Keep On Your Own Words in your mind " I DON'T wanna BE that mama" as your main motivation during mania, it does help too,

i have main words for my motivation "Whom shall I fear" and setting my mind to this words when i go out im okay, i can make it

i have friend in severe back pain and leg pain and he lives alone and he tells me about pain which is less now, that he knows it is there and he told me that he can ignore it by reading hystorical novels or watching tv or just being there without paying attention what is around him

for racing thoughts as your topic "mindfullness" there is guided meditations on youtube for Mindfullnes which you can try, it helps me and helped me, at first it doesnt work well, mind is wandering, by repeating and clear your mind and no thoughts just for seconds it feels great, using distraction is very helpful, for distraction you can use anything, notice it and dont name it, just notice and keep in the image it helps

get outside of house if you can, if you cant open the door or window where you are in the house gives you feeling of more open space and it can lessen racing thoughts, and you dont feel like being in hole of your racing mind if you are paranoid then dont do it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_xEGLueiLM, i use this one and it helps me, but need time to benefit from and maybe the background music can irritate you, if iritates you there is many more that you can find on youtube.com

you have dogs as i remember, talk and play with them, i do that with my pomerenian little lion, noisy barker, attention seeker but she is one of my main helper when i dont do good

you are creative person as i see you through talking, use that creativity to help you with racing thoughts, use your mind to help you insted to keep you in racing thoughts

kiss the flower, hug the world

these are ones that helps me, and you can find your own and new ones, because sometimes when old ones doesnt do much then i add to it something new within old one

the point is to shut mind and quiet it, it is not easy at first and it doesnt work much, if you already can do this then do it as long as you can

organize your time and try to follow it until your mania gets down, likely you dont want something like this now, it helped me many times, sometimes i had to force myself to follow my timing

Keep On Your Own Words " I DON'T wanna BE that mama" as your main motivation during mania

"Quiet your mind, and keep peace at heart"

What i have been able to do more and more which before it was impossible is when i feel a trigger or rage, or any PTSD symptom i become and observer rather than a participant of whatever is happening and refrain from acting on any impulse or saying a anything until it passes....I can not always do it but i have become better at it...

Like riding a wave rather than having it crash over me....

I also remind myself that whatever i'm feeling is bookcase symptoms of PTSD and not the real me...and if i give it time and stay as an observer of them they do pass...

That's where meditation helped me, something I did intensely for the first five years after I was diagnosed with PTSD in 1995. It really helped me get started with accepting my PTSD and living with it. Vipassana Buddhism in particular goes hand in hand with American psychology. Its teachers are the masters of mindfulness and psychologist Jack Kornfield's writings really helped. Meditation gave me the tools to have enough self-discipline with my mind to be aware of impulses I had and not to act on them every time.

Psychologist Kornfield's way of making those tools available to me respected current brain science. It cut through some of the hocus pocus and mystery that had sometimes shrouded things like meditation from me before. Here's his website. ://www.jackkornfield.com/

And here's a quote I know you'll like, arfie:
"Good-humored patience is necessary with mischievous children and your own mind."
~Jack Kornfield

I take a walk and really pay attention to the temperature, the plants, the cement, anything do keep my mind away from the stressful flashbacks or "rememberance episodes."

This really helps me.

Thanks everybody.

My manic episodes remain a mystery in my life. I call them, "a wild magic" simply because they move to forces I can neither tame, nor predict. Mine is to sit in peace with them?

This morning's meditation wandered to the Relay Tower. It is the meditation which helped me through the psychotic break in which I realized I had become "that mama." cerca 1989.

I place the image of a radio/tv relay tower upon my head. My job is to catch signals, store them until they reach a designated capacity, and pass them on. Allowing them to exceed the designated capacity will blow the capacitor.

Receive, compress, send.
Receive. Compress. Send.
receivecompresssend
just flow
receive.compress.send

Arfie, love how you wove that engineering background of yours into the narrative. Pretty cool.

The funny part to me was the last line turning into a hot link that goes nowhere...

That just might be tomorrow's sunrise meditation.
Hot links to nowhere...