Day 3654: What helps you feel better?

I’m realizing, here and now, that what helps me feel better is more acceptance and less pressure.

It helps me feel better to clarify that first sentence: if I accept myself and others and I put less pressure on myself to do more and to do things perfectly, I feel better.

It helps me feel better to be aware of my dreams. For example, last night I dreamt that I was trying to facilitate a Coping and Healing therapy group in a huge cavernous location with many rooms, a bad sound system, and people who weren’t really interested in participating. After trying to help them feel better to no avail, I stopped the group and let everyone go. It helps me feel better to realize that is probably an anxiety dream about my starting new groups for the doctors where I work.

It helps me feel better to realize I’ve accomplished enough in my long life and, at this point, I can relax and let go. It helps me feel better to know I can keep reminding myself of this, every day.

Does anything in this blog post help you feel better?

I hope it helps you feel better to know there’s a new year’s worth of The Daily Bitch Calendar.

Here’s the first thing I find on YouTube when I search for “what helps you feel better?”

Thanks to all who who help me feel better, including YOU!

Day 3512: Showing up

If you’ve been showing up for this blog for years, you might remember I’ve learned that the secret of life is three things:

1. Show up.
2. Be gentle (with others and yourself).
3. Tell the truth.

That simple wisdom keeps showing up for me. Now, let’s see what images are showing up on my iPhone.

Those National Days will be showing up on Twitter soon, posted by this left hander.

Here’s a song that was showing up for me on my walk yesterday:

Here’s another version showing up on YouTube:

Thanks to all strangers and friends showing up here and now, including YOU.

Day 3222: L-words

Let’s not Linger LaziLy; Let’s Look at the Latest LiveLy daiLy caLendar:

Look and Listen! Luscious L-words Like Let, Living, Life, LateLy, Last, and Loving:

L-words to describe Joan besides LoveLy, LiveLy and Liberated?

Let’s Listen to “La-La (Means I Love You)” by the DeLfonics:

Leave a comment?

Love to aLL!

Day 3117: It’s never what you expect

I expect that I’ve written a previous blog post with this title, because I often say “it’s never what you expect.”

You probably expect some images here, but maybe not these.

That last question received some answers you might expect and also some others you would never expect.

When I search YouTube for “it’s never what you expect”, I unexpectedly find “It’s Never What You Expect and Everything All At Once” by Noé.

I would have expected there to be at least one reaction to that on YouTube. Yes, it’s never what you expect.

You might expect gratitude at the end of this post, but maybe not this: thanks to all who appreciate this blog more than I expect, including YOU.

Day 2696: Go back to your dreams.

If you go back to my previous blogs, you’ll find

• many posts about dreams (going back to here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) and
• that I have trouble going back to sleep when I wake up too early, which I almost always do.

Last night, I woke up too early (AGAIN!) and I was able to go back to sleep by reciting this phrase to myself, over and over:

Go back to your dreams.

Now, I shall go back to all the photos I took yesterday, to see if there are any dreams there.

Oscar could only dream about eating that flounder last night.

Go back to YouTube if you want to find the official music video of “Dreams” by The Cranberries:

 

Now I have to go back to another Zoom-y meeting — this one with my fellow behavioral health workers, in which we will discuss our dreams of going back to work in person.

My dream is that going back to gratitude will help us achieve our dreams.

Day 2562: Moments you dream about

Because there are so many moments you nightmare about in today’s news, I choose to focus on moments you dream about in today’s blog post.

I snapped that photo during some dreamy moments food shopping last night with my husband Michael. Many moments later, Michael produced more food moments to dream about.

Earlier in the day, I had some moments to dream about …

• planning a 50th high school reunion to dream about with Butch and Barton,

• taking photos to dream about from Barton’s and Michael’s cell phones, and

• distracting myself from possible future world nightmares with these other moments you dream about at our local supermarket.

Yay today (despite the clouds) for all the moments you dream about.

Here‘s “These Dreams” by Heart, with dreamy vocals, instruments, and other moments to dream about.

I dream about comments from you, so please take some moments to leave one, below.

I spent many moments yesterday look for expressions of gratitude to dream about, like these:

Day 1771: Approval

I keep reading about “historically low” approval in the news.

In my work as a therapist, I try to help people improve low self approval. Improving low self approval often includes  group therapy, where people realize they are not alone in their unfairly harsh approval of themselves.

Self approval is often improved by

• self care,
• connecting,
• sharing,
• letting go of shame,
• acceptance,
• forgiveness,
• honoring dreams,
• identifying an achievable next step, and
• giving oneself credit for progress, no matter how small.

What helps you improve your self approval?

I suspect there will be some approval of today’s photos.

 

 

Is there approval for “Approval” by Brett Max?

 

My dreams include improved self approval for all who helped me create today’s post and — of course! — for YOU.  Thanks for your approval!

 

Day 1738: Sharing dreams

Yesterday, I was asked to facilitate a group for staff, in addition to my usual Tuesday “Coping and Healing” group.  As usual, I was honored to provide a safe-enough space for people to express themselves and to connect with others in a healing way.

In both of the groups, people discussed the tragic events in the news. In one of the groups, the members decided to share and comment on each other’s recent dreams.  Whenever I work with dreams in a group, I encourage people to respond to other people’s dreams  with “If it were my dream, it might mean ….”  People’s dreams included sacrifice, animals, losing a baby, wandering in an enormous house, being chased, and communicating with dead relatives.  I mentioned that I’d recently dreamed that I was friends with Stephen Colbert.

If it were your dream, what might those dreams mean to you? What dreams have you been having lately?

I snapped only four photos yesterday, two consciously and the other two unconsciously.

During dark times, try sharing your dreams.

Somebody is sharing dreams on YouTube:

 

Many thanks to you for sharing these dreams with me, here and now.

 

Day 1502: Opening the heart

I’m going to  open my heart to you, here and now, and tell you about a dream I had last night. In that dream, my open-hearted cardiologist, Dr. Deeb Salem, told me that my new mechanical valve (which I got during open heart surgery in September) wasn’t working correctly and that they were going to have open up my heart again to fix it.

I wonder if that dream about reopening my heart was triggered by this image I saw yesterday morning, at the beginning of a blizzard here in Boston?

When I saw that opening-the-heart image yesterday morning on my way to work,  it opened my heart in a good way. My heart opened up with appreciation for all those things that are key to opening my heart to love and to new possibilities. And when I  opened my heart (and my iPhone camera) to other images during the day, I continued to think about that first open-hearted image.

As you open your heart to my other photos, do you see any keys to opening the heart in them?

Today, I’ll be opening my heart to patients on the first Friday I’ve worked since my Open Heart surgery in September. But first, I have to open my heart to cardiac rehab at 7:30 AM.

Do I have time to open our hearts to an Opening-the-Heart song?

As usual, I end every post by opening my heart with gratitude to all who helped me create this post and to you — of course! — for opening your heart to me, today.

Day 1373: Dreams

Yesterday, my  12th day after open heart surgery,  I fell asleep and had a dream of  being lifted suddenly by unseen hands and carried, very rapidly, as I lay flat on my back, through many rooms and hallways. In the dream, I thought, “Oh no!  Ghosts are taking me away!” I screamed in the dream, the dream faded, and I woke up in my  bed at home.

Somewhat of an expert on dreams (because I’m a psychotherapist), I asked myself, “What did that dream mean?” And I realized the dream captured the dreamlike experience  of being wheeled down hospital hallways into  operating rooms, which has happened to me more times than you could possibly dream between the ages of 10 and 63.

Then, I got ready for my dream of a friend, Carol, to pick me up and carry me to my appointment at the Coumadin/Warfarin clinic at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, to find out if I would be able to eat all the foods of my dreams on this new medication.  The nurse there, Kathleen, was a dream, as she allayed my fears and told me I would probably be able to eat whatever I wanted (including chocolate!), as long as I did so consistently.

Then, I told Carol I wanted to drop in on members of my Cardiology Dream Team at Tufts Medical Center, who hadn’t yet seen me since my surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota on September 21. I assumed my appearance would exceed their wildest dreams. And while most patients wouldn’t dream of dropping in unexpectedly on their doctors, my cardiologist Dr. Mark Estes has demonstrated (see my previous dreamy blog post here), that he is fine with my doing that.

The next hour was like a dream.  Dr. Mark Estes showed up trailed by five students and told me I looked like a dream — better than he had ever seen me in our decades of working together.  I told Dr. Estes that I might have been dreaming, but I thought I had heard various people at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota state that my heart was in a normal/sinus rhythm after the operation, instead of its usual atrial fibrillation.

Let me explain why my heart going out of atrial fibrillation and into normal/sinus rhythm, even for a limited amount of time, would be a very unlikely dream come true.

1. My heart went out of normal rhythm and into atrial fibrillation almost exactly three years ago today (described in this here dreamy blog post).
2. At that time, my doctors agreed it did not make sense for them to try any non-surgical means to return my heart to a normal rhythm, because the atria were so stretched out from my leaky valve that my heart would almost definitely return to a-fib.
3. When I had my last cardiac procedure in May of 2015, Dr.  Estes told me that my fibrillating atria were even bigger — “the size of a grapefruit, instead of the normal size of a walnut.”
4.  My other cardiologist, Dr. Deeb Salem,  had a dream: he hoped that the surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, when performing the open heart surgery twelve days ago to replace my leaky valve, might also use a surgical technique (called the Maze technique) to try to get my heart back into a normal rhythm.
5. When I discussed that possibility with the Mayo doctors, they all agreed that the added surgical time of two hours was NOT worth the risk, since the chances of any technique returning me to normal rhythm was highly unlikely.
6. At that point, I let go of the dream of my heart getting out of atrial fibrillation, and instead focused on preparing myself for the heart valve replacement surgery.

So when I told Dr. Estes yesterday that I thought I had heard people at the Mayo Clinic say that I  was out of a-fib after my surgery, he looked like he thought I was dreaming. He said, “Ann, if your heart DID get back  into sinus rhythm post surgery, that would have lasted for a very short time. I am skeptical it happened at all.”

And then everybody  — Dr. Estes, the students, Carol, me, and others — watched yesterday, as if in a dream, as we accessed the data stored in my pacemaker/defibrillator to see what kind of rhythms my dreamy heart had been generating recently, when I’ve been awake and dreaming.

As if in a dream, my dream team cardiologist, Dr. Mark Estes, announced to all of us: “You’re in sinus rhythm.  And you’ve been out of a fib and in normal rhythm consistently since your surgery on September 21.”

I responded, “My boyfriend Michael would call this a Christmas miracle.”  I heard Carol say, dreamily and sweetly, “Today is the Jewish New Year.”  Everybody looked happy, like in a dream or in a special on the Hallmark Movie Channel where the heroine does better than anybody dreamed possible.

How did this better-than-anybody-could-possibly-have-dreamed result occur?  I have a dreamy memory of a discussion, last week, with a Mayo Clinic EKG technician, who told me I was in normal/sinus rhythm when he visited me in the Intensive Care Unit.  Perhaps, we speculated, when they stopped my heart and then restarted it after the open heart surgery, that helped my heart’s rhythm — just how we often fix our phones, computers, and other devices  by turning them off and turning them back on again. Sometimes, the simplest solution works better than our wildest dreams.

After this dream of a visit with Dr. Estes, Carol carried me away in her car and drove me home to my dreamy boyfriend Michael. I told him the good news, as if in a dream. Later, when I shared the good news with my dreamy 18-year-old son, Aaron — far far away in the dreamy land of Scotland — Aaron texted me: “It sounds like a magical fairy wonderland situation over there.”

Magical and MUCH better than the scary dream that started out my dream of a day, yesterday.

I also want to say, at this point in this dreamy post, that it’s very possible that my dream of a heart with its shiny new valve might go back into atrial fibrillation — tomorrow, next week, or some other point in the future.  However, I wouldn’t dream of lowering my heart’s expectations right now — that heart of mine has exceeded everybody’s dreams for sooooooo long.

When I was dreaming under general anesthesia last week at the Mayo Clinic, my surgeon played dreamy music by our favorite saxophonist, the late Michael Brecker. On this dreamy day, 13 days later, here is one of my favorite tunes by Dreams, the 1970s dream team of Michael Brecker, his brother and trumpet-player Randy Brecker, the dreamily fabulous drummer Billy Cobham, dreamy bassist Will Lee, and other dreamily amazing jazz musicians.

 

 

Because my readers appreciate photos I take beyond my wildest dreams, here are all the dreamy images I captured yesterday:

You know what?  Yesterday still feels like a dream to me ….  too good to be true. And I don’t have any photos showing Dr. Estes, the medical students, Carol, Kathleen the nurse, or any of other people I dreamily wrote about in this post.

So …. maybe it was all a dream?

What do you think, my dreamy readers?

Dreamy thanks to all those who helped me create this dream of a post and to you  — of course! — for whatever dreams you bring, here and now.