I’m Reading

EMDR

Posted on by kmarrs

Despite the trauma train that has been the last 6 months kicking up some dust, I’m actually fairly stable. So in this spirit, I’m working on processing the trauma I’ve been through in the past 37 years. There are all sorts of things, big and little, and I’m ready to deal with it all.

DBT is great for helping to survive the day to day. But I’m doing that fairly well. Even when I was dying, I made it through each day intact. DBT isn’t set up to deal with the past.

There is a form of therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing it’s perfectly set up to help process past traumas and desensitize people with PTSD. It is a little tricky to explain, but it’s basically puts the patient almost into a trance. I’m going to provide some links to web pages and books that can explain this much better than I can below.

I will say that it is helpful. I’ve only just begun the process and I have a long ways to go, but I finally feel hope that I can let go of the past and come out the other end happier and less angry. PTSD makes me angry and I don’t like that about myself. But I can fix it. And EMDR is the key.

https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/
https://youtu.be/Pkfln-ZtWeY

Bannit, S.P. (2012). The trauma toolkit: Healing trauma from the inside out. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.
Scaer, R. (2005). The trauma spectrum: Hidden wounds and human resiliency. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Van Der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Viking.
Parnell, L. (2008). Tapping in: A step-by-step guide to activating your healing resources through bilateral stimulation. Boulder, CO: Sounds True Books.
Shapiro, F., & Forrest, M. (1997). EMDR: The breakthrough “eye movement” therapy for overcoming stress, anxiety, and trauma. New York: Basic Books.
Shapiro, F. (2013). Getting past your past: Take control of your life with self-help techniques from EMDR therapy. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books.

Surviving Finals

Posted on by kmarrs

So. Wow. It’s been a long minute since I last wrote.

All I can really say to my defense is that my idea of thinking 2 maths classes at once would be an easy return to school… Haha. Ha. ha. No.

I forgot the sheer workload in a single math class much less two at once.

But I survived! Even finals week! With my 4.0 intact.

God, I’m tired though. The kind of tired that a nap just can’t fix. It’s like straight through to my core.

But I’ll recover. Just in time for next term. I’m actually going full-time next term, with 3 classes, but they are only 6 weeks each and none of them at the same time. It should be much lighter.

Also, I forgot how much I love to read. Or rather, I never doubted how much I love to read, but I sort of didn’t realize how much I missed it until term finished and I curled up with a book. To just sit there and read when you know there is nothing else in the world I need to be doing… It’d been awhile.

I’m rereading Game of Thrones. I hadn’t read them in a long while, years really, and I’d never read the 5th book so I’ve curled up with the first book and I’m going to try to read all 5 before I’m back in class.

Alright. I’ll try to update more, but I’m not really sure what there is to say. Life is quiet with no real drama. Other than the car breaking and then being gone with no replacement. I mean, my BIL who lives with us has a car, but I only really have access to it 2 days a week. And even then it’s shared. I’ve never not had a car. It’s getting old fast.

Currently Reading

Posted on by kmarrs

Borderline Personality Disorder BPDI’m going to try to write one of these every week. First, it gets me writing. It gets me past any writers block with an easy post that doesn’t take a ton of time from school. Second, it holds me accountable for reading a book a week. Granted, some books really do take a long time to read even when I am keeping up on my reading. But unless the book I’m reporting on is 500+ pages, give me the stink eye if I report the same book two weeks in a row. Other weeks I might report on 3 books because each book alone was a 3 hour read.

As we speak it is 3:04 on what is to be Tuesday morning.  This post goes live in 7 hours.  A little less, really.  I am just now finally beginning A Separate Peace.  Which, I know.  But I’m hoping to have it nearly read by the time this goes live.  So cross your fingers for me?

I did manage to finish The Fitzgerald short stories!  It’s not that I didn’t like them, it’s just that every time I became invested in them, the story would end and I’d have to reinvest.  And not all the stories were as worthy of the investment as others.  So it was a long and drawn out read.  But I finally decided it was time I finished and finish I did!

The bible was on target but so confusing.  My mom asked what version I was reading and I didn’t have an answer but I think the version she’s handed me will be easier for a beginner reader.  I think after this week’s novel, which was last week’s novel, I’m going to get caught up on the bible.  Or at least try.  We shall see.

You are welcome to find me and friend me on Goodreads if you would like to see my read, to-read, and currently reading lists. It’s a great site for finding great books. And I love going to the library and pulling up my to-read list. I have also made both a list of books I own and a list of books I want to be sure to buy, which is very handy when I’m browsing Half Priced Books clearance shelves.

I have not been paid to promote anything with this post. The only thing I aim to promote is my love of reading and I have not been paid anything. Unless you want to pay me. Then you’re welcome to. Didn’t think so. *wink*

Currently Reading

Posted on by kmarrs

img_7378-stack-of-books-q75-1055x1740I’m going to try to write one of these every week.  First, it gets me writing.  It gets me past any writers block with an easy post that doesn’t take a ton of time from school.  Second, it holds me accountable for reading a book a week.  Granted, some books really do take a long time to read even when I am keeping up on my reading.  But unless the book I’m reporting on is 500+ pages, give me the stink eye if I report the same book two weeks in a row.  Other weeks I might report on 3 books because each book alone was a 3 hour read.

 

I’m a little bit each day, making my way through The Holy Bible.  I have an app on my phone that breaks it down for me so that as long as I stick to the program I’ll have it all read through by the end of the year.  We’ll see.  I imagine I’ll have some catch-up days.  But, I’m totally counting it as one of my books read this year towards my goal of 52.

I’m still slowly pouring over a collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I need to get this book done by the 10th, is my goal.  I don’t even get to add it to my 2014 count because most of it got read in 2013.  I was hoping to have it done by the end of 2013.  But no such luck.  I got distracted.  That and I kept putting it aside to read other, amazing, books.

My real book for the week is A Separate Peace by John Knowles.  I’m not nearly far enough in to grant you an opinion.  I’ll offer that on next week’s reading update.

You are welcome to find me and friend me on Goodreads if you would like to see my read, to-read, and currently reading lists.  It’s a great site for finding great books.  And I love going to the library and pulling up my to-read list.  I have also made both a list of books I own and a list of books I want to be sure to buy, which is very handy when I’m browsing Half Priced Books clearance shelves.

I have not been paid to promote anything with this post.  The only thing I aim to promote is my love of reading and I have not been paid anything.  Unless you want to pay me.  Then you’re welcome to.  Didn’t think so. *wink*

When Love Is Not Enough, Chronicles of LauraJo – A Review

Posted on by kmarrs

Borderline Personality Disorder BPDThe following is not a paid review, but I was given a free copy of the book and CD for the purpose of reading, enjoying and sharing my thoughts with you, my readers.  Everything I have to say is of my own opinion.  After years of people being convinced I should pitch scrap-book software and the likes to you all, I was honored to be approached with this offer.

Twenty-Six and a half years ago, Pat Engebrecht lost her daughter to Borderline Personality Disorder.  At the age of 29, after years of failed attempts, many hospital stays, struggles with sexuality and the loss of an eye from a police shooting to the face in a hospital parking lot, and a life lived with mental pain and anguish, LauraJo succeeded in taking her own life.  She had a life filled with success as she was an accomplished tennis star, writer, musician, artist, friend, daughter, sister.  But as we are all too aware, sometimes that isn’t enough.

Depression knows no reason.  You can’t tell the angry or sad voice in you that you have too much going well for you to be this hurt.  If it chooses to sink its claws in you, love is not always enough.

25, 30 years ago, BPD was only just emerging in the world of mental health diagnosis.  Too few saw it as a legitimate diagnosis and those who did simply didn’t know how to treat it.  30 years later, to be honest, we aren’t much better off.  Even with DBT and the latest medication there to offer, for all too many, BPD is a death sentence, and most of us are terminal.

Our own hands leave those floundering over our loss, wondering what went wrong.  Could they have done anything different?  What caused our mental anguish?  What were we thinking?

These days we have the online world of blogs to try to show the inner workings of our minds.  30 years ago, LauraJo had her journals.  What we put on public display, LauraJo kept locked up in a chest she crafted with her own hands.  It was 2 decades before her mother, Pat, could bear to open the journals and read them.  Inside was the inner workings of a suffering mind.  The ups and downs chronicled in painful detail.

Pat took those journals, added her thoughts and details of what was going on in her daughter’s life at the time of each entry, and created a book that she hopes, and I know, can make a difference.

I know in my heart that if LauraJo had lived to see the internet, she’d be fighting the fight of awareness and proper treatment, while helping to fight stigma, along with us.  However, we lost her 10 years too early.  In her place we have this beautiful work.

A book showing that despite popular opinions of her time and ours, BPD isn’t always a result of poor parenting.  A book showing mothers, fathers, and friends that their love was received, but the hurt went further than any amount of love could fix.  It shows those of us who might be contemplating suicide exact how those we love will be effected.  “No one will even miss me.  They’ll be better off without me.”  This book is 304 pages of evidence that we’ll always be missed, by all those we have touched with our lives, and no one is ever better off without us.

Pat took the pain of the loss of her amazing daughter, and used it to create a book that shows us how suicide effects all those left behind, how suicide can happen despite love and success, and the inner working of a troubled mind.

This book is not an easy read.  No book on the subject ever could be.  I had to read it in bits and pieces as my heart broke a little more with each page.  Broke for a daughter in so much pain with life, and a mother in pain with the loss of life that even she saw coming.  She fought so hard to keep her daughter with her, but reader and mother alike knew it was only a matter of time.

Please go get this book.  There is a CD of LauraJo’s music out there as well.  I recommend listening to the CD first and then during as a companion.

This book will move you.  This book will break your heart.  This book will show you what it’s really like.  It’s real.  It’s uncensored.  It has heart, hurt and loss.