Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

 

It was lights out by10, and I slept straight through till 3:30. Unheard of. I usually had to get up and pee at least two to three times a night. Of course, I didn't sleep well the night before. I had an exceptionally bad night's sleep- some glitch in interpersonal relationships. Was this due to the magnesium oil that arrived yesterday?

My acupuncturist recommended the spray for spasming muscles. The directions say it's good for sleep. I sprayed it on my lower legs, as much of them as I could reach. I was also able to get some under my right foot. I slide into bed. Hate to think about what that oil did to my sheets. 

As I read my update entries from a year ago as I entered them into the blog, I see I was working on the same physical challenge then as I am now. Objectives cycle through. Currently, I'm working on the position of my right foot while thrusting my left hip. I have to trust it as compensation for the right hip thrust. Walking that way creates stress in the left calf muscles- It feels like some nerve pinching. I find it curious that the problems in my hip show up in the outer thigh.

I'm dealing with major shifts in my relationships with others. Several people in my family are uncomfortable with me and don't enjoy me. Worse yet, they think rather poorly of me. I've decided to give up on working out these relationships. I am going to set my boundaries. My guess is one, and all will be relieved.

Shortly before I met Mike, I made a similar shift in setting boundaries. I figured I was never going to find a life partner. I decided I would see someone I was dating only once a month and only allow one phone call a week. When I was on a date, I would do exactly what I wanted to do. On one dinner date in a Chinese restaurant, I read a book. Rude, yes. He didn't call again. But I had to figure out how to make myself comfortable. When learning a new skill, mistakes are inevitable. I never had more dates, and Mike was one of them. He loved that I was prepared to take care of myself. He continued to love that in me. He said he didn't have to guess what I was thinking or feeling. 

Some love that trait in me, and some hate it. Some love my 'out there being myself' trait, and some hate it. Some love the way my mind works, and some hate it. Mike had mixed feelings about the last two. He liked my upfront-out-there behavior in relation to himself, but he was embarrassed when I was that way with others. I wasn't thrilled with some of his social behavior either, but there were no deal-breakers. The good so outweighed the bad. 

I have always been someone who struggles to make relationships work. So, I'm hanging in there when they would just as soon leave. Being with these people makes me feel lousy. Do I need this crap? This is a problem since the people I am referring to are all parts of my family. I was talking to Judy about it. With one of the people, I think we can set up mutually comfortable circumstances for us. We can play a board game, take a course, or something of that order. Casual conversation is out. That's not comfortable for either one of us. For her, I always pose the threat of bringing up a topic that will make her uncomfortable. It is her unwillingness to intrude to such an extent that she has never said, 'How are you?" She sees questions as a form of invasiveness, not an expressed interest. We are polar opposites in how we relate to others. As a result, her children are very uncomfortable with me because of how they were raised and explicit instructions to avoid a relationship with me, as I was considered 'dangerous.' 

    The people involved have no reason to modify their behavior. They all have functional lives; their coping skills work for them. I like my coping skills; they have served me well in many ways. Have they served me perfectly? No. I can't imagine anyone has a 'perfect' set for themselves, no less others. With one person, I think we can deliberately create circumstances we can be mutually functional in. With the other two, I don't see it. The extent of their discomfort with me is just too great. I know our mutual discomfort is great for one of them – very disappointing. We're just going to have to forgive ourselves and each other and start from there. 

I got another notification from my Visa credit card company that I owed money. OMG! I usually pay the moment the bill comes in the door. In the bad ole days, I sat down immediately, wrote a check, put a stamp on the envelope, and put it in the mail. Now that I switched to online payment, a bill slipped under my radar. I owed over $4,000 on a card that I usually keep under $500. The first step was figuring out why the bill was so high. Ah, it was the last payment for the additional solar panels. The payment was due on February 2, and now it's April 7. However, I can't find the bill for March. I always pay on time, and the one time I don't, I have an enormous bill. The penalty will be interesting. Next time, that credit card bill will be on the end table until it is paid. My short-term memory is gone.

I had three sessions planned for today. Fourth grade D., J, and adolescent D. Fourth grade D's mom was on the phone and couldn't get off. She wasn't free until an hour later. I had the time, and so did it then. D's reading accuracy is much better. However, he still doesn't follow the recommended procedure if he has trouble with a word. It drives me nuts. There is a good possibility he doesn't remember the procedure. He did a good job on the comprehension activity, only making a mistake if there was a not in the sentence. I asked him if he knew the ten commandments. He said yes. They go, Thou shalt not steal. If the 'nots' were left out, it would read, Thou Shalt Steal. Some difference, eh?

I sent a link to J at 2:30, but there was no response. I didn't hear from him until after 5. He said he was with his mom. He is usually a good kid. We have an easy back-and-forth relationship. I want him to listen to the audio file with the words phonemically broken down to see if this will help his verbal fluency. The problem isn't with English; it is with all languages. Last time, I did the exercise using a philosophy text, saying each sound very slowly. He found that relaxing. He fell asleep—all good. I want to do 10 minutes a day with him to see what happens with his verbal fluency.

I had an appointment with adolescent D at 4. I sent the link. There was no response by 4:05. I called his mom. They had just walked in the door, and D signed on immediately. He continued to have problems with the word average. He could decode and say the first two syllables; the third undid him. He got a vowel sound that would work. That /j/ represented by ge foiled him. He would distort the /j/ sound, adding a vowel sound. He would reverse the /a/ and the /j/ sound.  

Again, I asked him if the letters moved. He said no. I wondered if the sounds swirled around in his head. He asked, what does that mean? I described it as a feeling of confusion where things are moving around in your head instead of holding still. Yes. Where was he feeling that swirling? In the front of his head. Wow! This is the first bit of helpful feedback I've gotten from him. He is using his visual working memory to process sound. It will work in a pinch, but it is not designed for that purpose. 

I showed him where the working auditory processing center was; if you drive a pencil through the head just to the left of the soft spot and through the side at the temple, where the two pencils meet is the auditory working memory. He was able to visualize the site and focus there. I spoke some German to him and asked him to feel the vibrations in that area. He didn't feel any. I asked, "What can I do to help D?" always a good question. 

I got the image of a spot right behind and slightly above his left ear. I asked him to focus on that spot. Picture a color there. Blue. A pretty or ugly blue. A pretty blue. What's its texture, soft or hard? Soft like ice cream. How big? Medium-sized. I told him to allow it to drain. I saw it flowing down behind the ear. As it did, I saw another color being exposed. He said it was pink. A pretty or ugly pink? Ugly. I told him to instruct his brain to release anything negative about that spot to keep anything positive or anything he still needed. I told him that his unconscious mind would work that out; he didn't have to do anything. As that pink spot dissipated, I asked him if he felt a little weird. A little. Good, that means something new is happening. As it continued, I could feel increased relaxation. He concurred. In the end, we went back to the spot where the auditory working memory resides. This time I did some phonemic sounding. He could feel it. We may have solved his problem. We'll see.

______ -______-______

Musings:

I've just started working with a 7-year-old boy at the end of second grade. His ostensible problem is his reading. I had one session with him; his mother was at his side the whole time. I was surprised at how poor his word recognition skills were. His mother made it clear that that was not the problem. He refused to pay attention. He fidgeted. He played with the chair he was sitting in and the desk drawer. He could not sit still. He had a bouncy ball in school, but he didn't have that here. She said he didn't want to do the session; he just wanted to play video games. She said if he didn't do as well as she knew he could, he wouldn't get to play video games.; he would have to sit with her and read. Boy, his reading improved immediately.

His hyperactivity has to be dealt with first, but not with drugs. My body hurt when I had to sit still, as I remember it. It can be agony. It's like little taser shocks were running through my body. Sitting still was torture, physical torture. 

The question is, why is he just fine when he is playing video games? Good question. Is it that he is distracted from the pain, or does it go away? Is there something in the nervous system that makes those little shocks stop? Is it possible that concentration reorganizes the nervous system?

I can't, won't, see this child in person until he has been vaccinated. That's going to be a while. I am planning to have the mom be my hands. I can see places in his body where there are energy leaks. Also, it looks like he is ungrounded. The energy stops just under his knees. It doesn't go down to the bottom of his feet and into the ground.

I have a few successful exercises. A strategy I could use is drawing a meandering line v-e-r-y slowly and having the student watch it. That action produced remarkable results with one child. Weird! Another is having him place his hand and arm on his mother's while resting it on a tabletop and moving it very slowly. Doing very slowly undercuts the monosynaptic reflex response.

       What is the monosynaptic stretch reflex? It is the most primitive neurological pathway. It's the one used to keep us standing without thinking about it. It runs from the spine directly to the muscles. It never connects to the brain. Suppose something has to connect to the brain. In that case, it requires something like 200 synaptic connections versus the one of the monosynaptic stretch reflex. It is set to automatic, as it should be. But what if it fires inappropriately? How to alter it? If we move so slowly that the nervous system doesn't detect it. Then we can change that neurological response.