Open Letter to You, A Bipolar

Dear Fellow Bipolar,

Just the other day, I was talking to a friend about all the various projects I love to do, such as creative writing, graphic design, web design, book cover design and app development. She said to me, "Of course, you do all that, you're bipolar. Bipolars are tremendously creative!" 

Suddenly, it occurred to me how I used to believe that going on medication would stifle my creativity, which seems to be the consensus in most of the bipolar community. But, I thought it would be helpful to tell people that the opposite has been the case for me. I'm more focused and so I'm more capable and I am more free to be creative.

No one wants to be on medications. I fought them. A doctor told me and my parents when I was sixteen that I would have to be on medications my entire life. After feeling the absolute numbing effects, the weight gain, the stomach problems and many other issues, I said, "Absolutely not." I believe that over the span of age 16-36, I was on medications about six years, and that was not consecutively. My life during those years was a casualty. It did not turn out the way I wanted, either in career or family life.

You see, what I did not understand was that it takes time to adjust to medications- like several months, or even years sometimes. You need to be patient and bipolars aren't good at that. You will probably need a cocktail of medications. It is extremely rare that only one medication will work on its own. And you will have side effects. And you will hate them. And you will NOT feel creative. Yet, I promise you that this will pass.

I also promise you that your creativeness will come back and your artistic freedom and ability will amaze you.

Staying on medications is better than frequent hospitalizations. It's better than a series of shallow, failed relationships, or blowing money and going into bankruptcy over and over again. It's better than suicide, and the frequency of bipolars killing themselves without medications is about one in five.

Do you want to stay alive? Do you want a life worth living? Then persevere with medications until they work for you.

Over time, I've learned not to take on too many projects or life ceases to be fun and my creative ability becomes too constricted. You see, I'm not in the creative arts business for the money. As much as I love new things sometimes, I've learned that money isn't going to make me happy and it actually adds nothing to my overall quality of life. I want to support myself and have money for the things I need, but I'm mostly in it for the fun and I try to use my abilities to be of service to God at the same time. That is greatly freeing.

I couldn't do that as an unmedicated bipolar. No, as an unmedicated bipolar, I always took on way too much, to the point of nervous breakdown later. I was too pulled and stretched in too many directions to really do anything well. And I was drawn to quick and flashy things that usually involved spending money and taking ridiculous risks.

As a bipolar, you have immense potential. Unfortunately, all of that potential is usually wasted because most people do not stay on medications.  Don't let that happen to you.

Nine years now of staying steadily on meds and five years stable. Four years of knowing it was worth it and waiting patiently through the process of getting it right, even though it seemed to take forever. Even during those first four years of shakiness, waiting for the right drug combo to be discovered, the quality of my life was better. And for the past five, it's gotten immeasurably better.

It's worth it. You are worth it.

The depth of high and low is still inside me, believe it or not. I can still sense and draw from the extremes. Yet they don't define my life experience or who I am and they do not control me. That's how medications have helped me. I am more content. I am happier. I have huge fun creating things and my creativeness does not overwhelm or control me. 

Right now, at this very moment, I have exactly the life I want. I am content. And I am still growing. 

I am writing this now because I want that for you, too.

Sincerely,
Laura Paxton

Why I Am Grateful for Having Anxiety Issues

Grateful for anxiety? This is lunacy. Of course, that is the sort of lunacy you should have come to expect from me by now.

Although it may seem odd to say I'm grateful for having anxiety issues, it is still true. I don't like anxiety, of course, I don't like the way it feels or the toll it causes on my physical health and energy level. I don't like the way it can negatively affect relationships with other people, either. Yet, without anxiety, I wouldn't be as aware of the need to grow closer to God.

The first flutters of heart racing, the first awareness of sweating and labored breathing remind me that I need Him. And even if I end up taking medication for it before I can compose myself enough to pray, I do pray. Later, I find novel and interesting prayers and devotions to try to use when the experience hits. I try all sorts of creative techniques to get a handle on it. I succeed sometimes and sometimes I don't. None of that matters. It's the awareness I have that I need God that matters. That's why I'm on this earth, after all.

I've come to refer to the anxiety onset the "God Alarm." As soon as I can get to a point where thinking is possible, I say, "Thank you God for the call to come closer to you."

Psychological situations can trigger anxiety but I get to have a "sense of control" with them more, since I know my thinking causes them and my thinking can sometimes help stop them sooner.

However, in my personal situation, anxiety will eventually go away on its own, whether I do anything to calm myself or not. And anxiety will come no matter how hard I work to avoid it. For me as an autistic person, loud or screeching noises cause it. Bright lights in my face cause it. Being in a crowd of people can cause it.

My biology reacts immediately. It's involuntary. I carry dark glasses and ear plugs and use them as needed. I try to minimize any situation of overstimulating distress. But, they happen. They happen because life happens. Ambulances screech down the street. Light can suddenly change after a rainstorm, shooting a ray of stabbing light into my eyes, unexpected.

Is my goal to be cured and anxiety free? No, not at all. My goal is to remember I am weak and He is strong. My goal is to remember that I need Him. And so God provides me with that awareness on a regular basis.

With my bad luck, I may end up getting cured of it. And then what will I do to remind myself that I need God? A buzzer on my cell phone just wouldn't be the same.


 "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." -C.S. Lewis

Divine Mercy- What Does It Even Mean?

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday. "Mercy" is a difficult concept for me to wrap my head around. I imagine others have some of the same issues I do with the word, "mercy." It's just feels unfamiliar and odd to even say. 

I spent several years following a philosophy that people should not feel guilt or fear. In order to have "personal power," you would fight these feelings and the beliefs that produce them as the enemy. Any form of judgment of self or others was to be avoided, and guilt and fear feelings were usually considered to be the feelings of a victim. An empowered person would avoid those experiences at all costs. So, if there was no need for guilt or fear, there could be no need for mercy. Pleading for mercy would even seem to many as evidence that religion was harmful.

I think at the time I followed this spiritual path, it felt like what I needed. I needed to fight self-criticism. I needed to fight self hatred. You see, I grew up with a mother who honestly did not love me. She wanted to. But, for whatever reason, she couldn't. Even as a baby, she avoided caring for me when she could, leaving that to my father and a nanny. My earliest memories were of her pushing me away, shutting doors so she could be alone, and of her telling me I was a bother. 

As I grew older, her criticism was intense and harsh, but being rejected by your own mother to begin with is enough to wound, even if she doesn't speak to you at all. So, of course I would do anything to flee from that pain, including following a spiritual path that insisted that people never do anything wrong, and that to criticize or judge them at all goes against unconditional love. I had to have a break from the constant psychological onslaught in my head. It remained a constant battle, despite six years of making fighting it my main focus.

In other words, all of that effort did no good. It was, as the expression goes, a "band-aid for a bullet wound." I learned how to ignore self-criticism through the spiritual path I was following, but all of the energy I drew from ignoring it went into the service of myself. That's what "personal empowerment" is. I did very well. A book I wrote and self-published sold over 20,000 copies. I bought a new Audi. I looked and felt successful, and I credited it to my teachers. Crediting them was helpful to their careers because that helped them gain more students and thus more income. 

At one point, the bottom fell out of all that. The teacher I had thought was the next thing to God and who I had sworn to follow to eternity said he couldn't be my teacher any longer. And so, I became lost. Before then, I had created an altar to myself, focused on myself as a goddess and did incantations to produce "prosperity and abundance" in my life. That worked. I had spent hours staring in a mirror trying to "love myself perfectly" because that is what he told me to do. But, towards the end, without his support, I saw a demon in myself in the mirror. I began to dream of demons and eventually, I had the crushing realization that I had betrayed the God I knew so well as a child.

Of course, I'd known it all along, but I pushed those thoughts aside. I believed that they were parasitic, sucking the "personal power" I was trying to attain. There's no real excuse for what I did, wounded or not. I knew deep down that to try to be God (or a goddess) was the opposite of my Christian faith. It took ending that relationship with my teacher to wake up and face the decision I made and when I did, I could not forgive myself for it.

Following that time in 2006, I ceased to care about anything. I was diagnosed as agoraphobic. I did not want to leave my home. I found out I had some neurological problems and shouldn't be driving. I was also diagnosed as autistic for the first time. I kept myself occupied with computer games to shut out the pain. I believe for six or seven years, I also blamed myself for "failure" in life because of that very reason- that I didn't care about myself or my life, so I had ceased to accomplish anything, like building my career or having a family. I wasn't suicidal at that time, but I also didn't do more than just "exist." I went on disability. I was flat and felt nothing, day in and day out, for years. Often, I actually thought of myself as being like the "walking dead." And truthfully, I was. Once I stopped fighting guilt, it swallowed me whole, only worse than before. 

Three years ago, I started an RCIA program and two years ago, I became Catholic. I started to put God first more and more. I swore to consecrate my life and every breath and every heartbeat of it to Him and I have not wavered in my dedication to that aim. I know I'm doing the right thing, with absolutely no doubt, even though I am doing the opposite of what I was taught for years through my previous "spiritual path." In the process, I've been rebuilding a better life, based on Christ as the foundation. The "real me" has started to emerge, a new creation in Him. I am a person I never knew before and I am living in increasing peace and joy.

Learning who I am now leads back to the concept of "mercy." What does it mean to me? At first, I thought it was thinking God was a harshly and unfairly judgmental person and so you had to plead for mercy so He didn't crush you like a bug. But, that is not what mercy is. That would just be how I felt as a child. So, then I thought maybe mercy was realizing that because we're sick and wounded, we can't help but do the things we do, so we shouldn't judge or criticize ourselves for it at all. But, that's not what mercy is. That's what my past spiritual teachers thought, but it was not that.

So, what is mercy if it is neither of these two things? I prayed for it for the past two years with absolutely no clue what I was praying for, honestly. But, it's actually something in the middle, between these two extremes. God's mercy is about admitting when we sin against God but also accepting His compassion for us in our human condition. It has taken me a long time to reach this place of "balance" within myself. During Lent, it all started to "click" more and more.

The Divine Mercy Chaplet is important because I think most people in the world today don't know they need mercy, or they have been taught to fight those desires, or they don't believe deep down that God is merciful and loving. It's not just me who struggles with these issues, although I did have "all the above." And so each year, including the year I became Catholic, I've prayed the Divine Mercy novena. There is medicine in repentance but the healing of our soul is not complete without acceptance of His mercy. Only through praying for mercy for others did I begin to realize what it means for myself.

For more information:

http://thedivinemercy.org/news/story.php?NID=2985

Mortification- Then and Now

A few nights ago, I saw a picture that was purported to be of a woman who had her mouth and one eye sewn shut by Saudi Arabians because proclaimed Jesus was her savior. The first thought many Christians had was of her bravery, to face such pain out of loyalty to God. Yet, later in the evening, I found out that the story was only a fraud. The picture was a form of "performance art," and a Japanese woman had volunteered for this treatment. She chose it- for art. (I've placed the link to this picture very low on the page. If you think you might be triggered by looking at this, don't worry. Just don't click the bottom link.)

Let's look around and see what people are doing in the world today. As of this moment, if I were to go to a therapist and tell him that I had a corset sewn into my skin for pleasure, that would be considered healthy and okay. As long as I did not have a problem with that, it would not considered mentally ill. I could talk to that same therapist about choosing genital mutilation for myself and he would not blink an eye. I could tell that same therapist that I pierced or slit my tongue, that I or that I walked my boyfriend around with a leash and collar like a dog, and that would be fine too. If I am comfortable and happy and expressing myself in the way I want, that's fine.

The focus in therapy, especially in "pop psychology," tends to be on using only "positive" ways of speaking to and treating ourselves. We are to have "unconditional positive regard" for anything we feel like doing, even in the above examples.

Positive approaches are good but they are not the only approaches that are good.  Practices of discerning judgment are not necessarily unhealthy.

What is the goal of bodily mortification today? Some people want to endure pain because they genuinely like it. Others think it it cool to endure the pain and show off their bravery to others. Some find the practice to be a way to be creative and express themselves. In either case, the motives are purely self-gratifying.

The old way of self mortification was the opposite- It was to help people move beyond the self, into a closer relationship with God, and a life of greater service to others. When bodily mortification for the sake of penance is done today, this is often considered "sick" by psychologists. However, if someone comes into their office with a peeing fetish, (by modern diagnostic manual standards) that is not considered sick.

Furthermore, if I were to intentionally cause discomfort through self-denial for the purpose of becoming stronger to withstand sin, such as Catholics do during Lent, that would be also be considered ill to many modern therapists. For certain mental health professionals, it's considered sick to judge yourself, to feel guilt, to feel fear of any kind. While not all therapists take such an extreme view, the basic structure of this perspective permeates most mainstream therapy. 

Today's Catholics practice penance, such as fasting or giving up something we enjoy, especially during the season of Lent. Most people never practice severe bodily mortification, as was done in the middle ages, because the point of penance is not simply to suffer and hurt. The point is to help us turn our hearts away from the many harmful consolations of the world and towards the loving arms of God instead. It's a form of re-training. The point of mortification is not to suffer for suffering's sake. Today, mortification most often takes the form of fasting and giving up things we enjoy for a certain period of time. It's not what it used to be.

People often think back to medieval practices of penance and bodily mortification and contemplate how mentally disturbed they seem to us now.  I'm talking about the kinds of things people used to do (and some still do, in a few very rare orders now,) like sleeping on hard floors or self-flagellation. Many people don't understand the reason people did these things. It is assumed they must have hatred towards their bodies or that they believed that the body was bad. However, that was not the true reason in many cases. In order to draw closer to God, people practiced self-denial. Today, as well as then, the goal of self-denial is to cultivate gratitude and love for God regardless of pain or pleasure, regardless of whether we get what we want or not.

Another goal in self-denial is to imitate Jesus in offering sacrifice, to experience union with him through "suffering with," which is the heart of compassion for our dear friend, Jesus. Catholics don't see the body as bad. The body is good but we would rather be controlled by our choices than our automatic bodily passions towards things. The practice of self-denial can bring unity and harmony to body and soul, not separation.

Many people today want to separate the body from the soul. This is hatred of the body on a whole new level. "Feminism" has been becoming more and more defined as celebrating all that is not motherhood. We want to deny that our biological bodies have anything at all to do with our "gender," or the societal concept of who men and women are. Many believe it is possible to be born in the wrong body- female instead of male, for example. Yet, the same people who say God puts the wrong people in the wrong bodies will say that God does not make mistakes and that He created gays, so being gay must be the way they were intended to be.

I include no moral perspective in the above comments about bodies and gender. I offer only  logic for reflection. My hope is that whether people agree with what I'm saying or not, people will see a different perspective and know what that perspective involves. It's so odd to live in a world where everything is okay, as long as you are doing it for selfish reasons, but to sacrifice for others is considered ill.

To learn more about the Catholic perspective on suffering, take a look at this really thorough article: http://www.fisheaters.com/offeringitup.html

Do not follow this link if you might be triggered by looking at a picture of a girl with her mouth and one eye sewn shut. (The picture is midway down the page.)

http://motleynews.net/2012/09/26/bagelheads-japans-hot-trend-of-injecting-saline-in-forehead-for-that-bagel-look/

Article I wrote for "The Fountain" Magazine, the Graduation/Ordination edition for St. Paul's National Major Seminary

Globally, Our Catholic priests are the leaders of all those things in life that make life matter. A priest infuses a community with purpose and meaning, brings people closer together in relationship to each other and to Jesus Christ, our Lord. A priest is a facilitator for the deepest encounters we human beings can have with our holy, mighty and infinite God.

He feeds us with the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Savior, allowing the Word the universe was created through to become one with who we are. He helps clean us from the dirt of our sin, heal us from the effects of our sin and He reunites us with God, with each other and with our Mother Church. 

These actions the priest takes secure the lives of our soul for eternity. Jesus Christ is active in the life of his children more through the priest than any other human beings. He calls our priests and chooses them to bring us, His flock, more in union with Himself. While being a priest is the most important job a man can have, a priest must realize the person he once was isn't needed anymore. He must decrease so that Jesus can increase, so to be a priest is actually, paradoxically, the most humbling job a man can have.

In today's world, issues of “spiritual warfare” are more important than those affecting physical welfare or survival of God's people on Earth. What good is it to live in an economically advantaged area if more souls are being lost? A quality life is made up of our connections and relationships, our families and our faith. 

Uganda is also one of the poorest nations in the world. For a young man to grow up in a region riddled with deadly diseases eradicated in other areas of the world, with lack of medical care, unsafe water, and difficulty accessing quality education, graduating seminary to become a priest is a profound accomplishment. 

Uganda is also one of the richest nation in the world spiritually. Uganda, a country about the size of the United States state of Arizona, has produced twenty-four saints. 42% of Ugandans are Catholic, whereas only about 22% of Americans are. Over the past few months, I have shared many conversations with seminarians who are more peaceful and joyous than Americans I know here in America. They write to me about the love in their communities, villages and at seminary. I've learned how people see themselves as being part of a team, or a larger whole, with a sense of belonging and purpose in the lives of all. 

In a country like America, we are connected well technologically, but we have forgotten how to be a part of a real community. It is easy to see ourselves as isolated individuals, to feel disconnected and alone. More economically “successful” countries have become morally bankrupt, but from what I have experienced through getting to know several seminarians, Uganda is rich in happiness, spirit and soul and has far more to offer the world than people realize.

I'm a convert. I tried every “spiritual path” considered “cool” by secular culture until I was left miserable, empty and in despair. So almost every day, I feel a profound sense of gratitude for all the Church has given me- and that would be, everything important to me and my soul, now and forever. 

I am deeply grateful for the priests (in America and elsewhere) who have helped bring me nearer in my relationship to God. Who they have been is not as important as who they have led me to love- Christ, all holy, great and infinite and without whom we have no life, here or in the world to come. I am very grateful for the many seminarians in Uganda I have come to know and love- not only as scholars but as soul mates in our journey together towards God. You are my family. I desire to serve the Lord as much as I possibly can, because of the inspiration you offer me. When my life gets “tough” by “first world” standards, I only need to remember what a day in your life is like to let my complaining go. No matter how many material comforts I may accumulate, I am usually still not as happy as you! 

I want to say thank you to you, the seminarians in my life who keep me going on difficult days. You send me Bible verses. You give me your prayers. You encourage me. You brighten my days. Some of you have had masses said for me and my family. When my spirits start to droop, you lift them back up. You are my "dream team" of friends and I love you all very much. I'm beginning to wonder what I did without you and you know, I am your greatest fan. So, if anyone thinks I am trying to help the poor, pathetic people of Africa, you couldn't be more wrong. You are brilliant. You are deserving. You have worked harder than most of us have had to work for anything in our lives and you dedicate it all to God. I want to honor some of you by at least listing your names- Godwin, Jimmy M, Jimmy L, Okodi, Leonary, Salvin and Deacon Mathias. (These are men from several different seminarians I have come to know.) I love you all dearly. I pray for you all day long.

Seminarians of Uganda, thank you for all the joy you have given my heart. I love you and celebrate this occasion of your ordination with great enthusiasm and respect. Thank you. You are truly my heroes.

Laura Paxton, M.A., OCDS,
President, Carmel Heart Media

Something Woke Me Up Yesterday- and it wasn't about me.

I learned something great at the Carmelite Monastery yesterday, just as I was dozing off. It was right after our thirty minutes of quiet prayer time and I was groggy.

I'm not sure how or why this came up, but we have been doing Lectio Divina with the encyclical Apostolicam Actuositatem for months now and yesterday, we spent about forty minutes on number 20. I hadn't found this document to be thrilling reading, and it wasn't exactly jarring me out of my stupor.

We were contemplating how the laity is to participate in the work of the Church, because all Secular Carmelites are required to have some sort of lay apostalate, and so we need to understand what that means as well as we can.

Somehow, in our discussion, this verse from Paul came up, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." [Colossians 1:24]

The person who brought up the question that served as my "alarm clock," is a pre-aspirant. She is also a convert, such as I am. She had a question I've often had myself. She wanted to know how anything could be lacking in the sacrifice of Christ. In response, I remember becoming suddenly alert, excited that I knew the answer. I rattled off some sort of response I had heard that technically might have been considered right, when actually I did not fully understand the verse myself. So, my response confused her.

I listened for a while and I heard some really profound and eye-opening things from my sisters in Carmel, people who have seriously contemplated this verse for decades. 

For one thing, we don't actually pray. The Holy Spirit prays within us, for us. For another thing, we don't actually produce any good actions in the world. Only God can do this through us. It's not just that in humility, we give God credit for everything. It's that in reality, He really is the only one who HAS credit for anything. This is the only thing that is actually true.

As Christians, we are not ourselves, or who we were. We are the Body of Christ. Each time we receive the Eucharist, we are becoming one with Him and with each other. So, it is Jesus who sees through our eyes, speaks through our mouths, thinks through our brains and suffers in our bodies. So, Jesus is still here on earth, continuing His joys and afflictions through us. We are the vessels and witnesses of His greatness. Christ's work of redemption is complete, yet we must do our share to continue His work on earth, to complete the work that is "lacking" or still needs to be done in the world.

Apostolicam Actuositatem seems really dry at first. I wondered, how do you contemplate something that keeps talking about our personal relation to "the hierarchy." Well it's really about our personal relationship to the Body of Christ, and the hierarchy is just a term for the way that is structured. There's not a word in it about "me," the individual. It's about "they" and about "acting together." If we look more closely at the verse by Paul, it reads, "I do my share," implying he does his part of the group. It doesn't say, "I, on my own, because I am uber-super Catholic girl, do what Jesus couldn't finish doing." It says, we continue to do His work on earth.

The reason Apostolicam Actuositatem seemed so boring to me for the past few months is that I wasn't hearing things about me, me, me. I wasn't hearing what "resonates with me," or that I can "apply to my personal life." I was hearing about how to be a part of something larger than myself, to continue, through my share in the body of Christ, to make Christ's presence more known here on earth.

Well, I'm not sure if I understood all of this correctly or if it was even explained correctly, but it woke me up. (I was literally nodding off before my friend asked this question and I woke up quickly, seizing that opportunity to attempt to say something brilliant to impress everyone-- which thankfully, did not happen, because the group, as a whole, had a wider message.)

I'm not sure we can read the Bible as individuals with individual interpretation as our guide. I'm not sure it was intended to be read that way. In fact, I'm confident that it's not. The  Body of Christ is not the fragments of Christ, after all. 

It was interesting that our President, Chris Hart, talked about how common it is for people to just give all their energy and work towards what they think is serving God, only to find themselves depleted and exhausted. In that weakened state, God actually has someone there to work with to accomplish His true aims. If we think we're serving Him, we're not. I stand convicted- all the way. I started to ponder what it actually means to let Him accomplish His work through us. There's a profound passivity involved that isn't easy to learn.

Well, I can't hit the snooze button on that.

Starving for God and on Diet Pills? Why?

I spent almost my whole life starving for God, although I didn't realize that I was. Imagine that you're ravishingly hungry, but you find a way to turn off your "appetite switch," so that you no longer look for food or eat food. A dieter's dream!

Well, that's not so great when it comes to God. I was truly wasting away inside. 

Years of my life were spent searching for something, but I never quite knew what it is. Yet then, there was the time I stopped searching. I didn't think there was anything out there to find.

There's a way to turn off your natural appetite for God, and that is turning off your "God switch." You see, when you suppress feelings of guilt, fear and weakness, you can become convinced you no longer have a need for God. Your appetite for God is suppressed along with those very natural human feelings.

It's like taking diet pills. And, it works. When you don't believe you need God, your "religion" becomes "personal empowerment" and "manifesting abundance" and feeling good and free to do whatever it is you want.

Most people I know are taking those diet pills. You may be happy, but so are people taking speed so they won't want to eat. I promise you, you're starving.

It was hard to give up spiritual appetite suppressants. Coming to terms not only with my past, but also with the truth of the human state of being sinners, was the hardest thing I ever did. I didn't want to look at it. I didn't want to admit defeat, that following my own will had led me nowhere or into dangerous ground.

Little did I realize, when you take that terrifying leap into repentance, you do really break into pieces, but it doesn't matter. Your fall is cushioned in the greatest peace and the deepest love you've ever known. Your soul is really satisfied. And, the real you may get up off the ground for the first time.