Thoughts on "the safe place" (mildly graphic image).

[oak]

In our dear friends' Manuel Moe and RiverGirl's recent threads I've mentioned, in passing, that the "safe place" is the most dangerous place to stay.

An analogy, with an example:

One time I read a WWI memoir by an extremely hard-bitten Marine. He said that in a battle (you know, over the top), the only safe place is out in the open.

An analogy

Imagine you are a good American soldier in your trench. Only bad things can happen there:

1. You get typhus and you die.
2. A shell hits you and you die.
3. A German soldier jumps into your trench, stabs you in the throat, and you die.

The safe place is where we die.

And I mean that in a non-figurative, actual way. Actual death.

Now, if you go over the top and into the open, you might get blown up or shot. Yet the vast majority of soldiers survived, and at any rate eventually someone had to take someone's trench.

An example

My doctor, at one of the two best hospitals in the world, advocates the Mediterranean Diet. Another school of thought at the same hospital, the Esselstyn crowd, recommends a whole foods plant based diet. I defaulted into the Standard American Diet, have sleep apnea, and am at risk of stroke, death, and many other terrible things. As in today. April 9.

The example's dilemma

The Standard American Diet is everywhere, cheap, and satisfying... in the short term.

I'm that good soldier, huddled in his trench.

The Mediterranean Diet is more expensive, takes much more meal prep time, and is not quite as immediately satisfying. Olives and mushrooms go bad sooner than Gatorade.

So what will I do?

Live half-dead, dulled by sleep apnea until an enemy soldier called Stroke jumps into my trench when I least expect it?

Or do I hop out into the scary place?

What am I getting at?

Talking with my counselor today, we agreed that I need to lose weight, earn more, and move to a more vibrant part of the region.

Each of you has your own battle. I don't know what it that battle is.

But I do know that sitting where I am is extremely dangerous. The only way out is through.

[manuel_moe_g]

Wishing you healthy nourishing meals, Oak, you deserve no less.

[remarks]

Doing nothing is something. I try to remind myself that when I don't want to get out of bed in the morning. I've gotten out of my safe place in a lot of ways in the past year and most of them have turned out positive. Of course, that didn't make them any easier to start!

[rivergirl]

Thank you for sharing the analogy, Oak.

Wishing you passage from the seemingly safer place to a place offering a healthier, more fulfilling life.

[Mental Fairy]

The yoga mat

Today the safe place to have my very cathartic cry,sob, howl, yeti like moan, and ending with a rather extended sigh was upon the yoga mat. A mat that has endured many a stretch and many a sigh.
This afternoon it took up a new occupation as my therapist without words. I bent my brain cells a little to fire up that glow in some scientific region of the brain I’m yet to review and revisit when the strength comes back to allow another mental rinse. I thought it would happen maybe in the shower, on the loo or during a morning jog. I’ve always partaken in yoga but today I really did feel it more in the head.
Have a good day fellow family, Monday night is upon me and I really don’t think I can process another night of nightmares and sleep walking so alas I will tie some bells to these tortured running toes and try rest. Winter is upon us here.

[manuel_moe_g]

Hello Mental Fairy,

What do you think of crying? I lost the ability to cry a long time ago, i think it is a side effect of the medications i take. Sometimes i miss it, if i could cry i could better honor my grief

I really don’t think I can process another night of nightmares and sleep walking so alas I will tie some bells to these tortured running toes and try rest.

i am wishing you well, please take care, you deserve nice things in your life

[Mental Fairy]

Good morning Manuel Moe

Crying I seem to do when I’m very tired and my guard is down. The animal adverts on tv or something or someone is injured I get emotional.
Yesterday I think it built up a little as I’m reading this book from therapist that has better helped my understand what is happening to me. Starting to feel little bits of emotion here and there.
I also felt useless at that time of crying, weak and unwanted. Something that I was told as a young las. The phrases that follow from an adult to a child.
The medication I’m on helps but I also know I’m dependent on them and the fear of coming off them is far greater now than ever. I find the evenings worse. It’s when I become tired and agitated. Having an addictive personality is something I’m aware of so when people offer me alcohol I refuse. Rather my meds and hide under a blanket.
I wish I wasn’t like this.

[MNyby]

Dear oak, - - - and about your opening post and a combat zone.

I obviously have no idea where you picked up that information about a combat zone, - - - be it a trench, or an airfield under attack - - - but you've been given the wrong sense of what's going on in a combat zone.

Firstly, I don't have much trench warfare experience, except that trenches can be useful in certain situations even in these modern times and I obviously have a bit of experience with it, but my area of duty was aviation and choppers in the U.S. Army. I am a life member of the VFW, by the way. But all that specific information isn't so important.

What is important is you understand that in a combat situation, a hot zone, you are not in control of much of anything. Period. A combat situation is the chaos of chaos. And, even more importantly, it is very usually a "follow the leader" situation. You do what you are ordered to do and you do it as you were trained and you do it without much thought about safety. You do it to get a specific job achieved, and the "jobs achieved" can come one right after the other if the immediate command so orders. Basically you are in a robot mode. You'd be surprised at how unfeeling things are. You just do it. Funny, as I type this, I still can't really relate any other experience in my many years of life to some of the situations I faced in the military on active duty. There's just nothing much like it in other areas of a normal life.

And that safe place is where we die idea is just not . . . I can't imagine where you got that, oak. Please dump that thinking. Please! The safe place is where you are safe. No fancy words needed for that thinking. Plain and simple, safe is safe. It could be anywhere. And that is also so very true in a combat zone. Safe is safe and when you aren't safe you will know it right away and you should have already prepared yourself, if that was possible. For example, I live in an earthquake zone and actually this place is never safe, but you prepare for the worst and that is the best you can do. That is the fact of it. Nothing fancy. No fancy words or thoughts. You are safe, if you are safe. If you are in danger you deal with it as best as you can. In a combat situation that normally means you follow the leader. Or you follow your comrades. Or you do what you were trained to do and you do it as best you can, and then you might be safe. There's nothing fancy about it. Toss that movie stuff out of your thinking.

When your building starts to shake in an earthquake you wait and judge what might be the strength. If you think it is getting really bad you head for the toilet room as that is usually the safest place in the building. The toilet in your home is built very strong. Running outside is NOT a good idea. And you do not panic.

I just got out of a 6-month (roughly) stay at a hospital for a lymphoma relapse and the first couple of weeks when I finally got processed in were very tough, but it is exactly the same as I stated in the hot zone AO - - - you follow the leader. In that hospital the "leader" is the chief doctor telling you what to do and what medicines to take or what that drip is for that is hooked up to your arm. And the nursing staff come very close to that "follow the leader" style, except there starts to be a little looseness possible in some situations. Mostly, though, the nurse is the boss. More of the follow the leader style.

oak, it is follow the leader. That is what is safe. Now a big problem is if you find out that you are the leader. Then I am afraid there is no safe place for you. That is what they mean when they say that leadership is a lonely place.

But please dump that trench scenario thinking you have up there in your post, oak. In the trench, behind the trench, in front when it has gotten into projectiles flying around, large or small, there just isn't really any safe place and if you are in that situation you aren't really thinking about safe. Believe it or not you're thinking about the small stuff, if you are not on duty. How can I get my socks dry. Or get new ones? What is in this C-ration today. Or now they have what they call MREs. All that little stuff takes all your time, if you are not on assignment. And assignment could be right there in that trench. Could be guard duty back with the vehicles. Or guard duty at the fuel depot. It might just be paperwork. Military and government work is a whole bunch of logs and notes and reports and it never seems to stop. Who knows. There is way too much work in a military situation. It never seems to get done.

And if you do get wounded then it is just like I already stated - - - you follow the leader and normally that first leader is the medic. That medic is going to save your life. They are good at that. They should get a doctor's pay, but they don't. They will get you back --- way back --- to a field hospital first and there you follow the leader, who is the doc. After that you might be in a medevac hospital, which is farther back from the front line, if you are fortunate enough to have a front line situation. But at the medevac hospital it is another doc you takes orders from and so it is follow the leader again.

Now, if you want to relate safety in an everyday life situation, then you first have to determine who your leader is. Is it you? Is it your Divine One? Is it a wife or husband?

So I suppose that first step to be safe, oak, is to know who your leader is.

Hope none of my style is upsetting to you. I tend to be blunt and very basic in my thinking. I'm 69 years of age and have been around the block a few times. I have had some amazing experiences in my life and am truly lucky to still be among the living. I don't know if my advice is any good, but some of it might be. But I do know, oak, that you don't have a proper way of viewing an active duty hostile environment situation, if you really think what you wrote in that opening post is true. Fix your thinking of that, please.

Oh yes, there is one more thing, which is hard to explain. When you are young, you have a different view of safety, in many cases. Some reason you feel like you are automatically safe and I haven't a clue why that is. I didn't realize that until many years later in my life.

Oh yes, another thought, now that it is on my mind. Being scared. That's a weird one. Usually scared happens after the event is over. I think you are probably too busy to be scared when a bad situation is happening. About ten years ago I was in a mighty bad earthquake and it was so strange, because I ended up keeping other people sort of occupied so as they wouldn't get into a panic situation. We were all safe, but that time I was on a train and some of the people were sort of freaking out and as a not-so-young human I ended up being the one to be kind of keeping order in a public situation. The train stayed on the tracks and that was number one. Nobody got hurt in the emergency stop it did, so that was number two. Number three then became the stay calm and cool and just wait for instructions from the train crew, which I suppose gets back to that follow the leader thinking.

Okay, this post has gotten way too long. Sorry about that. Hope something I wrote helps somebody. That is what this Online Community is about, yes? Helping each other. Just that I tend to be way too blunt and direct and some folks take offense at that style. If that includes you that is reading this, I apologize. Again.

[manuel_moe_g]

Hope something I wrote helps somebody. That is what this Online Community is about, yes? Helping each other. Just that I tend to be way too blunt and direct and some folks take offense at that style. If that includes you that is reading this, I apologize. Again.

Please don't apologize, MNyby. What you wrote is fascinating stuff. It is a viewpoint i know nothing about, and i would love to learn more, and i bet it would be important for me to learn.

When i think about a dangerous place to be, mentally, i think of these places:

[1] : wanting to die, and having the will and the means to kill yourself

[2] : being like a cornered wounded animal, where your only option is to lash out (with maximum violence) no matter what the provocation, or in any place where you have so little to lose lashing out with maximum violence seems like a good idea

[3] : being comfortable, where the facts on the ground are plainly showing that you are bleeding out slowly, or otherwise slowly dying, if you don't change something

[4] : like [3], you are slowly bleeding out, but you don't care or you can't care, because you are sleepwalking through life

the situation in [3] is one where you could fool yourself that you are really in a "safe place", where if you stopped lying to yourself you would see that you are really in a great deal of peril, but it feels like a "safe place" because it is comfortable

My experience with the four dangerous situations:

[1] : just before i got professional mental help at the age of 25, when i made the appointment with the psychiatrist i knew i was one bad day away from no longer being here. Sometimes now i don't feel like being alive, but the whole system my self-preservation is much more resilient. Things would have to be very very bad for a very very long time before i would kill myself, because i have so much experience with getting up when knocked down, and so much experience with walking slowly out of the darkest of caves into the bright sunshine.

[2] : about 8 years ago i had my last experience with resentment leading to explosive anger, now i take care of resentment building through weekly therapy, and i don't intend to stop weekly therapy

[3] : the years 21 through 24 where all about being comfortable while i was actually bleeding out. i was doing nothing to help myself in romantic relationships and i way lying to myself that it wasn't really that important to me. i would later realize that without the hope of a successful romantic relationship, i would just as soon die

[4] this is the only one that i have some fear about happening to me now. but i think the chances are low that i am totally sleepwalking through a dangerous situation, because i am constantly examining everything about my life, and i am actively doing painful, hard things to improve my situation

What do you guys think? If i can make anything more clear, don't hesitate to ask. Would really like to know your thoughts!

[MNyby]

Well, I was only trying to correct the apparent thinking one member had about a military situation we refer to as a hostile AO. (AO mean Area of Operations.) That was all I was trying to do.

As for the mental situations one finds themselves in, which corresponds to that very long list - - - well, that isn't probably a good area for me to be offering advice. I could offer thoughts, but as I am no professional about how my brain works or your brain works, well I would be careful about taking any of my thoughts seriously.

But let me take a look at Number One.

I think that idea that maybe you want to do harm to yourself boils down to respect. Does that seem an odd approach? Maybe it is. But let's think about something a moment.

If you have respect for another human you are very likely not going to be giving any thought to causing that human harm, right?

So why should it be any different with yourself? You are also a human. If you respect other humans, then how about sharing that respect with yourself? Basic thinking - - - respect yourself. If you respect yourself, maybe you won't be thinking about hurting yourself.

Then you might want to ask about how to respect yourself. Well, that is easy - - - remember you are a human, just like all those others you have respect for. Don't forget you are a human. Be absolutely sure in your mind that you have that clear - - - something like : Heh, I am a human.

And just like that respect you have for others that stops you from hurting them, maybe you won't want to hurt yourself, because you are a human and you respect yourself.

Just a thought, in a manner of putting it. No idea if it is a useful thought, but it might not be so bad.