Tag: Stress

Breaking Up With Maladaptive Daydreaming…

I spent so much time with you, and now I have to walk away—just like that, just today. The unicorns were great, and as I look back, my heart flips and screams a silent scream, ” I do not want to become a pillar of salt”. I regret looking back; I see the Milky Way and the rainbow – brilliant and true – beckon to me. Suddenly, a hommack emerges to welcome me back to Unreal. Fear claws with delay talons, vicious and true. “What is there to look forward to?”

I am numb, struck dumb by the reality that beckons menacingly. Now, I want to remain. I could stay forever and walk the yellow brick road. Maybe then I could find Freedom, which has been running from me. I never caught it, but it would just be out of reach, encouraging me to chase it and capture it with my net of great expectations. I never did catch it; most times, I could not see it, only hear the roaring of rushing waters, melodious and true floating through the air.

I have avoided those shadowy figures that lure me back into the trap of daily living. My bones grow cold when I feel them growing too close. “Does it make sense to go back? To sit and watch as my fate is reflected in hopeless eyes and zombies of broken dreams. But I want to walk through the path with real flowers, sunshine daffodils, a real path with dirt that fills my lungs before I give it life once more. I want to experience the newness of changes that signal I am still alive and more is just around the corner. “Not all those who wander are lost,” not forever.

As I step away from those dreams, they become cold and hostile, beating at my back. Without looking back, I know they are fading away into mediocrity and into obscurity. A tear hurries down my face, trying to seal the scream building up, ready to overflowing. Those shadows become solid. They become too real. I see the merging of monsters into faces I know and those yet to come…

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to” 

Can I make it in the real?

Snake Plant!

Yes, the snake plant. With a name like this, you would think this plant has some venomous poison or in some other way detrimental to your health. I certainly would not expect it to have as many benefits as I discovered it has. Certainly, the other name, Mother-in-Law’s tongue, sounds no better. Many a wife has complained about their mother-in-law being “infuriating”, “Judgemental” “overbearing” and other wonderfully evocative adjectives. Though, I must concede that I have heard about some wonderful mother-in-laws so the bad ones may be in the minority. Who knows! The point is the names associated with this plant would not immediately endear you to it. That is until you do some more digging to find out there are many benefits to this unlikely plant.

In Jamaica, I have always noticed these plants, because they are everywhere, but did not really consider them worth my time. They seemed to grow wildly, with little attention and certainly little encouragement given. They did not seem as useful as many other plants around and certainly not as beautiful – in my estimation at least. So imagine my surprise, when someone at church told me that they had some use! I had to find out more. What I found out, made me a lover of this plant instantly, and even here, in this cold far-flung Isle, I never stopped looking until one day with little effort on my part (not surprisingly), God produced one for me!

These green and yellow spiked hair-raising plants had some serious mojo. Known as “Sansevieria trifasciata“, they are “native to Asia and Africa” and have several health benefits. Who knew that plants could affect your physical and mental health like this plant! Not me. According to Common Sense Gardening, they require little care (though may God help the one I have because I have already killed a cactus, taking care of it!) and therefore a great plant for the most amateur of plant lovers. However, this is not the secret to their magic. No, it is not!. What makes them miraculous? Well, they can filter the air, and remove toxic pollutants, imagine them supplying oxygen for your personal top-up, while absorbing CO2 at night, benzine, Formaldehyde (CH2O) and more. They may be able to boost your mental health, help with minor ailments, and be effective against allergies, among other things. Now, maybe this sounds too good to be true but I have had them in Jamaica and they certainly did not hurt me. As a matter of fact, I slept better and felt more revitalised in the mornings! Added to this is the fact that there are several sources, which list similar benefits of the plant, so it’s a win-win situation. God is truly amazing right?!

So why am I rambling on and on about snake plants? Well, get one and see what it can do for your mental and physical well-being. Why not, what do you have to lose?

Maladaptive Daydreaming

Do you know this term? I was today years old when I came across it and at first glance, I thought, “Well that sounds like some weird stuff, there is no way it could apply to me”. But alas it does!. I am not happy about this because of what it is. According to Medical News Today, “Maladaptive daydreaming is a term that refers to when a person spends an excessive amount of time daydreaming. Often, this behaviour may be developed as part of a coping mechanism”. Though it cannot be formally diagnosed it still bears some consideration and exploration. As a child, I went to live with my grandparents and I remember there was an empty lot right across the street from where I lived I somehow transformed the Macka trees into a landscape of rolling lush hills and green carpets of grass, where I was coming from in the country. In my eyes, it was the same place just in a different location and I did that for several places in the new environment I was living in. I missed my previous home and I wanted to go back but couldn’t, so I used my imagination to take me back there. Over the years I have lost myself in my many imaginations, daydreaming about alternate realities that combat disappointment, fear and boredom with my life. They were comforting and I felt necessary to tune out the pain and disappointment with reality. It was my escape.

I have tried over the years to daydream less as I try to be a big girl, but there are days when life seems too much and a quick fix seems to go a long way. However, it is not a healthy practice. It is a form of dissociation, simply put is a lack of connection to yourself and the world around you, it allows us to mentally take a break from reality. It separates us from our friends and family because we spend so much time in our own imagined world and affects our productivity. Guilty, guilty guilty! Now what? Where do you go with this information then? I am an adult so why haven’t I completely banished this seeming childhood escape mechanism. The simple truth is new traumas are added to our lives quite often. We each find our own way of escaping these traumas.

I learned that one coping mechanism is walking. I love to walk. Somehow walking makes me feel as if I am reclaiming my autonomy. I feel as if I am walking away from a prison to my freedom. Of course, at some point, I have to go back to my cage. But for a couple minutes or a few hours, I can walk of my own will, anywhere I want to without feeling pressed in. I also am distracted by what I see around me or of late the biting cold. Sometimes as I walk I talk to God and tell him how I feel and my worries. That helps me but it does not last. Hopefully, I can find out some more about this and how to cope with ways of dealing with stress and traumas from my past that now haunt me and share, but for now, that’s all folks.

Goodbye Stress!

You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.

― Steve Maraboli

If you’ve recently looked in the mirror after one hard day and wondered when you got so old – but you’re not, you my friend may be stressed.

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Today, we use stress as if it is a badge of honor. We talk about being stressed day and night, as if it were a prize that we have to brag about.

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This leads to little things happening that add up to becoming BIG problems:

  1. We remember nothing from moment to moment
  2. It feels like your bodies are attacking itself – literally, every patch of skin bones and organs are at war with each other.
  3. you can’t eat or you eat too much.
  4. You can’t sleep or you sleep too much.
  5. You nightly dreams become hellish – a monster you can’t escape.
  6. You can’t decide whether to sit or stand, go or stay. It’s all a mystery!
  7. A small bitter little monster is knocking away all day at your head. Trying to tear it off your shoulders.
  8. You get angry and then don’t know why and frankly you just don’t care at this point.
  9. Absolutely nothing is worth smiling or laughing about!
  10. You have a constant river of sweat pouring down your body. Even when you know the temperature should not allow this!
  11. And nothing you do ever turns out right!

There are so many things that can go wrong because you are stressed. The greatest of them all is that it can kill you.

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So what are you going to do about it?

What you are not going to do is continue this way. Because if you do it could be that you really have developed a tolerance for being stressed, which is not good.

The road that seems the easiest is often the most dangerous and the familiar can be so deceptive that your demise creeps up before you can fight it off. To combat stress maybe we need to stop leaning on the wrong people (yes frenemies, they may seems a strange breed but they are a dangerous one!) Also, we need to go to bed and get some sleep (even though I should have been at mine an hour ago, we will get it right). Next, stop overthinking things and just go with the flow. Stop giving people your time, and don’t stretch yourself – who cares what they think. Only you know what you are going through. And finally, stop overlooking great opportunities that may seems difficult but which will bring the desired results. Give back the title and trophy that is stress and live your best life. Shalom!

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