What a morning! I was up before the alarm went off and ready to get out of bed. I was already feeling much better than yesterday. I'm not sure what all the factors are. Mike is still gone, gone. That hasn't changed. Was that the deepest moment of my grief, a two-day meltdown? Or did dunking my head in a bowl of ice water turn the trick? I did it because my eyes were bothering me, itching, and burning. The ice water dip takes care of that like a charm.
I had an appointment to take Elsa to the dog groomer. I usually have her in by 7 am, dropping her off on my way to Bikram. The groomer said, don't bother coming in before 8. That gave me time to take care of some paperwork before I set out.
First, I needed the packing slip from Acoustical Solutions so I could send the clips back. Dorothy had taken a picture and texted it to me when she forgot to include it in her repacked Priority Mailbox. I tried five times to email that picture to myself. Not one came through.
I called the company to ask if I could just put a note in the box. I was told no. I needed some official document. They would send it to me -sometime during the day. While I was on the phone with Tom, the tech who sold me the clips in the first place, I told him that I thought he failed to do his job. He sold us material without giving us all the information. He said Scott watched the video; it was apparent it was a drop ceiling. (The drop ceiling makes the ceiling in Yvette's quarters too low, especially since she had a ceiling fan.) I told him I had watched the video too. However, because I was unfamiliar with the system, my attention was on the mechanism. I had no reason to catch that it was a drop ceiling and by how much. I assumed there would be no height difference between a regular sheetrock ceiling and the one installed with these clips. Also, he did not make it clear that we would have to buy the furring channels separately. As I finally looked at the process, I didn't know that it would prevent vibration from coming through from people walking above when the problem is the creaking of wood against wood.
I finally called Dorothy and asked her if she could email it to me quickly. She came through for me. I closed up the box with the packing slip and put it into the car.
Next was dealing with the background check process for the Step Up Tutoring Program. They said that I needed paper and ink fingerprinting because I was out of state. I got that from my local police station, but it didn't have the ORI # of the Step Up Program on it. When they sent a picture of the sheet to me, I could see it had a printed ORI # with the name Hilo Police beneath it. Huh? What was that going to do for me?
I remembered clearly the clerk asking me if I knew the ORI number. I said no. She told me that she could not fill out any information on the sheet for me. She gave me a book of codes to use to fill in the various boxes. Then why didn't she tell me what was going on? If I didn't know better, I'd say the police department ran a con on me.
They said if I wanted the information to go to some other company other than their police department, I had to bring in a fingerprint card from that company with the ORI number already written in. They said they cannot release a card from their office without an ORI number in it. Okay. Why didn't they tell me that? Why did they make me pay for this useless card?
I will have to go back because I have additional questions. A) What did I get with this card? How does it benefit me? B) When I bring in a blank fingerprint card with their ORI number, can that number be written in by hand, or have does it have to be preprinted? C) I also would like to know why I was allowed to get this card without asking what I wanted it for? Weird isn't the word for it.
Wow! Wow! Wow! I wish I recorded this session with D. This was amazing. I don't know if I can even reconstruct it. It started with me asking him if he thought he remembered the math facts better. He said yes. He was able to remember 2x3= successfully each time, but that was it. He had such a clear memory of the number 10 on his apartment, which I understand to be the correct part of the brain for visual working memory. I asked him if he was using the forehead part of his brain to remember the multiplication facts. He said no. It had slipped up higher.
I guess I asked him if it just slipped up there against his will, and he just couldn't hold it in place at his forehead. He said yes. I asked him about the direction of this sliding. I gave him some possibilities. He said it moved in a circle and made a move around the crown of his head, moving to the right and coming round to the left, moving around his head. He said something to the effect that he had drawn a circle. It was clear from what he said that the circle didn't describe what he was feeling. Again, he was not observing what is. As I pursued it a bit more, he made it clear that the movement was at the left side of his head in a clockwise motion while looking directly at that point.
I asked him if he could do a spin release; did he remember how to do it? He said yes, but when I asked him to describe the process, it became clear he had no recall. I told him that if he had this problem with his memory for the rest of his life, he would have to start asking people for help instead of covering it up, making things much, much worse for him in the long run. Then he admitted he didn't remember.
I described the process again. Instead of restraining the spinning in D's head, he had to allow it to move as fast as it wanted. When it reached its top speed, it would go away. It must be the way a tornado looks when it goes up into the sky and disappears. Oh, he said. He did remember.
Now, this is the part I don't exactly remember. I don't know how we arrived at the next point. I think he just started answering a question I had asked a long time ago. He said that what he liked about not remembering is that you could forget the bad things. Here's where the "Wow! Wow! Wow!" came in. He was showing self-awareness and an ability to articulate that awareness. Need I say it again? Wow! Wow! Wow!
I asked him to remember a bad moment. Now, this is a nine-year-old child boy whose father died when he was two. Here's a likely candidate for a bad memory. Fortunately, he spoke faster than I could and brought up one he was ready to deal with. He remembered when he was standing on stage and couldn't remember what he had to say. No, I didn't tell him how many people have similar nightmares. Although I do think this probably happened to him.
I asked him where he felt the bad feeling. He said in his head. I would imagine it felt like it was about to explode. But I asked him to pay attention to the rest of his body. We checked out his big toes, his heels, and his fingers. There was no bad feeling in his toes or his heels, but there was in his ankles. I told him it sounded like the bad feeling was in his whole body except his feet. I asked him how he felt about the feeling, did he like it or hate it. He hated it.
I had him do a standard release I developed inspired by Buddhists. I have the forebrain, the executive function part, tell the hindbrain, everything that isn't forebrain, to "Let go of anything bad and keep anything good or anything he still needs about his hatred for this bad feeling." Dealing with the hatred for the feeling before dealing with the actual feeling is inspired by Buddhist teachings. After doing this exercise, I always ask if a person feels more relaxed or tenser or the same. The goal is an increase in relaxation. That's how I know we're doing the right thing.
Once D. felt as much relaxation as he could from that first statement, we did the other half. I had to tell him I didn't know if it was true for him or not. We would find out together when he did the exercise. This part of the exercise is to "Let go of anything bad and keep anything good or anything he still needed about his love for the bad feeling." I told him how I always do both with myself, and I'm often surprised about how some part of my loves what I think is bad.
He experienced even greater relaxation (release) from this part of the exercise than the first part. We stopped here because I felt he had done enough work for one day. It didn't look like much, but it was huge from my point of view. He had altered his whole world view and his view of himself. I didn't want to push for any more at this point.
It had taken over a year for D. to trust me enough or himself enough to get to this point. There are some kids I can do this exercise successfully within the first session. What is going on with this little boy? If he's deliberately killing off his memory, that would explain a lot about him. D. isn't some freak who has intentionally disabled himself. We all have to make monumental decisions dealing with life's problems at a very young age. We often choose paths that work in the short term but are disastrous in the long-term. How is a two-year-old supposed to understand that as they make these life-altering decisions?
I had him read to me from one of the Magic School House books. He still hadn't found either copy of Socks. It's in his house somewhere. He initiates treasure hunts for his missing stuff in his family on a regular occasion.
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Musings:
I find it interesting that the far right is screaming about anarchists but refusing to wear masks. That is a disregard for the welfare of others and the law. They are promoting anarchy.
Marxism: Marx talked about the revolution of the proletariat. This is what we are facing now. The workers of the United States feel ignored, denigrated by those in power and those with more education.
Someone once told me that once you have determined your vision of the nature of man, everything else follows from there. For Marx, everything was about the material world. Workers wanted fair wages, decent working conditions. I think he got that wrong.
It is not that workers don't want fair wages and decent working conditions, but there is something they want more than that. Or let's say once the very basics of those conditions are met, the rest has to do with feeling valued. If an employer tells people that they are making a meaningful contribution, that can go a long, long way to satisfying a basic need. Of course, all that is blown when they see the employer riding the gravy train and clearly laughing at their gullibility. Ah, then, run for your life.
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