Beating Myself Up Over Failed Intentions… #JusJoJan

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m struggling quite badly yet again. I’m feeling quite depressed and like life is slipping me by. That’s not good, but sometimes it’s the best that can be.

When I set my hopes for this year, I fully intended to experience more, yet here I am, six days into the year and I’ve abandoned Morning Pages, am in bed a lot again or just blabbering on to my staff about whatever.

However, feeling guilty about not having made the most out of the day, means even more of my time and energy is wasted. Rather than beating myself up over a day gone to waste, I’d much rather make the most out of each moment. And sometimes “the most” is pretty little.

About half an hour ago, I was talking on the phone with my wife again and responded to the question of what I’d done today by saying that I’d gone on a walk and played dice, so not much. Then I realized that I’d also made a necklace. Remembering that made me smile to myself.

Of course, my day schedule is still not working as it should and that might never change, but it’s up to me to make my life meaningful. And sometimes, that means hyperfixating on some random thing, like the fact that I almost certainly finally found the perfect recipe manager. It’s my fifth or so, so this did mean having to transfer my recipes from my previous one into this one. However, this did give me another opportunity to look up interesting recipes.

Now it does often frustrate me that, even though I make plans to cook or bake, they rarely come to fruition. However, like I said above, fretting over this means even more time and energy has been wasted.

This post was partly inspired by today’s #JusJoJan prompt, which is “intentional”. One thing I beat myself up over, is the fact that I didn’t blog yesterday and hardly wrote anything else, so in that sense who am I participating in #JusJoJan? There’s however no jotting police other than my own inner critic.

My Hopes for 2026

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! I’m publishing a second post today to share my hopes for the new year. I don’t call them resolutions and I honestly hardly look back at them over the year, but it’s somewhat fulfilling to notice that I did make about half of my hopes for 2025 happen indeed. In fact, when I was talking with my wife about the year 2025, I realized I’d done better than I had expected, contrary to what I said in my yearly review. Anyway, here are the things I hope to achieve in 2026.

1. Get in more and more varied physical exercise. I am pretty sure that this is going to be a hard one, because it looks unlikely that I can go to the gym regularly or go swimming again. However, there are other ways too, like yoga, pilates, etc.

2. Do more meaningful activities, such as cooking, baking and crafting. This was one area in which 2025 has been less successful than I’d hoped but more successful than 2024. I’m still hoping to make that standing unicorn sculpture I mentioned yesterday happen. However, even if that’s not going to happen, I hope to include crafting and kitchen-based activities in my day schedule regularly.

3. Focus on mindfulness and gratitude. I am finding that even a few minutes in the Gratitude app helps lift my mood. I honestly think this is because it’s something new, but I hope that I can keep up the mojo. I already started this habit in 2025 when I wrote the positives and negatives of each day and E-mailed them to my assigned staff. I’ll continue to do so this year.

4. Improve my wake/sleep schedule. Over the past six months or so, I almost always spent most of the morning in bed. I’d really like to change that. Today was good in this respect.

5. Write more regularly. I don’t just mean blogging, although I seriously hope to do more of that too. I mean, my blogging year was better than 2024, but 2024 was about the most disappointing year blog-wise. I hope to write more this year than I did last year. I also started doing Morning Pages again. I however don’t get up early for them, because I know that’s a recipe for disaster. Rather, today, I did mine after breakfast, when I used to hop back into bed.

6. Further taper my medication. I’m having another meeting with the intellectual disability physician, who prescribes my psych meds, next week. So far, I’m pretty sure I’m still able to further decrease my med dosage.

7. Stay relatively mentally stable. This is an almost obligatory item on the list, as I honestly think the above have covered all I can do to help myself along in this respect. Some of the contributing factors to my deep lows have been related to external circumstances. Now I wouldn’t say I have absolutely no influence on those, but it’s not like I’m all-powerful.

8. Stay true to my wishes and needs with respect to my care. This means, for example, that I will continue to assert my right to informed consent for all of my care agreements.

9. Expand my social circle. Like I shared on Monday, I fully intend on going to more meetings in 2026. At least one of those, the brain injury support meeting, is local. I also intend to go to the nationwide cerebral palsy day in April. I intend to go by myself. In previous years, I went with my mother-in-law, but I’m not in contact with her anymore. Besides, I am pretty sure that, now that I know quite a few other participants, being accompanied by her is a hindrance to my social inclusion more than a help.

10. Be more conscious of my food choices and eat more healthily. I stepped onto the scale yesterday evening and the number wasn’t pleasant. Now I do know that part of that is probably holiday weight and part is the fact that I’ve been moving less. Regardless of my weight though, I seriously hope to be making healthier food choices.

Mindfulness As an Activity #JusJoJan

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Happy New Year to you all! I’m happy to read Linda has given #JusJoJan another go and I’m going to try to participate again. Today’s prompt is “mindfulness”, which really speaks to me.

When I first learned about mindfulness, I was in dialectical behavior therapy for my emotion regulation issues. All I remember of it at the time were rather abstract concepts like imagining your thoughts are like clouds in the sky. I couldn’t put these concepts into practice at all. I mean, observing my thoughts felt so completely alien to me. Same for mindful breathing exercises. I’ve tried them, a zillion times, mind you, but I always end up being distracted.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast episode of one of the ADHD podcasts I listen to occasionally. Not that I have a diagnosis of ADHD, but I relate to many of its traits. The episode was about seven different kinds of rest. In it, the podcaster described seven different ways of rest that we all need, including physical rest, mental rest, spiritual rest, etc. None of these in her particular experience involved napping. Also, by doing just one activity, the podcaster said you could be resting in more than one way.

For example, she mentioned going on a walk and, while on her walk, being conscious of every red thing she saw. This is mindfulness in a totally different respect than imagining your thoughts are clouds. It totally spoke to me!

Now of course I’m totally blind so counting or naming red objects doesn’t work for me. But I’m sure the same principle can be applied to sounds or any of the other senses. I’m going to give it a try when I next go on a walk.

Overcoming Negative Emotions #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m really struggling and honestly, even though it’s past 10PM, I haven’t even completely decided on a topic for my letter O post in the #AtoZChallenge. I did a quick Google search for personal growth topics and the only one with an O I found, didn’t even have an O as its main first letter. It was “Overcoming fear and anxiety”. Then I realized that “obstacle” starts with an O so if we’re rebranding it as “Overcoming obstacles to mental health”, the main word does start with an O. Let’s go!

The topic of overcoming negative emotions and moods that are obstacles to mental health, ties in with many other general self-help topics. After all, many things that help people overcome mild to moderate symptoms of anxiety and depression, also help people feel better overall. These things include:


  • Mindfulness: being aware of your thoughts, feelings and actions without judgment.

  • Gratitude: focusing on the things you do have rather than the things you don’t.

  • Physical activity, including something as simple as a walk, but also running and other more intense exercise.

  • Healthy and balanced eating habits (yes, that includes the occasional treat!).

  • Making sure you get enough proper quality sleep.

  • Spiritual or religious practices, such as prayer, spells or meditation.

  • Contributing to your community.

  • Distracting yourself by engaging in a hobby, such as reading or crafts.

More specific practices that could help according to some are sitting with feelings, putting your problems into perspective by thinking that it could be worse, and forcing yourself to smile. Yes, I seriously got these from a handout in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a therapy approach applied to an increasing number of mental health issues. You’d be right if you thought I don’t think highly of these ideas. That is, I either focused on the wrong aspect of the teaching and the bigger picture was different, or these people are indeed horribly invalidating.

One thing that I did get from DBT that might make a tiny little bit of sense, is opposite acting (hey, another O). This means that you do the opposite of the immediate impulse your feelings and thoughts trigger. For example, if you are feeling depressed and your impulse is to lie in bed and isolate, DBT instructs you to actually go out and meet people. This is probably where the forcing yourself to smile comes in. Facing your fears is also a way of acting opposite to the emotion and this is, when done gradually, actually effective in treating mild to moderate anxiety.

My Safe Space

Posted on by Astrid

A few months ago, my former behavior specialist introduced a kind of visualization exercise to me called something like “A safe space” It doesn’t necessarily involve just visualizations though. Rather, the idea is to imagine your safe space, real or imaginary, in as much detail as you can. For today’s blog post, I’m going to describe mine.

I am in a kind of artificial forest surrounded by trees. The ground, however, is smooth, so that I can walk on it. When I want to rest, I can sit on a soft, cushioned bench in the forest. It feels like moss, but smoother and velveter. I can pull a weighted blanket over me when I want to fully relax. Of course, it’s always comfortably warm here.

I smell the scent of various plants and trees in the forest, such as lavender, sweet orange, pine, etc. They vary with the time of day or week and with the seasons, creating ever-changing combinations of aromas.

There are, of course, unicorns in the forest. The unicorns have all kinds of colors and sparkly or shimmery or glow-in-the-dark mane, creating a beautiful sight. Since my safe space is imaginary, I can see well enough to actually perceive these colors and sparkles and everything. When I feel like it, I can ride one of the unicorns. I can also cuddle with the colts and fillies. The unicorns comfort me.

There’s water in my safe space too. It has all the pros of a swimming pool (the cleanliness, smooth surface to stand on at the shallow end, etc.) but is still natural in a way. There are dolphins in the water that I can do dolphin therapy with.

I hear calm harp music and birdsong in the background when I’m in my safe space. Sometimes, the birdsong is replaced by dolphin sounds.

All combined, the unicorns and dolphins with the music, scents, and comfortable feel of the weighted blanket, will calm me.

Of course, aside from the real dolphins and the unicorns, everything I have in my imaginary safe space, I either have in my real room at the care facility or could somehow create elsewhere. I mean, I have a weighted blanket, an essential oil diffuser, a music pillow and a Spotify account to create the soothing music. The staff also offered to take me swimming once in a while again and I could obviously find a real forest (though that does not have the smooth ground to stand on). I can still imagine many colors in my mind, so this visualization exercise may help me create the colorful experience of the unicorns I described above. In truth, though merely imagining a safe space isn’t necessarily going to make me feel any calmer, it does get me closer to realizing the things I have right here in order to create it.

loopyloulaura

Poem: Are You Now Here?

Posted on by Astrid

Are You now here?
Or nowhere?
That’s the question

The answer, the ultimate determiner
Of life’s purpose
Your value in this world

So
Are you now here?

This poem was written for this week’s W3 Prompt. The idea is to write a poem inspired by the previous week’s winning poem, with a few added rules. This week’s rules were that your poem must contain 16 lines or less and the first and last line must be the same. In addition to being inspired by last week’s winning poem, I was inspired by a phrase from Lisa Genova’s book Inside the O’Briens, in which Katie, who is a yoga teacher, has this mantra that you are either now here or nowhere.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 11, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this late Friday evening. It’s too late for coffee for my liking, but I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare regardless. I’m pretty sure there are still some soft drinks in the fridge, so if you’d like a drink, you can have one of those. Or you can just have water. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d ask you about your weather. The weather here has been truly beautiful all week. Yesterday, the temperature rose to about 16°C. Today, it was slightly cooler, but still about 14°C and mostly sunny. Over the weekend, we’re supposed to get slightly cloudier weather and we may get rain on Monday and Tuesday. Oh well, I guess that’s a welcome change for the farmers.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you all about the new creative projects I’ve been busy with lately. First, early in the week, I finished yet another polymer clay unicorn. This one, for those who can’t see, is teal with purple legs, tail, mane and ears. The purple color is the color I’d been mixing myself a few weeks ago. Its horn is Pacific blue and the unicorn stands on a heart-shaped surface of the same color as its horn.

I’ve also been creating a mobile for my sister’s new baby. The baby isn’t due until May, but I don’t want to put myself under pressure.

Finally, I’ve had a bunch of ideas in my head. I got a lot of rings similar to the one I put my polymer clay owl on. One is for the mobile, but I want to use one for an Easter bunny too and maybe I can think of others too. I also thought of combining a slice of wood from a tree with polymer clay and my staff gave me a slice. I really look forward to crafting with all of this material!

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I’ve also been loving experimenting with photography and photo editing. Of course, my staff does most of the work in this case, but I tell them what I want them to do and I suggest ways of improving the pictures based on the tips I get on photography blogs. For example, when I took Wednesday’s flower pic, I didn’t realize it might look burned out due to excess sunlight. Then when I went out to take some more pictures on Thursday, I made sure to take them later in the day and to make shade with my body while my staff took the picture.

At the suggestion of one of my staff, I also downloaded an app that is really cool for collage making and such.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I had a haircut this morning. I had my hair cut in layers, so that my wavy hair comes out even more than it normally does.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you that the dietitian came by this morning too. We did an exercise in mindful eating. It was really quite interesting. We got a slice of a tangerine and had to listen to a story and, midway through, we had to look at the slice (my staff at least) and describe it without saying what it was. Then we could feel it, smell it, lay it on our lips and finally take a tiny bite, all the while describing the sensations without mentioning what we were eating. We then chewed onto the tiny bite as long as we could and then, once we’d swallowed it, had to wait until the taste disappeared. The idea is that, if I want a treat, such as a piece of licorice, I can do the same (well, except for taking tiny bites) and not take another one until the taste has truly left my mouth. I have been trying with licorice, but not been successful yet.

How have you been?

#WeekendCoffeeShare (June 4, 2021)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! I didn’t participate in #WeekendCoffeeShare last week, but today, I really want to. Even though it’s nearly 9PM, I honestly still crave coffee. So let’s grab a coffee or other drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I would share that the weather has been great here over the past week! I mean, right now I’m almost soaking in my own sweat and wishing it could be a little cooler, but it’s much better than all the rain we had during most of May.

If we were having coffee, I would share that, due to the warm weather, I was able to meet my step goal every day of the week so far. In fact, by yesterday evening, I’d gotten in more steps than during the entire week last week. Woohoo!

If we were having coffee, I would share how much I’ve been enjoying nature lately. On Wednesday, I heard a chorus of frogs when walking beside the local canal. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my phone with me and, when I did later that day and yesterday, they weren’t as loud. I still fully intend on capturing some nature video sometime soon.

If we were having coffee, I would share that today, the water system in my care home had to be cleaned professionally because legionella bacteria had been found. It scared me a little, both the contamination and its associated risks, as well as the method of cleaning, which apparently involved chlor gas. I mean, we weren’t allowed in the building while the cleaning took place, but I somehow got it in my head that I’d be forgotten. I wasn’t, of course.

While we had to be outside of the building for the day, some of my fellow clients went to the day center. The staff proposed I go with some other clients to a monkey zoo called Apenheul, which is in the city of Apeldoorn, about a 45-minute drive from Raalte. I initially didn’t want to go, as I felt I’d just be overloaded. Since I would have one-on-one support for the entire day, my staff said I didn’t have to go if I didn’t want to and could decide this morning to sit in the day center or do other activities. My husband tried to persuade me to go anyway and so I did. I didn’t join my fellow clients and took a shorter route through the zoo. Overall, it was a good experience. My one-on-one took some pictures with my phone. Unfortunately, the monkeys didn’t make many sounds.


If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I might finally start my topiramate next week. At least, the GP figured out my options for going on a different birth control (because topiramate blocks oral birth control) and okay’d my going on the depo-Provera injectible birth control. She said that she’d get back to my staff next week to make sure I can start it. Thankfully, a nurse at my care facility will be able to administer it. Please everyone pray that this means I can start the topiramate soon. I really could use some relief from my PTSD.

If we were having coffee, lastly I would however share how effective learning to be present has been for me lately. This is an exercise I found in the book Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation and it’s really quite helpful. I haven’t yet been able to practise it when very distressed, but when I’m at a moderate level of distress, it does help.

How have you been?

Just Rambling

Posted on by Astrid

IWSG

I really should be posting my Insecure Writer’s Support group post today, but I’m not fussed. I didn’t write as much over the past month as I’d liked to and the optional question doesn’t appeal to me. For this reason, I’m just going to ramble. I will post the #IWSG link and image on this post, but I won’t really be sharing much writing-related news.

I mean, the optional question is how long you let drafts sit there before redrafting. The short answer is that I don’t really do drafts. I write my pieces in one go usually and publish them onto my blog right away. Of course, I do have freewrites and some works-in-progress that I haven’t published anywhere, but even my one published piece that I wrote back in 2014, I wrote in one sitting.

Okay, now that we have this out of the way, let me ramble about other stuff. Today, like most of the past month, has been mixed. I was okay for most of the morning and afternoon, but in the evening, I’ve really been struggling. My feelings that, if I drop my mask (figuratively speaking), everyone will run from me and no-one will want to care for me anymore, are intense. For those who might be visiting from the IWSG: I live in a care facility due to my multiple disabilities, including challenging behavior. Lately, I’m spiraling more and more out of control and this seems to create a vicious cycle of anger, shame, self-hatred and more anger.

Yesterday, I had an appointment with my psychiatric nurse practitioner. We decided there that I won’t go the diagnosis route for dissociative disorders, but that off the record at least we agree that I have dissociative identity disorder (DID). We won’t do a whole lot of system mapping. Not only have I done this already, but it seems counterproductive to the idea of needing to practice being present.

Speaking of which, I looked up the learning to be present exercise in the first chapter of Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation and had my staff write it down. The book is in English (at least, my edition is) and my native language is Dutch, so I translated the exercises and where appropriate, adapted them to suit my needs. After all, one of the exercises is naming three things you can see around you. As I am blind, this won’t work. I do find that other exercises do help me. One in particular is the butterfly hug.

Tomorrow, my GP will get back to me about my medication. I would’ve gotten topiramate prescribed to me for my PTSD symptoms, but found out last week that it’d block my birth control pill from working. My nurse practitioner would originally have prescribed the topiramate, but now I need to work something out about getting on a different contraceptive first. This will hopefully be sorted tomorrow or at least then I’ll know when I can come in to see my GP about it. I really hope this medication (the topiramate) will help, since I’m on quite an emotional rollercoaster.

Finding God in the Middle

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s prompt for Five Minute Friday (#FMF) is “Middle”. I sat thinking about what I want to write for a bit. The prompt really resonates with me, but I wasn’t too sure why. Then I realized that, in all of my life, I struggle to find the middle.

In dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), I learned to practise finding the middle. The middle between emotional mind and rational mind, for example, is called Wise Mind. But there are other things that require the skill of dialectics.

For example, I struggle to reconcile my relatively high (sometimes even seen as very high) IQ with my low emotional level of functioning. I know rationally that, when staff leave the room, they aren’t on the North Pole, but emotionally it feels that way.

Then again, there is somehow a middle. I still am both highly intelligent and emotionally vulnerable, after all. If they were mutually exclusive, I wouldn’t be me. And I am me. And that’s okay.

DBT is partly based on Buddhist thinking. However, I do believe that God does call us Christians to find the middle ground too. Like Kate writes in her own contribution, God is there always: He was there in the past, He will be there in the future, but He is definitely also there in the middle, that is, the present.

This is also what DBT calls us to do: be present in the here and now. Mindfulness is one of the core skills of DBT and it doesn’t matter that the idea of it originated with Buddhist thinkers. In fact, when we as Christians pray and especially when we are still, we are present. God calls us to be present, to receive his grace in the Holy Spirit. DBT fans can call that Wise Mind all they want. I call it God’s speaking to me.