Wednesday, October 9, 2024

 Wednesday, October 9, 2024  

  Wednesday, October 9, 2024. I found myself in a moment of confusion about Shelly's appointment time. I had initially thought it was on Wednesday, but then I convinced myself it was on Thursday. Just as I was about to step into the shower, the phone rang. It was Shelly. Thankfully, I hadn't fully lathered up and was able to quickly rinse off. I wrapped myself in a towel and settled in for the session. I was in desperate need of this moment of relief.

    I told her about my internal shaking. I attributed it to ongoing fear, endless fear.  There's nothing in my current life I'm afraid of that warrants this order of anxiety.  This is post-traumatic- distress from the years of explosive verbal attacks from my mother.  I lived in terror.

  I didn't have time to take a shower after the session. I had to get ready for Ulu Wini. I looked for my preferred earphones on the bathroom counter, where I was sure I had put them before I jumped into the shower.  They were nowhere in sight.  I ran around the house looking in all the other possible places I might have left them.   I returned to the bathroom with the extra set with the external mic. I put that set down on the counter and went about getting dressed. When I came back, there was the set with the external mic, and right next to it was the one with the built-in mic.  Weird.  I chose to think it was Mike. He knew how distressed I was and reached out to console me. It was either Mike or I had lost my mind altogether.  Door A or B?  

    I talked to Shelly about my internal shaking and extreme behavior.  I think terror underlies the shaking. I spent most of my childhood in a state of abject terror.  The next attack was guaranteed. I didn't know when it would happen and what would trigger it. I knew leaving a light on when it wasn't necessary would trigger one.  I was a child; I sometimes forgot.

    I remember the constant need to move quickly as if I could outrun the overwhelming feelings. It was like navigating a turbulent river. You had to paddle faster than the water, or you would lose control of the canoe. That's how I lived, always on edge, trying to maintain control of my terror.

   After the session, I looked up the significance of feeling like I was shaking inside. Yes, indeed, it was a sign of anxiety.  I know I've been distressed, obsessing about things that don't work out as I like.   It was bad enough this morning that I took two L-Theanine. Dr. Reed told me only to take one.  It calmed me down but left me feeling weirdly fuzzy.    It affected my work at Ulu Wini. I don't know if I was better or worse off for it. I just felt weirdly calm and spoke in a well-articulated, slow manner.

   Second-grade KJ asked to work on multiplication again. I gave her the same problems I gave her last time: arrays, and asked her to make an addition and a multiplication problem for the array. She didn't have a clue, so  I started from scratch. 

  Second-grade JM was next. She needed no help with word recognition, and I'd say she is above grade level. We worked on comprehension using We Don't Eat Our Classmates. While she had read the book before, she couldn't answer some fundamental questions.

      Third-grade TC had difficulty with automatic recall.  I asked her if she felt a block in her brain in the area behind her ear. She described the block. It was white, large, and hard that slid in sidewise.  We could not eliminate, move, drill through, or around it.  I don't know how the spinning at the left temple was identified. She did a spin release there. When it was done, the block behind the ear was gone. Okay. Let's see how this plays out.

    Last, I worked with a second-grade SL. I hadn't worked with her since she was in first grade. I checked my notes from the previous school year when she was in first-grade. My notes said she had problems with automatic recall. I worked on Fry Sight Word List 1-25. She had trouble with most of the words. She had issues with memory and visual processing.  She identified the left temple as the place where she ''saw'' the words in her head. I have found the forehead to be the best spot for embedding the word into the visual processing system.

    Over the thirty years I have been doing the BrainManagementSkills with students, instructing them on which parts of their brains to use to be effective readers, I have found the forehead area to be the only one that consistently works for visual processing.  While students may get some embedding in other brain regions, the word's visual image is stronger and clearer at the front.  However, there is no scientific evidence to back up my theory. The primary visual cortex is at the back of the brain, not the front.  As I experience it, the forehead is like a computer screen. It is where we have access to the data processed and stored in the rest of the brain.  I have seen images of the brain firing when reading posted by Stanislas Dahaene, a French neuroscientist interested in how the reading brain functions. The front of the brain, where I think the words are initially embedded, doesn't light up, suggesting it is not involved in the reading process.  I have no explanation. All I can say is that so far, those students who haven't used that part of the brain to embed the image of the word have done poorly and have improved once they switched.

     I directed SL to use the area behind her forehead. We identified the spin that interfered with her using that part of the brain, but I was too tired to proceed with the release. 

   I took a long nap when I got home.  The anxiety persisted.  I had no contact with Joseph today. I am concerned he is uncomfortable with me.  His personality is controlled and moderate. As far as I can see, his emotive range is from A to D.  He's steady and reliable. Nothing like me. But we find a way to enjoy each other, mostly discussing ideas. He's an excellent intellectual companion. I   hoped he was not totally freaked out by my bizarre behavior the other day. I apologized, but that won't relieve his concern that I'm a crazy lady capable of anything. Some people require predictability in all aspects of their lives. The unexpected is out, unforgettable if not unforgivable.

     I worked with the  Twins when I got home.  She read Australia as Indiana. When I challenged her, she said the two words looked alike.  She read most of the words in the passage accurately and fluently. And then she misread  Australia, reading it as Indiana, and didn't see a problem with it.  She said she thought they looked the same. We also worked on identifying the main idea. When I asked her about the story, she grabbed two words from the text: Americans and water. I highlighted those two words, one in bold and the other in italics.  Then, I underlined all the references to rabbits. It was four rabbits to one American and one water. I told her you could tell the story by what had the greatest number of words.  I must figure out why she doesn't know when she misreads a word.

     Twin E said her reading accuracy improved significantly because of our work with the embedding.   When she practiced with me, she took her time and checked if she had embedded the word in her visual memory.  Twin A hadn't been doing that. I suspected she felt she didn't need to because her reading was good enough as it was. Her word recognition skills were much better than Twin E's.  Twin E may catch up and surpass her. 

    I finally got around to clipping to bougainvillea in the yard off my bedroom.  Darby doesn't want any of that green waste; it has thorns big enough to puncture a truck tire. I  had one puncture a vein once.  Mike came to my aid.

   I was wide awake until 10:30. Usually, I'm not good for much more than watching videos after 8:30 as I wind down for the night. However, tonight, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the hour.