Paddling

Here are some of my thoughts from the past week or so:

I had an odd few days last week that have continued through the weekend and into today. It’s like I am having heightened emotional reactions to events. I’ll read something moving and all of a sudden my eyes are full of tears. I get overwhelmed with details at work and I feel like ripping everything up or punching a wall. But my sense of humour is spiked as well and I laugh quickly. On my way home on the train I started thinking of my sister who lives in Scotland and I got this powerful sense or memory of what it’s like being in her company and I missed her so much and so suddenly that it really took me by surprise. I thought of the two of us spending the afternoon in a pub somewhere getting gently drunk, talking and laughing.

Anyway, all this made me realise what extreme emotional reactions I was having, to events, memories, and so on. Weird. I still feel like it today. Easily frustrated by my job. Easily sparked off to tears by reading my book, which is just one of the books I used to read as a kid.

I don’t think it’s a mood episode, it doesn’t feel like one anyway. The nearest I can get to that is agitated hypomania – but the frustration is fleeting and I think it’s borne out of tiredness more than anything else. But I definitely feel … something … different.

The way I figure out if it’s a mood episode or not is by seeing if I am reacting to an actual event or not. If my emotions are one way and have no connection to events then it is a mood episode. Also, if something bad happens and makes me feel bad, but I continue to feel bad after the event has passed, then it is usually a mood episode.

But if the emotions are related to an actual event then I am reassured that it isn’t a Cyclothymic mood swing. It may be tiredness. It may just be part of what makes me me. I think that ADHD also plays a part in this. I have read that ADHD can cause more extreme emotional reactions (good and bad) in some people.

Anyway, I’m not worried about it, just observing. I am noticing that each day I’m having to work harder to motivate myself at work and to concentrate. I’ll be glad when I can have some time off to recharge my batteries before I start studying.

I had an extremely emotional weekend. My Mum got ordained on Saturday – I am very proud of her. She’s been working towards this for a long time. She is now a Reverend – I have nicknamed her The Reverend Mother. Then my step-Dad retired on Sunday, and my teenage sisters said goodbye to all their friends in the church before the whole family moves on Wednesday this week. Even Dad cried.

I was still doing my over-identifying thing with other peoples emotions. If I saw someone crying it made me cry. I’m not sorry that they are moving, I am glad they are moving. They have had a hard time these last few years. I am happy that they are moving to a new place and a new chapter. But I still felt sad to say goodbye to these people. I couldn’t tell if it was my sadness or if I was picking up on sadness from other people.

I also became over-stimulated a few times. Especially on the Saturday. There were over 100 people there. At one point I was talking and my Mum asked me if I needed the loo because I was moving my legs so much. I hadn’t even realised that I was tapping my feet and moving back and forth very fast as I talked. Usually that would be a sign of hypomania – but actually I seem to be developing a sense of if something is a mood episode or not and this time I think the answer was not. I think it was ADHD again, the hyperactive component – I got over-stimulated and got more and more hyperactive as a result.

I realised anew this weekend that I’m still at the beginning of recovery. I still don’t know who I really am, I still feel like I haven’t fully recovered my faith in God, I’m still fragile. I feel like a fragmented person. I react to different situations in different ways, most people see me as being very loud, but others see me as a bit aloof. People don’t often know which Karita they will get. There is no one coherent me. I have been wondering how to reconcile all these different parts of myself. Is it even possible? Have I been unstable for so long that I will remain erratic forever? There’s the intelligent, academic part of me, the scatty part of me, the loud, joker part of me, the sometimes harsh, sarcastic part of me, the loving, sensitive part of me, the hyperactive part of me, the insecure, paranoid part of me…

I want to be one, coherent person, who is at ease with herself.

This last week or so I have been experiencing emotions intensely. I have been thinking of this as yet another thing to get to grips with, learn to tame into submission. But it hit me last night that maybe this is who I am. A person who experiences all emotions very intensely, both my emotions and the emotions that come from other people. Maybe it isn’t something to be tamed into submission, squashed and made to play nicely… Maybe it is something to be accepted and even embraced. Maybe this is the real me.

Them’s my thoughts. Not entirely sure what to do with them. Somebody said something to me recently that I found helpful:

Before you were on meds you were in a boat without a paddle, now you are learning how to use the oars!

Work, Brain, Work!

I want to write. I really want to write. I had some thoughts last night that really made sense to me. I was finally able to put into words some of the feelings that I have been… er… feeling. But today my thoughts are just bouncing around my head in all different directions, making one hell of a racket, and it’s making even the most simple tasks quite difficult.

(Other than buying new eye-makeup and putting it all on and parading around in front of the mirror, or course. That I can do.)

I shall attempt to get this off my small but perfectly formed chest, otherwise it will just bang around making a mess in my mind and drive me up the wall.

People may have noticed that I have not really been writing much about my faith these days. In fact, some of my regular Christian commenters have upped and left, and I can understand why.

Truth is, I’m struggling a bit in that department. Me and God haven’t been exactly best friends of late. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe He exists and all that… I just don’t get it. My understanding of God is inextricably linked to my moods:

Mood goes up = Wonderful flash of insight into God, meaning of life, etc.

Mood goes down = God, where are you? Clearly you are not interested in me, and if you are then it’s only to judge me.

End result = Constant cycle of self-recrimination. My faith should be stronger. I am weak. God must heartily disapprove of me. I will just sit here with my head bowed and wait for the thunderbolt to strike.

Now I’m starting to think that this may not be the most healthy way to view God or my belief in him. However, that was as far as I got. I realised what I was doing wrong, but had no idea how to put it right. Still don’t, to be honest. It all just seems so big. Too big for me to deal with. Therefore, I have just ignored it. And the more I have ignored it, the more doubts have started to creep in.

Last night it hit me that I have to do something. Otherwise I am in danger of “backsliding” – insert horrified gasps as appropriate.

As I haven’t got to the solution part of this scenario yet, I have decided to pull back from blogging about God for a while. Off the cuff answers won’t satisfy me anymore. Particularly those nauseatingly sweet answers I am supremely capable of giving myself. Instead of attempting to provide nice, theologically sound answers, I have taken to asking pedantic, obstreperous questions – anything to stop my brain from falling back into apathy.

Where Are You?

WARNING: Spoilers! (Not many, but some)

I’m reading a book called The Shack. I’ve been hearing reports about it for a while now. It’s a book about God, written by a Christian. It’s fiction. About a guy whose little daughter is abducted and murdered. He then enters a deep depression and three of so years later receives a note from God, asking to meet up.

OK. Sounds intriguing, but a little absurd.

Truth

My brain has been doing its usual over-analysing thing over the last few days. I had a conversation with my sister about relativism, I’ve been reading a blog about Catholicism, and I’m trying to become more self-disciplined (something I have always struggled with). Now, these subjects are not really related, but I’m going to blog about them anyway.

Relativism. I just don’t get it. How can two opposing statements both be true? It just doesn’t make sense. I understand tolerance. I believe that everyone has the right to believe whatever they want. But deluding ourselves into thinking that not only can we believe whatever we want, but also that, no matter how opposing our views are, they are all true, because all truth is relative (what works for me is true and what works for you is true) is surely just that: self-delusion.

Who gets to decide what is actually true? Lets take the above theory, that truth is relative, and ponder it for a moment. I am certain that I am typing this post using a keyboard which is plugged into my computer. What if someone came in and was certain that actually I was just thinking this post and magically transferring my thoughts to the computer using nothing but the power of positive thinking… Can this person possibly be correct? I’m fairly sure that the answer is no.

So, common sense comes in somewhere along the line. If certain things are true and other things are not true in the physical world, then doesn’t the same rule apply in the spiritual realm?

Back to my question then: who gets to decide what is true? This brings me to a blog I’ve been reading: “Et tu?”. This is a wonderful, insightful blog, by a woman who used to be an atheist and became a Christian a few years ago. I love reading her blog. She wrote a post about why she became a Catholic. Fascinating. I am not one of these Christians who believe that Catholics aren’t real Christians, that they’re not saved, or anything like that. I have known some very devout Catholics, who had a sincere faith in Christ Jesus as their Saviour and Lord. Jennifer F. mentions how she struggled to understand the Bible when she was searching for God. How do we know which bits of the Bible have a literal, concrete meaning, which can be applied directly to our lives, and which bits are metaphorical, with a general meaning? She says how she found Christians who could defend their beliefs using scripture, but two Christians could both defend their differing views using different Biblical quotes. Therefore, how do we know how to use the Bible? This is what she discovered:

“Around this time someone told me that one of the Christian denominations claimed that God did leave us this “answer key” I’d been yearning for. I found out that the Catholic Church claimed to be a sort of divinely-guided Supreme Court, that God guided this Church to be inerrant in its official proclamations about what is right and wrong, how to interpret the Bible, how to know Jesus Christ, and all other questions of God and what he wants us to do. I heard that it claims that God speaks to us through sacred Scripture and through the sacred Tradition of his living Church.”

This seriously got me thinking. I just don’t understand where the Biblical precedent is for a “divinely-guided Supreme Court” that is “inerrant in its official proclamations”. To me, the Church (that is the body of Christ, the worldwide community of believers in Christ Jesus) will always get some stuff wrong. The concept of the now and the not yet. We have God’s Spirit with us now, to give us understanding and to guide us, but there are many things about God that we will not understand until we are in His presence after this life ends. Jonolan has also covered this topic recently, in his post “The God Delusion”:

“Now please don’t get me wrong, I do not deny the existence of a god-head. I deny Man’s understanding of it. I believe that Man cannot – not in any meaningful way – understand the divine. We see the God(s) through the lenses of our own inadequacy.”

There have been some fascinating comments about this post – go and have a look for yourselves. Now for myself, I believe that although we cannot understand the divine fully, God has given us Scripture so that we can learn about Him, and he gives us His spirit to help guide us (amongst other things). But it isn’t so very clear cut. Christians disagree on many things; homosexuality, divorce, drinking, sex, contraception, abortion, etc. We can’t all be right. See, once again, how I don’t subscribe to relativist beliefs. How then, do we come to an understanding of God’s will (preferably without having to resort to the age-old tactic of “I’m right, you’re wrong”)?

I welcome comments on this topic. I hope that if people find my blog who are either Catholics, or believe in relativism, that they will not be offended by anything I have written. I just want to understand, and I hope that people will feel comfortable enough to comment. If not… then I’ll keep reading around and maybe I will understand eventually.

Here is a quote, which I find to be very helpful in my thought process:

In essentials unity. In non-essentials liberty. In everything love.
Augustine.

PS. You may have noticed that I have not written about self-discipline. It really wasn’t related so I’ll leave that for another time.

PPS. I also hope that nobody thinks that I am confusing Catholicism and relativism – I’m not; I just find both subjects relevant to the common subject of truth.