Karen Wilson

When I was 9 years old, I experienced my first panic attack, and at 27, my last. Decades later, I can say I have been through the gloom of depression, the tension of OCD, the turmoil of ADD/ADHD (not just in myself, but in others close to me as well). I have weathered countless storms and personal battles that have driven me to find a way to a deep and lasting peace that I believe is fully achievable by anyone who truly wants a way out of the hell.

The human soul in turmoil is the epitome of hell. I have a fireproof rope-ladder that can help pull other souls up out of the flames. But you must climb onto the ladder, to be rescued….

That’s where some people throw in the towel. They either won’t reach for the ladder, or they won’t step onto it, or they step back off it as they’re being lifted out of the pit. Being rescued isn’t for those who secretly enjoy being mentally unwell. There is attention to be garnered, if you’re mentally unstable. There is a lot of help that can be received from others (rides, handouts, assistance with all sorts of things in life), if being in the negative limelight provides you with a sense of importance and worth. Being a perpetual “victim” can have a lot of rewards. But peace isn’t one of them.

The answers I have found that have removed the ball-and-chain from around my ankles, I have fought for with every ounce of my being. Those answers have required the ongoing investment of my time, my energy (even when I felt I had nothing left to give), my money, and have many times required sacrificing time with my family and friends.

I love to share what I have learned, and I will freely share it within my coming blogs. If even one person grabs hold of that rescue ladder and stays with it all the way out of the abyss, up into the glorious realm where there is Peace of Mind, then my efforts will have been rewarded. I ask you only this: as you find strength and peace, turn and, in whatever way you can, offer the rescue ladder to others, too.

Peace, my friends. It’s all about mindset. It matters (deeply).

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A couple of weeks back, a pilot of a commercial airliner, while in flight, experienced cardiac arrest and died. With the assistance of his co-pilot and the jet’s built-in autopilot system, the plane was fortunately guided down safely onto the tarmac without incident (so skillfully, in fact, that the passengers were surprised to learn about the events upon landing).

Autopilot serves a great purpose when it is needed. In our daily lives, our own built-in autopilot system allows us to carry out umpteen routine tasks without having to think critically through each and every step. But occasionally, the autopilot can get stuck in the “On” position in my life, and I find myself with the realization that I’ve been functioning for the last 10 minutes, lost in thought or “daydreaming.”

One of the most common reports of children with ADD/ADHD is that they are constantly “off in another world” when they should be completing the seatwork their teacher assigned. In adults and children with ADD/ADHD, getting “side-tracked” is commonplace. Staying on task is a huge task in and of itself, because the autopilot keeps grabbing the controls out of the pilot’s hands and taking the jet off in a different direction.

But those dealing with ADD/ADHD are not the only ones who are frequently lost in thought. People who are under various stresses in their lives are also very prone to “zoning out.” Anxieties of all sorts consist of turning thoughts and concerns over and over in the mind, regarding the past, the present and worries about the future. While attention is on those thoughts, it cannot at the same time, be directed to the task at hand. The result is that you are robbed of the joy of expeiencing the beauty of the details of life. Unaware of what is happening in the world around you at that particular moment, you miss out on life. A walk outside is just that: a walk. A drive to work is the same old, same old. Soon, pretty much everything in your day is dull, routine, humdrum, and gets to be downright depressing.

Indeed, Depression holds captive your life in a similar way. Thoughts are turned right off, there is a deadening of mindfulness, a retreat deep into the cloak of self. Joy is found in few, if any, places.

The common thread here, lies in the loss of mindfulness, a lack of intentional, mindful awareness. Being mindful of everything happening in my world at any given moment is what enables me to experience new and fresh facets of life that energize and inspire me. As I sit and write this at this moment, two stunning yellow finches have just touched down outside my window. As I study their depth of colour, I realize one is a male and one is a female. They are so tiny! So precious. I am delighted by them. In my past, when deep in anxiety or depression and living in a perpetual state of unawareness of the many goings-on in the world right around me, my mindset would have prevented me from noticing how spectacular these two adorable little birds were.

Mindset matters. I will have a whole lot more to share about mindfulness in the future, but for now, if you are wanting to gain back control of your thoughts, to disengage the autopilot mechanism that may be robbing you of the moment by moment joys to be had in life, then know this: mindset matters. Deeply.

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When I was young child, I was playing at my mother’s feet as she was ironing. Curious about what she was doing, I stood on my tippy-toes and reached out to point to the iron. She quickly and firmly cautioned me to not touch the blazing hot appliance. Taking her words into little account, I continued reaching and put the palm of my hand flat against the iron hotplate. I remember little after that besides the searing pain that seemed to torch through my entire being!

To be sure, I had a mind of my own. How often my parents must have longed for the ability to control my thoughts! Likewise, parents of teens are constantly wringing their hands because they cannot control them. They have minds of their own.

But which of us doesn’t have a mind of our own? Our minds wander, slip, slide and careen all over the place at times (granted, some much more than others!). Life events happen like curves and bends in the road, and the car veers off its course as the road becomes rough, sometimes landing on its side in the ditch. One thing after another starts going “wrong.” It’s not supposed to go this way!

But life unfolds as life unfolds. As obvious as this may sound, with the eyes of Forrest Gump you will see how profound this reality truly is. Life is filled with good things and bad. Often labels are assigned to occurrences that judge them “good” or “bad.” What one person sees as good, the other may see as bad. It is not universal.

A friend of mine just lost her job. At first, I could sense her downheartedness at this “bad” event. But as she is one who is given to working through trials in her life, sure enough, within about a day or so, she began examining the event from a different perspective. Before long, she saw the amazing opportunities that this “good” occurrence had provided for her!

Some people have learned to train their thinking, such that when they encounter something that initially knocks the wind out of them, they can then, within a relatively short period of time, stand back and wait and watch for all the good that will eventually come from it. Faith often has much to do with it, but faith alone does not always magically train the mind to take a fresh look at the bigger picture.

What happens when our usual ability to “re-think” a situation and find the good in it, doesn’t work? Thoughts that headed south continue to spiral down, down, down, in some kind of a vortex….pulling down, down, lower and lower. Energy is sapped. Numbness sets in. It’s happening again. Oh no! Not again!

Everyone deals with stress, but not everyone is chronically anxious, frequently and deeply depressed, or perhaps panicked by the fear of the recurrence of a certain feeling or thought.

Let me say this: whether you have general Stress, extreme Stress, chronic Anxiety, Major Depression, Panic Attacks, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), or any other affliction that is impacting you at the level of your mind or your emotions, you are not alone, and you are not a freak. And there is help.

Today I invite you to take the first step towards greater peace of mind, to the doorstep of happiness. But before I do, I want you to think of an Olympic athlete. Did that person get to win the gold medal by just learning about the sport one day upon rising out of bed? No! They trained for it. And how did the training begin? Perhaps with stretches, and then some push-ups (oh dread!), followed by some laps around the track.

Or take the renovation of an old house, for example. It’s disheveled and in need of much repair. Do you just start patching and repainting and putting a new addition onto the old, off-kilter structure? Not if you want the changes to be lasting! You’ll start with the foundation, and get it straightened first. It’s a big job, and requires a lot of concerted effort. But it’s the only way, if you want the house to be solid and stable.

So while the following may seem dumb, mundane, and useless to do, if you are really serious about wanting to gain control of your mind, you’ll start at the beginning, at the foundation, where everything you build on from there will be lasting, solid and trustworthy.

A Simple Mindful Awareness Challenge

So here it is: If you have a quiet place you can go to, it will help. If you feel comfortable doing so, close your eyes. Are you breathing? Good. I thought so. Can you feel your breath going in and out? Feel it right now. Feel it go in; feel it go out. Focus on your breath. Stop reading for a moment, and just be aware of your breath. It’s always with you. Everywhere you go, your breath will be there to focus on. If other thoughts pop into your mind while you are focusing on your breath, just gently replace the thoughts with the thought of your breath. Be kind to yourself if your mind wanders again and again. Don’t scorn yourself for those other outside thoughts that keep popping in as you’re trying to focus on just your breath. Simply and lovingly replace those thoughts with thoughts of just your breath.

If you can do this exercise for 2 minutes today, you have more than achieved success. If you can do it for 5 minutes, that’s wonderful, too. If you can do this exercise several times a day, all the better. But do it lovingly. If you can only manage 2 minutes before your other thoughts dominate, do not be harsh with yourself and call yourself names. You are a wonderful success in doing any of it at all. Love and accept every attempt you make.

Until next time, my friends, Peace.

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Singer-Songwriter, Dan Hill

In a recent MacLeans Magazine article (October 14, 2010), Dan Hill (“Sometimes When We Touch”) shares openly about his and his family’s experiences under the care of Mental Health professionals.

Dan’s transparency and vulnerability, as he once again steps out from behind the curtain of privacy and self-protection, helps to further strip away the stigma that still surrounds the topic of Mental Illness. More people than we could ever know deal with some form of challenge in mental health and wellness.

I encourage you, if it is within your comfort zone, to take a small step out and share this article with someone you think may benefit from hearing about how real Dan is, in his article, Me and My Shrinks.

Here’s a wee excerpt:

“You’re in serious trouble,” Dr. Tony concluded when I finished my rambling narrative. His voice gaining volume with each pronouncement, he continued, “Your emotional development stopped once you hit puberty. You’re selfish, spoiled, and entitled. You think ….”

Read the article in MacLean’s Magazine… and also visit Dan Hill’s page on Facebook….

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Imagine being born without arms.   No arms to wrap around someone, no hands to experience touch, or to hold another hand with. Or what about being born without legs? Having no ability to dance, walk, run, or even stand on two feet.   Now put both of those scenarios together: no arms and no legs. What would you do? How would that effect your everyday life?

nick-vujicic Here’s Nick Vujicic, a man with no arms, no legs, and one incredibly inspirational attitude. Take a look at his outlook on life (see video clip below):

For more on Nick Vujicic, visit https://www.attitudeisaltitude.com.

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A certain amount of fear is a healthy thing to possess. It functions as an early warning sign to prevent us from entering into harm’s way. Unfortunately, [read: Paralyzed by Fear…]

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When Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living popped into my Amazon mailbox, the title didn’t just pique my interest; it reached out and grabbed me by the throat! [read: Full Catastrophe Melt-Down …]

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A dark time will come in everyone’s life when it will feel like there are no answers to the meaning of life and the pain that is sometimes experienced. [read: What is the Meaning of Life?…]

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Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are terms that are often confusing to people, as the phrases are frequently used interchangeably. What do they mean, and is there a difference between them? [read: ADHD vs ADD…]

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It all began when I was 9 years old and I choked on a piece of meat.

Fortunately, my Dad, sprang into action and dislodged the obstruction from my throat. Having now been turned off the rest of my dinner, I was excused from the table.

Consciously I was a little shaken up by the incident, but the days and weeks to follow revealed a deep trauma that had actually occurred within me. When I attempted to eat anything solid, my throat clamped shut like a spring-hinge. Feeling not terribly hungry anyway, I resorted to liquids (juice, water, and creamy soups with no big lumps). After about three weeks of this, I began to be quite hungry, and the notion came over me that I could handle boiled chicken.

“Boiled chicken?” my Mom questioned back. “Who eats boiled chicken!” But she knew that anything crispy, hard or dry would be simply repelling to me, so she boiled me up some tender chicken, which I mashed a little and managed to swallow without too much difficulty. Eventually I must have eased back into eating anything and everything, but I was soon to discover that a change had come over me, outside of eating, that would paralyze and immobilize me unexpectedly for the next 19 years to come.

I grew up always fearful of being focused on and picked on publicly, and had always felt uneasy in situations where there was the potential for someone to point and laugh at me. I had been the butt of jokes and the recipient of public mockings at the hand of someone I had trusted deeply to protect me. I had not realized, at the time, the degree to which I had become petrified of being singled out and put down. Following the choking incident, panic started coming over me in certain situations, when I was out in public. It didn’t happen all the time, and so I never could predict its arrival, which made it all the scarier for me.

The panic attacks continued, ninja-style, unannounced, throughout all of my teens and most of my twenties, until I was twenty-eight years of age.

By that time, I had built up a significant wall (no, it was more like a fortress) behind which to hide, so that no one could see the real me. I was unaware of this wall, but took every measure, sub-consciously, to have it on duty at all times. It was not a conscious decision I had come up with, to conceal myself. It was a built-in, natural defense mechanism to protect me from future public, verbal scourgings. My psyche had determined that protecting me was of life-or-death importance, so the stakes were very high.

Now, to a rational, self-aware human being, it would appear logical that being embarrassed publicly would not result in death or anything near death. After all, what is the worst that could happen? You’d feel like an idiot and then move on, right? Pretty simple.

The trouble was, I was not self-aware, and so lived in the grip of terror, not knowing what was inducing the fear, or why. Panic Disorder involves the triggering of the body’s autonomic system, releasing adrenalin and other hormones into the system in preparation for the body’s fight-or-flight from a perceived perilous situation. When real danger is present, the body needs to be able to react with beyond-normal speed, strength and intuitiveness. Yet when the danger is merely perceived, the body receives the same signal from the brain, that triggers the same amount of adrenalin as in a truly perilous situation, but because it is not really needed, the amount of the hormone arrives in overdose quantity, sending a chain reaction to all the body systems, elevating the heartrate, and sending power to all the extremeties, so that the person can run, kick, fight, and in any way, get away. Blood, and hence, oxygen, are borrowed from the brain, the heart, the lungs and from any organ that can surrender it temporarily, leaving pounding heart, shortness of breath, and the inability to think straight in the moment.

And all this, because of a perceived danger, that the unconscious mind has picked up on, but to which the conscious mind is not privy.

One thing is certain: the unconscious mind, responsible for all of this, believes there is something HUGE at stake, that is life-threatening. My task was to figure out what that was, so I could reprogram my mind to process the same situation as non-life-threatening.

The answer for me came about all quite by accident. I had sat with several Christian women to whom I had grown very close and trusted deeply, and during one of our times together, we were sharing about how transparency in relationships enables the iron closet of hidden secrets to be purged, the conscience to be cleansed, forgiveness to be sought, and relationship bonds to be strengthened. We all shared, one by one, about the deepest, darkest, most rotten, dirty little secrets we had stored up in ourselves throughout our lives. Assured that this was how I could deepen my relationship with God and find forgiveness for what I had done not only to humans but also to Christ, I poured out every last detail I could think of, of every single moment I had lived. The cleansing felt unbelievably scary, but I had no idea at the time that the reward would be as monumental as it turned out to be.

It was perhaps months down the road before I began noticing that certain settings that would have triggered a panic attack in the past, were no longer doing so. I continued to walk in my new mindset of transparency, allowing who I truly was to be seen, so nothing new would get stashed away, guarded inside any locked and hidden pressure-cooker like before. Miraculously, no panic attack every struck again.

What I will say, though, is that there have been moments when I have felt the precursors to a panic attack….that uneasy, tense and guarded feeling of high-alert and an unreasonable sense of fear (in comparison to the real danger at hand) when I have been in certain public situations. As soon as I picked up on those signals, I stopped immediately and consciously removed the protective guard, that mask that I hid behind for so many years, and allowed myself to be consciously vulnerable to potential embarrassment and even deep humiliation. What if someone laughs at me? What if I make a complete moron of myself? What if people look down on me and gossip about me? What is the worst that will happen?

This self-awareness and willingness to be completely transparent now calms me profoundly. I let the embarrassment in, picturing myself opening the front door and letting the wind flow right through me, and right out the open back door. I no longer lock and latch and press on that front door, trying with everything in me to keep the intruder of humiliation out. I now invite it in, like a best friend, to come an linger inside me and spend time with me. The more I invite it, though, the less power it has over me, and it slips quietly out the back door.

If you or someone you know has ever existed in the prison of fear, dread or panic, whether fear of heights, fear of flying, fear of anything perceived or real, I welcome you to visit the site of Dr. Reid Wilson, who has a free program on overcoming fear, Panic Disorder, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. You can work on the online program at home, at your own pace. I applaud him for continuing to make this resource free. It speaks of his commitment to being a great humanitarian first and foremost, by helping as many fear-crippled people as he can. His site, anxieties.com, is located at www.anxieties.com.

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It’s January. Christmas is over. New Years is past. [read more: Every Winter Do You Feel SAD?…]

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A Spiritual Mindset

December 30, 2009

in Spiritual Mindset

Learning How to Pray to God

For me, having a spiritual mindset involves focusing beyond what is going on in the world, [read: A Spiritual Mindset…]

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Mindfulness Meditation involves the practice of intentionally and purposefully focusing on the present moment in a gentle, effortless manner. [read: Christian Mindfulness Meditation𔔞]

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If you are a perfectionist at heart, chances are you may have an issue with organization. [read more: Getting Rid of Clutter in 5 Minutes…]

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How important is inner peace to you? [read more: Symptoms of Stress and Anxiety…]

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