Sunday, October 3, 2021

  

Sunday, October 3, 2021

 

    My obsessive thinking up again in the middle of the night. I should have suspected something because I wasn’t tired at bedtime. Because I maintain regular hours, my body fades right on schedule as a rule.  Not tonight. I was wide awake and full of energy.   I think fear strikes my body before the thinking starts. There is some incident that triggers the fear, and I’m off and running. Controlling my thoughts does not alleviate the grip fear has on me. I can feel it in every cell of my body. It’s not a great feeling.  I believe I lived this way for my whole childhood and much of my early adulthood.  

      Vipassana, a method of meditation, helped me get some relief- and the supportive, comforting presence of Mike. I tried to calm my mind. That lasted for all of two seconds at a time.  I got up and took two CDB pills.  I think that’s what helped last time.  They didn’t seem to be helping now. Then I felt the shift.  It had taken enough of an edge off the fear for meditation to have an effect.  I calmed my body and fell asleep. What a drag!

    I took on Kukuna this morning. I ran into David. I hadn’t seen him in a while. He said he hadn’t been walking; he was busy harvesting coffee.  We talked about his neighbors’ roosters. He said the guy had about ten. One of our neighbors brought a suit against him, forcing him to get rid of them. What he did was house them on someone else’s property. Then that person decided to sell, and our neighbor brought his brood back home.  He has their cages tucked up against the side of a hill. I’m above him; that’s why I  don’t hear them.  People to either side of him are not so lucky- including the guy who originally sued him. I have no idea what the latest development is.

        I ran into a second person, one I didn’t remember ever seeing before. Although I don’t know how I could have forgotten her. She has a huge head of long white hair. She was walking a dog. Once I established hers was male, I proposed letting them have contact.  The problem was she had just gotten her dog and didn’t really know how he might behave.  He was a fourteen-year-old dog whose owners moved to the mainland and couldn’t take him along. Can you imagine having a dog for fourteen years and just abandoning him?  I hope it was a hard choice.  The white-haired woman, Laurie, volunteered to take Hughie.  She couldn’t see putting him down for convenience. He wouldn’t have lasted in a shelter.  

  At 9 am I had an appointment with the M&W sisters.  M, who is repeating first grade, still had problems allowing automatic processing. I asked her if she was afraid of making a mistake. From her reaction and something mom said, it was clear this was a problem for her in many areas. This fear had to be addressed. It is a learning blocker. I started with the release phrases: I let go of anything bad about my hatred of my fear and keep anything good or anything I still need. And then, the opposite: I let go of anything negative about my love of my fear and keep anything good or anything I still need.  She felt some relaxation, the telltale sign it’s having an effect. She experienced some relaxation when he released the hatred and a lot of relaxation when she released the love.  I assured her I always do both, even with myself. One of the two releases is always a big surprise. We think we only feel one way, but we don’t. 

      I felt more had to be done to achieve the necessary calm for her to proceed with her learning. I have several protocols I can use.  I chose EFT, the tapping cure. Getting the right setup is vital when doing this. This is what came out of my mouth: “Even though I’m afraid of making a mistake, I’m still a good person.” She said yes to this phrase, and I went with it using Pat Carrington’s tapping steps. There are several different ones. As with everything, there’s the original and millions of variations as each person adapts it to their own lights. That’s the haps. M zoomed through the reading today. Where it had taken the full half-hour to get through three of the same stories we read in each session, today, she read four.  One was a totally new one. Besides that, we had taken time to do the fear releases.  Pretty darn good.

    With W., who is in fifth grade, I continued with Phase I of The Phonics Discovery System. She doesn’t like it.  Adolescent D is okay with it; 3r grade A is too. She combines the vowel with the following consonant when I ask her to separate them. I have to remind her every time. 

   I had a long conversation with Damon. We talked about August’s struggle to get a room change.  He did move some of his stuff into the room across the hall from his as Cylin, and I recommended, assuming squatter’s right.  Unfortunately, the response was to lock the door- with August’s stuff in there.  This is an opportunity for him to learn how to pursue something he wants without assuming entitlement.  This is tough in this situation. This is a private college- expensive. The college has not updated this dorm.  It does not have enough electricity to support private air conditioners and has not converted the building to central air as it has with other dorms.  August is in the worst room in the worst dorm.  How to pursue what he wants without becoming obnoxious- or learning when obnoxious is a good move?

    I was walking while I was talking to Damon.  Whenever I get a phone call, I leap to my feet to get more steps in. Judy and Paulette passed on their way to church. The next thing I knew, they were passing me the other way, heading back home. They spotted Paulette’s cat, Meew, at the end of the block. This is quite a distance from home. He is a male, but he is fixed. Paulette picked him up, and they drove him back home.

    I did some more work on the Phase II video of The Phonics Discovery System. All I did was work on some of the slides. I didn’t practice a Zoom presentation. I must do this every day until I get a version I’m happy to publish on YouTube. 

    In my before-dinner walk, I ran into one of my walking acquaintances that I hadn’t seen for a while.  He said head visited the mainland, sightseeing deserts. He also went to  La Paz, Mexico.  He says he is planning to move there.  He likes desert living. He was impressed by how much cheaper it is to live there than here in Hawaii. Hawaii living is expensive. Everything needs to be shipped in by boat or air. However, this man is somewhat of a jerk. He had endless complaints about the stupidity and crassness of others.  He thinks the people here are nasty.  It is true the native Hawaiians often resent the presence of us haoles. I can’t blame them.  They are the ‘minority now, with all the implications.  This man said the people in La Paz were nice.  Hmmm!  He was there as a tourist.  He was there to spend his money and then leave.  If he becomes a resident have may find that the natives are not going to be so thrilled with him.  When he talked about how unfriendly people are here, this man made a point of saying, “of course, not you.”  Given my discomfort with his hyperness and negativity, he may find that I am not that friendly either.