Woman and Child First

Asking The Right Questions

 How often do you enquire as to how you are going - on an emotional level?

How often do you make a check-in with yourself and ask the real questions? 

For instance: How am I going? What do I need to do today to lift myself? 

These exercises are entirely necessary if one is learning to manage depression. Buy hey and c'mon. These questions are just necessary. This is daily practice.

Give yourself some attention. Ask the real questions, wait for the answer and then act on your own advice.

Contemplative Sculpture.

Dreamings From Bluecray

Motorcycles, Music and Wisdom in the Land

I dreamt of a billabong, still water clear
a tiny brown platypus sitting so near
hidden by reeds and tall growing sedge
I watched him dive freely away from his ledge.
As he entered the waters all bubbles and glee
I became that dear platypus and he became me
Then waking quite quickly, a smile in my mind
I “knew” what it meant to be one of his kind
A blessing a story a picture a song
this vision stays with me
tho’ the dream is long gone.

Thanks to al @ bluecray for this sweet interlude!

The Stuff of Dreams

          

            The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.

W.H. Auden

  I enjoy working with people's dreams. Whenever they appear in a session, they always present rich inner material for that person. Dream dictionaries are never used in my office. (They can be helpful but they are limited).

 The main reference point, or interpretation base is that person. I simply ask the guiding questions. What is that related to in your waking life? What do you really feel about the person in your dream? What do you feel the dream is about? And etc.

I kept a dream diary myself over many years, the style of writing still intrigues, delights and yes - informs. It still reminds me of how completely insane I am...Oh but in a good way.

 A dream diary holds a personal history that can be helpful down the track as well as the morning after your dream. What are your dreams telling you at the moment?

An Individual Life

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all,
there is only the meaning we each give to our life,
an individual meaning, an individual plot,
like an individual novel, a book for each person. - Anais Nin

It's interesting that in young adulthood we adopt our own - individual - role models. If we are lucky, those luminarie's keep guiding us and reassuring, long after their deaths and long after the initial infatuation. Nin keeps speaking sense to me, 30 years later.

Spirituality And It's Place In Healing

"When I went out, I often had patients talk about – most of the indigenous patients – talk about calling on the spirits of their forefathers to help. Once in the past, a patient I was treating, a young man, hung himself, and what I saw was the family and the extended family talking to the spirit of their forefathers to help them bear this". - Russell d'Souza, psychiatrist.

D'Souza is based in Melbourne and is one of two pioneers in the field of psychology and its relationship to spirituality. He's done lashings of research to show that a person's spiritual life may in fact be an extremely useful resource to draw on when supporting them to heal. And here's his colleague, another psychiatrist, George Halasz:

"That is in the setting that I really understood that there is a soul – much like there is a ventricle in the heart, there’s a liver in the abdominal cavity or there’s a brain in the cranium, somewhere there’s a reality to the soul. And I thought “ah ha, that’s what has been neglected”.

Personally, I'm relieved to be given the go-ahead to explore this with clients. I have done so only in the past where the client has made explicit reference to it. I shall be more confident in bringing up the subject now, having previously been scared of perhaps imposing my own beliefs (and therefore being unprofessional).

The same ethical principle still applies of course, the green light of which I speak allows the therapist to encourage the client's own opening of pathways to spirit, not necessarily their own.

Link to the interview

Eskimo Medicine Man

Anna Freud Revisted

An interesting 'by the way' occurred when Rob McAlpine was giving his presentation last week at the pilot training program for treatment of anxiety disorders in children and young people.

In stressing the need for a "multi-modal" approach to treating this condition, he referred to the large body of work that was conducted by Anna Freud and her colleagues concerning anxiety in kiddies. Anna is known as the founder of child psychoanalysis.

It seems the recent research has given credence to the psychodynamic model, originated by Anna's papa Sigmund. Much of the kudos and consequent ideas comes from her meticulous note keeping. (Interestingly, Sigmund wasn't big on notes). There are numerous documented successes - kids just stopped being anxious after her interventions.

A Greater Good

Although I haven’t seen good research to substantiate this theory that mothers’ happiness directly influences the happiness of their children, a fairly extensive body of research has established a substantial link between mothers who feel depressed and “negative outcomes” in their children, like acting out and other behavior problems. As you might imagine, when we mothers feel depressed it is not good for our children’s happiness. -Christine Carter, Ph.D.,

Yet another reason to look after yourself. I repeat, to nourish and nuture oneself as a woman, a mother is NOT a luxury, it's an essential.

The above snippet comes from a blog that looks closely at the "Science of Raising Happy Children".

Can't remember how I stumbled on it, but I'm really enjoying reading from it. Over to the sidebar for you, Half Full Blogversations!

Painting by Kim Richardson

Grace Discovered

I'm a very visual person and I actively seek out images of beauty, interest and delight. Such things captivate my imagination and can literally turn an ordinary day into something with a lovely twist.

Since losing my favourite blogger, Theresa Duncan, to her suicide last July, I've been scouring the net for blogs to help satisfy that need for visual romancing. (Theresa was a genius at this art, as well as an intellectual giant).

In my hunting process, I've come across a blog called dear ada, the author of which always features beautiful pieces of art that fill in my day very happily thank you.

Today, still being on holidays, I found myself with time to languish around the dear ada site and find that the author "birdie"has been struggling with diabetes for 20 years. She speaks about this disease with eloquence and indeed grace in her other site.

She has published her own book Aiming For Grace: 20 Things I Know About Diabetes. (Gorgeous cover).

I really loved reading birdie's posts about her life with diabetes. Having had gestational diabetes when pregnant with Ben, I know something of it, but certainly not what it's like for 20 years on end. The theme of these posts can be summed up in one word - inspiration.

This is the beauty of blogging I think, a person's world can become known, even accessible and in birdie's case, the beauty and struggle of that world is intertwined in a fabulous way.

What a marvelous and interesting woman.