When I feel great, I fear that something bad will follow. Good things & bad things happen, but not necessarily in that order.
Last night, when I was feeling great about this week & next, that crown fell off. My dentist — who is wonderful & enjoying a much earned vacation in Florida — reassured me & texted another dentist at Beacon Hill Dental Associates. On Tuesday, I’ll take the cats to the vet & see that dentist.
Are you reading & commenting today?
Thanks & more thanks to all who helped me create today’s post & to you (including my wonderful dentist!) for reading, here & now.
Here comes a photo of the socks I wore to work yesterday:
Here comes an exercise we took the trouble to do in last night’s Coping and Healing group:
Here comes more explanation of that exercise — somebody in the group said that listing three positive things about themselves every day helped reduce symptoms of troubling depression and self-judgment. I thought it would be good for each of us in the group to take the trouble to create that kind of list. Despite past troubles bragging about myself, I decided to list more than three positive things about myself and I encouraged the other group participants to do the same for themselves, recognizing that many people have trouble acknowledging positive things, especially when they are depressed. I had a little trouble listing eight positive things about myself because of the messages about modesty in my family of origin. However, I also went to the trouble of “stealing” the positive things other people said about themselves, if those applied to me also.
Here comes my suggestion for you: please take the trouble to list three or more positive things about yourself in the comments section below.
Here comes the rest of my photos from yesterday.
Here comes troubling news : acclaimed songwriter/musician/poet David Berman — who struggled with depression and substance abuse — died this week at age 52.
No matter what trouble comes — including darkness and cold — the best we can do is to keep coming together.
Here comes my gratitude for all who help me create these daily posts and for you — of course! — for taking the trouble to read them.
Yesterday, in my therapy group, I wrote the word “empathy” twice on the white board.
I wrote “empathy” twice because I heard and experienced so much of it from the group participants. I especially noted and appreciated it because I hear and experience so little empathy, these days, from world leaders.
Why do the participants in a therapy group seem to have so much more empathy than world leaders?
Is it because people who have come together to cope, heal, support, and learn from each other naturally have more empathy?
What does your empathy tell you about that?
Here’s a definition of empathy, again:
em·pa·thy
/ˈempəTHē/
noun
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
synonyms: affinity with, rapport with, sympathy with, understanding of, sensitivity toward, sensibility to, identification with, awareness of, fellowship with, fellow feeling for, like-mindedness, togetherness, closeness to
“what is really important about learning a language is learning empathy for another culture”
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is won and lost. And that someone’s pain is as meaningful as your own. — Barbara Kingsolver.
Sympathy relies on a common experience. If you’re clumsy, you might have sympathy for others who tend to bump into things. Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand another person’s feelings even if you’ve never experienced them yourself. — Joe Gebbia
A prerequisite to empathy is just paying attention to the person in pain. — Daniel Goleman
Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations towards violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control. — Steven Pinker
Empathy begins with understanding life from another person’s perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms. — Sterling K. Brown
Empathy is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn’t pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would create voter backlash. — Karl Rove
When you show deep empathy towards others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems. — Stephen Covey
The struggle of my life created empathy — I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me. — Oprah Winfrey
Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It’s the impetus for creating change. — Max Carver
Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals. — Neil Gaiman
Is there empathy in my other photos from yesterday?
Which of those photos represents empathy best, to you?
For me, it’s this one:
Or maybe this one:
If necessity is the mother of invention, what is empathy? Here‘s “Call Any Vegetable” by the Mothers of Invention:
Any empathy in this quote from Frank Zappa, the leader of the Mothers of Invention?
The mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it’s not open.
I look forward to the empathy in your comments, below.
Empathic thanks to all who helped me create today’s post and — of course! — to YOU.
One of my recurring dreams is to have a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Much to my amazement, that will be occurring on August 19 at 13:00 (1 PM) at the Natural Food Kafe basement room. I only have one show this year, but I’m hoping the show will be recurring next year.
My show — “Group ‘Therapy’ with Ann” — is loosely based on the recurring groups that I do five times a week at work. At this point, I’m staying up and having dreams about how to make that work well since there are new and non-recurring elements I’ve never dealt with before, including:
it’s about half the time of my usual groups,
I don’t know how many people will show up,
several of the participants will be total strangers to me, and
it’s a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!
I know that I will be using some recurring elements of my real groups, like mindfulness and a check-in where everybody will have the space and time to speak uninterrupted. In my recurring groups, I always introduce the check-in by saying what I’m curious about in the moment, as a way to suggest what people might want to share. For the purposes of my Edinburgh show, I’m planning on curiously asking people:
why they came to the show,
how they would introduce themselves,
something we might not guess about them,
their experience in the moment,
what keeps them up at night,
what keeps them going,
a favorite saying and/or song, and
a recurring or vivid dream they’ve had.
In my check-in, I plan on singing one of my original songs and also sharing a recurring dream I have, about trying to call somebody on the phone and not getting through.
Last night, what kept me up was my indecision, at this point, about what to do at the mid-point of the show. When I finally fell asleep, I had my recurring dream (which hasn’t occurred in years).
In my dream last night, I was trying to call Michael on my cell phone. It was incredibly difficult, because of new changes to the phone, which I couldn’t figure out. People were trying to help me connect to him, but nothing was working. Eventually, I attempted the tried-and-true method of saying to Siri, “Call Michael!” At that moment, Michael showed up. I was very relieved to see him, but it was too late for me to get to an important appointment. (The dream had other non-recurring elements, including a Trump supporter who kept trying to steal one of my boots as I was putting it on, but never mind.)
Do you have a recurring dream? Would you talk about it if you came to my show? Actually, it would be a dream for me if any of my readers showed up at my Fringe show, no matter what they decided to share.
Certain recurring dreams and themes show up in my photos. Can you spot any today?
Here’s the original song I’m going to sing during my check-in, which has had recurring appearances in this blog:
I have a recurring dream about people leaving comments, and they often do!
Recurring thanks to all who help me create this daily recurring blog, including you!
I assume each of us has only one life. So what do we each want to do with our one, precious life? What do we want to do to preserve the precious, one life of others?
This past weekend in the USA too too many people lost their one lives because of gun violence. I am going to spend the rest of my one life doing whatever I can to stop the madness of such easy access to assault weapons — weapons designed to end as many lives as possible as quickly as possible.
This weekend, when so many lives were lost, I spent my one life with those I love doing what I love — the priority for every single day of my one precious life.
How many photos do we have?
Because I don’t have nine lives, I don’t smoke and I try to live healthy. I owe it to myself and to those who love me.
When I search YouTube for “How Many Lives Do We Have?” I find this:
How many thoughts and feelings do you have, here and now? I look forward to reading every one of my readers’ comments.
How much gratitude do I have for those who helped me create this post and for you?
I’ve asked the coordinators of the Jam’n Java Open Mic if I could be a featured performer some day and they replied, “We usually book people who’ve had a show elsewhere.”
It doesn’t matter that I’m sharing these particular photos today and it doesn’t matter what order they’re in:
It doesn’t matter that when I sang my latest original song yesterday, somebody said, “I tell everybody ‘I don’t know what planet she’s from, but it’s a good one.'”
It doesn’t matter that Michael and I danced to this song last night:
It doesn’t matter what comments you leave or how I express my gratitude to everyone who helps me create these posts, including YOU!
