Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    Hi Jody--
    
    GOOD FOR YOU to help yourself by taking the seminar you mention.
    I'm sure that will help you a lot.
    
    Altho the allergy I have every spring (when all those little green
    thing-ys are in the air) is not serious, it is sure annoying, and
    it slows me up sometimes.  So I have a small understanding.
    
    As far as coping/understanding/accepting/looking at a brighter side,
    I'll tell you what has helped me when I get this way about anything.
    I visit someone in the hospital, or listen to the news, or (best)
    listen to a friend.  Most always you wouldn't want THEIR problems!
    This in no way diminishes what you have, and how you cope with it;
    but for me, I've found that comparison makes me see my problems
    much differently.
    
    Keep your spirits up,
    
    Jane
    

    *Everyone* has problems!  You are not alone.  The "poor, why me?"
    stuff is for kids!  Some people think I've got no trouble because
    I've been skinny all my life and I have money, but I still suffer
    from acne and I am absolutely the most near-sighted person I know.
    I've lived with both of these problems for most of my life (eyes 
    since age 7 and skin problems since age 14) and I do not go around
    thinking "poor me" or "why me?"  because I figured out *long* ago that
    *virtually everyone* has some chronic problem that they have to live
    with.  I make the most of the good things I do have and I try to
    minimize the impact of my negative attributes.  I hardly ever think
    about them.  I'll bet each contributor in this conference has her
    or his own story too.
    
    Keep working at it.
    
    	-Ellen

    I have been a chromic asthmatic (I have a combination of bronchial and
    cardiac asthma as a result of being severely burned as an infant and
    then developing pneumonia...) most all of my life.
    
    As a child at school I was too weak for gym class, too badly affected
    by chlorine to go in a swimming pool...
    
    Despite missing classes I eventually succeeded academically.
    
    Despite physical weakness I succeeded in my physical goals.
    
    My condition is controlled and mitigated (but not cured) by a drug cocktail
    that has affects on my activity. As a teenager I was introduced to yoga
    and transcendental meditation by my doctor (before the Maharishi and the
    Beatles made it popular), and that helped too.
    
    By careful meditation and learning self control and discipline I have
    reduced my dependence on drugs to an emergency only inhaler. I studied
    the martial arts and achieved black belts in Tai Kwon Do, Hap Kido,
    Karate, Ju Jitsu and Aikido. I managed to pass a military physical (I
    didn't tell them about the asthma and they didn't find it)... In fact
    since my teens the problem has only rarely affected me. Only when I
    am tired and overworked, or overstressed does the self control crack
    and I have trouble.                         
    
    I am not unique: Steve Ovett who held all the world records for the
    track events between 800m and 10000m a few years back is a more severe
    asthmatic than I am.
    
    My message would be this: if you think of it as a problem or a handicap,
    then it will be a problem to you and will handicap you. Think of it
    as a challenge and you can soar over it and succeed in anything you
    wish.

    /. Ian .\
    

    To expand my comments on asthma and yoga/tm/exercise...
    
    (I received a mail message from a fellow noter and stupidly deleted
    it before writing down the DTN...)
    
    Asthma may be caused by a number of things, but ultimately you can describe
    the condition as an interruption of the feedback loop that controls
    your breathing within the autonomic nervous system.
    
    The condition is helped if you can increase the strength of the muscles
    of the chest and heart. It appears that to a certain extent asthmatics
    suffer from a "if you don't use it you'll lose it" syndrome - if these
    muscles aren't exercised then the feedback nerve impulses seem to grow 
    weaker, and the muscle's ability to respond to nerve impulses gets weaker, 
    both making an asthmatic attack more likely and more serious. The 
    immediate problem is that *aerobic* exercise upsets the feedback loop 
    (by increasing the heart rate and increasing the breathing rate), which 
    may be desirable in most folks but which is exactly the sort of 
    disturbance that can trigger an attack. Hence exercise is good but 
    should be strictly non-aerobic. Once you've built up the muscle strength 
    then aerobic exercise is possible. My doctors now tell me that Nautilus 
    and similar are excellent for asthmatics (when I was a teenager and could 
    have used such things they didn't exist and I used free weights).
    
    The second and more important thing is to improve control. In a [very]
    severe asthmatic attack autonomic breathing stops completely, and you
    have to tell yourself to breathe (a truly frightening experience for
    anybody who hasn't experienced or seen such an attack). Yoga exercises
    and TM both develop a greatly heightened awareness of the body's internal
    functioning (everybody has heard the usual advice to a beginner to try
    to listen to their own breathing?). In advanced practice people do learn
    to control their autonomic reflexes. This is usually demonstrated by
    the yogi who can slow down pulse/breathing or lower body temperatures
    to an abnormal degree. What the asthmatic is seeking is exactly the
    opposite. You learn to take the irregular pulse and breathing rate and
    substitute a metronomic but normal pace breathing and pulse. This can
    be used for controlling an attack: at the first symptoms of onset, instead
    of reaching for an inhaler you can use the exercises to get into a truly
    relaxed state and control the breathing. With the breathing under control
    the disturbance to the autonomic system will usually go away and you
    can slowly let it take over again. An advanced student (more so than
    I, I fear) can set up a sort of subconscious monitor that does this
    continuously, a sort of personal pacemaker. In any event it appears
    that the confidence you develop in controlling minor attacks makes them
    less likely to occur, and also reduces the risk of more major attacks.
           
    Two caveats:
    
    1) always see a physician before starting a course of exercise (and
    if using a club, it is advisable to tell them of your condition).
    
    2) relying on yoga to stem an attack may be dangerous. Recent research
    into the use of inhalers has shown that occasionally patients relying
    on them take too long to recognize the seriousness of a life threatening
    attack and seek hospital assistance. The same sort of thing is possible
    if you use yoga: it certainly doesn't *replace* medicine. Again learning
    the relaxation techniques is harmless, but you should discuss with a
    physician the advisability of using these techniques to fend off attacks.
    
    ie It works for me, but it may not work for you, so get professional
    advice.
    
                                    /. Ian .\
    

    
    Thank you all for the advice so far.  It is helpful.  However I
    feel that some clarification is in order.  In the basenote I said
    
    "Sometimes I wonder "why me?" - I'm sure things could be a lot better,
    but then again, they could also be a lot worse."
    
    If you have a similar experience to convey, please do...but don't
    think I'm trying to throw myself a pity party.  That is NOT the
    point.  I am asking for advice on how to function in a more healthy
    way.  I am VERY aware that there are people in the world with far
    worse problems than me.  I am directly related to some of them
    (many health problems are hereditary).  
    
    Feeling better already  :-)
    
    Jody
    

    "You can Heal YOur Life" by Louise Hay
    
    I liked the book, not sure if I buy all her ideas. You might get
    something out of it - keep what makes sense for you, toss what doesn't.
    
    Dawn
    

    The following response was made by a member of our community who wishes
    to remain anonymous at this time. 
    
    						=maggie
    
    ======================================================================

    While I agree that using one's handicap as a crutch is not good, in
    some cases acknowledging one's handicap and recognizing that one has to
    do things differently than other people can be a great help.  At least
    it was for me. 

    I'm not going to go into the details here because it is too difficult
    to explain in a note.   In brief, for the greater part of my life I
    have been fighting an undiagnosed psychiatric disorder.  About six
    months ago the disorder was diagnosed and explained to me.  Having an
    understanding of what was wrong with me and the ramifications of the
    disorder on my life has made it MUCH easier to cope with day to day
    reality.  It has also given me something to grasp onto when my
    perception of reality starts getting a little warped.  Prior to knowing
    that I had this disorder, I was crippled by my feelings of guilt and
    inadequacy at not being able to cope with life.  Now that I understand
    that there is a disorder, I no longer expend the energy fighting myself
    for being inadeqate.  Rather I can look at myself and see me for what I
    am with my weakness and not somehow feel that the weakness are my fault
    for failing at life. 

    Which is not to say that I now simply sit back and say that I can't do
    things because of this disorder - or use it for an excuse.  Now I know
    the scope of what I'm dealing with and how to fight it. 

    To me, it was as if I had wanted to be ballet dancer but only had one
    foot - and everyone had two feet, but everyone said it was normal to
    only have one foot and what was my problem anyway.  Then to be told,
    yes it is more difficult for you with only one foot, and that's ok.  It
    doesn't mean I can't dance, but at least I understand why it is more
    difficult. 

    I hope this makes some sense.
                                                                  

    Try HYDRA::HOLISTIC notes file.
    
    

    Read "LOVE IS LETTING GO OF FEAR" by Jerry Jampolsky. Or listen
    to Roy Masters on the AM Radio dial (95.6) From 4pm till 5pm week
    days.
    
    Both these sources will help you understand yourself and when you
    can do this you'll see the "problem" will give you up.
    
    Basically , these people get into the "mind areas" and show how
    the mind controls the body and that by itself the body does 
    nothing.

For years I felt inadequate communciating with people, and it was not until
I was in my twenties and teaching high school that I realized there was a
chronic problem underlying my difficulty-- dyslexia.  Giving the problem
a name helped my self image a great deal!  I wasn't weird-- I had a
definable problem.  It's a problem that will never go away, but it's
one I can work on and compensate for, so that I can function as an
effective communicator.

I have two primary ways of coping with the problem-- one is to work
on it from year to year, strengthening various cocmmunication skills;
another is to supplement my skills with whatever it takes to be
effective in a given situation.  

Developing skills takes a lot of time and energy for me, so I concentrate on
one area at a time and I congratulate myself whenever I make progress.
Reading and spelling came first.  Years of experimenting and drilling.
By the time I was 13, I could read at a 5th grade level, and the same year
I won a regional spelling contest.  Writing came next.  Speaking was MUCH 
tougher!  I only learned to speak with confidence by teaching in a classroom 
setting 5 classes a day for several years, when I was in my twenties.
Carrying on conversations came after that.  Beer helped a lot with that one!
At our weekly ski club meetings, everyone else was stammering and jumbling 
thoughts, too, while they hoisted a brew, so I didn't feel so strange trying 
to have a two-way or multi-way conversation with folks.  Carrying on arguments 
is still something I'm working on-- the emotional climate of an argument delays 
my listening and speaking responses.  I'm also still working on being able to 
handle questions during a formal presentation.

Compensating and supplementing for the weak areas can be tricky.  During a
presentation, I usually have one or two people in the audience primed with
answers, so that I can call on them to help out.  Or I think through the
most likely questions ahead of time and cover them somewhere in the present-
ation.  That way I can just say, "We'll cover that when we talk about ___. If
I don't answer your question then, be sure to ask it again later."  Some-
times I just have to come out and tell someone I have a problem and get
their cooperation.  And sometimes that doesn't work because the person
responds with abuse rather than cooperation.  That's their problem!

I know what you mean about the occasional "Why me!" thought.  It's a natural,
especially at a time of major frustration!  I usually take a deep breath
and think about how well I've done in overcoming the problem and how well I 
communicate overall.  And if I find myself raging about some abusive so-and-so,
I turn my thoughts to the influences that helped me grow as much as I have.

In the last 5 years or so, I've changed my self image from "a person who has
trouble communcating" to something much more realistic and much more positive.
I've read lots of books on the subject of dyslexia, and the two most influential
for me were "Reversals: a personal victory over dyslexia" and "Can't Read, Can't
Write, Can't Talk Too Good Either".  That helps, too-- to share the experience
in a positive way.  It's healing and reassuring.  Nothing like putting things 
in perspective!