Tag: emotions

Posted in musings

fighting for joy

Posted on by kristinabean

In gardening news, Rondel and I planted most of the purple sweet potato slips this weekend! Some were a lot bigger than others, so we’ll see if they all make it or not… the orange ones will need to grow a bit more in their jars first, but we left some space for them.

In other news, I was thinking this week about how joy can’t be taken for granted but must be fought for, sometimes by tooth and nail. I can’t just assume that relationships and circumstances will happily accommodate me, nor can I assume that my response to adverse situations will be one of cheerfulness and contentment. If I want to have joy, I have to do the hard work of maintaining it in my heart.

Practically, I know that there are a few specific things that consistently impair my ability to be joyful: issues with my husband, a lack of prayer, and sleep deprivation. (Hormones also play a role but there’s less I can actively do about that!) So when the morning starts off with a misunderstanding or argument with my husband, it tends to color my whole day in blacks and grays; by default, I either become sad and depressed or bitter and resentful. If joy really matters to me, I have to be willing to swallow my pride, bury my anger, and actively seek reconciliation and understanding again. Sometimes it’s as simple as a “sorry for what happened – I love you” sort of text – and yet, while it may be simple, it sometimes seems like an impossible task.

But it all comes down to whether or not I really want to live with joy. I don’t believe that I will always be able to have joy, no matter how hard I strive for it, but I do believe that it is a very different thing to be overwhelmed by my emotions and sinful tendencies but to still be fighting with all my strength for hope and peace and joy, than to raise the white flag to the general progression of discontent and stress and insecurity without a second thought. And after all, our joy is directly commanded by God. It is not a trivial or selfish thing to fight for it, but something that pleases Him and blesses everyone around us – so it is very much worth the effort that it takes.

In the emptiness of bleak despair, He is my fullness and hope.

In the piercing pain of loneliness, He is my comforter and my companion.

In the gnawing fear of inadequacy and rejection, He is my helper and the lover of my soul.

In the storm of brokenness and sin (my own and others’) that threatens to capsize me, He is the source and sustainer of my joy, and it is under His flag that I fight when I fight for joy.

Posted in links, musings

fighting the fear of rejection

Posted on by kristinabean

The deepest fear of the human mind is abandonment.

That statement was dropped ever-so-casually into a talk on Neuroscience and the Soul that I was listening to this week, and it stuck with me.

If our greatest fear is that the people we need won’t be there when we need them most, is it any wonder we try to keep our needs and burdens to ourselves, to avoid that letdown?

If we’re terrified that the people closest to us – the people we long to trust and by whom we need to be loved – will walk away if they knew our deepest selves, it is any wonder that we feel lonely and isolated, unable to truly share ourselves lest we suffer their rejection?

And I think about how our fear of abandonment, instead of being assuaged and lessened by deep trustworthy relationships over our lives, is actually strengthened and confirmed by our experiences.

The baby left to cry himself to sleep learns that he is just too much, too intense, too needy – that no one, not even the people he needs and loves the most, can handle his full range of emotion and personality.

The preschooler sent to her room to tantrum, isolated from her support system when she is most overwhelmed by her own emotions, learns that her anger and disappointment are going to cut her off from the feelings of love and security she craves.

The child bullied at school, dealing with intense rejection from his peer group and unsure of how to fit in and make friends, who then goes home and finds no sympathetic or listening ear, learns – writes deeply into his psyche – his own inadequacy and worthlessness.

We learn, as we grow, that the intensity and depth of our needs, the power of our emotions, and the uniqueness of our personalities contain things that no one else cares enough about to deal with – that the cry of our hearts for unconditional love will go unanswered. So teenagers hide their fears and questions and doubts and struggles from their parents because they’re afraid of being shot down and pushed away again. Spouses keep secrets and avoid topics of conversation because they’re afraid of conflict and disagreement leading to rejection and separation. We isolate ourselves so that we can avoid abandonment – we choose self-inflicted loneliness over the loneliness that whispers in our ears, “no one loves you; no one will ever love; you are not worthy of love.”

I remember in the early years of my marriage sitting in the car reciting psalms to myself before I could bring myself to go into our apartment, because I was so afraid that this beautiful relationship I had would suddenly and inexplicably fall apart – such is the depth and irrationality of this human fear of abandonment.

It takes incredible courage to open our soul to another, to risk this most fierce and desolate pain. We’re so often callous and insensitive to those are daring it, perhaps in ignorance, perhaps in self-protection – for to love another imperfect person unconditionally is also one of the most difficult things we can do. And yet this mutual dance of daring and difficulty, of risk and response, is where we can begin to redeem our broken covenants and communities.

Let us love each other with Christ’s love and allow ourselves to be loved in return; let us strive to know each other with grace and open our hearts to be known intimately in return. There is no great beauty without great labor and at least the risk of great pain.

Posted in musings

anger

Posted on by kristinabean

Anger is quite a useful emotion.

When I’m angry, I can stop feeling sad, anxious, apprehensive, melancholy, stressed, guilty, inadequate, or uncomfortable – the anger drives all other emotions out before it like a scouring wind.

If my husband is tired and stressed about school and the kids, it can be hard for me to simply be present with him as he’s feeling that dissatisfaction and frustration; his emotions make me uncomfortable, on the one hand, and on the other, I’m jealous of the time he has with the kids. Simply being angry at him – for having the emotions that I dislike, and for not appreciating what he has right now that I wish I could have – is far easier than being with him and supporting him. It’s less complex and more comfortable.

The same principle applies with my kids, my coworkers, the situations and instruments I deal with at work, and even myself. The intricate web of emotion created by daily life is confusing and uncomfortable for me, and getting angry gives me an emotion I can understand while pushing away all the other emotions that are so hard to handle.

Unfortunately, of course, this kind of irrational and unjust anger is incredibly damaging to my relationships with people. It’s not great for a marriage when a wife gets angry every time her husband has an emotion that’s not positive! And it doesn’t result in a secure and happy childhood when a mother flips out at her children, inconsistently and impulsively, for normal childish behaviors. I know this, so I try to control my anger. It might be the easiest emotion, my default emotional response, but it isn’t the emotion that I want to characterize my relationships at home or at work.

My primary strategies these days are two-fold: a preventative strand, that works on creating margin in my life so that I can better handle uncomfortable emotions; and a crisis management strand, that gives me ways to pause the anger response pathway and hopefully step out of it. Prevention involves things like regular prayer, consistent time in the Word, and sufficient sleep and time outside. Crisis management looks like counting to ten when I feel my anger rising, or offering up quick and instant prayers for peace or grace (written/memorized prayers are really helpful here, but sometimes just a wordless prayer – a silent plea to heaven, eyes raised, soul yearning – is all I can lift up in the moment).

What are some of your tactics for keeping anger from running (and ruining) your life?

Posted in family life

a listening story

Posted on by kristinabean

I often struggle with stepping back and accepting other people’s emotions, to simply listen and seek to understand, because I tend to take their emotions personally and become defensive. As a result of this sense of personal involvement, strong or negative emotions in other people make me incredibly uncomfortable, and my default response is anger and anxiety.

While learning about child development and respectful parenting has helped me a lot with distancing my emotional state from my children’s emotions (without distancing myself from them), it’s still a huge challenge for me with adults, especially in my family. So when I have even a small success – when I can remember that their emotions are not a personal attack before letting loose with angry words or falling into a panicky state – it is pretty exciting!

Yesterday my husband seemed to be upset; he was silent, morose, and sharp. My unthinking response was to wonder what I had done wrong to make him upset, and then to be angry at him for being upset about things that he hadn’t established expectations for (like our schedule for the afternoon, which I thought might be the cause of his stress or irritation). So I was avoiding him, not talking to him, not making eye contact, etc. – all the things I do to keep myself from saying something in anger. But as we sat in the car together I suddenly thought, yelling at him or prodding him to talk about things isn’t going to help me find out what’s wrong or make him feel better. It’s just going to bring us both down and make us angrier. I remembered all those parenting blogs that said, over and over again, to simply observe and offer presence. So all I said was, “it seems like you’re really upset about something.” I tried to say it in a way that would let him know he didn’t have to provide any information – I wanted to be non-confrontational and non-interrogative (not sure how that worked haha).

Maybe it was just because he saw that I wasn’t going to be mad at him, but he then opened up and told me all the things that were worrying him (none of which were about me, showing me just how unreasonable my initial reaction was), with a depth of connection that wouldn’t have been possible if he’d been saying things just to get me to leave him alone or stop being angry.

So I am now an even bigger fan of respectful parenting! This posture of respectful listening – of noticing negative emotion in the people I love without letting it unravel me or hurt our relationship – is something I want to cultivate more and more, now that I see how it benefits my adult relationships as well as my relationship with my kids. And it helps me stay far more relaxed and positive myself, which is never a bad thing.

Posted in art, musings, quotes

{fine art friday} -Japanese Madonna and Child

Posted on by kristinabean

One of the beautiful things about the Church is her universality – her appeal to people from all cultures and eras, and her significance and importance to them. The stories of the Church – the stories of Christ – and above all the stories central to the Gospel – fulfill the echos whispered in different ways in human traditions and legends, and fulfill the longing questions of our hearts. So while each culture is able to remain fully Christian and hold true to the meaning and teaching of each story, they are also able to take those stories and imagine them in culturally significant ways. Most notably, we appropriate the people and events of those stories to our own cultures by making them “look like us.” We envision Jesus and His family and disciples to fit our own ethnic background, and we layer the Church’s stories into the rhythms of our own cultural sense of time and emotion.

So in the parts of the Church heavily influenced by Europe, we see Jesus depicted as a white man, and we see the fasts and feasts of the Church, the focal stories, aligned with the seasonal changes of the Northern Hemisphere. The birth of Jesus, for example – the beginning of a new hope for humanity – comes at the Winter Solstice, as if by His birth He reverses the plunge into darkness and heralds the dawning light. Many of even our most traditional and spiritual Christmas songs focus on this aspect of the birth, something that makes singing them in the paradisaical Arizona winter somewhat odd… Likewise, His resurrection is celebrated in the height of spring, surrounded by all the natural reminders of new life.

Likewise, in other areas of the world, one can see different cultural influences on the artwork and life of the Church. This set of four paintings of the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus, by an unknown artist from Japan, illustrates that in several ways.

Madonna of the Cherry Blossoms
Madonna of the Bamboo Grove
Madonna of the Moon
Madonna of the Snow

Clockwise from top left: Madonna of the Cherry Blossoms, Madonna of the Bamboo Grove, Madonna of the Moon, Madonna of the Snow

Obviously a significant difference between these and Western Madonnas in that both Mary and Jesus are Japanese. It makes the motherhood of Mary, the humanity of the Word made flesh, more immediately and emotionally palpable to the people painting and praying with theses images; it allows them to feel close and connected to these people who, after all, are not just historical people but living members of the body of Christ.

Something else I learned about these paintings, and Japanese art in general, that I also found very fascinating was that the four seasons of the year are central to Japanese art and poetry. Back in the tenth and eleventh centuries, nature was seen as a powerful, frightening, and unpredictable force, and aristocratic poets began to simultaneously tame it and use it as a lens to understand human emotion (which was probably also a powerful and unpredictable force that they wished to tame and control more completely!). As one author put it, Japanese culture focused mainly not on nature itself, but on a “secondary nature” –

…not a direct apprehension or participation in the natural world but a culturally constructed view of the non-human realm as representative of inner feelings experienced through profound associations made with outer phenomena connected with the rotation of the seasons and cycles of the year that are meaningful for their symbolic and aesthetically oriented value. – Steven Heine, in a review of Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Art by Haruo Shirane

By placing Mary and Jesus within each of those four seasons, the artist not only signifies their presence with us at all times of the year, he or she also meditates on the presence of Jesus, the importance of the incarnation, the loving motherhood of Mary, through all the various emotions we undergo as humans. He is with us in the springtime when the cherry blossoms give us hope for renewal and revival; He is with us in the autumn when we watch the lonely moon in our own melancholy and withdrawal. The cultural patterns of the year are drawn up into the eternal promises of Christ; they are not obliterated by His presence, but glorified.

Posted in family life, musings

a day when I fell apart

Posted on by kristinabean

This weekend I had one of those days, as a parent, that I wish had never happened. I’m not sure what triggered it – maybe hormones, or sleep-deprivation, or the chronic stress of having been sick with sick kids for the whole month of January – but I felt like I’ve felt in the midst of a depressive episode. In other words, I had no energy or motivation, I cried at the drop of a hat, I kept fighting back irrational waves of panic, and I was incredibly, explosively, angry. Not a good set of emotions with which to set about being with two toddlers…

The worst moment came after I’d been trying to get Limerick to take a nap since he was completely exhausted, failed once because Rondel came in with his own set of needs (to which I responded horribly), and had just given up for the second time because Limerick didn’t want to stop nursing and I felt like I couldn’t handle it any more. I came down the stairs yelling, pouring all my frustration out verbally, and then burst into uncontrollable tears. My husband took in everything at a glance, took Limerick up for a nap, and left me with Rondel. And my little boy just looked at me with these big eyes and asked, “type of thing Mommy sad about?”

So I sat down with him and told him how wonderful he was, and how much I loved him, and how I was just having a really bad day and felt awful and didn’t know why. I don’t think he understood, but he snuggled up to me and gave me a hug. I told him that I shouldn’t have yelled at him earlier, that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and asked him if he would forgive me, and he stopped nursing, looked up at me with the sweetest smile on his face, and said that he would. Then he resumed nursing and snuggling.

The whole episode made me realize how much my emotions affect my children: the next day, while I was sleeping in with Limerick, Rondel apparently asked my husband to sing songs about being sad, and all the different reasons people would be sad, and for the next several days he continued to talk a lot about sadness. It had to have been unsettling for him to see that kind of raw emotion in one of the people he counts on to keep his world stable and safe (obviously he’s used to seeing Limerick upset 🙂 ), and he’s had to process that in his own way in the days since. I don’t really know what to think about that except that I’m so happy he can process it verbally and relationally with us instead of holding it in or expressing his discomfort with testing behaviors. He is an extremely emotionally sensitive and mature toddler, and I’m really grateful for that.

Because we’ve been through this before, my husband and I made sure that I took care of some basic things that night and the next day to try to prevent the emotions from getting worse or forming a mental habit: I went to bed early and slept late, I took my vitamins, and I took a couple naps with the babies the next day. It was a sacrifice for him of study time and family time, and it felt pretty selfish for me on one level – but on the other hand, it pushed away the unmanageable emotions, or at least reduced them to something I could handle while still being the gentle and respectful parent I am trying to be. It is amazing to me how much something so simple as sleep can affect my mood and my ability to cope with life – but it was a reminder to me of the importance of self-care, and a reminder that the good emotional weather I’ve been having since my pregnancy with Limerick isn’t something I should take for granted. Storms may yet arise.

Have any of you other moms dealt with depression, anxiety, or anger? This is really the first time it’s hit me since my first was a baby (so, the first time he’s old enough to perceive what’s happening), and it makes the experience – and the urgency I feel about remedying it – very different. So if you have any tips or advice for handling those things in the midst of motherhood, I’m all ears! I don’t want to be caught unawares and unprepared again.

Posted in musings

thoughts on college and depression

Posted on by kristinabean

Comparing my college experiences with those of some of my closest friends, and pondering the nature of my depressive episodes versus theirs, I think there were a couple key things that made college easier/better for me and that also helped me fight through my depression to my current stage of remission.

First, I was highly skeptical of the college environment, and really of any larger environment outside of my family. I knew it would be run by people who believed things I believed to be false, and I didn’t want to be taken in by it. My goal was to get as much possible out of the system without becoming part of it; in a sense, I saw myself as an undercover agent infiltrating enemy territory. In retrospect this was a rather ridiculous and exaggerated mindset, born of reading too many fundamentalist Christian books bordering on conspiracy theory no doubt 🙂 But it had the silver lining of not setting me up with unrealistically high expectations for how awesome college would be! Because every positive experience came as a surprise, and every challenging experience as an expected part of my “mission”, I ended up loving my time as a student.

Building off of that, I was able to keep a small picture of myself (in contrast to a large picture of the world around me). Everything could then appear to me more wonderful, more majestic, more beautiful. Sometimes this meant that everything looked more overwhelming, especially in the midst of my depression, but it has also helped me to realize that I don’t need to control or understand everything – everything is big, and glorious, and chaotic, and I can find contentment in being a small part (but of course my own unique and specially personal part) of that everything. My husband helped me work through this in a practical way during my depression, and G. K. Chesterton helped me a lot in coming to an understanding of it on a conceptual level:

“[Man] was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.” – Orthodoxy

Finally, I never lost the community that supported me through my childhood and adolescence, and I never lost my gratitude to them for their love and encouragement. I cannot imagine how much harder the transition to college would have been without my family, my church, and my high school friends. Their presence enabled me to adjust socially to college at a slower pace without enduring the loneliness and isolation that many of friends felt in their first year or two. As time went by, then, I could develop friendships in the natural organic way such things tend to happen – by doing things outside of class together, outside of the whole college environment together, and so on. But the relationships I made before college and continued through college were essential. One of the triggers for my post-college depression was, I believe, the stress of finding a new church with my husband and losing a lot of the community that I had been a part of since childhood. I felt alone in a way that most people deal with as freshmen, I think.

Looking back now, at the things that supported me through difficult transitions and the things that let me down at other moments, I can prepare myself for the future. I can remember how low expectations (or, more precisely, expectations of challenge and adventure, as opposed to fulfillment and pleasure) set me up for pleasant surprises. I can remember how looking at the world with wonder at its towering beauties, keeping in mind my own smallness in it, gave me liberty and room to breathe. I can remember how crucial community was to me – the tight bonds of long-held relationships, the support of people from all generations around me – even as an introvert, and put in the uncomfortable work of building a new community around me when the inevitable transitions of life threaten to leave me alone.

And above all, I can pray.

I can pray to the Father for His guidance, to the Son for His peace, to the Spirit for His comfort. In the arms of the Trinity, I can find meaning in even the worst of my suffering, and the hope of redemption and healing. It would be incredibly narcissistic of me to claim that I had a great college experience and came out of my depression in my own power, by some sort of strength or wisdom I possess that another person with worse experiences didn’t have. It was all grace. And the same grace that protected and healed me then gives me the ability to learn from the past now so that I can avoid those same traps in the future – and so that, maybe, I can help someone else avoid them the first time around.

Posted in musings, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – the beginnings of Advent

Posted on by kristinabean

Advent is blossoming slowly in our home this year, growing from the seed of a single candle, small and lonely in the darkness, but bearing the power of eternal hope. There’s been a lot more “real” than “pretty” or “happy” this week but I’m realizing that Advent doesn’t have to be a big or glamorous production to invite wonder into my heart or introduce the hushed anticipation of the season to my children.

For me, the most beauty has come in re-discovering the ancient Advent hymns, including one of my all-time favorites:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descending
Comes our homage to demand.

IMG_3076
King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
Comes the powers of hell to vanquish
As the darkness clears away.

IMG_3077
At His feet the six winged seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

I love how it weaves together the themes of all His comings – the Incarnation at Christmas, His coming into each of our lives as our Lord and King, His presence with us in the Eucharist, and His Second Coming when He will completely conquer sin and death. Though right now we’re specifically remembering the waiting for His birth, there’s a sense in which we both wait for Him and meet Him every day – hailing Him as our Lord, consuming Him in the bread and the wine, longing for Him to come finally and fully heal and redeem all things.

In the meantime, while we wait, we do the little things we can do remember Him and prepare for His coming. I may not have a beautiful handmade wreath this year, but I can get out my plastic evergreen backup wreath and still light the candles and sing the hymns and point my eyes to heaven. I may not have any sort of tree to use for the Jesse Tree devotional, but I can still read the stories with my children and see how God has been writing His plan of salvation through all the pages of history.

He is coming. Into this darkness, He is coming with hope. And I, in my brokenness and inadequacy and sin, am holding desperately onto that hope. In this crossroads between my reality and His promises, I am finding the heart of Advent this year.

(Joined to the link-up at Like Mother, Like Daughter today – the theme is Advent this week, and everyone’s first beginnings of the season, so there should be a lot of beauty there.)

Posted in family life, musings

my gentle parenting thanksgiving day mission statement

Posted on by kristinabean

Today, I will love my children for who they are, the way they are, and not act as though I would rather them be someone different.

Today, I will advocate for my children’s wellbeing instead of feeling embarrassed when they are unable to adjust to unreasonable adult expectations.

Today, I will be the safe place my children need when they are overwhelmed, overstimulated, tired, hungry, or uncomfortable, instead of ignoring them to focus on my own conversations or activities.

Today, I will be mentally and emotionally present for my children, so that I can observe the warning signs before a meltdown ensues, and protect their privacy and dignity by giving them the rest or space they need to recalibrate.

Today, I will do the best that I can do to ensure that my children remember Thanksgiving Day with the whole extended family as a day of joy and togetherness, despite the potential for chaos and stress. And I will do this not by emphasizing to them what Thanksgiving ought to be about, but by equipping them to handle the special challenges of the holidays with confidence and grace.

Posted in family life, musings

facing thanksgiving with a mood disorder

Posted on by kristinabean

While the general joy of the holiday season begins to creep upon me beginning with Halloween and my birthday, the anxiety of it doesn’t really start for me until now, in the week between Limerick’s birthday and Thanksgiving. I don’t know if everyone has to fight down panic attacks during the holiday season, or intentionally pursue joy while the black tentacles of depression and apathy are pulling them down; I don’t know if everyone feels trapped between the potential of the season and the expectations for the season, faced with a list of people to visit and chores to complete, wondering where the beauty and the significance went. I would imagine there are a lot of us, but I personally only know one other person with any certainty.

With that in mind, what I want to do is to ask the rest of you to be kind and gracious: to realize that we really do love being with family, participating in the festivities, carrying on the fun or meaningful traditions we’ve built with you over the years, but that sometimes the weight of it all is just to great for us to carry. Sometimes the chaos of a joyful family is too overwhelming, the social pressure too intense, the smells and sounds and expectations a perfect storm that threatens all our normal coping mechanisms. When we have to leave early, or take a few moments of solitude to recalibrate, or drop out of the conversation and activity for a while, it’s not because we don’t want to be with you. Will you believe me when I say we’re making a huge effort to be there with you, because we love you and you matter to us?

And for anyone who’s trying to navigate the holidays through anxiety or depression, I feel you. I’ve been there – some years more so than others – and there really isn’t anything positive about it. It’s incredibly hard to stay engaged for hours of small talk, with stress-inducing levels of ambient noise and who knows what other irritants (low light and allergens, anyone?), when your insides feel like a black void or when every defense system in your body is on high alert. It hurts to try so hard to be happy and present only to end up feeling like you’ve failed, and ruined the holidays for someone else.

So please don’t feel guilty about taking the space you need to be you, to be joyful, to remember the big ideals or the little traditions that are meaningful and important to you as an individual. Please don’t feel guilty about advocating for yourself and your own well-being – if it helps, think that there are probably others who will be glad you spoke up because they’re running on fumes as well.

You are loved. You matter. Even if you can only be around for five minutes on Thanksgiving Day because you’re having an episode or an attack, the day will be brighter for everyone else because of those five minutes. When you’re fighting for each moment, sharing it with another person is one of the most precious and valuable gifts imaginable, and anyone who understands will value it accordingly.