Society is Mental Illness

An American psychologist who lives in Slovenia and has recently read my book said to me: »I think society IS mental illness.«

I was puzzled for a while, but then I asked: »What are mental patients then? The worst cases?«

To my astonishment he replied: »No, they are just people who are more aware of it.«

I answered instinctively: »I'll take this as a compliment.«

Later I gave this conversation more thought. Maybe he was right. Think of paranoia. It's one of the core thinking patterns. We are afraid of getting old, afraid of dying, afraid of being alone. So afraid that whole industries can grow out of it. Think of depression. Most people are so immersed in negative thinking that you have to carefully pick your company, otherwise you get constantly drawn back into negativity, even if you strive for positivity. And the majority of negative thinkers are not even aware of what they are doing.

Thus maybe mental patients did not fall mentally ill in vain. The man said that we are more aware of it. What does it mean? Being aware of the problem is always the first step to the solution. Maybe mental patients who make it through their illness and start thinking positively can help the non-mental-patient-people to step out of their negativity. For honestly speaking the negativity cannot get any worse than it already is. We have hit the rock bottom already. Thus logically it can only get better.

Please send your thoughts on this subject to: bb.bukle@gmail.com

Bringing Theory into Practice

Some time ago I mentioned in a blog that I affirm regularly: “It is my responsibility HOW to draw a line in a relationship. The reaction of the other person involved is his/her responsibility.”

Today I would like to share with you a story that shows progress in real life due to the upper affirmation:

The other day I tried to draw money from an ATM. I pushed the bank card into the fissure. The ATM did not react. I noticed another fissure just above the one, where my card was stuck. I realized I had pushed the card into the wrong fissure. I tried to pull it out, but it was too deep inside already. I saw a man standing behind me and since he was waiting for me, I figured it would be good for him to get this thing sorted out as soon as possible, so he could use the machine too. I asked him for help. He approached the ATM and could not believe that a woman can be so stupid. I decided to buy tweezers just around the corner and try to grab the card by them. I ran to the shop and bought tweezers. When I came back, the man was angrily waving with my bank card in the air trying to make me feel guilty for having been so stupid. I tried to cheer him up with a joke, but his despair was not repairable. He asked: “Will you be able to do it by yourself now?” I kindly asked him for help, for I was in enough stress already and I did not want to do any more mistakes. He helped me, but did not forget to add an ironic remark that hurt me: “Like I have time for you.” He must have drawn his money while I was buying tweezers, so after having seen my card in the right fissure, he hurried away without saying good-bye.

Then I tried to finally draw the money from the ATM, but on the display there appeared a sentence that I did not fully understand. I was tired and I left with my bank card and no cash. I thought if I sit on a bench nearby and get some rest, maybe later I will be able to try again. When I sat down however, I started crying. I felt like a loser that does not even know how to operate an ATM. On the top of that I could not understand why the man was so angry with me. I even bought tweezers largely on his account so that he would not have to wait too long. On the top of that I made fun of myself in order to cheer him up. Still he showed absolutely no compassion. Since I had gotten to the point of crying, there was no hope for getting my focus back and being able to operate the ATM in a short time. So I went home. On my way home a most remarkable thing happened. I managed to transform my sadness and guilty feeling into anger that I expressed verbally. I did not care if anyone passing by should hear me.

It was a great relief to get the anger out and even to feel it in the first place. If this had happened a year ago, there would not have been any righteous anger whatsoever. I would have only carried this feeling of being a looser inside of me. The progress also showed in the largely decreased amount of time that I needed to process the feelings connected to the unpleasant event. I forgot about the man by the end of the day. If this story had happened a year ago, I would probably have carried the story of my failure in my head for a fortnight.

You can ask me more about the power of affirmations: bb.bukle@gmail.com

Saying Thanks as a Habit

Over the last years I have gradually developed the habit of saying thanks. I start in the morning. I say thanks for all the good things that happened the day before and also for the »things« that are there all the time – being happily married, having found my vocation as a writer etc. This is a part of my morning meditation called maypole exercise, which is one of the basic exercises of the Phyllis Krystal method. I do this every morning, which sets a thankful atmosphere in me for the whole day.

It is one thing to say thanks for the good things, but what about the bad ones? I am grateful for the mental illness episodes in my past, for they had brought me to the point in my life, when I finally realized, what my true vocation was. On one hand it was hard to accept the illness and it took me about 13 years to come to the conclusion that it was all for the best. On the other hand it is easy to talk about the positive aspect of something that is over.

The truly hard thankfulness seems the one that we can develop already while a bad thing is happening to us. Let me give you an example. When I wake up with a migraine, I first get angry. Then I realize that anger will only make the migraine worse. Then I say mechanically: »Thank you God for this migraine. I do not know why it is good for me, but it might reveal itself later«. I do not really mean it and how could I, when my head hurts like hell. Nonetheless it helps to say thanks, for these sentences calm me down, while angry sentences would only make the headache worse. In retrospective I have been many times really grateful for the migraine, for I have realized that it had slowed me down, when I was either working too much or getting too emotional.

Last but not least I want to tell you a funny story in order to spice the serious subject a bit. Some weeks ago I was buying coffee from a coffee machine. When the sentence »Please remove the cup« showed up on the display, I said: »Thank you«. The next moment I was laughing at myself and looking around in shame. The lady that had heard me was smiling. We ended laughing together.

You can ask me more about my habit of saying thanks: bb.bukle@gmail.com

The Blind Car Driver in Me

This is another blog on dream interpretation. May I point out again that I only interpret the impressive dreams or the reoccurring ones. I dream almost every day, thus in my opinion it would be pointless to try to interpret every insignificant dream. I might even overdo it and get obsessed with dream interpretation. That is why I have set myself the limitation of interpreting only certain dreams. On the contrary a person who rarely remembers a dream in the morning would not need this limitation of course. May I warn you that you should consult your psychiatrist first, before you start any kind of dream interpretation, for you have to be stable in order to be able to do it. If one interprets his/her dreams during a mental illness episode for example, the interpreting might even make the episode worse.

In my previous blog I mentioned that I usually use the Phyllis Krystal Method to interpret my dreams. Nonetheless the example in my previous blog was interpreted solely according to my intuition. This time I will describe an example of my dreams that I have managed to interpret according to the above mentioned method. Dream interpretation is just a facilitating exercise that I use as a back-up next to other exercises according to the PK Method that I do regularly. It is not the core work of the method, but it gives useful hints at times.

The dreams: I met a very interesting woman. She was the head of the Union of the Blind People of my country — not the real head, just somebody who appeared as such in my dreams. She was driving a car. I was astonished. I asked her: “How can you drive a car? You are blind.” She gave me a most logical but at the same time a surprising answer: “I see with my third eye.” As much as I was dazzled by her self-confidence and supernatural capabilities I was also just as much disappointed with myself, for I had stopped driving a year ago.


This last bit regarding my driving is real. It is not an imagined story from the dreams. I had been trying to learn how to drive and be relaxed while driving a car for 4 years, but it only got worse over the years, so a year ago I finally quit. The real-life feeling of being a loser who cannot drive a car was combined with the imagined story of a blind car driver in my dreams.

When I woke up in the morning, I first thought the dream was telling me to try driving a car again. Later however I tried to interpret it with the PK method, because this is what I usually do, if the dream is impressive. According to this method the people that appear in our dreams represent parts of our personality. Similarly the car usually means our job or business. Thus the blind woman in my dreams could be interpreted as the brave part of me that knows how to pull off my book project, even though the skeptic in me is still having her doubts, for this is my first project of the kind. In my opinion the dreams were trying to encourage me in my endeavor to publish a book that will help other mental patients in their fight for a better life.

You can ask me more about my dreams and the way I interpret them: bb.bukle@gmail.com

Dramatic Dreams

Last week I had a somewhat weird but also an inspiring dream. A friend of mine appeared in it. We were running away from a flood. I spotted a pile of sand and said to him: »Let's climb up this pile and then we are saved.« He said: »Oh, I don't feel like climbing. It's too strenuous. I will go around the pile.« I looked back at the threatening flood and decided to save my ass instead of trying to persuade him to take the hard way.

It was one of those situations in dreams that are hard to explain, but you know what you have to do and it is the only way out. I knew there was no time to go around the pile, since the flood was approaching too quickly. Losing any additional seconds trying to persuade him would have gotten both of us killed. So I climbed up the pile. When I got to the other side of the pile, I knew I was saved. I looked back and at that instant the friend was carried away by the flood. He died. I felt guilty for a second, but then a great feeling of reassurance set in. I did what I could for him, yet he was not ready to fight. His reluctance to make an extra effort cost him his life.

When I woke up from the dream in the morning, I said to myself. »Jesus, how stupid dreams.« Later however I started thinking about them and suddenly it dawned on me that the dreams were telling me something. The friend from the dreams is a friend from my real life. I have known him since my high-school years. He shares the same diagnoses with me, but he is too reluctant to do anything about his life that would change things for the better. I tried to show him the way many times, but he was never ready to work on his thinking patterns or to change his life style to a healthier one. It broke my heart to see him all miserable again and again and at the end of the conversation he would usually say that I worry more about him than he worries about himself. So I stopped chatting with him. I left him behind.

The dream was telling me that there is no need to have any guilt feelings about my decision. I still e-mail him, but going out for a cup of coffee with him is simply too exhausting for me.

I often try to interpret dreams that leave a great impression on me or those that reoccur often. I believe that such intense dreams usually try to tell us something. I normally use the Phyllis Krystal method to interpret dreams, but it doesn’t always work. This time I simply used my intuition.

You can ask me more about my dreams and the way I interpret them: bb.bukle@gmail.com

The Happy Hacienda

It's not really a hacienda. This is only a nick-name for a cute little plantation of olive-trees on a hill overlooking the sea. It’s a magical place, where the retired parents of a good friend of mine live and grow olive-trees for a hobby. Among the olive trees they are also happy to show their guests the lemon-trees flowering in May and to offer them fresh fruits in late summer: apples, peaches, figs and grapes. Giving the prevailing pale green color of the olive-leaves a touch of colorfulness there are red poppies, pink honeysuckle, yellow Spanish broom and indigo colored sage blossoms stretching up towards the sun. Next to this dazzling array of sunbathing plants there is a group of oak trees believed to be inhabited by dwarfs.

The dwarfs may represent an unpleasant issue for the skeptics, but my husband and I were surely being spoiled all the afternoon and throughout the evening by the human inhabitants of the olive-trees-plantation. All the carefully prepared food, all the laughs we had together have left a smile on our faces instantly popping up whenever we remember the soft smell of jasmine shrubs, the soothing light of the sunset and the delicious taste of homemade salt fish.

We came to meet my friend at her parents’ house in order to give her a set of earrings and a necklace as a small token of our gratitude for her peer-review of my book. It’s amazing how much we get back, if we are ready to give. Next to all the fairy-tale-like feelings described above I also discovered something very practical we got as a feedback. Later in the evening my friend’s aunt and uncle came to visit. They noticed the new earrings and the necklace she was wearing. My friend began to explain enthusiastically, how she had received this gift for having peer-reviewed my book. Suddenly it dawned on me that the earrings-plus-necklace-set is going to add to promotion, although totally unintentionally. That’s what I call little every-day boomerangs of our gratitude. When we give without expectation, we actually get a lot back. It’s not just a saying.

You can ask me more about my new book: bb.bukle@gmail.com

Society expects

I have read a paragraph in a leading national newspaper just recently: “Nowadays the society expects a lot from a woman. We have to be successful at work, be good wives, good mothers, look like models and keep smiling.” It’s interesting that such statements appear quite often and are usually written by women.

Coming across sentences like this we gradually get the impression that the society sets a list of priorities for us. Give me a break! Who precisely is this “society”? Society in my opinion is nothing but a sociological notion. How could something that is not even a human being expect anything from me? I choose to take care of my health in the first place for example. My husband comes second. I am not a mother yet, but work definitely comes last. This is my list of priorities. And I definitely don’t need any “society” to approve my choice, for I take full responsibility for my decision to put my health first at all times.

Of course I am “lucky” in a certain sense. I had my lesson – 3 times in a locked ward of a psychiatric clinic. An experience like this makes it very easy for a person to put one’s health on the top of the list of priorities. Those of you who are healthy and thus lucky in another way of course could maybe use my advice. Watch out for silly phrases like “society expects”. And decide what is your list of priorities yourself. Oh, and yes, please try to squeeze health somewhere towards the top — you know, just in case.

You can ask me more about taking responsibility for my own life: bb.bukle@gmail.com