Fighting to BE in the Moment

swimming pool (Photo credit: freefotouk)

So my new (two years now!) apartment has a swimming pool. And the weather is finally warm enough for me to get into it on a regular basis.

So why can't I just swim and enjoy it?

I find I am having a lot of trouble, these days, to keep the pool simply as an activity of fun and/or relaxation, rather than turning it into a chore.

Swimming is good exercise, we all know that, and I need to get in more exercise. So I am swimming laps, and I enjoy swimming laps, but I am trying not to let that become a chore. To have it become, "You must swim XX many laps."

I am trying to enjoy the texture and temperature of the cool water as my arms and legs move (ungracefully, but nobody's watching) through the water, the feel of it flowing through and around my fingers and toes, the faint smell of chlorine, the the shimmer of the water, the warmth of the sun on my face and back.

And that's another thing. The pool isn't heated, and like many apartments in SoCal, it's in an unnatural canyon. Between the shadow of the buildings on the east, and the ones on the west, the pool only gets direct sunlight for perhaps 5-6 hours each day, even in July, and the temps can drop as much as 30 degrees at night. So the water temperature tends to stay cool, even on days when the temperature reaches the 80's or 90's.

This means, since I am not a fan of the cold, I like to lie out long enough to get heated up, before getting into the water.  (Yes, I always use sunscreen. No, not always all over - later on I generally find a spot or three that I managed to miss.)

I lie out, get warm, or hot even, get in the pool and swim some laps till I am tired and/or cold, then repeat.

Can I simply lie in the sun, enjoy the rays sinking into my body with their vitamin D, slowly turning my skin from its natural corpselike white color to a faintly tan color?

No, I feel I have to do something, even when I am lying out. The other day I took pages with me for a speech I am rehearsing. Generally I take a book. Because otherwise how can I justify slicing out 1 1/2 to 3 hours, in the middle of a perfectly good day, when I could be writing/organizing/houseworking or Doing Something Productive?

Yeah, do ya think maybe I should learn something from these posts on workaholics? Yes, I have many Important Events coming up, that demand research and preparation.

And yet, it is still okay to set aside time for pure relaxation. Not just okay, but necessary. To kick back and tell that monkey mind just to hush.

I'm going to try to get in the pool a few evenings a week, plus at least one day this coming weekend,  when I will just BE poolside, and in the water.  Just to enjoy the water, and the sun, and the palm trees rustling in the wind.

I may take a book, if I am reading one that I enjoy, or I may not.

What do you do to beat back the "productive" vibe?

Your thoughts?

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chapter 8 - Orderliness & Rigidity

This post continues with Orderliness & Rigidity from Chapter Eight.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

Too Perfect, When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If   you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

Cover of The Odd Couple

Orderliness and Rigidity

Remember Felix Unger of The Odd Couple? He was the archetypal obsessive type - so perfectionistic that "I cooked myself out of a marriage," he complains in Neil Simon's stage play. "Nothing was ever right.... The minute she walked out of the kitchen I would recook everything." He was so tightfisted with money that he literally made his wife keep track of every penny; so safety-conscious he wore a seat belt at drive in movies. But, more than anything else, Felix obviously - and comically - illustrated what it's like to be too orderly. His passion for cleanliness and organization drive his wife to seek divorce and his roommate to commit mayhem.

<Felix's orderliness is an extreme example of a commendable trait found in many obsessives. Like Felix, some obsessives have a need for orderliness so great it puts both them and others under undue stress. Furthermore, once they've established a certain order, whether in their surroundings, actions, or thoughts, they are loath to change it. They become rigid, and this rigidity can be very self-damaging.

Neat Freaks

<snip> "I'm like a cat," one patient told me. "I spend most of my time on maintenance - grooming myself, keeping my things neat and clean and in good repair. There's not much time left over for living."

That patient felt oppressed by the burden of maintaining an impeccable world. Others - the Felix Ungers of the world - may enjoy cleaning and straightening, but drive others to distraction with their insistence on orderliness. Such people can't resist tidying up while the party is still in progress, or chastising children for the "mess" created by their play.

<snip> Rita also was not overly concerned about the neatness of her surroundings, but she was meticulous in the extreme about the organization of her computer files. When she began to write a book, she told herself that she needed to be able to find any given quote from among her voluminous material quickly, so she spent several months developing a complex system for cross-indexing all her interview notes. The result would have dazzled any data processing specialist, but Rita later admitted that she rarely used the cross-referencing features, and that all the time spent developing the files contributed to her delivering the manuscript almost a year behind schedule.

Straightening, classifying, and otherwise organizing things are favorite activities for many obsessives. Such task clearly have intrinsic value; it's easier to find and use possessions or pieces of information if they're arranged in good order. But those activities also may impart a symbolic reassurance that one can order life in its greater aspects - that the unexpected catastrophe can be avoided.

***

A domesticated cat grooming.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I lived with "Felix Unger" - who was also a hoarder in process. Meticulous about his person - which I found very attractive, since many men can be slobs. He did remind me of a cat, the way he would fuss about his grooming sometimes, the way he would avoid dirt and wipe his mouth many times with his napkin while eating a meal. I found it cute and endearing, at first. Later, when he wanted to always spread out towels before lovemaking, and when he found fault with my appearance... not so endearing.

I have heard of OCPD hosts who will obsessively begin clearing plates the minute someone sets a fork down. No sitting around the table, chatting, perhaps allowing guests time/space to decide if they want a second helping or another glass of wine. And yes, normal kid clutter totally freaks them out, which is why mixing un- or under-treated OCPD and young children is a very, very bad idea. (They don't do real well with teenagers, either, even when the teens are not mouthy and rebellious.)

The story of Rita, the story of a lot of OCPD'rs, including my ex, was to obsessively arrange and futz over one small piece of something (aka, churning) and in the meantime, this big mess over HERE... ignored.

When you spend all your time fussing over X, you run out of time to attend to Y. Deliberate? Or a case of broken filters? One of the current descriptions of OCPD is not being able to see the forest for the trees, or sometimes not even being able to see the trees for the leaves. Or is it a way of procrastinating, to get out of doing something one really doesn't want to do, as I will write and comment on blogs rather than do my filing?

High quality ostrich feather duster
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The re-doing of stuff - a joke in The Odd Couple, a reality in many OCPD households, creates a vicious circle.  I would dust, say, and ex would find fault with my dusting and re-dust. The more he bitched and redid things that I did, the less inclined I was to put any real effort into doing them, since I knew he was just going to do it over again anyway. And of course, because I did a poor job, he would be upset and feel the need to redo whatever it was.

Do you have an experience with Orderliness on Steroids, 
your own or another's?

How do you get past it?

Other thoughts?

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chap 7 - The Obsessive Cognitive Style

Image via Wikipedia

This post continues with The Obsessive Cognitive Style from Chapter Seven.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

Too Perfect, When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

The Obsessive Cognitive Style

Cognition is a general term that refers to our intellectual processes: paying attention, thinking, remembering, calculating, etc. Cognitive styles define the way we pay attention to things, the sorts of things that naturally draw our attention, and the way we "register" perception and thoughts.

The cognitive motto of obsessives might well be "Notice, Comprehend, Remember."  They scan the world around them intently, directing their attention like a sharply focused searchlight.  They typically read or observe things as if it were important to understand and remember the individual detail rather than merely form an overall impression.  They seem to listen more pointedly and concentrate more intensely than others do.  It's as if the obsessive thinks he may need every scrap of information that comes his way.

Contrast that for a moment with a very different cognitive style, one that happens to be common to people with an urgent need to feel loved by or closely connected to others.  Such people often take in the world in a more relaxed, passive, almost random way.  They're much more attuned to the emotions generated by their experiences than to the information involved in them, and predictably, they tend to remember feelings very well, while having a poor memory for facts.  Often this leads others to conclude, wrongly, that they're not particularly intelligent.  Such people may also claim to have a poor sense of direction.  But usually the true reason they have trouble finding their way back from a place is that they weren't thinking in the obsessive mode when they were on their way to their destination.  Rather, they were experiencing the trip - the scenery, the conversation, the music on the radio.  Most obsessives, on the other hand, are careful to make a mental map of where they're going - so they can be sure to find their way safely home.

Many obsessives are driven to acquire detailed information... <snip>  This interest arises partly from a genuine pleasure in learning, partly from a desire to be viewed as a knowledgeable person, partly from the need to store data that might come in handy someday, and partly from the illusory sense of control that comes with knowledge of one's world.

I see two dwarves, a la Snow White,
high-fiving each other.  You?
Image via Wikipedia

<snip> Many obsessives focus upon details at the expense of the "big picture," and have great difficulty prioritizing these perceptions.  If given a Rorschach test, for example, they tend to discern lots of minutiae in the inkblots - small things that others generally overlook in favor of a more generalized impression.  Obsessives often need to explain the significance of every aspect of the blot, just as they tend to feel compelled to make sense out of all they perceive and experience.  Loose ends - disparate, jumbled fragments of information; unpredictable events; serendipity - often are unsettling because they suggest chaos, the obsessive's nemesis.  To feel in control obsessives must somehow fit their perception and experiences into a comprehensible whole.

<snip> Obsessives generally strive to remember all the data they have acquired (and many in fact have an amazing memory for facts and trivia).

***

It's like they're trying to hoard information.

If I have all the information, I will be safe/nothing will surprise me.

Life is full of variables. I think perhaps this OCPD tendency - to believe that one can/should "own" all facts about a situation, is partly responsible for the crushing upset when something happens unexpectedly.  The OCPD'r had pinned down 95 out of 100 possibilities, but despite the forecast, it rained anyway, or the cat got sick, or whatever unexpected thing happened.  Whereas a non would be more likely to have a Plan B, C, and perhaps D, or at least be unfazed by formulating one, if plan A fell through.

I wonder if this OCPD tendency to gather facts/trivia ties in to the other ways in which it's similar to autism.  The "Rainman syndrome," whereby somebody can remember years of baseball stats, for example, but not be able to order a sandwich at Subway.

It's not that having depth of information is bad.  It's just that we don't always need to know everything.

Example:  Many years ago, when I was 18 and newly arrived myself, I had a friend flying into LA.  I knew the airport she was coming from - Baltimore-Washington - and the time her flight was supposed to arrive.

This was Not Enough Information.  I needed stuff like, oh, what airline she was flying.  Flight number would have been helpful.  Then I could have found the gate (although now you don't get to meet people at gates anyway, just at baggage claim.)

But on the opposite end of the spectrum - history of late or on-time arrivals by said airline, type of plane, wind factor, total number of planes scheduled to arrive at LAX that evening, and many more bits of trivia... TMI.

The key is realizing when we've got sufficient info, and stopping there.

What did you think the Rorshach looked like?
Your thoughts?

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chap 7 - The Thinkaholic: Worry, Rumination & Doubt

from Flickr via Slideshow Bruce

This post continues with The Thinkaholic: Worry, Rumination and Doubt from Chapter Seven.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

Too Perfect, When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

The Thinkaholic: Worry, Rumination and Doubt

Imagine yourself pedaling down a bike lane that runs beside a country highway. The morning sunlight warms the earth, and colorful flowers scent the air. But even in this rustic locale, traffic streams by. At times farm vehicles lumber beside you, filling your head with their noise. Faster-moving cars whiz by, and you can hear their whining engines far into the distances. Only for a few brief moments do you have the road to yourself, and only then can you savor the breeze, or hear the birds sing, or revel in the power of your hardworking muscles.

For many obsessives, life is a little like that journey down the country road. A steady stream of worries and painful thoughts distracts them from life's joys. In a sense, they think too much: it's nearly impossible for them to turn off the flow of concentrated observation, analysis, and reflection. "My mind is a regular worry machine," one woman said. "Sometimes I'll churn through every conceivable aspect of a problem, then I'll tell myself, 'That's enough,' and will try to shift to something more pleasant. A few minutes later my thoughts have crept right back to my worries. It's as if worrying is as automatic as breathing, something my mind keeps doing, no matter what."

Worry and rumination have few redeeming qualities. Once something bad has happened, Ruminating over it only prolongs your pain. And worrying is at least as pernicious. If the object of your worry doesn't come to pass, you've suffered needlessly. And when misfortunes do occur, they will be just as irritating or devastating as they would have been even if you'd spent more time enjoying yourself and less time worrying. Worries trade chronic misery for the pallid hope of being a little less devastated.

***

I have a friend, who I've suspected of being a little OCPD (and another friend, who I also suspect of having OCPD, who argues that I am now seeing OCPD behind every bush.  She may be right.)

Anyway, Friend A once confided in me that whenever things were going really great, whenever he was in the middle of a terrific love affair or party or even a movie, he would become quite sad, because he would begin thinking about how it couldn't last.  He would start obsessing about how it would end, how things would go wrong... He couldn't let himself be in the moment and enjoy what was happening right then.

I found this terribly sad; still do.  There's a saying, "Don't borrow trouble, the interest rate's too high."  Or the Bible, Matthew 6:34: Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

We're human, we do worry.  We do sometimes look behind us and play the game of what-if - as if, had we done something different, the outcome would have been better (could've been worse, too, we have no way of knowing).

But it's like being on that country road, after the farm vehicles and the cars have gone by, and instead of noticing and appreciating the flowers and birds and fresh air, we're stuck churning over what it looked and felt like when the cars were crowding us.

Trouble will come - and it will go, and it will come again.  We don't have to live in "trouble-mode" all the time.  That's a choice.

Me, I'd rather smell the roses.

Your thoughts?

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chapt 4 - Making Romantic Commitments & Your Choice

This post continues with Making Romantic Commitments & Your Choice  from Chapter Four.

This series will look at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

Too Perfect, When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

 Making Romantic Commitmenta

Next time you're torn by an ultimatum, either to make a commitment or end an important relationship, clarify the thoughts that are causing your anxiety.  You'll probably find two sets of concerns locked in battled within you.

If I don't commit:

• I will will guilty about dashing X's hopes after all this time.
• I might discover late that I want him or her back
• I might never again meeting someone who could love me as much.
• His/her leaving will make me unbearably sad.

But if I do make the commitment:

• I might wind up regretting that I chose X and be trapped by my conscience in a bad relationship.
• I'll be accepting the intolerable certainty of never falling in love again.
• Someone with whom I could have a better relationship might come along, and I would be tied up.
• I'll be giving up my freedom, and just thinking about that feels horrible, almost like dying.

Now consider these more reasonable beliefs:

• Although it's sad and painful to end a love relationship, you would recover from such a loss (as would your loved one).  The pain would be neither intolerable nor endless, even though it might seem that way for a while. <snip>
• On the other hand, if you did make the commitment, it wouldn't be irreversible.  No commitment to a relationship ever is.  Though you shouldn't ever enter a relationship with the idea of bailing out when it gets difficult, if it becomes clear that it won't work, even after every effort to resolve the problems, you can end it.  It would be difficult, but you could if you had to.
• If you're so close to committing to X, how unsuitable a choice could he or she be?  X might well have some flaws, like most human beings, and it's true that a better choice for you might someday appear, but don't use these arguments to disguise an exaggerated fear of commitment.  If the main obstacle is your terror of closing options, the same problem is bound to come up in future relationships, no matter who your partner is.
• Finally, it's true that giving up the fantasy of ever having a new love is a painful loss, but it's not unbearable unless you decide it is.  If you insist on telling yourself you can't stand the thought of giving that up, fine.  Have it your way.  But you don't have to think that.  <snip>

Your Choice

I'm not making a blanket recommendation that you commit to your current romance, job, or anything else; I don't have to live with the results.  You alone must decide how much of your reluctance is legitimate and how much is your fear of commitment.

If it's only reasonable caution, you'll resolve your doubts as new data come in.  But if the main obstacle is a fear of decisions and commitments, data won't help.  In fact, you'll just use this additional information to justify your paralysis.  You'll waver, anguished, until external matter decide for your or until you can't stand vacillating anymore and jumo in or out on impulse.

<snip> You can choose to see commitment as an unbearable risk, and the end of your freedom.  Or you can choose to see it as the only way to stop this chronic feeling of painful isolation and lost time.

***

Madonna did Justify My Love, maybe we can ask Lady Gaga to do a song called Justify My Paralysis.

When I look back over my life, my regrets have to do with the men I haven't kissed (granted, I've kissed quite a few), the chances I didn't take re: dating, careers, new activities.  I regret staying in bad love and job relationships because of fear - fear of being alone, or never finding someone else, or finding another job.  And from what I hear, everyone else is the same - they regret the dreams they didn't risk.

My biggest risk - taking 6 months off from work/looking for work after a lay-off, and pursuing writing a book.  Did it sell?  No.  Do I regret that time - absolutely NOT.

Second biggest - moving in with OCPD ex, although I had some misgivings.  I did everything that was in me to make that relationship work.  I'm sorry it didn't work; I'm not sorry I tried.  Even though it didn't, even though in many ways it was an emotionally damaging relationship, in many other ways I am emotionally richer and deeper because of it.  So, no regrets.

Life really and truly does work out - if you decide you're going to make it work out.

What's the biggest risk you decided not to take?
Do you regret "the one that got away" - a relationship that ended 
because you wouldn't commit?
Thoughts, feelings, comments?

VD with the G-F

So, I was anticipating a rough VD, since it was my first since breaking up with OCPD bf.  And it was rough, in spots, but I tried to be pro-active and not let myself sink into too much unhealthy reminiscing and nostalgia.

Reality is, Valentines' Day with him was no great shakes.  I think once he cut roses from the garden and put them in a vase on the table for me.  He never, ever, sent flowers to me at work, and many years didn't even bother with a card.  More than a wee bit Demand-Resistant to the whole idea of making a fuss over his loved one for a "Hallmark Holiday."

So... I bought my own rose for my desk at work, and am still enjoying it.  (Though I did move it away from that corner where I could too easily knock it onto the floor.  In case that worried you.)

And I decided to get Carried Away a bit for the G-F, with all kinds of good-smelling stuff I wasn't "allowed" to use due to ex b-f's complaints about cologne and scented lotion.  And duckies.  The pink one even lights up! (For those of you thinking I'm both bi and moving waaaaay too fast - I found that while I feel somewhat uncomfortable treating myself well, I can manage it if I treat myself in the third person, like my own girlfriend.)

So, some new stinkum from Bath & Body works, plus I cashed in a gift card and showered g-f in Luscious Kisses from Victoria's Secret.

Over the weekend I knocked out a few chores that had been hanging over my head, which made me feel happy and relieved.  And which gave me permission to enjoy myself, though I'm trying to get past the silly notion that pleasure should be earned.

Worked on eating mindfully.  I fixed girlfriend some of our favorite meals, but tried to focus on appropriate sized portions, and stopping when/before being full, trying to tune into learning how to listen to the body, instead of just eating, eating, eating, because food is sitting there.  And trying to include lots of salad, green veggies, and healthy choices. 

Also bought Valentines' chocolate for her, all her favorites, though a small box.  We haven't inhaled them all yet, but are eating them 1-2 per night, totally savoring and enjoying each and every bite.

This mindful eating business is hard work, and I'm such a beginner, but I trust it's the right way to go in the long term.

Spent a fair amount of time with my favorite dysfunctional couple, Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII.  Their story is one I've been magnetically drawn to for most of my life.  Talk about an object lesson in 1) Passionate love doesn't always last forever, and 2) It's not usually healthy for a woman to lose her head over a man.

Theories abound on What Went Wrong.  Did either Anne or Henry have a Personality Disorder?  Because things went downhill pretty fast once the "chase" was over and they were officially married.  Much like what happens when a "non" moves in with a person with a PD.  Or were one or both of them simply drunk with power?

Certainly Anne exhibited some wild mood swings.  She was also pregnant and miscarrying during much of that time, and that in itself could account for her being so "highly strung."   Plus just a smidge of pressure from being surrounded all the time by people who hated her guts, and constant demands from those who wanted to use her to further their own interests.  We think about Diana, Princess of Wales, and how she was constantly hounded by paparazzi, but old-time royalty had people around them all the time.  Even the privies weren't private.

from Wikipedia Commons

One interesting novel, Threads by Nell Gavin, takes on the story as woven into a theory of reincarnation.  The idea is that people choose to be reborn into different families to work out unresolved karmic issues, and that Henry, Anne and Katherine had been married, siblings, parents and children in previous lifetimes.  I especially liked the section where Anne was an Egyptian whore, Katherine her young daughter, and Henry a transvestite man-whore who befriended them because he longed for children of his own.

This would explain a lot about 15th and 16th century men's fashion.

Watched some flicks - Carrie Fisher's entertaining Wishful Drinking, and Disney's Tinkerbell which I'd been wanting to see forever, because my favorite artist Loreena McKennitt had done most of the music and the narration.  As the intro ballad wafted me into the story, that's when I did my VD weeping - not sure if it was because I felt so moved by Loreena's gorgeous voice, or a little bit of sadness over ex b-f. 

Although ex b-f also really enjoys her music, and always claimed a love of animation, he was never willing to watch this movie with me, because...   because.  Who knows why? 

Every time I go down that rabbit hole of trying to make sense of the nonsensical, I simply get more lost.  When someone has a mental disorder, things don't make logical sense.   Yet those of us who love them may keep churning past actions or conversations in our minds, thinking we'll hit on some magical insight and we'll really "get" why they think and act the way they do.

I will never be able to understand his distorted thinking, and that's okay.  I don't have to.  I just need to figure out the way I think, and make healthy choices for me.

What healthy choices have you been making for you?

Tell me about it in the comments.