reply to daniel discussion re: self confidience

[tobecome]

sorry i am having difficulty posting where I wanted to but didn't want to lose my thoughts. I think possibly making a scrap book of how far you have come or pictures of yourself before vs after which symbolically identify with your new mission in life right now. Using your music to boost your soul. Exercising and grooming..ie taking notice of your appearance. I also have found using perfume to help me. I like Bannana Republic Classic Cologne. They have a men's and women's cologne. Otherwise making sure I have everything I need...cell phone, ear plugs, day planner.
Start slow and gradually build upon your comfort and skills.
You know your body best..so prepare it to do your best but also listen to your body when it might be time to retreat. And I believe in the power of prayer.
just my two cents...
tish

[Siria]

.......our past memories of ourselves are no longer relevant, so with this thought in my mind I am now finding it easier to move forward into my new future & new vision of myself! I am now the creator of a better improved me............Well in theory this sounds OK, but in reality it is pretty difficult & I find myself wanting to bury my head in the sand whenever life looks a little bit tricky. Having always been a strong willed person, feeling at a social disadvantage is overpowering - I have been reading 'lifes secrects' by deepak chopra - this has been both inspiring & emotional for me as it seems to be walking me slowly through my healing process helping me to understand this world/society in a fresh way!
Due to my memory, I have to read over things a few times - but so far so good & I would recommend a little deepak chopra to enhance your confidence because after all it does come from within us.....
Good luck :-)

[tobecome]

siria,
thank you for your note. I'll just briefly state that i don't believe in luck. But I wish you well too.
take care,
be well,
tish

[Daniel]

I hate to be the one to disagree with something someone else says, but I find it difficult not to take issue with your comment, Siria, "...our past memories of ourselves are no longer relevant..." - I disagree not in whatever unfortunate truth this statement may have for you personally, but I think getting to know who you used to be again is an opportunity to correct some aspects of yourself you may not have liked but until encephalitis, had no inclination to alter :

1) Healthy living through the acquisition of a rehabilitational and weight managing routine
2) Realizing past bad habits which are now aspects of the past (eg drinking more than is advisable)
3) Seeing aspects of your former personality which were not great (eg being submissive out of a desire to not be excluded by friends and doing something only to fit in)

and so on and so on - point is that it's only through seeing where it was that you used to be, that creates the opportunity to move forwards in the right frame of mind - I hate elements of my former self, but I'm determined to not go back there, and doing that requires knowing where there used to be.
I just think if one is to truly move on in becoming something they're happy/ier with, then it requires knowing where your mistakes were in the past and not making yourself predisposed to the repetition of such errors in judgment again.

Who you used to be may not be someone you like. Past memories of events you were involved in : relationships, habits or whatever else, all led you to the point you are at now and in some way gave you the inclination to realize how wrong you either used to be or that such things were.

I *thank god* that I can recall everything with the exception of the early - mid months of 2005, because I wake every....single...day determined to never returning to being that fat loser/lemming, and I use that term with the utmost sincereity knowing that I'm actually much better now than before, I just gotta polish off this silly virus.

It's not the recollection of the past which hinders your ability to move forwards with yourself, it's how you choose to deal with the past which creates a much better future : don't dwell on the past and feel bad about it, learn from it and don't ever stop doing that.

I disagree only in that I think our pasts are *extremely* relevant : if you have no past mistakes to learn from then aren't you more or less doomed to repeat those same things over and over again?

[Siria]

Oh Daniel, I didn't mean to disrespect you in anyway & My words probably didn't really go deep enough into what I was actually thinking when I wrote them. I have now a list of issues from my past which I am taking with me to my first therapy meeting next month - Of course all of these issues are from my gloomy past - and I basically need coping strategies to help me cope with what are now fresh emotional wounds.
How I am now moving forward is to remain in the present and as my whole life has changed so has my life style, not through choice but through necessity. Prior to my last post here I had been dwelling & making a huge deal out of the chunks of memory I had lost, so to deal with this I had to 'let go' & not hang so much onto what has already past.
I had already reached a point of understanding prior to the e virus, having had 2 children my health & body awareness was already engaged but at this point I had become bored, i suppose & my social life had brought alcohol back into the equation!
I have just been through an extremely tough emotional week, involving social service & brain injury assessment/reports which should have been done 18th months ago!! These interviews delved back into my past life & I was left feeling emotionally drained after 2 hours!
One thing i noticed later that night was that this whole thing is already a repeat of my childhood, another area of my life which i had no control over - the further down the rabbit hole I go the deeper it gets - so now I am left in the abandoned & isolated chapters of my gloomy life & the reasons I drank & smoked in the beginning.
Through reading these posts it is clear to see how different our worlds look through the windows this site has opened to one another.
Luck hasn't been a feature in my life but I do believe that it is a positive thought to pass on and won't do any harm to those who give or receive the positive thought/energy - which do exist.
We are all on our own journeys in this world and the paths we take are dictated by the choices we make, I believe that all of us on this site are very strong people & are already making all the right choices so I wish you all the very best of everything in your lives because if anyone deserves it, it's us lot!!!

[Daniel]

I think letting go of who you used to be is something you need to be careful with : I've frequently had members of my family tell me,

"You're not the same as you were, you're better now, all you need to do is to remain positive"

- yet remaining positive is such a challenging thing to achieve when everyone else around you is saying things like

"You're not the same as you were, you're worse now, you need to grow up and be the same person you used to be, I want my friend back"

there's an obvious contradiction there : family see only the positive, new future, friends want the perhaps more negative past.

Letting go, to me, is realizing first of all what it is you need to let go of, and what is dead weight in your life which is making such conflict as what I mention above so intolerable.
I sat on my bed many times and thought about the way my former friends were coping with my situation while my only advocates - my family - did *everything* they possibly could to lift me out of the duldrums (blues).
On those days where I sat on the bed and pleaded with my cellphone to receive a text message from people who no longer cared about me, I'd have given anything to get them back into my life and feel normal like I used to do.

Then, one day, I realized that they were dead social weight, I saw that even if they did fumble their way back into my life, I'd have no time for them and those who I should be concentrating on respecting were those who were and still are, giving a damn about me.

I subsequently cut the dead weight from my life with a nice, clean cut, as one day in recent history they did send me a message asking me to go to their Christmas do at one of their flats.
It felt like a defining moment which life had decided at that point in time to test me with : had I learned from my realization of no longer needing them, or did I want to run back to them like a failed drug addict in recovery, only to begin the months and months of hearing nothing from them and wishing I was?
I chose to answer respectfully to the message, but to turn down the offer knowing that would likely be the definitive end of knowing them, but in doing so, I felt incredibly unblocked in life as I'd untied the knotts tethering the dead weight of useless former friends to my ankles and let them drop to the ground like they deserve while I continue my ascent to better things.

In that moment I wondered if I'd made the correct choice and now I know I have - they were trying to pat their own egos and relieve a little stress by contacting me out of their own guilt, not because they cared : I don't think they do because they haven't argued with my response or contacted me since that time.

Subsequently, I've grown a new and higher respect for those who have stuck at my side, family, and I go to the gym or my job no longer feeling like I'm doing so in order to get well enough to regain those old friendships, but instead to regain sufficient enough health to forge new ones entirely : that, to me, is coping : the ability to not dwell on aspects of the present, but instead decide only what's necessary dead weight to let go and instead visualizing a positive future while allowing those aspects which are positively assisting you now to get there.

I believe you're an articulate and intelligent individual who's got many valuable points of opinion to express - I don't think it's a matter of letting go of who you used to be at all : I think it's cutting those aspects of who you were, which make you feel bad now, loose (within reason, obviously not including family) and allowing only those positive aspects of who you used to be to influence who you're trying to become - who is anyone you darn well please to be.

Remain positive - I'm always about if you wanna chat.

[Siria]

Thank you, I just wish you were a neighbour and we could drink herbal tea & decaff coffee together on sunny mornings on the terrace......mind you i think we would have so much to talk about & books to share we would run out of tea & coffee all of the time!!

[Daniel]

I used to be an utter coffee *addict* - when I was about 20 and stupid, I discovered that if you put enough sugar into coffee with milk, it tasted like hot chocolate and you got the ability to stay up all night even after a night on the grog with the lads - my coffee splurges preceeded many of our lurkings around town, not causing trouble, just aimless drunken walking through parks and so forth. The winters here in Christchurch are nothing compared to what I see in England, and I can still recall mornings of about July (mid winter) when there was a white frost on the ground and the sun was rising and shining off the surface of whatever road we were walking along - the glare from the frost on my eyes took over keeping my zombified complexion awake while the coffee wore off and I could feel my heart racing from the stupidity of drinking so much coffee to stay awake after a bourbon splurge on the preceeding evening, yet being there with friends and knowing that we were the only ones on the streets at that time on a Sunday morning was in that moment exhilerating.

I recall once hearing an urban legend that if you stay awake for three days then it's like taking an hallucinogenic narcotic : I've never been into the drugs scene, but this was a potentially free equivalent and where the previous coffee addiction came from as we used that to help us all try and make the three days.
10 of us started, and only I with a couple of others were stupid enough to finish as one by one the others gave in to sleep or obligations which they forgot having had when we begun.

The worst night was the first, as there was such a contrast between being wide awake and then feeling buggered. On the second morning, there came a second wind with the rising sun and more coffee, but by the 3rd night, you feel more hungover than receiving the emulated experience suggested, unless of course that's how it's supposed to feel - I decided then never to say yes to drugs as I slept through days 4 and 5 and woke feeling *terrible*.

Needless to say, I no longer drink coffee, or booze (can't anyway because of recovery) - but moments of late teen/early twenties stupidity were many for me, and while I don't condone it, it was something I now know how it feels to do.

You ever do anything stupid like this before?

[Siria]

Daniel said:

I used to be an utter coffee *addict* - when I was about 20 and stupid, I discovered that if you put enough sugar into coffee with milk, it tasted like hot chocolate and you got the ability to stay up all night even after a night on the grog with the lads - my coffee splurges preceeded many of our lurkings around town, not causing trouble, just aimless drunken walking through parks and so forth. The winters here in Christchurch are nothing compared to what I see in England, and I can still recall mornings of about July (mid winter) when there was a white frost on the ground and the sun was rising and shining off the surface of whatever road we were walking along - the glare from the frost on my eyes took over keeping my zombified complexion awake while the coffee wore off and I could feel my heart racing from the stupidity of drinking so much coffee to stay awake after a bourbon splurge on the preceeding evening, yet being there with friends and knowing that we were the only ones on the streets at that time on a Sunday morning was in that moment exhilerating.
I recall once hearing an urban legend that if you stay awake for three days then it's like taking an hallucinogenic narcotic : I've never been into the drugs scene, but this was a potentially free equivalent and where the previous coffee addiction came from as we used that to help us all try and make the three days. 10 of us started, and only I with a couple of others were stupid enough to finish as one by one the others gave in to sleep or obligations which they forgot having had when we begun.

The worst night was the first, as there was such a contrast between being wide awake and then feeling buggered. On the second morning, there came a second wind with the rising sun and more coffee, but by the 3rd night, you feel more hungover than receiving the emulated experience suggested, unless of course that's how it's supposed to feel - I decided then never to say yes to drugs as I slept through days 4 and 5 and woke feeling *terrible*.

Needless to say, I no longer drink coffee, or booze (can't anyway because of recovery) - but moments of late teen/early twenties stupidity were many for me, and while I don't condone it, it was something I now know how it feels to do.

You ever do anything stupid like this before?

I was unfortunately the queen of stupidity!! Never a weekend passed without me being the all night party reveller, so of course I had many friends and endless sessions at friends houses after hours. It was through these nights of exploration into new dimensions that I discovered my hopes & dreams & so then I made a choice to leave the party world and go to India to find my true self so off i went to the mysterious east. It was there that i began to write and draw so by the time i returned 3 months later i enrolled on an art & design course as mature student for 2 years which led me to meet my partner Anthony who i then went to University with for a further 3 years - so then we stood in the world of theory - the magic illusion of art had been dissected to its theoretical form, so no longer held my attention. What we took from this was editing & film making, obviously writing in a more formal structure to greater lengths and having confidence in what we made & created, so we then set up a couple of businesses both of which involved making & selling, importing & selling online art materials.
Then we had Kai and moved back to Jersey from the UK & then came the E - which brings me to here and these words I write to you - If i have 1 cup of caffinated coffee i will have a seizure so its decaff & herbal tea all the way for me now!! and as for the drugs.. well anti-convulsants are what I am now getting off, as for the friends from the party days of 1997-8 well i hear that they are still going & are taking much more serious drugs now such as cocaine, when I pass them on the street & say hi, they look old & their eyes are sallow - I am now the one who is aware & alive & i guess i am the one who is richer in my life for letting go - i am free - but i just dont have a new place to fit in or anyone to connect with as no one in my local reality can connect with what I am going through, the specialists, well they nod their heads sympathetically & take notes as I speak to them they try to look concerned but c'mon as soon as they leave the room they return to the other world which i am no longer a part of. and never will be again, i dont know whether to laugh or cry sometimes, which is when i feel as though i am going insane or believe that i already am!!
As I work in a pharmacy now dispensing medicines in the local community i see the larger percentage of what is going out is in the anti depressants, seeing the sadness in the facts makes me more emotional as i realise how helpless humans are in our society, I can understand maybe why Hope has studied psychology, as i too am looking at courses in counselling, not for now but maybe at a later stage in my recovery.

[Daniel]

Oh, and then there was this other night when we had no money and remained sober : we played hour after hour of some video game before, at about 3am, we all decided were hungry for junk food (there were actually only 3 of us). We were 18 at the time and at my friends parents house and one of my friends had then just recently got his drivers licence so my other friend suggested we borrow his fathers car and take a 10 minute ride to the nearest fast food shop (must emphasize that we were sober).
We pushed the car out the garage door and down the driveway before getting inside and proceeding to the nearest fish and chip shop, but it was in the suburbs and had closed hours beforehand, so my friend said "hey, it's only 10 minutes to the central city, let's find something to eat there, where all the 24 hour shops are" - so we did, and arrived there safely and ate fast food before beginning the return journey.
After leaving the CBD, the car began to slow and then stop and it was at that point that we assumed there was no petrol in the tank, we had spent all our money on food, and we had about 8 hours before the owner of the car got up for work, so we began pushing the car, two pushing while the 3rd steered.

After 3 hours of pushing, a policecar stopped us thinking we had stolen the vehicle from a stranger. When we confessed to the situation and was able to show the officer we had a licenced driver and were sober, and that the driver was the son of the cars owner - there were no laws being broken, so the officer decided that, rather than assist us in any way, he'd leave us to continue our vigil (the right choice as I think back now, taught us a lesson).

We pushed and pushed this car for another few hours until we saw the sun hinting at rising : it was still dark, but less dark then, and we knew we were about to be in *big* trouble when his dad got up and found his car gone.

It was at that point, as we pushed and began to fabricate reasons why we had done what we did to lie to his father about, that another car stopped behind us and we thought the cops had returned to see if we had learned our lesson,

"You guys need a tow?" came the voice of a young saint who effectively saved our asses. The man towed us the remaining distance through the suburbs and back to our friends parents house and after thanking the guy with all the sincereity we could muster, pushing the car back up the driveway and into the garage, going inside and crashing on the floor of my friends bedroom, we heard his father get up for work, oblivious to what we had done and the journey we had just managed to complete in the knick of time.

I can still hear him (the father) in my head, getting up, eating breakfast after showering, and going out to his car to head off to work and hearing the engine not going. I can still hear him swearing and grumbling as he came back into the house and as my friends mother asked him what was the matter he didn't say there was no petrol at all, he said three words I can still recall in my head,

"The battery's dead"

They then went outside and his mother used her car to jumpstart the other and he drove away as we realized how stupid we had been.

[Siria]

Daniel said:

Oh, and then there was this other night when we had no money and remained sober : we played hour after hour of some video game before, at about 3am, we all decided were hungry for junk food (there were actually only 3 of us). We were 18 at the time and at my friends parents house and one of my friends had then just recently got his drivers licence so my other friend suggested we borrow his fathers car and take a 10 minute ride to the nearest fast food shop (must emphasize that we were sober).
We pushed the car out the garage door and down the driveway before getting inside and proceeding to the nearest fish and chip shop, but it was in the suburbs and had closed hours beforehand, so my friend said "hey, it's only 10 minutes to the central city, let's find something to eat there, where all the 24 hour shops are" - so we did, and arrived there safely and ate fast food before beginning the return journey.
After leaving the CBD, the car began to slow and then stop and it was at that point that we assumed there was no petrol in the tank, we had spent all our money on food, and we had about 8 hours before the owner of the car got up for work, so we began pushing the car, two pushing while the 3rd steered.

After 3 hours of pushing, a policecar stopped us thinking we had stolen the vehicle from a stranger. When we confessed to the situation and was able to show the officer we had a licenced driver and were sober, and that the driver was the son of the cars owner - there were no laws being broken, so the officer decided that, rather than assist us in any way, he'd leave us to continue our vigil (the right choice as I think back now, taught us a lesson).

We pushed and pushed this car for another few hours until we saw the sun hinting at rising : it was still dark, but less dark then, and we knew we were about to be in *big* trouble when his dad got up and found his car gone.

It was at that point, as we pushed and began to fabricate reasons why we had done what we did to lie to his father about, that another car stopped behind us and we thought the cops had returned to see if we had learned our lesson,

"You guys need a tow?" came the voice of a young saint who effectively saved our asses. The man towed us the remaining distance through the suburbs and back to our friends parents house and after thanking the guy with all the sincereity we could muster, pushing the car back up the driveway and into the garage, going inside and crashing on the floor of my friends bedroom, we heard his father get up for work, oblivious to what we had done and the journey we had just managed to complete in the knick of time.

I can still hear him (the father) in my head, getting up, eating breakfast after showering, and going out to his car to head off to work and hearing the engine not going. I can still hear him swearing and grumbling as he came back into the house and as my friends mother asked him what was the matter he didn't say there was no petrol at all, he said three words I can still recall in my head,

"The battery's dead"

They then went outside and his mother used her car to jumpstart the other and he drove away as we realized how stupid we had been.

And the moral of the story being never ass-u-me anything in life cos as you can see it only makes an ASS out of U and ME - a good way to remember to double check all other CHOICES before making a decision!
At any rate a good tale to tell & yes an important point made about lessons we have learnt prior to E.

[Daniel]

India looks like a fantastic country - what spurred the interest to go there for you? I see in your words a lady who embraced an open and alternative lifestyle - perhaps, by your own apparent admission, going too far with it, then re evaluating herself and discovering that just because you lean towards alternative interests, by that I mean not conforming to the stereotypical way of social development, doesn't mean they're any less valid or less credible - people go through entire lifetimes wishing they had gone to India or China, like we have, wishing they'd just *once* tried something irresponsible in medicinal form, yet try as they may to emulate such experiences at that point in time, they fail as the opportunity to enjoy the moment has passed and they've remained on the straight and narrow, left only regretting not having spent their time more wisely than only doing what they learn to believe is right or correct in life and never once taking that chance of seeing a fantastic Asian culture or exploring their own artistic inclinations. You, however, have avoided a midlife crisis in the future because you've been there, done that, and are now trying to move on and ultimately, I believe you'll end up in better stead than many others and happier in life as a result.

Couldn't agree more about the specialists - I *despised* the one I had at the 4th and final hospital I went to because he gave up on trying to help and ultimately began to learn from me instead, so I helped him learn and co operated with him only to help another patient in the future.

Incidentally, do you know the correct name of your seizure type? I ask, as you mention coffee being a trigger for you, which logically I have an insight into with my own type, which is *so nearly* non existant now, 'presyncopal lightheadedness' :
This is triggered by a raised heartrate - eg when I get nervous, excitable, afraid or my heart goes too quickly. The last trigger has been helped by getting more fit in the cardiovascular sense, and as such I don't tend to get as nervous or fearful as I used to.

My concern for you personally, is that by drinking something seemingly harmless like coffee, you inadvertently might be raising your tension levels and coffee makes you more alert, so your blood circulation will naturally hasten also, and you're body may in time adapt to reacting with the seizures as a result, rather than adapting to not having them at all, which is an absolute possibility.

May I suggest you try not drinking coffee at all and see if that helps?

[Siria]

Daniel said:

India looks like a fantastic country - what spurred the interest to go there for you? I see in your words a lady who embraced an open and alternative lifestyle - perhaps, by your own apparent admission, going too far with it, then re evaluating herself and discovering that just because you lean towards alternative interests, by that I mean not conforming to the stereotypical way of social development, doesn't mean they're any less valid or less credible - people go through entire lifetimes wishing they had gone to India or China, like we have, wishing they'd just *once* tried something irresponsible in medicinal form, yet try as they may to emulate such experiences at that point in time, they fail as the opportunity to enjoy the moment has passed and they've remained on the straight and narrow, left only regretting not having spent their time more wisely than only doing what they learn to believe is right or correct in life and never once taking that chance of seeing a fantastic Asian culture or exploring their own artistic inclinations. You, however, have avoided a midlife crisis in the future because you've been there, done that, and are now trying to move on and ultimately, I believe you'll end up in better stead than many others and happier in life as a result.

Couldn't agree more about the specialists - I *despised* the one I had at the 4th and final hospital I went to because he gave up on trying to help and ultimately began to learn from me instead, so I helped him learn and co operated with him only to help another patient in the future.

Incidentally, do you know the correct name of your seizure type? I ask, as you mention coffee being a trigger for you, which logically I have an insight into with my own type, which is *so nearly* non existant now, 'presyncopal lightheadedness' :
This is triggered by a raised heartrate - eg when I get nervous, excitable, afraid or my heart goes too quickly. The last trigger has been helped by getting more fit in the cardiovascular sense, and as such I don't tend to get as nervous or fearful as I used to.

My concern for you personally, is that by drinking something seemingly harmless like coffee, you inadvertently might be raising your tension levels and coffee makes you more alert, so your blood circulation will naturally hasten also, and you're body may in time adapt to reacting with the seizures as a result, rather than adapting to not having them at all, which is an absolute possibility.

But surely decaffinated coffee is ok, i mean it was only when i had the normal caffinated coffee that my problems with heart rate, anxiety etc. began.
I have not heard of this 'presyncopal lightheadedness' before. I have avoided all stimulants in my diet since the e, and it was only when o had the one cup of normal coffee that i noticed the change, however with the de-caff i have been much better,

May I suggest you try not drinking coffee at all and see if that helps?