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ThisIs543
2 4,350 M Seeking Light 5
PathStep 306 Compassion hearts172 Forum posts212 Forum upvotes216 Current upvotes216 Age GroupAdult Last activeFebruary, 2025 Member sinceSeptember 1, 2017
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Putting my mental health first has helped me to move forward.

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Mindfulness isn't happiness
Mindfulness Center / by ThisIs543
Last post
 July 28th, 2019
...See more (Is this the right place to post this?) I think there is a lot of confusion that mindfulness is about being happy. That if you are struggling with life, you can't be mindful. That if you are poor, depressed, anxious or abused, that you can't be mindful - or possibly even worse, it is made to sound like mindfulness is the thing that will cure anything that needs to be fixed. But mindfulness can happen at anytime. You aren't telling yourself you are happy all the time. That is just another form of self-delusion. You're just watching, becoming one with awareness: This is how things are right now. Maybe you aren't happy with it, but maybe you can find a way to be ok with it. Awareness isn't happy or sad, anxious or depressed, angry or in denial. Awareness simply is. This is how your body is feeling right now. This is what your mind is thinking. This is the sound that surrounds you. There is absolutely nothing that keeps you from practicing mindfulness - except unconsciousness. There are moments of great discomfort and pain in any life. Mindfulness doesn't fix your pain or make the discomfort go away, but it does give you a different way to relate to your pain. Pain isn't constant, it ebbs and it flows. Can you be aware of the pain, and ride the waves? Can you let go of the stories you tell yourself about your pain, like it will never get better or no one feels the way you do? Mindfulness is a buzzword right now, like "peace" was in the 70s. And we see a lot of the same imagery. Here is a beatific being, usually dressed in white with a happy meditative look on her face. But mindfulness doesn't always look peaceful. If you were to watch me in my day, and trying to figure out when I was practicing mindfulness, I sincerely doubt you would be able to tell. I might be smiling, but I might have a frown of concentration or be listening intently to a coworker. I might be crying or teaching group cycle. I might be sighing as I press the elevator button. I have been practicing mindfulness for twenty years (ish), and I have probably gotten to the point I am able to practice this open awareness most of the day. 60-80%, on the average day. But only 5% of that will see me meditating with a peaceful expression on my face.
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Rheumatoid arthritis
Disability Support / by ThisIs543
Last post
 January 27th, 2019
...See more Hi everyone! One of my goals is to make daily self-care posts, including the forums here. I check in with the chronic pain forum pretty regularly, and it seems kind of sleepy. Unless I'm not looking in the right places :-). So rheumatoid arthritis has been the condition that I've been dealing with for 2 or 3 years now. Long enough that I forgot my diagnosis date! I'm pretty achy, although the pain's pretty well managed by medication and rest. The fatigue, however, can still be pretty bad. I also deal with depression, so sometimes it can be hard to unwind the threads between depression and pain. I work part-time, which people don't really seem to understand. And sometimes I wish I could do more, but the fact is that 24 hours a week really wipes me out. And I'm lucky that I can make enough money to live on part time. Plus it gives me extra time in the morning for yoga and meditation, extra time with my dog and cats. So at this point I'm not really sure I would want to go back to full-time. RA is a much different reality to live with than I imagined. But in some ways what I imagined is worse, like my joints don't really get swollen because I'm in early stages. But I never imagined that arthritis could make you so tired, like you're constantly fighting off the flu. So that can be difficult to manage.
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