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How I escaped social anxiety & depression without drugs

This is a dramatized version of my first major synchronicity, which I've written about elsewhere on this blog in other forms I keep having the same nightmare.  In my dream, I’m stuck in cold and dark place, completely alone; and thirsty, so thirsty…the dryness clicks and snaps in my mouth.  In the dream I’m trying to fall asleep, but I’m shuddering and my teeth won’t stop chattering from the cold.  I can’t get warm and I  can’t get comfortable because I’m pinned behind a giant boulder—the only way to lay down is to lean forward and drape myself over the rock.  Every time I start to fall asleep in the dream, I jolt awake in real life with a sense that I’m about to fall out of bed. It’s no mystery what’s causing this recurring nightmare…it was brought on by Aron Ralston’s memoir, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”… I’m haunted by Aron’s story.  He’s the guy who went hiking alone and had to cut off his arm after a boulder fell on him.  He spent 5 days trying to engineer a way

Past, Present, & Future Coexist in the Unconscious

Tonight I watched the first episode of the TV series "Touch".  It gave me shivers.  It was absolutely gorgeous (though at points I was rolling my eyes over some of the drama and use of stereotypes). I watched it because my husband (who has always been critical of my synchronicity experiences) told me that there was a show about my subject.  He has already watched the first 24 episodes.  He told me it gets better after the first episode (which he also rolled his eyes at). He came in when I was about halfway through and asked me if I understood what it was about.  He said it was about this idea that there are four times: the past, the present, the future, and the "now"--which is different from the present because it is everything rolled into one.  And I kind of knew what he was talking about because that's how synchronicities sometimes make me feel--like I've glimpsed that connection between everything, stepped outside of time.  After he left, I thought to
I have been in the flow, riding the wave of synchronicity, being washed along by it's current to new discoveries this summer.  It has been an amazing reawakening of what is possible when I follow my curiosity, my intuition, my sparks of inspiration. I've been working on a speech about finding myself and overcoming anxiety.  I can't turn around without being nudged by synchronicity to check out another writer, artist, speaker, stranger, or acquaintance.  Everywhere I turn I glean some new insight into what my journey has been about and where it has brought me. What I've discovered is the importance of social communities to find our authentic selves.  I've been reading Sen's Identity and Violence.  Today I discovered Spiro's description of Ubuntu.  I stumbled upon John Hain's word cloud art, one piece of which describes the dualistic mind--and despite my best efforts to be inclusive towards everyone, I draw the line at the point where I begin to questi

Too many apologies

I've been thinking a lot about my friend who was lost last Tuesday in a tragic car accident.  I'm remembering the lessons he taught me. This friend of mine loved people and he loved listening.  He kept his schedule flexible so that he could be there for you whenever you needed him, regardless of everything else he had going on in his life.  We were going to build an amazing friendship...we had this connection which made our conversations flow so naturally.  I was endlessly curious about him and who he really was underneath his constant joking...he sometimes came across as not all that serious but every now and then I would ask him a question about his field he would quote all of the top scholars on the subject and instantly articulate a gem of an answer.  He always commented on how much he enjoyed talking with me and I was curious about that too...about exactly why he enjoyed talking to me when I could never articulate my ideas...could never remember who I was quoting or the

A tragedy...a shock....

In my last post  I wrote about a synchronicity which was meaningful enough to get me to return to post to my blog after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus.  The synch I described was related to my strong connection to a colleague, which became even stronger over this past month, June and July 2016.  Earlier this month I was struck by the sudden realization that he was married to my old therapist...a therapist who changed my life and was integral to one of my first major synchronicities in 2011, a turning point in my life which I wrote about here  (in the post I referred to my therapist as a friend--she was the one who told me I was between a rock and a hard place and also the one who had recommended Lerner's book). On July 4th I got to attend a party and sit down with my colleague and my old therapist.  I gave her a book about the use of synchronicity in therapy and a letter describing the role she had played in my transformation.  I was eager to sit down with my colleague after the pa

Synchs have not stopped

Sorry for my long absence.  I just wanted to make a quick note that my life is still full of synchronicity.   Since I last wrote I found my dream job in a seriously synchronous way--and it happened just a few weeks after getting rejected for another job which I thought was going to be perfect for me (I wrote about it in a previous post).  Even my skeptical husband pointed out how weird the circumstances were.  I have now been in the job for two years and have grown so much as a person that I can hardly recognize the new me. Today a huge synch hit me and nearly knocked the wind out of me.  It was so awesome.  I've met many people at my job and connected really well with many colleagues.  One in particular that I always seem to be able to have an awesome conversation with is a professor of psychology.  Yesterday we met for coffee and I told him that I liked chatting with him because it was like therapy for me.  And he replied that I get what I pay for because he's an experiment

A four-year old's way of knowing

I've written in the past about synchronicities involving my four-year old son.  My son is very perceptive in general and this weekend he has again blown me away--this time by inspiring me to continue learning to cook. My husband is a great cook who can whip up a nutritious dinner out of nothing and I am a very insecure cook who has learned almost everything I know in the kitchen directly from him. Every once in a while I will get into a cooking-kick--once when I checked out Anna Venturi's " Secrets from an Italian Kitchen " from the library, once when I began following recipes from Rick Bayless' " Everyday Mexican " and for several years using my husband's recipes.  I've been taking a MOOC the last two or three weeks ( Just Cook--Child Nutrition & Cooking ) which has kicked me into action in the kitchen again. On a coworker's suggestion, I checked out Aaron Sanchez's recipes, and printed off his recipe for Birria on Friday.  My