It’s a noticeable thing that generally, and In sport especially, watching a video of ourselves in action will often have a considerable effect on how we can best start to perform that action in a different way. Uncomfortable as it might seem at first, we often take the opportunity, when it’s thus presented, to become more objective and analytical about the “us” we are watching. It’s a very good way of honing skills, because within the video facility is the means of slowing down the film, in order to break down the various elements of a complex action into each link in the chain.
As a coaching aid within sport, video is a massively useful tool, both for players and coaches – and an astute and watchful observer can pick up an enormous amount of useful information about skills performance and also competition strategies. However, powerful as video might be, it is still just an audio-visual experience. In sensual terms it is 2 dimensional. Its abiding effectiveness lies in the fact that most of us within sport are visually oriented – i.e. we primarily work best at coding up visual experience and re-presenting it to ourselves in a similar fashion.
Realities
However, we are not robots – each and every one of us is unique. Not everyone is primarily visually oriented. In sensual terms we each make meaning of our experience in different ways, and across the sensual spectrum we each code up our experience in different ways as well. We are very good at recognising patterns, and this makes generalising a straightforward and common human propensity. We’ll regularly say that Fred is LIKE John, Ellie SOUNDS like Pam, and William BEHAVES similarly to Pete. In the detail though, there is no generalisation because Fred may look like John but he sounds and behaves in a completely different way – as do we all.
So, given the uniqueness of our various realities, is there a facility where we can add more sensual dimensions into observing our performance?
On the outside, the use of virtual reality has been a real advance. Starting with flight simulators right up to now, with adaptive motion software devices such as the Wii, we are able to replicate – and within that adapt – a whole range of actions, motions and emotions.
On the inside, visualization is widely used as a creative and re-creative mental facility for how we react to changes in our reality.
The Experiment
I’ve always had a fascination with running experiments with some of the players I coach – with throwing balls at targets with eyes shut being the most memorable!
Recently I've been exploring the possibility of a player being able to mentally step out of what they are doing to become a ‘virtual observer’ of their own action – whilst at the same time performing that action. Although it is still relying on a lot of the Visual elements, I had an idea that something else useful would come along – not for everyone, but perhaps for certain players.
Whilst working with batsmen in cricket, I’ve invited them to find out whether they could project into an imaginary fielder standing close enough to be able to observe them as they bat. We used a bowling machine so that the ball delivered was consistent with one particular stroke in response. The players – already accomplished batsmen - were asked to play at between 6 to 10 balls received.
The range of reactions and their various abilities to “do the projecting” was as varied as I had expected. At one end of the scale the player said he couldn’t do it at all, or so he felt. (Incidentally, this lad finds visualization difficult and displayed the same characteristics in the “Eyes Shut Throwing” experiment some 3 years earlier!) At the other end of the scale, the player reported the following:-
“Not sure I did the watching bit very well, but I did notice a feeling that I seemed to be very tentative in what I was doing.”
Now it could be said that he was tentative because part of his attention was detached from concentrating on the ball. The thing is - in my view he didn't look tentative! It was his own conclusion.
However, what happened for him when we went back to him just playing normally - allowing full attention to be brought upon the approaching ball – was noticeably different.
Before the experiment he had been playing well – after the experiment AND his own INNER FEEDBACK, he played with much more authority and in a much more positive way. I hadn’t asked him to be less tentative and play in a more positive, assertive way. Tentative was his own description of what he felt he looked like – which made his inner adjusting process so immediate, ongoing and 100% effective. “Hard wired” is probably another way of describing it.
Given these criteria, could he have got this feedback any other way?
• This was a real-time experiment and a real-time response.
• The sensual information fed back was non-visual.
• It was his own information.
• Could a virtual simulator provide him with his own ‘2nd position’ observation.
• Could video provide the Kinaesthetic data as feedback.
Conclusion
This clearly works best with players with very good visualization and projection abilities. When it works, it works at lightning speed, and with immediate effect. By using the player’s inner resources, any cross-sense translation is their own - such as his virtually-observed Visual to an inner-Kinaesthetic. With this nothing is clouded by any coach’s interpretation or linguistic capabilities - nothing is 'lost in translation'. It could almost be described as ‘Clean Transformation’.
The experiment is an ongoing ‘Work in Progress’.
The Wright Way
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Internal Dialogue v Conscious-Unconscious Dialogue
Arguably they could be one and the same – and yet to my mind –
Internal dialogue is much more associated with the way we talk to ourselves on the inside; sometimes actually have audible conversations; very often presenting as the ‘second’ and every subsequent point of view; and of course that damning, “critical” voice.
Conscious-Unconscious dialogue is a much less tangible notion, where there is more of an integrated feeling about what is presented in consciousness; where there is less (or no) criticism and more intuitive acceptance. A felt sense of ‘you are clear to go’ – an embodiment of ‘trust the unconscious’.
In a sense, it’s all about how we interact with our thoughts. In this regard we can well understand how hard it might be to “sort our heads out” – if we are using our thoughts to deal with our thoughts! Rather like self-regulation, the regulation process might not always come up with a decent solution.
However, if our interaction with our thoughts is at an unconscious, trusted, intuitive level, then it’s much easier to spot the toxic stuff and not give it a second thought; easier to recognise some of our thoughts for what they really are.
So check out HOW you interact with your thoughts and give yourself an M.O.T!
So what are the beneficial differences of gaining a clearer understanding of how to best run our interaction with our thoughts?
In Being
With a clearly channelled conscious-unconscious dialogue we are grounded, comfortable with ourselves, objective about what we do, and have a deep sense of our authenticity. We understand our worth, are confident, and rarely have issues with self esteem.
If Internal Dialogue is dominant then we are likely to be less sure of ourselves, and whilst this might not be in all contexts we are prone to ‘peturbations’ (disturbances in our state of equilibrium). From this we can draw the conclusion that, especially at these times, we are less grounded, and therefore susceptible to ways that the outer world might impinge upon us.
In Taking and Doing Action
For someone where their conscious-unconscious dialogue is well attuned, being single-minded is a straightforward process – as is also the acceptance that it’s fine to change one’s mind. Because of clarity in that inner space, there’s an openness, a realisation, that there are many ways of doing something and that one may not necessarily have seized upon the optimum way.
Being single-minded is not something that I see the same as having a ‘One-Track Mind’, or a closed mind. Individuals in this area are, for me, people who operate with a very dominant and conscious psyche. They are the people for whom the inner voice is almost ‘Internal Monologue’. They are the people who aver that “There is only one worldview and it’s mine; only one map of the world – and I’ve got it.”
Decision Making
With a broader sense of conscious-unconscious dialogue, decision making becomes a much clearer, snappier, tighter process. The weighing up of options seems to take place very quickly, sometimes with uncanny speed.
Those of us still with the Internal Dialogue dominant will take much longer to take big decisions, and be more habit driven with lower level activities. We may even struggle with what constitutes a ‘big decision’, and proceed to endlessly ‘dither’ or ask around for advice in the style of “What would you do?” Or, “What do you think should I do?”
Performance
Think of a time when you had a performance (in any context) where everything went right, every choice you took was the right one, every bit of action was executed superbly.
HOW were you being through this Performance?
For most it is a rather detached experience, where no thinking takes place, where everything just flows as if guided by some unseen and perfect hand – Was it like that for you?
Where was Internal Dialogue when all this was taking place? Silent? Unnoticeable? Was there any awareness of it within your consciousness?
It is no secret that optimal performance requires a clear and open mind without Internal Dialogue.
So, if you want consistently more performances ‘in flow’ then deal with internal dialogue by ignoring all the unhelpful thinking you’ve been investing there until now, evolve towards a better engagement with your unconscious, trust and be your true self and not the self that is prone to being undermined from within. Once you let go of that that’s not been working, then changes start and gather pace.
Someone once described their life to me, as being “....like driving a car on a mountain road in a blizzard, with faulty brakes, smooth tyres, no windscreen wipers and no lights.” More than a bit dramatic I’ll grant you, but he had a very vivid imagination and talked a good story as well. The thing was, he ran his life via his Internal Dialogue. “What would happen if you stopped the car, got out and discovered that the weather outside was fine?” I asked him. “What if the windscreen was actually a cinema screen and you had been watching a film of your life? It would feel real and everything you said and thought to yourself would be real too.” We were looking at each other but our eyes didn’t meet. I was watching him - and he was watching something inside. It was a very long, silent moment and then he breathed a deep sigh.
The thing is, whenever we are being and we are AWARE of our Internal Dialogue then the warning signs are there for us. We know that here is the destroyer of our ability to engage all our processes at an unconscious level. When these red flags are waving, our concentration, our awareness loses focus – and all our abilities degrade accordingly.
For all of us, discarding a reliance on Internal Dialogue is a continual piece of ‘Work In Progress’. It’s always handy, therefore, to have some ready answers to the questions, “What can I do? How can I get out of my head?”
• Establish some distractive routines to break state and anchor these to a fast-track to the sense of that grounded centre. This can be breathing well, visualizing a calm place or colour, or having some handy kinaesthetic activity to engage the conscious.
• Take steps and build (or reaffirm) some realisations about keeping Internal Dialogue off your agenda for next time. Check the tread on your mental tyres!
• Acknowledge that performing intuitively at an unconscious level is the best way to be, and that evolving from Internal Dialogue to Conscious-Unconscious Dialogue will greatly enhance your long term improvement and consistency in performance, decision making, taking action, and life.
Conclusion
I spent most of my life talking to myself a lot. Increasingly over the last seven years or so, I have become accustomed to talking less and doing more. There’s still a degree of internal dialogue going on from time to time, and it’s OK and I’m comfortable with the nature of it – whereas before that it was definitely not my ‘best friend’.
How do I know I’m on the right path?
Well, there were certain 'traumatic' experiences in my early childhood that never became part of any of my internal dialogue. I know now that (thankfully) I accepted that these events were what they were, nothing more – nothing less, and were coded up with no emotional content at all. Had they been, they would have blighted all areas of life. However, I was much more disturbed on the inside by certain folk tales that my imagination was able to 'make real'.
Internal dialogue has the power to perpetuate a fragmented sense of self. For a full sense of holistic unity, sort out your thinking and go for conscious-unconscious dialogue every time!
Internal dialogue is much more associated with the way we talk to ourselves on the inside; sometimes actually have audible conversations; very often presenting as the ‘second’ and every subsequent point of view; and of course that damning, “critical” voice.
Conscious-Unconscious dialogue is a much less tangible notion, where there is more of an integrated feeling about what is presented in consciousness; where there is less (or no) criticism and more intuitive acceptance. A felt sense of ‘you are clear to go’ – an embodiment of ‘trust the unconscious’.
In a sense, it’s all about how we interact with our thoughts. In this regard we can well understand how hard it might be to “sort our heads out” – if we are using our thoughts to deal with our thoughts! Rather like self-regulation, the regulation process might not always come up with a decent solution.
However, if our interaction with our thoughts is at an unconscious, trusted, intuitive level, then it’s much easier to spot the toxic stuff and not give it a second thought; easier to recognise some of our thoughts for what they really are.
So check out HOW you interact with your thoughts and give yourself an M.O.T!
So what are the beneficial differences of gaining a clearer understanding of how to best run our interaction with our thoughts?
In Being
With a clearly channelled conscious-unconscious dialogue we are grounded, comfortable with ourselves, objective about what we do, and have a deep sense of our authenticity. We understand our worth, are confident, and rarely have issues with self esteem.
If Internal Dialogue is dominant then we are likely to be less sure of ourselves, and whilst this might not be in all contexts we are prone to ‘peturbations’ (disturbances in our state of equilibrium). From this we can draw the conclusion that, especially at these times, we are less grounded, and therefore susceptible to ways that the outer world might impinge upon us.
In Taking and Doing Action
For someone where their conscious-unconscious dialogue is well attuned, being single-minded is a straightforward process – as is also the acceptance that it’s fine to change one’s mind. Because of clarity in that inner space, there’s an openness, a realisation, that there are many ways of doing something and that one may not necessarily have seized upon the optimum way.
Being single-minded is not something that I see the same as having a ‘One-Track Mind’, or a closed mind. Individuals in this area are, for me, people who operate with a very dominant and conscious psyche. They are the people for whom the inner voice is almost ‘Internal Monologue’. They are the people who aver that “There is only one worldview and it’s mine; only one map of the world – and I’ve got it.”
Decision Making
With a broader sense of conscious-unconscious dialogue, decision making becomes a much clearer, snappier, tighter process. The weighing up of options seems to take place very quickly, sometimes with uncanny speed.
Those of us still with the Internal Dialogue dominant will take much longer to take big decisions, and be more habit driven with lower level activities. We may even struggle with what constitutes a ‘big decision’, and proceed to endlessly ‘dither’ or ask around for advice in the style of “What would you do?” Or, “What do you think should I do?”
Performance
Think of a time when you had a performance (in any context) where everything went right, every choice you took was the right one, every bit of action was executed superbly.
HOW were you being through this Performance?
For most it is a rather detached experience, where no thinking takes place, where everything just flows as if guided by some unseen and perfect hand – Was it like that for you?
Where was Internal Dialogue when all this was taking place? Silent? Unnoticeable? Was there any awareness of it within your consciousness?
It is no secret that optimal performance requires a clear and open mind without Internal Dialogue.
So, if you want consistently more performances ‘in flow’ then deal with internal dialogue by ignoring all the unhelpful thinking you’ve been investing there until now, evolve towards a better engagement with your unconscious, trust and be your true self and not the self that is prone to being undermined from within. Once you let go of that that’s not been working, then changes start and gather pace.
Someone once described their life to me, as being “....like driving a car on a mountain road in a blizzard, with faulty brakes, smooth tyres, no windscreen wipers and no lights.” More than a bit dramatic I’ll grant you, but he had a very vivid imagination and talked a good story as well. The thing was, he ran his life via his Internal Dialogue. “What would happen if you stopped the car, got out and discovered that the weather outside was fine?” I asked him. “What if the windscreen was actually a cinema screen and you had been watching a film of your life? It would feel real and everything you said and thought to yourself would be real too.” We were looking at each other but our eyes didn’t meet. I was watching him - and he was watching something inside. It was a very long, silent moment and then he breathed a deep sigh.
The thing is, whenever we are being and we are AWARE of our Internal Dialogue then the warning signs are there for us. We know that here is the destroyer of our ability to engage all our processes at an unconscious level. When these red flags are waving, our concentration, our awareness loses focus – and all our abilities degrade accordingly.
For all of us, discarding a reliance on Internal Dialogue is a continual piece of ‘Work In Progress’. It’s always handy, therefore, to have some ready answers to the questions, “What can I do? How can I get out of my head?”
• Establish some distractive routines to break state and anchor these to a fast-track to the sense of that grounded centre. This can be breathing well, visualizing a calm place or colour, or having some handy kinaesthetic activity to engage the conscious.
• Take steps and build (or reaffirm) some realisations about keeping Internal Dialogue off your agenda for next time. Check the tread on your mental tyres!
• Acknowledge that performing intuitively at an unconscious level is the best way to be, and that evolving from Internal Dialogue to Conscious-Unconscious Dialogue will greatly enhance your long term improvement and consistency in performance, decision making, taking action, and life.
Conclusion
I spent most of my life talking to myself a lot. Increasingly over the last seven years or so, I have become accustomed to talking less and doing more. There’s still a degree of internal dialogue going on from time to time, and it’s OK and I’m comfortable with the nature of it – whereas before that it was definitely not my ‘best friend’.
How do I know I’m on the right path?
Well, there were certain 'traumatic' experiences in my early childhood that never became part of any of my internal dialogue. I know now that (thankfully) I accepted that these events were what they were, nothing more – nothing less, and were coded up with no emotional content at all. Had they been, they would have blighted all areas of life. However, I was much more disturbed on the inside by certain folk tales that my imagination was able to 'make real'.
Internal dialogue has the power to perpetuate a fragmented sense of self. For a full sense of holistic unity, sort out your thinking and go for conscious-unconscious dialogue every time!
Monday, January 16, 2012
Chat-View with The English Sisters!
Today is an exciting first for me as I hooked up for a "Chat-View" session with those amazing ladies The English Sisters.
After we'd sorted out some minor connectivity delays we were able to start the ball rolling - they asked me about my upcoming book "Mind How You Go", and we also talked about some other aspects of my work.
As you can probably tell I really enjoyed the time we spent together and it is now available to view on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AcBuWf-HWc
It's amazing how fast such an interview goes in terms of time, and so with certain topics we barely scratched the surface, and others weren't even mentioned! However if you are interested in finding out more about the book or any of the the areas where my work takes me, then please do get in touch and we can communicate in more detail.
I do have plans afoot to launch my own YouTube channel soon - but for now I'm grateful to the fabulous English Sisters for my first screening!!
Enjoy!
After we'd sorted out some minor connectivity delays we were able to start the ball rolling - they asked me about my upcoming book "Mind How You Go", and we also talked about some other aspects of my work.
As you can probably tell I really enjoyed the time we spent together and it is now available to view on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AcBuWf-HWc
It's amazing how fast such an interview goes in terms of time, and so with certain topics we barely scratched the surface, and others weren't even mentioned! However if you are interested in finding out more about the book or any of the the areas where my work takes me, then please do get in touch and we can communicate in more detail.
I do have plans afoot to launch my own YouTube channel soon - but for now I'm grateful to the fabulous English Sisters for my first screening!!
Enjoy!
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The Trigger and The Loop - Dementia Diaries #6
Opportunities are where you take them – and ‘events’ and ‘special days’ are really just that but in name only. In essence a day is a day is a day. Just another 24 hours. As Carson Robison’s song, “Life Gets Teejus Don’t It?” describes it –
“The sun comes up, and the sun goes down – the hands on the clock go around and around. I just get up and it’s time to lay down...” and so on...
This last Christmas Tide was, for me, a whole mixture of new discoveries, curiosities, perspectives, learnings and understandings about conditions within dementia – especially in terms of triggers and loops.
In the build up to Christmas Day, (this year on a Sunday) my Dad would notice all the decorations, cards received, play carol tunes on the harmonium, and often tell the story of how he could sing “Silent Night” (Stille Nacht) in German and “O Come All Ye Faithful” (Adeste Fidelis) in Latin. It took him back his youth and – several times a day – he would launch into song just to enliven the memories!
However, this year, there must have been some trigger – whether deeply embedded in memory, or quite superficial we just don’t know – that compelled him to feel duty bound to attend the 8am service at church on Christmas Day.
The cycle or compulsion kicked in somewhat early, though, and on the morning of Tuesday 20th December – at about 7.40am – he appeared downstairs, dressed up to the nines with his outdoor shoes on.
“I’m just going up to church for the 8 o’clock service,” he said.
“Ah that’s very good, Dad,” I replied. “However, there won’t be anyone there today because it’s Tuesday and Christmas Day is coming up next Sunday.” He laughed it off and added,
”Oh well – I’ll just treat it as a dress rehearsal!”
So far so good! He enjoyed having a much longer day than usual because his regular getting up time is between 10.30am and Midday. The thing was he actually got very tired as a result, and although he went to bed at his regular time (around 11pm) the next day he slept on until much later. On Wednesday 21st December he got up around 4.30pm – somewhat confused because it was nearly dark outside and he couldn’t tell whether it was 4.30am or 4.30pm! No matter though because he was quite happy and chirpy as usual.
Next morning however – Thursday 22nd – he was up and around at 7.15am, getting ready to go up to church for the 8am service. As you can see there was a looped pattern emerging here and as had happened two days previously, he got rather tired from having a very long day awake, dressed and pottering around!
Friday 23rd, as you might have guessed, he overslept, getting up at around 5.30pm with more unsureness as to whether it was really early morning or evening. I found myself hoping that Christmas Eve morning would not continue on the early/late cycle – but it was wishful thinking as on the Saturday 24th he was again up ready for the 8am visit to church!
There was certainly a feeling of building to a crescendo to this, and we talked about us all going to the Midnight service later that day. Through the evening on Christmas Eve we could tell he was thinking about going to the church and as the time got nearer he really began to gather his thoughts (and duties and compulsions – whatever they were). He became more agitated, kept going to the toilet, felt and then was sick, but still maintained that he was going to go. At around 11.30pm he put on his coat and hat and got together what he thought he needed, clearly very focussed and driven, whilst also losing his usual happy daily demeanour.
It is only a short walk to the church and we set out on the journey. After about 50 yards he said he felt sick and we knew it was going to be best if we abandoned the quest and returned home. Poor chap, he was so disoriented that by the time we’d arrived back at the front gate less than 30 seconds later, that he asked, “Where is this, where am I – what is this place?”
We got back inside and after the best part of an hour he was much more back to his old and usual self and so off he went to bed, in a better place but shattered all the same.
And so to Christmas Day!
Well, somehow I knew what was likely to happen, because of the daily cycle, but there was an outside chance that the “I must get to the church” compulsion would override everything. It did not – and so Christmas Day was very definitely a non-event! We’d decided anyway to reserve the culinary festivities until days later when there would be more of us present.
So I was alone for a lot of the day which might have put a very odd perspective on things – if I’d let it!
My Dad appeared just before 7pm, not properly awake and clearly disoriented, distracted, grumpy, cantankerous, on a very short fuse deep within his less than grounded reality. We had a brief conversation in which he made some choice and unkind remarks about our domestic situation in very florid language. I chose not to respond as he was not really with it enough to know it was me he was talking to! He went back upstairs to his bedroom and reappeared around 7.30pm, dressed and ready for something to eat and drink – now back to his normal, regular chirpy demeanour.
For the entire week following Christmas we observed him gradually getting back to his regular daily life cycle, wondering whether the next Sunday (New Year’s Day) might trigger off the get-up-early to go to church cycle again. Thankfully this did not materialise and I’m happy to report now – almost mid January – that he is back on an even keel all round, as are we all!
We had our ‘proper’ Christmas Dinner during the following week when there was five of the family present, and it was lovely, an absolute delight for us all including my Dad.
When he is totally ‘in the now’ it is wonderful for him. So whatever the trigger or unconscious driver was there in the pre-Christmas period, it was no longer present in his everyday consciousness once the day had passed, and he seemed to know it had passed as well. Quite often at other times this is not the case – but thankfully those triggers and loops have been worked through and out and have dissolved back from whence they came!
So what kind of Christmas did I have in 2011? Different – and very, very quiet!!
“The sun comes up, and the sun goes down – the hands on the clock go around and around. I just get up and it’s time to lay down...” and so on...
This last Christmas Tide was, for me, a whole mixture of new discoveries, curiosities, perspectives, learnings and understandings about conditions within dementia – especially in terms of triggers and loops.
In the build up to Christmas Day, (this year on a Sunday) my Dad would notice all the decorations, cards received, play carol tunes on the harmonium, and often tell the story of how he could sing “Silent Night” (Stille Nacht) in German and “O Come All Ye Faithful” (Adeste Fidelis) in Latin. It took him back his youth and – several times a day – he would launch into song just to enliven the memories!
However, this year, there must have been some trigger – whether deeply embedded in memory, or quite superficial we just don’t know – that compelled him to feel duty bound to attend the 8am service at church on Christmas Day.
The cycle or compulsion kicked in somewhat early, though, and on the morning of Tuesday 20th December – at about 7.40am – he appeared downstairs, dressed up to the nines with his outdoor shoes on.
“I’m just going up to church for the 8 o’clock service,” he said.
“Ah that’s very good, Dad,” I replied. “However, there won’t be anyone there today because it’s Tuesday and Christmas Day is coming up next Sunday.” He laughed it off and added,
”Oh well – I’ll just treat it as a dress rehearsal!”
So far so good! He enjoyed having a much longer day than usual because his regular getting up time is between 10.30am and Midday. The thing was he actually got very tired as a result, and although he went to bed at his regular time (around 11pm) the next day he slept on until much later. On Wednesday 21st December he got up around 4.30pm – somewhat confused because it was nearly dark outside and he couldn’t tell whether it was 4.30am or 4.30pm! No matter though because he was quite happy and chirpy as usual.
Next morning however – Thursday 22nd – he was up and around at 7.15am, getting ready to go up to church for the 8am service. As you can see there was a looped pattern emerging here and as had happened two days previously, he got rather tired from having a very long day awake, dressed and pottering around!
Friday 23rd, as you might have guessed, he overslept, getting up at around 5.30pm with more unsureness as to whether it was really early morning or evening. I found myself hoping that Christmas Eve morning would not continue on the early/late cycle – but it was wishful thinking as on the Saturday 24th he was again up ready for the 8am visit to church!
There was certainly a feeling of building to a crescendo to this, and we talked about us all going to the Midnight service later that day. Through the evening on Christmas Eve we could tell he was thinking about going to the church and as the time got nearer he really began to gather his thoughts (and duties and compulsions – whatever they were). He became more agitated, kept going to the toilet, felt and then was sick, but still maintained that he was going to go. At around 11.30pm he put on his coat and hat and got together what he thought he needed, clearly very focussed and driven, whilst also losing his usual happy daily demeanour.
It is only a short walk to the church and we set out on the journey. After about 50 yards he said he felt sick and we knew it was going to be best if we abandoned the quest and returned home. Poor chap, he was so disoriented that by the time we’d arrived back at the front gate less than 30 seconds later, that he asked, “Where is this, where am I – what is this place?”
We got back inside and after the best part of an hour he was much more back to his old and usual self and so off he went to bed, in a better place but shattered all the same.
And so to Christmas Day!
Well, somehow I knew what was likely to happen, because of the daily cycle, but there was an outside chance that the “I must get to the church” compulsion would override everything. It did not – and so Christmas Day was very definitely a non-event! We’d decided anyway to reserve the culinary festivities until days later when there would be more of us present.
So I was alone for a lot of the day which might have put a very odd perspective on things – if I’d let it!
My Dad appeared just before 7pm, not properly awake and clearly disoriented, distracted, grumpy, cantankerous, on a very short fuse deep within his less than grounded reality. We had a brief conversation in which he made some choice and unkind remarks about our domestic situation in very florid language. I chose not to respond as he was not really with it enough to know it was me he was talking to! He went back upstairs to his bedroom and reappeared around 7.30pm, dressed and ready for something to eat and drink – now back to his normal, regular chirpy demeanour.
For the entire week following Christmas we observed him gradually getting back to his regular daily life cycle, wondering whether the next Sunday (New Year’s Day) might trigger off the get-up-early to go to church cycle again. Thankfully this did not materialise and I’m happy to report now – almost mid January – that he is back on an even keel all round, as are we all!
We had our ‘proper’ Christmas Dinner during the following week when there was five of the family present, and it was lovely, an absolute delight for us all including my Dad.
When he is totally ‘in the now’ it is wonderful for him. So whatever the trigger or unconscious driver was there in the pre-Christmas period, it was no longer present in his everyday consciousness once the day had passed, and he seemed to know it had passed as well. Quite often at other times this is not the case – but thankfully those triggers and loops have been worked through and out and have dissolved back from whence they came!
So what kind of Christmas did I have in 2011? Different – and very, very quiet!!
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