My Courage has come from my Depression
My Greatest Teacher has been my Depression
My Understanding has come from my Depression
My Open Heart has come from my Depression
My Lifelong Mentor has been my Depression
My Well Being has come from my Depression
So much pain………..So many gifts
You too, can heal
With Love
And this healing journey is available to all
And what is your job…as a psychiatrist?
To help them find their way to their Own well being
To assist them in discovering what well being looks like for Them
No-one else
Not the Doc or the drug company or the family or the friends, or the lover, or the healer, but themselves
And by focusing on their well being a little here…and a little there….not today perhaps, but tomorrow a little
And then at some point, they begin to actually enjoy, the unfolding journey
While I strongly believe that current medications make it more difficult to get back to Well Being, I do not recommend sudden cessation
Rather, find your way to well being first
On a regular basis
With safety nets available
Strategies and plans for you to deal with the often prolonged emotional, physical and mental withdrawal from these drugs that have messed with your ever so finely balanced neurotransmitters.
Neurotransmitters that are involved in every moment of your life
The Psychiatrist should have in depth knowledge of the cessation syndromes, otherwise they have no right to prescribe them
Healing is there for all
It is so
With Love
When you diagnose someone with Recurrent Depression
Tell them it will return despite their best efforts
You diminish their power to heal
For on any given day, that they may feel a little sad, they will remember your words and remind themselves, with their thinking patterns and hence their feelings, that it is so
Instead of helping them heal
They are condemned
But hear me, my friend.
You can heal…forever
You can walk a gentle path, back to Your Own Well Being
It is so
It doesn’t matter what type of movement you call it:
Dystonic, Dyskinesic, Athetoid, Functional, Choreic, Movement disorder, Conversion, Dyskinetic, Clonus, Jerk, Tic, Basal Ganglia disease,
It doesn’t matter what your textbooks call it:
Dopa Responsive, Primary, Secondary, Tardive, Paroxysmal, Psychogenic
What matters, is our experience of it
…….and in the main you have very little knowledge of our experience of it
…..our lives
….and then you decide:
With this label you get this
With this label you don’t
With this label you get these benefits
With this label you don’t
With this label you get compassion
With this label you don’t
There are too many stories unheard
There is too much pain caused by your labels
You must open your minds, your eyes, your hearts
And close your textbooks
You must hear us
If you want to help heal us
With Love
Jacqueline
I’m often asked for assistance to cease Seroquel, (Quetiapine) by people who are finding the discontinuation syndrome distressing.
Here are some tips.
The first thing I would recommend, is that you immediately start meditating
Meditation is the gentlest, most holistic way to help your body heal
Here is a super easy introduction
Here is a great set of guided meditations by Linda Hall
When I was experiencing intense suicidal ideation a few years ago I was using these meditations, particularly, Inner glow, multiple times a day, to give myself a break from the pain in my head.
Meditation is Number 1 in your cessation plan
Find 10-15 mins every day if you can.
A gift you give to yourself and your healing 🙂
2.
Stop trimming the Seroquel dose until you feel a little more centred.
Perhaps 3-4 weeks
It is not always in your bodies best interests to replace one drug with another …….
although, if you need to use something short term through this time – do so, without guilt 🙂
…and a clear cessation plan
Spend these few weeks working out what helps your Well Being
I had a 5 pronged approach
Riding my push bike
Eating Healthily
Meditating
Becoming aware of what thoughts made me feel happier and which ones made me feel worse. Then consciously focusing on the better feeling ones.
Doing things that made my heart sing
My heart sing list was something like this
Yoga
Singing
Reading
Having a long hot shower
Playing cribbage
Meditation
Smelling flowers
Hiking
Do one thing every day, that makes your heart sing
When you are struggling, change your focus
Watch a comedy, go for a walk, hug a tree, phone a friend.
It doesn’t matter
Empower yourself – make it your decision
When you feel ready to reduce your Seroquel again, do so more slowly.
Give yourself as many months as you need, to cease altogether.
Work with a Medical Practitioner who is aware of seroquel discontinuation syndrome and knows to look for harm, such as body movement disorders, cataracts, diabetes etc
Give your body at least a month between reductions. Weigh the pill if that will help you
Your wonderful body has adjusted so dramatically to this drug that it will need time to adjust again.
Start a new thought around the discontinuation syndrome, such as :
“This is my body just adjusting”
“I am not my wonderful body – I am Consciousness. Beautiful, Worthy and Healing
“This will take time…but I will be gentle with myself during this time”
….and so on
Here is a link to how a thought pathway is helping me with Dystonia
Coloured Buttons is an online coaching programme I have started to help people recover from mental health diagnosis and depression in particular
It is in hiatus until 2015 but you may find some pointers that help you
To recap
Please start to meditate. It’s easy and will help tremendously. Do it for 1 month and see the benefits
Give yourself a break from dose reduction while you spend time developing some Well Being techniques for yourself
When you restart dose reduction again,do so more slowly – perhaps 10% a month. Use a cutter and some scales if you like
Understand, that you can do this
There is a little flame within you, that never goes out
It is there waiting for you gently blow it into life. The healed you 🙂
You are not your body
You are not your diagnosis
You are not your drugs
You are worthy and extraordinary and beautiful
With Love
Jacqueline
Meditation 3 – Putting it together
Music, Mantra and the Breath
This is a 3 part easy intro to meditation
Please see Meditation 1 and Meditation 2 here first
1. Putting it all together
Get comfy, where you will be undisturbed
Start listening to your music
2. Develop your full breath
As you breathe in
Let the belly rise
Let the waist expand outward
The lower ribcage opens
The shoulders lift
As you breathe out
The shoulders soften
The ribcage closes
The waist retracts
The belly falls
Breathe at a rhythm you can comfortably manage
3. Start the Well Being mantra
Say it softly in your mind.
As you practise synchronise it with your breathing
In breath
“Breath more deeply”
Out breath
“Go with the flow”
In breath
“It’s all easy”
Out breath
“Relax, let go”
Repeat
Work toward doing this mantra 10 times
When you start meditating, you will notice your thinking wanders. This is just the natural process of your mind learning how to quiet
It is normal
Just go with it
Whenever you notice you have wandered off….bring your attention back to your breathing and start again
If it didn’t come easily to you today – just chill… and try again tomorrow
With Love
Jacqueline
This introduction to meditation, uses music and a mantra
Music can be really helpful to relax and slow your breathing
I have used this soothing music (spiegel im spiegel) for many years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOgIGvDM06U
Use any piece of music you like, to induce a slow, rhythmic breathing
Start
Get comfy, where you will be undisturbed
Laying down, sitting up. Doesn’t matter
Under a fan or a duvet perhaps, so your environment is temperate
Palms open
Shoulders soft and down
IPod and ear buds in place
Music ready
Eyes closed
Get as comfortable as you can and start listening to your music
Develop a 4 part breath – just take in a little breath on each count of 4 and then slowly out again for a count of 4.
So,……. In…2….3…..4……and Out…2….3…..4
Use the music to guide and support your breathing – Over time, as you practice and relax, it will come naturally
Count 10 breaths in and 10 breaths out
If you don’t manage to get to 10 before your thoughts wander
Start again at 1
Only restart a couple of times before gently letting your practise go for today
When you start meditating, you will notice your thinking wanders
This is just the natural process of your mind learning how to quiet
It is normal
Just go with it
Whenever you notice you have wandered off….bring your attention back to your breathing and start again
If it didn’t come easily to you today – just chill… and try again tomorrow
with Love
Jacqueline
This current mental focus on my physical dysfunction, is not helping me maintain my Well Being
I am maintaining my Well Being, however I am having to do more work than normal, at the moment.
Whereas previously, through practice, it wasn’t requiring any great conscious effort on my part
A decision made
To try to focus only on the Spiritual journey
…and let go of the physical one
The journey of the body
The vehicle
…and while I am already doing that, ad hoc
I am choosing to do that more consciously
I have developed a new thought pathway for myself
A new story that reminds me that nothing has really changed…..
I Am Still Here
Still, the Jacqueline who is:
I am going to use my new story to help me see myself as ‘not broken’ and help manage my guilt
The non helpful guilt I experience, because I am unable to have the physical workload that I used to
….and then the endless interrogation about whether I am doing ‘enough’
Whether I am trying hard enough
A new thought pathway
A thinking journey, that will allow me to come to a new conclusion about myself
A conclusion that will replace the current one
That my body is broken and everything is hard
A new conclusion that will restore the faith I have lost, in my bodies ability to heal itself
A conclusion that will remind me that the human body is
self-healing – self-perpetuating – self creating – self perfecting
So from here on, every time I find myself noticing a physical symptom:
I will:
Something like this
“ruminate, ruminate, ruminate, I feel bad in this way, I feel bad in this way, I have pain, I feel sick”
Become aware of the current non-helpful thought pathway.
Introduce new thought
“Ah, remember Jacqueline, You are going to focus on the spiritual journey. These feelings are your miraculous body trying to heal itself.”
Then, use a refocus tool such as:
Remembering that I am self-healing – self perpetuating – self creating – self perfecting
a simple process, you can do at any time
By replacing my thinking and retraining my brain it will help me accomplish a number of things
Through practice, I can retrain my thinking to go down the new pathway
One that helps me redefine or refocus this experience as a spiritual one
A spiritual gift
….and while all of that may do nothing to change my Dystonia, it will change my perception, my feelings, my experience of the journey
With Love
Jacqueline
Coloured Buttons – An online coaching course to make long term recovery from depression is on holiday until 2015
Basil blogs
These are really just my random musings
To shine a light
On a path
For those who are walking this way 🙂
With Love
Jacqueline
You are already forgiven
We are all, already forgiven
We were forgiven for everything before we ventured forth into this lifetime, this vehicle
All of us
Each and Every One of us
…and who were we forgiven by?
By the ones we created the experience with
By the people who want to experience themselves as forgiving
Forgiveness
…one of the supremely beautiful, conscious states…….
With Love
Jacqueline
strongfitfabulous 
You must be logged in to post a comment.