up on or absorb those preoccupations. Unconsciously. Some personalities are warrior types and others aren't.
Same time, I also think it's wonderful to empower the young, especially girls. So I don't know that I'm pearl-clutching over anything that makes sense.
Kids need safety and to navigate adolescence without recklessness. Kids in the newest generation are facing it all: climate, possible civil unrest, epidemics and depression-era desperation in many folks. I do think the world is more unsafe but also think that positive engagement with community is more protective than weaponry or training to fight.
Then again, I'm a physical coward. No confidence at all that I could physically defend myself against danger so my reaction is to use my radar to avoid it -- areas, people with bad vibes, situations well known to be risky. My response to the attack on my community from far-right groups was -- stay indoors, keep quiet, and don't confront. Strangers were coming and going in scary trucks with scary flags. Eventually, they went away.
I certainly feel I failed to protect my own D, and she was drawn to darkness and confrontational situations. So I'll bet that's what I'm responding from.
Barrels of salt, do take all this with barrels of salt....but it's meant with care.
hugs
Hops
Twoapenny:
--- Quote from: lighter on May 08, 2020, 10:45:17 PM ---Tupp:
I looked up Youtube vids for Yoga with Adriene. She's adorable and her dog is pretty relaxed fellow. Her voice is really soothing too. I'll select a couple of her workouts and begin. Thanks!
Tupp and Hops:
I haven't sought out rough hoods. Rather, I've tried to support businesses I used to support weekly..... I've been to the one downtown ONCE in 2 months, and only bc it was close to the lab. I really don't want it to go out of business. I don't.
I have to say this..... my gut says I'm more likely to use this as a jumping-off point for showing the girls where to find and how to deploy and use the pepper spray in the car door, rather than skirt around our regular stores. We're NOT in what's considered a dangerous city BUT times they have changed.
How much will I let these changes.... change me/us? This is something I'm considering right now.
I'm not fearless.
I'm proactive.
I don't want to have regrets in either direction.
Lighter
--- End quote ---
((((((((((((Lighter)))))))))))))))
I'm sorry, because I didn't explain what I was worried about very well and I haven't been clear. My concern is the lack of hygiene if you're buying groceries from shops where people are crapping on pavements and masturbating outside, whilst wandering around filling up syringes. This virus last on surfaces from anywhere between a few hours to several days. It's airbourne. It can get on to your clothes and get into your system through your mouth, nose, eyes and by you touching something someone else touched - even hours earlier. We've lost 150 medical staff here now - that's people trained to hospital standards, following appropriate protocol, working in a sterile environment, without pre-existing medical conditions, dead - not ill from it and got better but in the ground now. I'm following various people on Twitter and sharing information from ICU consultants, virologists, scientists, ICU nurses and so on, with paramedic friends, other parents who are used to treating multiple conditions in their kids and science brain type friends and the advice from every person is the same - stay home, and keep washing your hands. There just isn't a safe way to go outside, at all.
We all have to go outside sometimes, I get that. There's a balance between the possible risk of contracting the virus and going mad from isolation, poor diet, being stuck indoors with relatives, lack of exercise and so on. Lots of people will be out and about all day and not catch it. Lots of people will catch it, be a bit unwell and then be fine. Many will catch it and not even know they have it, therefore passing it on to everyone else they come into contact with, directly or indirectly. Plenty of young, fit and healthy people here are dying from it; the whole "oh it's only the sick and elderly" thing is being shown to be a myth and as I say, we've lost ICU consultants to it here - if they can catch it with all their knowledge and skill at keeping sickness at by then no-one is safe.
I get that you don't want local businesses to go under but Lighter, they're going to. There's nothing more that any of us can do about that now. If they deliver then getting deliveries will help them out but if they don't, you risking catching this and taking it home to your kids just isn't worth it. You're in a similar situation to me, if you die there's no-one else there for your kids and they're at risk from the scary grandparents again. You've got to keep yourself safe and it's not guns or pepper spray that will do that for you, it's staying home as much as possible and when you do go out, going to places that are as clean and quiet as possible. If you get somewhere and there are naked people wandering about in the street get back in the car and go somewhere else. It really frightens me to think of you going shopping somewhere where people are shitting on the pavement and walking around with syringes in their hands. I've led a pretty open, varied life, I think, but I've honestly never seen anything like that and if I did I'd keep well away. You can't save the world. Honestly, Lighter, and I say this as your friend, and I do understand your concerns, I really do, but your girls don't need pepper spray training, they need to stay home, order in and if going out for food is the only option you need a list of safe places to visit, as early as possible in the day so there are fewer people around. Avoidance is what's going to keep them safe right now.
You do need to let the changes change you, in my opinion, because it isn't murderers or drug addicts or homeless people you're at risk from, it's going shopping. That thing we've all done for all of our lives without ever thinking about it or even wondering where what we're buying has come from a lot of the time, has suddenly become the most dangerous thing some of us are having to do. It's a massive shift in what we're used to and it's huge to get our heads around but that is the change, and honestly, our response to that - if we feel we're at risk of contracting the virus - is to avoid going out wherever possible and when we do, going to the place that is cleanest, for the least amount of time possible, as infrequently as possible. I think when we're frightened our natural instinct is to attack but in this instance I think the safest bet for anyone who is concerned is to hide.
I'm not saying any of this in a critical or judgemental way; all of it is said because I care about you and the thought of you shopping in places where people, God love them, aren't able to follow even basic hygiene precautions really scares me. I won't mention it again because I don't want to lecture or bang on about it but I really hope you don't go back there.
I am glad you found Yoga with Adriene :) I love her stuff, I find it really helpful. I really like Jason Stephenson's meditations; his anxiety ones I find particularly useful. There is also another yoga guy -David Procyshyn - whose stuff is much more intense and serious and the videos are longer but oh my days, the release I get from them is huge. He might be worth looking at.
Much love, Lighter! Sorry it's a bit long. Transatlantic social distanced cuddle coming your way
(((((((((((((((((Lighter )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
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