I think in terms of 'survival mode' lately...like getting through the day without wearing your heart on your sleeve...or tamping down how you really feel and promising yourself you'll cry when you get home if you have to, but 'not now.' The catch phrase survival mode actually comforts me because when I try to achieve that it may sound like I am just existing, but I am actually trying my very best to thrive, even if it does not feel that way at the time. I saw this article on the deep-rooted origins of survival mode and I find the link between (long, long ago!) then and now rather fascinating:


The extraordinarily high levels of social isolation found today provide perhaps the most important current example of evolutionary mismatch. When people feel that they lack supportive, loving relationships, when they feel lonely for extended periods, the consequences can be devastating. Social isolation has been shown to have effects on physical health that are comparable to not exercising or even to smoking cigarettes, and loneliness is also a major risk factor for most psychological syndromes, including severe depression.

...

But the catch is that in modern life, being alone more than one might like is rarely a serious survival threat. It may not feel good to consistently have nothing to do on a Saturday night, but that on its own is almost never a sign that your life is at serious risk. Because of our hunter-gatherer past, however, being alone too much often triggers a survival-mode state in us that, like all survival-mode states, creates stress and releases stress hormones throughout our bodies and brains. And chronically high stress levels seem to be largely responsible for the physical and psychological health issues that lonely people are at higher risk for. So the cruel irony is that, although being socially isolated is rarely an actual survival threat in modern, industrialized cultures, the state of being lonely does trigger stress and survival-mode states because of our hunter-gatherer past, and so being socially isolated does often end up creating a survival risk – but mainly because of chronically elevated stress levels driven by unnecessary and inappropriate survival-mode states. The brain is, in effect, tricked – typically unconsciously – into unnecessary states of survival mode, such as fear of abandonment, not because of actual survival-threatening circumstances, but because our brains confuse our evolutionary past with our modern circumstances. Every modern life is lived in the teeth of massive evolutionary mismatch, and the typical result is that we have far, far more survival mode in our lives than is healthy for us.

You can read more here:

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-embodied-mind/201212/survival-mode-and-evolutionary-mismatch

...the false illusion of true love

I can feel it sometimes, like a vision from a far away parallel universe. A vision of someone to love who loves me back. It feels so real sometimes, but I know better. It's just something I could do when I was younger and would go to my happy place, something I've never completely been able to shake off altogether...an ability to almost be somewhere unreal and feel like it is true. This morning, after having finally fallen asleep not too long before, I had the most intense dream and it was also very pure so though I knew I shouldn't be having it I didn't feel too guilty because of its genuinely sweet and spiritual aura. I dreamed I could be loved (in return!) and when I woke I was so very sad. I can still feel the sadness and, most of all, the heated resentment towards my alarm clock.

as seen on Pinterest

Speaking of alarm clocks...another reason I do not like them is because of how much they can startle you...sometimes so badly and unexpectedly (even if you did set it yourself the night before) you can fall out of bed. Certainly they are not very good for our health...I wondered about this and found this online:



"Although most Americans don’t equate the traditional alarm clock with being a threat to anything other than a chipper morning disposition, the facts tell us otherwise.  Conventional wisdom suggests that most attacks would follow an intense workout or stressful workday, but cardiovascular incidents of all types and degrees of severity happen in the morning – especially, right after waking."


 http://mhealthwatch.com/could-your-alarm-clock-trigger-a-heart-attack-21430/

 

Seeing this today via Huffington Post really helped. Since my own family and some people I know in other parts of my life are very, very anti-gay and often even hateful about it...well, I found reading this helped me feel better. It does not take the pain away of hearing what my own parents have to say about today's historical and heartening ruling, but it does help. I am so happy for the couples out there who can now legally get married!


  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-cheshire/supreme-court-ruling-and-_b_7673010.html

the article follows here:

Your religion is not being attacked. In fact, this ruling actually reinforces our countries commitment to let people live, grow, and even worship as they believe.

This ruling doesn't ask you to change any of Jesus' message.

We can still love.

We can still show kindness and understanding.

We can still show everyone they really do matter to God.

We can still marry the opposite sex, as well.

We can still feed the hungry and clothe the poor.

We can still worship God the way we believe we should. Even this Sunday, you can attend a church. Nothing has changed.

Maybe now that we are not trying to stop others from getting married, we can finally take the time to figure out why our own marriages are failing; because, the argument that a gay-marriage is somehow soiling the sanctity of our third marriage, is as ridiculous as it sounds.

We can now focus on bigger issues that actually matter and impact humanity for the good.

We can still (and should) be accepting to the entire LGBT community no matter what differences we may or may not have with them, (FYI- we should have been doing this all along guys).

You know, I have always found it interesting how our religion, based so deeply in love, acceptance, and kindness, gets easily hijacked into political hatred and social judgments. We need to stop trying to legislate our own morality and ethics onto those who don't believe the same way. Jesus never did this. And in truth, most of us "Christians" disagree greatly on the tenants of what are "moral issues" within our own faith. In many ways, we are a herd of cats trying to steer the world. And, it's not working people.

And to my many friends in the LGBT community...Congratulations, my friends! I am happy for you all. As a proud member of the American community, I believe that you should have the same rights as everyone else. It's one of the things that makes our country such a great place to live.

Now my Christian brothers and sisters, you are free to carry on with your outrage, anger, and venting...

But, when you're done could you give the rest of us a hand?! Jesus' love is a pretty heavy thing to carry all the way to the rest world and we could use the help.

I am not sure why I am stunned (pleasantly) that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Marriage Equality, but I am. The news is just so wonderful and I am so happy for all the gay and lesbian couples in the United States who can now get married.

 

as seen on Pinterest

The older I get, the more I grapple with all the things wrong with me that would make me an impossible candidate for a mutually loving relationship, the more I accept my eternal "spinsterhood" and make peace with it. This slowly won, but fairly easygoing acceptance, however, does not change my views or deep belief that love is out there for other people and that all couples in love do deserve (very much) to be together, legally, spiritually AND safely. It breaks my heart that whether two people in love (who just happen to be of the same gender) deserve to get married is even still an issue in this day and age, but it is...still an issue. This is an excellent op-ed piece from last Sunday. Below follow some of the best parts, but you can read the whole article here:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-gay-marriages-moment.html?_r=0


Nothing about it feels quick if you’re among or you know gay and lesbian Americans who, in a swelling tide, summoned the grit and honed the words to tell family members, friends and co-workers the truth of our lives. Our candor came from more than personal need. It reflected our yearning for a world beyond silence and fear, and we knew that the only way to get there was through these small, aggregate acts of courage.


Same-sex marriage isn’t some overnight cause, some progressive novelty, especially not when it’s put in its proper context, as part of a struggle for gay rights that has been plenty long, patient and painful.




But it’s not so dizzying or difficult to comprehend when you think about the simple logic behind same-sex marriage: You can’t relegate the commitments and loves of an entire group of Americans to a different category, marked by a little pink asterisk, without saying that we ourselves don’t measure up. You can’t tell us that you consider us equal and then put perhaps the central, most important relationship in our lives in an unequal box. It’s a non sequitur and a nonstarter.

There have been ruined careers, scuttled adoptions, sanitized obituaries. There have been millions of same-sex couples who were married in the eyes of each other, of everyone around them and of any truly righteous god, and they waited and waited for the government to catch up.

Ask Jim Obergefell. His is one of the cases that the Supreme Court is about to decide. He sued Ohio to have his name added as a surviving spouse on the death certificate of his husband, who died in 2013. It wasn’t just a few years before then that they began making their life together. It was two decades earlier.

Ask Edie Windsor. Her protest of the estate taxes that she was ordered to pay — but that a widow with a dead husband instead of a dead wife would have been spared — prompted the Supreme Court to gut DOMA two years ago.

She was married in Canada in 2007. When her wife first proposed to her, she gave Windsor a brooch instead of a ring, so that the diamond didn’t prompt questions from co-workers.

That was in 1967: nearly half a century ago. So don’t tell her that the idea of same-sex marriage needs more time to ripen.