If I’m not careful, I get to be very opinionated about labels and stuff. I was going to do ‘why it’s dumb that most bipolars are being reclassified as borderline’ but…I’m grabbing for any positive posts I can make. Though, to be fair, because of how I describe some of this stuff, I suspect this one might come off as slightly opinionated too…
A human BEING
I get really annoyed with some of the meditation challenge stuff that I read that says ‘to be in the moment you have to be a human BEING, not a human doing.’. It’s actually true though. Mindfulness, at it’s core is being as present as your brain allows it, in the moment you’re experiencing. It’s about making and keeping memories, not dwelling, not allowing pain to overwhelm you and building a better way to handle the ‘world’ in general. And I know why it annoys me so to talk about being versus doing.
What does it mean anyway?
Mindfulness sometimes means, for me at least, not to switch to automatic when I’m doing something. To pay attention and note, not only differences, but the good things I enjoy about experiences. And, in being present in moments, finding the courage to face harder stuff, by remembering the lessons of ‘being in the moment’ otherwise. That it passes.
Time however, even when being instead of doing, sometimes gets the upper hand
I can tell when I’ve not got the spoons to do a being versus doing exercise when it drags ON and ON and ON. I like meditating. I struggle sometimes, and I’ve been known to do things on autopilot when I shouldn’t, but lately, meditating has been hard. Being in the moment, moreso. I know some of it is to do with the process of grieving, after losing my grandmother mid-February, and I know some of it is about the fact that I know that it’s not going to be pleasant if I follow the trajectory that I’m on, because I don’t do well with what comes next. But as I’m more about being in the moment, I’m trying not to think too far ahead.
Being though is more than…well…being
One of the concepts I think I scrabble with, and may talk about more, who knows, is that ‘being’ isn’t just about the act of staying present. It’s more than that. I’m learning that through mindfulness and meditation. I’ll need to keep talking about it, I guess, but I’d love your thoughts.
Tomorrow I’m doing C for CPTSD, but how about we just be, today? 😉
(Featured image on this post was the first picture I took of our beach at the Hotel in the Dominican where we stayed in 2018. And honestly, feels like a lifetime ago. It’s also the tree I did my final mindfulness mediation under before heading back home at the end of what was an incredible holiday)
2 responses to “B is for Being not doing #atozchallenge”
I don’t understand why bipolar would be “reclassified” as BPD. There is a detachment, often based in trauma, from which BPD grows. And the cycles are not the same. It would seem to me much more sensical to classify BPD alongside ODD, and I can see how it’s possible that either/both could be ‘attached’ to a bipolar diagnosis. But to call a chicken a fish just makes no sense to me.
´\_O_/`
*shrug*
The short answer that I was given was that some of us are not bipolar in the first place, it was a mistake. That the bipolar and (what we now call) EUPD diagnosis are so similar that they were often mixed up. Though, oddly more often bipolar to EUPD, than EUPD to bipolar.
Net result for me was a rediagnosis, abd no one has ever explained why. It’s a whole other saga though.