The Strength of Vulnerability: Getting My Shit Together

  2020 was a rough year. I am so thankful to be where we are now, to have safe and reliable vaccines and to be able to begin to re-emerge. I won’t presume to speak for all in the mental health profession, but, for me, even this last few months have felt like a continuation of 2020 in terms of my professional life. At my hospital day job, I still see all patients virtually, and they are still facing many of the same struggles and questions as we were in the midst of the pandemic. Outside of that, the clients that I see in private practice attend sessions both in-person and via tele-health depending on their circumstances. People are carrying a lot right now. They really are, and it is an honor to be able to sit with them as they navigate the challenges that they face. I feel truly privileged to be able to helps those that I serve through my very different, and yet often very similar, work contexts, but I would be lying if I said that the load isn’t heavy some days. Compassion fatigue is a thing, a very real thing. I am a huge advocate for therapists having therapists, and sometimes we need to reach out and ask for help ourselves.

In my own life, I struggle with a great deal of anxiety, some symptoms of depression, and more than a tinge of ADHD, predominantly inattentive type. There days I’d really appreciate some of the hyperactivity that some experience. My anxiety and I are old friends, and I do take medication myself to help even out those spikes of anxiety. Also, one great thing about my anxiety is that it tends to rev up whenever the depressive thoughts get too bad because it’s scared of where we might be headed; so, that’s a perk. In general, I’ve learned to be aware of not only the challenges that my own mental health symptoms present but also the positive elements, the heightened empathy and awareness that aids me in connecting with others, the ways in which my anxious mind connects seemingly unrelated people and things to facilitate the creation of beautiful concepts and human connections. 

My anxiety and ADHD also make it difficult for me execute on those concepts; so, often the most helpful thing I can do is connect amazing people and resources, and, then, get out of the way. That is the part of me that this post is mostly about. Like many people with ADHD, I experience significant struggles in maintaining my personal and work spaces; so, often I go to work to do a job that can, some days, carry significant stressors. Then, I come home to a chaotic home environment with every ounce of my attention and focus drained. Rather than cleaning, I would grab a snack, watch something on Netflix, and then hit the hay…well, after clearing the stray clothes and/or clothes basket off the bed from which I had pulled together the days outfit that morning.

For the longest time, I have gone out of my way to avoid having friends come to my place. I have always managed to find ways to either go to their place or to meet them in a public setting. The idea of my coworkers or other friends seeing my home has felt horrifying to me. Well, just as I, and many other mental health professionals, have a skill set that others sometimes seek out to help them do things that they are absolutely able to do on their own, just with a little guidance and probing from me, I decided that it was time for me to do the same. So, about a month ago, I hired a home organizer to come to my apartment. In a very short period of time, she, someone who also struggles with ADHD, has helped me create some systems that I will actually maintain, and, to my surprise, I have been. I am shocked to find myself “re-setting” a room before I leave it, much like I would one of the shared therapy spaces at my day job. 

Yes, I have my very own Marie Condo, Bobby Berk, or Joanna and Clea from The Home Edit, and, surprisingly, it costs way less to spend an hour with her than it does to spend an hour with me. It is 1000% worth it! I have felt so much more relaxed in my home since taking this step. The fact that I now more often refer to it as my home than as my apartment is an unconscious shift that I noticed has taken place. It feels incredibly vulnerable to do this, but I know that I am not the only one out there who consistently avoids having others in their home; I often avoid allowing anyone other than family and one or two close friends to even set foot in my home. With that in mind, I am taking the incredibly frightening step to share before and after photos to illustrate the incredible work that this person (her name is Tracey) has done in my life.

    For those of you who don’t struggle with with maintaining personal spaces, I ask for your compassion and understanding. For those of you who also struggle, you absolutely have mine. 

Thank you for reading

—Josh a.k.a. Culbs (to some. You know who you are.) ❤️

Planning, Reflecting, Connecting

I’m pretty sure I’m one of the lucky ones. Some days I’m not sure. By this, I mean I’m one of the ones that has been able to continue going to work uninterrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. I see you all complaining about having to stay home and how much you regret having bought a 2020 planner. I read your words, and, sometimes, depending on wear my head is at the moment, I read those kinds of statements and either think, “Yeah. Well, I’d like a little taste of getting to stay home all the time,” or “Yeah. That sounds awful. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with myself on my days off. I’ll bet everyday being like this is awful.” Even my days off are starting to creep back to normal though, and, on almost all days, having and using a paper planner is helpful for me. The tactile experience of a writing instrument on paper is a very deliberate and reinforcing experience for me, and I am glad that it is a habit that I have cultivated, even if I’m not always as consistent with it as I would like.

For my planners, I choose to use Passion Planners. Originally, years ago, I bought in because they are geared towards helping you achieve a greater sense of work/life balance. I continue to use them for that reason, and, in the last few years as the founder, Angelina Trinidad has been more open about her identity, I appreciate knowing that I am supporting a company that was founded and is run by a queer woman of color. The company also makes an intentional effort to promote diversity and to help those who are able to afford to purchase a planner, but would benefit from having help in creating structure in their lives, gain access to their products. Also, right now, 50% of all of their sales are going to support organizations that promote and support people of color.

It is helpful for me to have a space where I can not only track my schedule but also think through the tasks I need to complete for the day, record my health numbers, and to be able to think through and remind myself that, even in these extraordinarily tumultuous times, there are still good things happening. In fact, both COVID-19 and the uprisings against racial injustice around the world are providing us with opportunity to recognize the importance of looking for the good things where we can find them and to appreciate connection with each other because, for multiple reasons, that connection can be lost suddenly and without warning.  Whether it’s in a paper planner, using an app, or just sitting in silence, I hope that you are able to find ways to reflect and sustain ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually right now in whatever forms those take for you. 

~ Culbs

Building New Habits, Laying A Foundation

Wow! It’s really been a while since I have posted anything to this blog or to any blog for that matter. This moment in time, we find ourselves confronted with two significant signals, the pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racial injustice. This, more many of us, has prompted us to examine ourselves, our choices, and to ask ourselves and each other what our future looks like, has me asking what behaviors do I want to be a part of who I am and what I contribute to the larger society. 

First, I am feeling compelled to read more and to be intentional about the messaging that I consume in all forms of media. In my former far-right conservative days, the church that I attending use to encourage fasting on Wednesdays. We would fast throughout the day and then come together for a church service on Wednesday evenings where we would spend part of the service in prayer, and, then, once the service was over, we would break the fast by going to a restaurant, usually the McDonald’s or Denny’s down the street from the church. This practice of fasting was meant to call attention to the need to “feed” ourselves in all aspects of our lives. Prior to the church service that evening, it was expecting that we would devote the time that was normally apportioned to meals to Bible-reading and prayer. The pastor even emphasized the importance of building relationships with the employees at the McDonald’s and Denny’s in an effort to draw them into the community of the church. Now, obviously, at this later point in my life, I see things very differently from my old church, but I think that there are some useful lessons in there. Being aware of the information that we consume is as important as the food that we consume, maybe even more so. I also think that there is something to that evangelical tendency to be so excited about something (in their case, a belief in Jesus) that I am always looking for opportunities to share it with others.

For the second change, I am doing it right now. I want to write more. The second job that I ever had was working as the News and Feature Writer for the newspaper in the small town where my high school was. One of the regular weekly duties of that job was interviewing a member of the community for a weekly column called Citizen of the Week where I would share a short summary of who they are and how they contribute to the community. I’ve smiled a few times at the realization that I am still doing similar pieces through the Walker of the Week profiles for Equitas Health and the Central Ohio AIDS Walk. I also write similar profiles on members of the Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus. I see these as so important in helping to connect members of the community to each other and to help peel back the curtain and to help us to see each other as more than just a face on a Spring morning in McPherson Commons or a singing face up on a stage. Additionally, I want to return to blogging more, and I want, through building this habit of regular writing to explore other forms of writing such as short stories, poetry, or maybe something larger, like a novel or a memoir.

Some EveryPlate meals for this week (Linguini
Carbonara, Hoisin Sriracha Chicken,
and Sweet 'n' Tangy Cherry Meatballs) 

Third, I want to cook more. For both my financial and physical well-being, I would be better off if I did this more frequently. I also enjoy it and find it to be good self-care. I realize from discussion with co-workers and friends that not everyone enjoys this, but I find prep work of chopping vegetables and assembling ingredients to be relaxing and gratifying. When I first moved to Columbus, I had a friend who would invite me over to prepare and eat a meal together. Maybe this will involve into another way of connecting and building community. For now, I struggle to maintain the consistent habit of just cooking for me. For now, I’m just using a meal prep delivery service, EveryPlate. They are a subsidiary of Hello Fresh, but they are significantly less expensive. The trade off is that they don’t neatly sort the ingredient into separate kits for you, and the direction cards that they send you are smaller and have fewer photos. I also wish that they provided more vegetarian options. For personal health reasons as well as the overall health of the planet, I have been trying to eat less meat. They do have some offerings, but those tend to be far less creative than their other more omnivorous options.

Finally, while, as an introvert, I have enjoyed some aspects of social distancing, I’m realizing that something has been missing from my life as I have been less engaged in efforts to  try to move us towards a better world. I am so encourage by what I see around me right now, especially from young people. The tragic death of George Floyd has created a moment, and people all over the world have been there to step through it and to ask what this moment means for us right now and who we can be in the future. I am striving for and seeking what the appropriate level of engagement is for me in terms of being present for both, as a mental health professional, my clients and patients as well as my community.

For now, my goal is to provide an update for this blog and my other blog, Authentic Culbs, once a week. This blog tends to focus more on what I am doing to, hopefully, improve myself as a person and contributor to society. The other blog has always focused more on my life as a part of that aforementioned conservative church and community and finding my way out of the closet and living openly as a gay man. I’m not sure if that is still what that blog is or not. I often feel that people are interested in that past part of me and the pain that I experienced through that journey. I’m more interested in looking ahead, exploring who I am now and what lies ahead, for me and for all of us.

If you have any thoughts on media to help me in this journey, please feel free to share. I’m also interested in thoughts about what either of my blogs are or could be. Let’s be in dialog and community. Thank you for reading!

~Culbs

Leaning Into the Fear

Higher Education has its advantages, and it certainly has its frustrations. I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken to a single person who could say that every piece of information or skill that they learned through their college years. Some of those maybe-not-so-necessary classes weren’t all bad though, right? In fact, we chose some of them because they were fun, and we’re taught to believe that those, seemingly, extraneous courses make us into more well-rounded people, right?

So, why do we cease seeing things through that lens after earning our degrees? Between elementary school, high school, my associate’s degree, my bachelor’s, and my master’s, I have spent more years inside an academic setting than outside of one. Outside of working and other obligations, I generally spend my time engaged in activities to give back to the community or just relaxing for an hour or two a day to recover before going to bed and getting up to engage in the activities of the next day. Taking the time to engage in activities purely for fun or because I want to learn about something new and interesting generally evokes a feeling of guilt within me.

I recognize that this guilt serves a double purpose though; because, it actually protects me. If I don’t give myself permission to explore new and interesting ideas, I don’t have to face the possibility of failing in those endeavors and being embarrassed. The guilt keeps me safe. I mean, who can criticize me for spending large chunks of my time volunteering and investing in improving the lives of others?

So, I think it’s time to start to look at my calendar as if I were planning a college semester. I have a job that I love, and I have the pleasure of owning a small business on the side. Those are my required courses. I believe that it’s time to seek to make an intentional reframing of how I select the “electives” that round out my life. I’m thinking that it’s time to add a few “I’ve-always-wanted-to-learn-more-about-that” courses to my life. A couple of days ago, I was asked by a friend if I had made any New Year’s Resolutions. I hesitated momentarily and then said, “no.” That wasn’t exactly true. I was just too afraid in that setting to share with him what the goals are that I have set for this year. I’m not even going to share all of them here now. I will share about two of them. One is already in motion. 

In the fall of 2018, I was asked to join the Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus’ sacred ensemble, Illuminati. I very much connected with their mission of sharing a message of inclusion through song in faith spaces. Despite being absolutely terrified at the idea of singing in front of an audience, I resolved to push past my fears and sign up. I already, after just a few months, almost allowed my feelings of guilt and my relentless inner critic to persuade me to give it up. Performing as a part of the larger main chorus performances over the holidays, allowed me to get a glimpse of just what the chorus means to those who come to hear them, and I am encouraged as I think of ways in which the mission and message of Illuminati in particular could be widened and amplified to minister to the wounds that so many within the LGBTQIA+ community have experienced at the hands of unaffirming and exclusionary communities of faith.

       The next area of fear and vulnerability that I have set my sights on is actually an area in which I dabbled before…poetry. I took a poetry course while I was finishing up my bachelor’s at Ohio University. I took it then because it terrified me then just as it terrifies me now. I haven’t dabbled in that arena for years though, and the part that excites me the most is that, when I took that course, I was still living as an ex-gay. I remember that a couple of the poems that I wrote were even about a girl that I was dating at the time. Thinking about picking up a pen and starting to write poetry now, living as my full and authentic self, feels exciting and empowering. I will be attending a poetry writing workshop later tonight. I am absolutely terrified, and I know that, in this instance, I need to lean into my fear rather than retreat from it.

I’ll be sure to let you all know how it goes, and, maybe, eventually I’ll feel safe enough to share some of my poetry on this blog. Thank you so much for reading and joining me on this journey of seeking to be a better me!

~Culbs

P.S. Oh. And a resumption of blogging is also a part of my effort to challenge myself to get beyond my fears and strive to become more comfortable with sharing parts of myself that make me feel vulnerable in new and creative ways!

Death...Pondering Mortality

For the past few weeks, I have been pondering my mortality. I know. It’s not a very comfortable topic for many of us. I mean it’s one of those things that we only get to do once; so, I feel like there’s some performance anxiety surrounding it. Where will it happen? When? Who will I be with? How will I appear in death? If I were able to see myself in death, would I be proud of what I see? Will I be ashamed? Oddly, while death is the one experience that our lives guarantee us to have, and, yet, it is the one experience that we work the hardest to avoid or, for many of us, to avoid even the very thought of.

In this present moment, as I write this, I am 41 years old. In a few days, my body's odometer will turn over to mark the end of my 42nd year and the beginning of my 43rd. I’m in my 40’s. How did I get here? It seems like a few weeks ago that I started counting down the days until my 16th birthday and then, shortly after, began marking the time until my high school graduation. It seems like we are constantly marking the time until the next milestone or looking back with longing at those which have already passed. As I have been making the conscious effort to be mindful of my own mortality and the importance of living in the the now, one of the things that I have done is that I have taken the step to download an app to my phone called ‘WeCroak.’ For some of you this might not be a helpful tool, but it has been enormously helpful for me. Each day, it sends me 5 random reminders that I am going to die. These reminders come in the form of quotes. The one that is sticking in my mind right now is from the American psychiatrist, Irvin Yalom, a name familiar to most people who have ever taken a class on the dynamics of group therapy, but he also did substantive work in the area of the fear that human beings exhibit towards our own mortality. The quote is as follows…”Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.”

Quote from 'WeCroak' App

Today I find myself particularly conscious of this spark, mainly inspired by the lives of two accomplished women. The first is former First Lady Barbara Bush who died just a couple of days ago on April 17th. Having lived so much of her life in the public sphere, she left behind a legacy of unyielding firmness in her beliefs while doing so within a composed and dignified personage. Whether you or I agreed fully with either her or her family’s political views, she lived her life in such a way that showed that she was unequivocally comfortable with being herself in all contexts. From all accounts, in the days and hours prior to her death, Barbara Bush had made a conscious decision that she was ready to die, and it seems that she was at peace with both that decision and the life that she had lived.

The second woman that I find myself thinking about is Southwest pilot Tammie Jo Shults who, on the same morning, made an emergency landing of a Boeing 737 in Philadelphia after losing one engine as well as hydraulics, savings lives of all onboard, except for one, Jennifer Riordan, a Wells Fargo executive who was nearly blow out of the aircraft after a window was shattered by engine debris at 32,500 feet. In those moments, facing what must have felt like her own impending death, adrenaline and years of flight experience both as one of the United States’ first female naval fighter pilots and as a commercial airline pilot kicked in for Shults. Her words from the cockpit recordings reveal a calm and measured tone as she detailed what was occurring to the aircraft and those aboard to air traffic control. Acts of heroism and desperation were also occurring back in the cabin as passengers worked to keep Jennifer Riordan from being fully pulled from the plane and to block the window to keep others from being blown out. Others worked frantically to purchase internet access so that they could send final messages to their loved ones, fighting to hold onto and enter their credit card numbers as the aircraft rapidly descended over 20,000 feet in approximately five minutes time.

Barbara Bush

Tammie Jo Shults

Based on these two women and the events that surrounded them in the moments that had to seem likely to result in death for both of them, I am struck by the calm that seemed to inhabit each of them. Both were able to draw from a lifetime of experience and accomplishment from their own history-making contexts. While only one of them ultimately died, both faced death, and it appears to me, as a distant observer, that both were the calm in the midst of their individual contexts, providing anchors of stability for those around them. That is the kind of calm acceptance that I hope that I exhibit when faced with my own impending death. In order to get there, I think that the powerful reminder that both of these stories present is that, until that moment comes, all that I have this immediate, ever fleeting and ever arriving moment, now.

~Culbs

joshua.culbertson@gmail.com

A Little Bit Better?

A couple of years ago, I read Dan Harris’s book, ‘10% Happier.’ I've recommended it many times since. Dan’s willingness to share his story gives an encouraging and realistic first look at mindfulness practices. While I am, just now, beginning to actually work meditation into my own daily practices, it stuck with me. It also stressed the importance of not feeling like you have to conquer the mountain all at once. It is okay, and even admirable, to focus daily progress while not beating yourself up about the ways in which you may have fallen short. It's also important to have realistic expectations. Will meditation and other mindfulness practices allow you to live out the rest of your days in perfect peace and contentment? Probably not, but an outcome of being 10% happier seems like a pretty realistic hope, right? Anyway, if you have not read the book, I highly recommend it.

The point of this post, while it would be a worthy focus, is not to sell you on Dan Harris’s book. My intent here is multiple. First, I want to acknowledge that I often set goals and fail to meet them. For example, I am intending this post to be a return to regular blogging. If you've read any of my blogs, you know that I struggle to maintain a steady stream of regular content. This carries with it a secondary goal. By seeking to establish a pattern of regular writing, I hope to establish the habits that will someday help me to write a larger work such as a memoir or a novel. 

In addition to wanting to write more, I am seeking to be a better version of me in other ways. For instance, I have made an intentional, focused effort in 2017 on improving my health. So far this year, I have been able to lose nearly 40 lbs, taken my blood sugar numbers from pre-diabetic numbers back down to a healthy normal, and I have brought my cholesterol numbers until control. Blood pressure continues to be a tad high, but it is much improved from where it was. 

Also, the summer of 2017 has forced the LBGTQ+ community in my home town of Columbus, Ohio to take a much harder and much needed look at the role of race and gender within a community within a collective of persons who should understand the value of diversity. I was naive enough to think that, on some level, I got it in terms of race. I work in an African-American-focused counseling agency. My ex is black. I have no lingering doubts that persons who are black and brown experience the world very differently than I do, especially within the realm of law enforcement. Still, I failed to see the very real trauma that is experienced by many people of color when confronted with uniformed, or worse, armored police officers. I failed to recognize how systemic structures have benefited me and hindered those who do not look like me. I, simultaneously, feel like I have learned so much in the past few months and like I have learned nothing at all. I will be on this journey for the rest of my life, but a few media items that have helped me, as a white person, so far are:

Books:

1. ‘Waking Up White’ by Debby Irving
2. ‘Becoming Ms. Burton’ by Susan Burton
3. ‘The New Jim Crow’ by Michelle Alexander

Films:

1. ‘Detroit’ directed by Kathryn Bigelow
2. ‘ Whose Streets?’ directed by Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis

I am also exploring how I can be a better inhabitant and steward of our planet. One way that I am doing that is by making the conscious choice to eat vegetarian. In addition to the health benefits and concerns for the humane treatment of animals, eating vegetarian had enormous benefits for the environment. The resources expended to raise, slaughter, process, package, and transport animals to be consumed for food are enormous. In addition, animals emit large amounts of methane gas themselves. All of this contributes to a weakening of our ecological system. I am also committing to taking a conscious look at my schedule each week and identifying at least two days that I can use public transit, leaving my car at home. My schedule, on some days, is too tight or I have to go too far to make public transportation a viable option, but, most weeks, I can find at least two days to make it work. It's not a complete fix, but it's a start.

So, those are some of the things that I am currently working on to make me a better version of me. I'm also currently working on getting some organization around my personal finances as well as ways to better organize my physical spaces. Plus, I'm sure that I will identify other areas with opportunities for improvement along the way. I invite you along to share in this journey, maybe learn something from my successes and/or mistakes, and to hold me accountable to this journey of intentional living and growth.

~ Culbs 

Good Job, Buddy!

Sometimes, it really is necessary for me to speak to myself like I’m a child, not in the sense that I’m talking down to myself, but in that I am talking myself up. Here’s the scenario: I am a yo-yo dieter. Go ahead. Look it up in the dictionary. My picture is there. I’m even a really bad yo-yo dieter because my highs and my lows both just keep getting higher. Any kind of New Year’s resolution, for me, never made it out of the concept phase. Plus, I’m not a fan of resolutions. Goals. I like goals. Goals are good. Goals are specific. Goals are measurable. My goal this week was, and still is, to workout every morning. So, I did some preparation:

1.) I put it on the calendar. If you don’t plan for it and create space for it, it doesn’t happen, right?

2.) I drove to the gym yesterday to renew my membership and to make sure

that I was active in their system.

Preparation is essential, but, ultimately, all of it is meaningless if we don’t act when the time comes. So, this morning, when the alarm goes off at 5:00 AM, I gave it a hefty amount of side eye, thought about it, and decided that, since I’d unexpectedly had to work last night, I was justified in maybe skipping this first day. I’d come at it with a renewed vigor tomorrow. I reset the alarm for 6:00 AM and attempted to go back to sleep. As I lay there, I reminded myself, from past experience, that I almost never actually achieve going back to sleep in these moments. Plus, I am scheduled to work even later tonight. I knew that when I planned my schedule for the week. Am I going to use that same excuse tomorrow?

I decided that I, at least, needed to get out of bed. One of my other goals for this week is to dedicate some time each day, on an on-going basis, to cleaning and organizing my apartment. So, I got up. I made it as far as my guest bedroom where I sat down at my desk, opened my laptop and began to reply to some e-mails. I began telling myself that just getting up this early was an accomplishment and a significant step towards working towards actually working out and taking a renewed focus in creating a healthy lifestyle. I do sincerely believe this by the way. You should recognize any positive steps that you take and speak encouragingly to yourself.

As I sat there at the desk, I reminded myself that, while most days, for me, are book pretty much back-to-back, today does have some flexibility in it in the morning. I could still make time for the gym if I’m really committed to doing this; so, I got up and grabbed my car keys. I hate having little tags and crap on my keys, but I had actually put the little gym card on there; because, I knew that, if I didn’t, not being able to find the card or forgetting the card would be my excuse. I went outside and got into the car. There was incredibly dense fog this morning. Again, my mind started trying to talk me out of it. Visibility is low. Driving there might not be safe. I don’t want my effort to get healthier to end with me being dead. Maybe I should just stay home, but I didn’t.

After driving to the gym, I, again, gave myself a little praise and told myself “good job.” Every step in establishing a new practice is significant. Again, I sat in the car wondering if I’d gotten enough “good jobs” for the day, but I decided that I was here. I might as well go in. Now, I should also share with you that, packaged in this, is another parallel channel of self-talk that’s going on. For me, the guy who was not only gay but also into pretty geeky things growing up, gym class in school was a pretty rough, sometimes traumatizing, experience. All of that comes with me when it comes to going to the gym and working out. I become that hesitant, awkward kid again in my head. Now, I am also someone who won’t let myself get away with that. I have never experienced that kind of overt judgment, teasing, and ridicule as an adult in a setting like this; so; for me, it’s much like getting a shot at the doctor’s office. I dread the experience each time, but, also, each time, I remind myself, again, as if speaking to a child, “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

Anyway, I did make it inside the gym, and I did accomplish my goal for today, and every day this week, which is just to go in, do 30 minutes on the treadmill, and leave. That’s it. This week is really just about establishing the habit of going, and, when I was done, I, again told myself, “Good job, buddy.”