on my lust for self-improvement

I laugh to think that I have my father to thank for my devotion to self-improvement, because my father was a steadfast non-improver and hater of change in general. He was fixed in his ways ever since I knew him and allowed himself to become ever more fixed, incurious and unquestioning as time went on.

But it just so happens that I first met the literature of self-improvement on our family bookshelves. I am not at all sure that Dad actually read a single volume. Or even a chapter. He did have a hypnosis relaxation record he used to lie on the lounge room floor and listen to, though. The LP had a black and white cover with a giant scary spiral (Hitchcock's Vertigo no doubt helped with that) and the record label's grainy logo of the Sphinx added an extra gloomy mysteriousness to it.
But over on the bookshelf was Dale Carnegie's classic 'How to Win Friends etc' and a book by a man who was an exponent on multi-tasking one's way to achievement and success. He had his family learn foreign languages as they brushed their teeth, and such like. I have pieced for myself a story of why and how these books got there. My Dad worked as a Singer Sewing machine sales repairman. He saw his job as an excuse to drive around the vast dusty suburban roads of Brisbane and the flat Redland Bay Area between brief visits to women needing their machines repairing. I think his boss must have tried to get a more pro-active attitude out of his employee - and possibly a few more working hours to boot. It wasn't a position he held down for long. Dad wasn't really cut out for sustained regular employment.

My father had nervous problems. Official diagnosis: 'nerves'. This was said dismissively to my poor young country-girl mother (so she told me) when she had followed Dad's panicked demands for a doctor to be sent out in the middle of the night (yes those were the days when you could call a doctor out to your home and they would actually come). I think she also once used the phrase 'anxiety neurosis' or some thing like that.

It was an interesting environment to grow up in. Dad ran our family, well his moods did, managed by my mother. And my mother told me stuff about my father. My early life was curtailed by my father. 'Play quietly in your room and don't disturb your father'. Mum told me she had schooled me with this. Told me when I was about 30. I was surprised, I thought I had chosen to tinker in my room with tiny dolls and packs of cards (as I couldn't play card games due to lack of playing partners and as no one had even taught me solitaire, I used the face cards instead as characters in my story scenarios). Mum had another story that I used to stand in front of the mirror for hours talking to myself. I was always a bit embarrassed by this - did it mean I was vain? I realized eventually that I must have been profoundly lonely. But it's like the fish looking for the ocean 'you're in it!' it doesn't need identifying, it's invisible and impalpable, it's just ...existence.

When I was 7 about to become 8. The family took a 4 day car journey to teh Queensland outback. The last three of those days I experienced travel sickness to the point of nausea and remember standing by the roadside, voiding my foodless stomach of the very last of its stock of bile and then my very recently swallowed saliva, while my father loomed over me bellowing 'it's all in the mind!' Which is ironic and un-compassionate of him as that's exactly where all his problems were. 

When I was 17, I once had to cancel a driving lesson at my father's request so I could hold his hand as he lay on the floor and moaned. 'If only a man had a broken arm, he could understand!' He couldn't understand and it's probably fair to say he refused to understand. The fact that he mentioned understanding was startling to me as I was required not to understand, required not even to be aware of Dad's 'nerves'. I had been briefed by mum never to mention it. And yet, regrettably, here I was on this day, having to be sudden witness to non-existent thing. He wanted to hold my hand. I felt trapped. Before you think me heartless, a little back story - once when I was three he had made me sit on his stomach (while the morbid baritone drone of the Hypnosis record relentlessly intoned) because he had a stomach upset. (Yes, I have been through this with my therapist.) You see, Dad's ideal child was an inanimate one. 'Children should be seen and not heard' was declaimed often. Clearly 'children are also a handy alternative to a hot water bottle' was another of his deeply cherished beliefs.


On this exquisitely uncomfortable occasion (hand, not hot water bottle) the sound track was provided by the radio which rode the airwaves always. It was interminably tuned to his favoured jabbering, MOR station. (Actually more lowest common denominator, than MOR, but let's not dwell). The radio was playing a merry American tune 'There's such a lot of living to do!' I sat there, desolate that my lesson had been cancelled, afraid at what this state of my father's meant or would lead to and feeling - how can I put this? - in a dull panic of claustrophobia and aversion, combined with a prayerfulness that Dad be deaf to the song that was playing so that he not notice the hideous irony of it all.

There's music to play
Places to go, people to see!
Everything for you and me!

Life's a ball
If only you know it
And it's all just waiting for you
You're alive,
So come on and show it
There's such a lot of livin' to do

My father wasn't the most aware of men, or so I felt, so I was hopeful. 

And that was when he said, with a sentimental-to-melodramatic cadence: 'Ah, Peta, It doesn't feel like there's a lot of livin' to do.' which capped it all off nicely. I was left me to wrestle down yet a billowing cloud of sickly absurdity while I simultaneously entertained the somehow horrific concept that I might be expected to comfort him in some way.

And people wonder where my sense of absurd dark humour comes from.

new brain

There was a wonderful Python sketch where some 'Gumbys' in their corner-tied pocket hankies gurned 'new brain', or so I remember.

I watched Limitless the other night on DVD.

I so want to have that level of smartness - the 

drug usage and violent drug barons I can do without but I so want the smarts.

Anyway - here's my update.

I was weirdly disappointed that in our recent session we were focusing on the tinnitus - though I'd love to be free of it, of course! - because I am so invested in being cleverer. I asked Dr P and she seemed to agree with me saying - well if we fix this we are helping the brain overall, aren't we? She seemed to say yes but she could have been humoring me.

However - here's a cautious thought. I feel a tad smarter. I am sitting doing thing on the computer and my memory as I go about my email tasks seems better - I make fewer mistakes with numbers. I feel less fog. I can look at the top title bar of a document with more ease - that seemed to be too effortful in the past - hence me gettign into a muddle with which document I was working on - relying on a motor skill memory (when had I last clicked from doc to doc) rather than simply looking! How bizarre. How wonderful.

Also exciting news...if the volume indicator on my TV is accurate (variables, variables, subjectivity)  I seem to be hearing  better!

FANTASTIC.

I have always suspected that it's the high frequency sounds of my tinnitus that are obstructing me hearing consonants so clearly. At the hospital ( I must write about my Tinnitus Therapy session) they have told me I have lost upper range hearing - I don't like to take it on. Glasses one can accept, but the hearing aid is far from a fashion accessory at the moment. Even if my hearing is slightly impaired, I'm sure that the tinnitus lowering will be good news for me.

It's rather exciting.

If I were to rate my tinnitus - I might say 25% in right ear (it's actually seems  hard to gauge each ear level - my access to right hear hearing is impeded by the sounds in my left) and 65% in left. Which is a big reduction. Yes, it really is.
Miracles may be possible. 
Or rather, Science works.
I'm cautious of course, 
but a tad excited.

tackling the tinitus

I've been working hard and away for a bit. Recently visited Dr Parkinson for another session of Brainwork. Four Protocols all on the central strip of the brain.

Dr P asked which side the tinnitus was worse on. Usually the left, I said.

We worked with the first three protocols. I scored pretty well compared to the sluggishness of the fist attempt at these trainings last visit. In Bar form you could see a healthy and satisfactory ( to Dr P) downward trend.

And in the format where tit looks like a multicoloured carpet being woven before your eyes, it was all looking very smooth and coherent indeed - apart from on sudden spike that mystified the Doctor.

Then the final area - the electrodes had been moved over to the right side for the last two. One still remaining glued to the bone behind my left ear (with the milky gel product Dr P was finding it hard to deal with on this warmish day). 'That one monitors your heart. The heart sends a much stronger charge than the brain (I'd heard this in personal development contexts and here was this scientist verifying it!), so we gather that data and subtract it from the brain data.'

This last reading was crazy - very incoherent. Dr P was surprised. I was scoring ok, about 200-odd by the end of the session, but everytime my synapses hit the targets, they jumped back to their scrambled default. 'This proves that your brain agrees with you - the right side monitors the left ear - the tinnitus will seem worse in your left ear.'

The carpet graph looked very jangled, a weaving machine gone wrong. I thought about the jangled nerves I had when my neighbours played techno - the way my skin prickled and I walked about the flat as if on knives - the time I first manifested tinnitus, a whole 13 years ago.

A bit of me is afraid that the tinnitus will go - strange to admit, I know but it's a real sensation, it's like: miracles will be possible, world-view overturned, scary!

But of course I'd love to hear quiet again.

Sitting typing this today - right ear much quieter. left ear still audible, perhaps more like 7 than the 8 I gave it in the consulting room on Tuesday.

too much theta?

So, another session on the 6th June. Two new protocols and I think still the 4 old ones - I had thought that I had fixed three and it was just one to polish. But I am not complaining - get those brain bits spic and span. I like thoroughness.
And am chuffed that I am on 2 new 'protocols' - they are targeting one area at the side and one at the top of my brain - both temporal zones...I think.

I do ask but a couple of times Alan misunderstood what I was asking (I failed to ask clearly enough?) and hey, I'd rather let whoever is doing the session get on with it correctly rather than pin them down. 
I am sitting here with my journal now to find the notes I made after that session. Let's go back in time a bit first.

Here's a note from my journal 25/5/11 'I feel like I am experiencing things more directly. wondering at pigeons, excited by mudflats outside the train window (on a trip down to Plymouth) like I am observing natural life rather than noticing the concept of it as in 'ooh, rivermouth''. Hard to capture this stuff, I think I felt less like I was gripping reality from the language side but sensing things more. And that nature seemed more three dimensional because of it.

I had a couple of nights where I woke and spent two hours or so reading, then late lie ins to catch up. Not ideal. Is this still brain fatigue (which should be reducing) or due to something else?

I do feel life is getting better clearer. I am doing the brain work but I am also listening to a Sedona CD each morning during yoga. I had a leak in my flat and as part of the clear-up of things damp, I did some extra cluttering. That always greases the wheels, I find.
4/6/11 'I notice when I rush I feel good. As in 'good girl'' I remember that my father always required us to jump to it. It was usually not clear what we were jumping to, but the required reaction seemed to be to instantaneously achieve a state of - I might have said alertness, but it was not,  it was panic. Panic was the required , correct, safe, 'good' response. In this state, I also seemed slightly nervy and pathetic which was also 'good' because I was fulfilling my family role. A day at the beach could be interrupted at any time by a loud whistle. This meant run back to the car instantly or you risk being left behind. I finally retrained myself not to respond to whistles. Hassle from workmen on scaffolding was part of my father's legacy. I did ask Dr P if a habit of hyper-vigilance in childhood (and this is just one of a thousand of examples I could give to demonstrate that) could have caused some of my dyscalculia and she said yes. But enough of the turgid childhood reminiscences and recriminations: Brain Training!


Again the speed of my brain to make corrections is commented upon. Anything over 20 is good, apparently, but on my old familiar protocols, I score 40 a minute. Feel pleased.


On the new protocols it's 'less forgiving', Alan says. The chirruping and cheeping 'rewards' have gone and there is only one sound, the metallic 'clunk' - which occurs each time all the targeted conditions are met (this is reduced delta and high beta reducing and the normal or slow beta rising). I was slow on one of these new protocols, but that's ok.


Alan shows me another graph where there is a peak a sharp witch-hat triangular spike, that is a surplus of theta activity!!


Now theta is the stuff of meditation. I spent years meditating. I used the Holosync programme, too...I thought that the aim was to have all your usual brain functions ongoing but with high theta to boot. Like great Indian saints or Buddhist Masters, do, if I have this right....
And here we are trying to eliminate my theta. Ok, let's do it.
I started to make story-sense of things that probably aren't related at all.
People who have seen my show Invocation will know of my chagrin of getting a nun who adored transcendent silence on a Past Life workshop. I wanted something I could more usefully channel to deal better with an ambitions colleague and increasing demands to be more business oriented.
In another workshop I got a meditative figure again as guide and remember being very troubled about it - meditation is all well and good. I am doing plenty of it but I need to be left-hemisphere function sharp. I need much more of the hard crystalline smarts, not the deep indigo and gold transports, please.
Was a part of me getting this - too much theta in an area it shouldn't be, causing me an abstract fog or a transcended absence right where there should be engagement. I did use to zone out sometimes in conversations or during talks...


Alan said we did 5 minutes each of the new protocols and 10 each of the old ones.


The second new one I scored well, even thought there were two lulls. I increased my target score from 2 to 4 ( was that double or just 2 points more?) either way I was satisfied. 


Came home at 3.30 after running some chores and I slept for an hour and a half. I was meant to be in Belgium today and tomorrow, but my client cancelled. Inconvenient on one way but actually I was delighted. I was tired for some reason anyway, and after the new brain work I think packing for travel and an early start would have been hard work.

what's normal?

I've made only a couple of stupid mistakes of late and have not recorded what they were and so have forgotten.

Other people lose their car keys or something with regularity. I love reading Tim Dowling in the Guardian, who records his shortcomings with passports etc. Was he dropped on his head at some point? Or are all humans just simply imperfect?


What I feel mostly at the  moment is the absence of panic. And perhaps I am experiencing less weighty fatigue. It's not a spectacular outcome, I'm not suddenly able to do calculus or anything, but it's huge. Less brain freeze. Less brain fug. Came in handy when Thames Water caused a leak from my apartment to the flat below...while I was out of town. I failed to experience brain-freeze and although I felt the temptation for the wheels to freeze in their tracks, I pursued options one by one. I have to reflect though that I was not alone - someone helped me google a local 24 hour plumber which was causing me a tad 'frazzled blindness'. Never used that phrase before, but it sums up what i was experiencing.

Often in life I have not attempted things or avoided things for fear of that feeling of panic and failure. That state is so unpleasant and one feels so helpless and humiliated in its grip. It is more than the event, vastly hugely more. And somewhere one realizes that and the urge then to gee onself into capable, adult action at that point only makes things worse. 
Hm, now that I accurately describe it to myself like that, this calm is a huge outcome indeed. Can one only clearly describe a mental (slash emotional) state accurately once one is OUT of it?


I had another visit with Dr P. on 3rd May. She had recently attended a conference on tinnitus and the speaker had kindly shared his power-point presentation with her. The 'event-stress-further activation-stress' cycle was supported by his research. I also learned that the tinnitus noise is created like this - there is the 'inciting incident', so to speak, then the symptom (the noise) followed by ensuing concern, then anxiety at the symptom, fear of the return of the 'inciting incident' (in my case the techno playing neighbours), which is when the brain starts looking for the original offensive sound and.....
that brain activity of looking is (or creates) the noise that you hear, if I understand correctly. Nature can be cruel. Or at lease counterproductive, it seems.


Three of my four 'protocols' (or little bespoke programmes for selected parts of the brain) are regularizing nicely and Dr P wants to get the last recalcitrant one sorted out before we start on the Tinnitus. 

Then I want to go for the brain brightening. Calculus here we come. Only kidding. Shakespeare memorization perhaps, better problem solving definitely. Financial acumen, that would be great.


I have been directing/devising a piece of outdoor theatre. There was a day when I looked like it wasn't knitting together. I went to bed affirming that the idea had to come up from my unconscious. And indeed it did. At 3am. I began having extra insights. I'd lurch up and scribble in the book beside my bed, switch off the light, lie down and then lurch up again. This happened about seven times. I did get my solution. This may or may not be related to the brain work, but I found it interesting to observe nonetheless.What's new is the sure belief that it's not me  who comes up with anything it's the 'everythingness' as my friend Drew said the other day. The universe, the great collective unconscious, the Field, Unity, however you want to call it. Not just brain work but The Artists Way and The Sedona Method have helped me not just think that this is true, but to experience the trust that it is true.
Oh god (there is none?) do I sound evangelistic now? I just came up with another word. The Universal Genius. That's what we plug into when acting, or when clowning. Create the conditions as best you can then in that fullness of emptiness, await the impulse in the moment.

running on

I can report:

feeling calmer and less panicked, less self blame, more seeing others objectively.

There's a lot of work I am doing at the moment and a lot of stress - actual heart pain, promoting my workshops.

Back to Brain training - on Tuesday May 3rd, I think it's session 4. I do 4 protocols again. Felt the green wasn't high enough and the yellow not down enough but the black was well down.

But Alan and Dr Parkinson note a high score, in the 400's - 'anything over 200 is good.' And on the graph all the lines are calming down over all and looking more orderly.

Dr P is going to assess my progress with all the recorded charts and I will hear about that next session, hopefully.

I have made my follow up session appointment with Julia, much later than the stated '5 weeks time'.

Last night I did a task on the computer that would have made my old self give up and possibly cry. My hopes are rising. My appetite for the smarts is high!

mistakes and small successes

Right - I am meant to be improving my brain, but I am also wanting to log my progress ( and after all the repair work has only just begun.

So I am more and more aware of my mistakes. And how I deal with them.

When I am around people who are stressed, it seems to jangle my brain.
Sudden urgent questions do the same.
But surely everyone feels this.
I am learning to say - just one moment, I will get out my timetable/sheet of paper/list and then I 'll give you that answer.

At lunch on this job the stress is on - I am working on  my focus, working to breathe through everything. Using Sedona Method to let go of anything that is not essential. But when there's a lot of extra things happening, I sense my physiology and demeanour getting a tad ragged, which  disappoints me.

I do a few stupid things. Like:

I ask the student leader where are the folders? - but it's the morning and they come in the afternoon.
It's like I am relying on / responding to visual cues, (the student coming to the door) rather than having a clear narrative grip of the processes through time.
I make notes from moment to moment in my journal in the lulls or over my 11am to 12pm lunch break.

I write:
All the systems make me stupid. Questions make me feel dull and confused. Annoying that my brain doesn't work as well as I'd like. (I partly use my journal for stream of consciousness as a kind of cleansing). I seem to be stupid in the mornings, then a bit better after 11am. I say Cafe Nero instead of Costa and am corrected. I want to shout 'who cares!' I have been corrected in the past over numbers or clock reading (google dyscalculia symptoms). Once someone was furious with me for saying up instead of down. My reaction in theses moments is : but what does it matter! and I justify myself with something like 'but all the evil high street coffee barons are the same!'
Ah the treacherous workings of the brain in cahoots with the small emotions and the ego/identity!

One day I cannot find an applicants form ( it is where I didn't expect - simple manual error, moving the form without recording it on the front of the folder it was moved from.
We are very late getting to the assembled after lunch. I read the names in a state of humiliation (hopefully invisible to any but me).

More mistakes:

I say April but what comes out of my mouth is August

Speaking with another colleague, I confuse students Sascha and Natacha in my memory

On April Fools Day I write 4/1/11 on the folders - correct it.

One of the Student Leaders makes the kind of mistake I do - It's interesting to observe how it makes one feel about that person...well at least I understand and sympathise to a degree. I can almost see his lack of focus...he's greta with the interpersonal, like me, but you need the other to lead well.

I think I am copying a Client's number into my iphone - I try to call her but each time I do the office phone rings....I have copied the office number. Classic Clown routine.

I am focused on the person I want to ring - can't spot the mistake right away.

But!

I figure out a way to overprint the forms that are bamboozling the panelists - with the YES and NO at the bottom missing. It's a tiny thing, but it is appreciated.

Helen is great - she really wants to get the whole process as right as it can be.

I get disappointed when I miss a something.

Later she reminds me that she too, makes mistakes.

I spend a lot of time one day dealing with students who have not learnt the required speeches. I am firm and kind and offer counsel occassionally. 

I finish taking the antiscar (correctly this time) - there seemed to be fewer ampules in the box this time...

I write:

is it that tracking and spotting mistakes is making me smarter?

Or is it that the Homeopathy has take it's slow effect. Or because I have stated my need for focus and received fewer interruptions. Am I simply learning the job?

Noticing someone today - their use of language is less than clear - I can see them creating momentary confusion. I know hoe to spot that and remedy it. I know how to rephrase and order the information to take the frown off their brows.

My earliest memory surfaces of my Father using poor communication and of me feeling incredibly stupid. 'The plane!' He yelled! I look in the sky. 'No down there!' he's furious! A small toy plane, how nice, he's showing me something but why is he so unfriendly while he's doing it, it doesn't compute. 

Ridiculous that he was asking a 3 year old to pick up and bring him a large woodworking plane anyway.

In the evenings I am achieving much - I prepare an eflyer and posters for coming workshops. I am on fire with achievement.

A colleague says she has heard 'good things' about my teaching.

On the weekend, I go to hard pilates. I am learning to have a more positive feeling for the concept: Heroic. It's putting pain to one side and letting go of all the emotions and judgements. It's not longing for things to stop. Seeing discomfort not as a punishment, or a warning, but part of reaching something else, something better, eek, a goal.

I have a meeting about my website. I read about a 91 year old body builder and am inspired. I watch the people cheering on the marathon runners and I am touched.

There is a process Helen does at lunch which I cannot do as quickly as she can.

Part of the problem is my handwriting is scrawling and I cannot stick to columns of lists, keep changing the format.

I write: 

keep own notes

photo copy ( because Helen hand-writes this information in duplicate)

there has got to be a way

carbon paper

or a scanner

I start to concoct an idea for a form...(yes, I who 'hates forms' starts to dream of a form that will help me order the actions involved in this process!)

I work on it on Helen's computer when I have a moment. After a day or two, it becomes a part of the process and the student leader thinks it works really well from his point of view. I am ridiculously so pleased with myself.

I dream of a flood coming. I run ( with unaccustomed athleticism) from it.