It has become increasingly clear what direction I should go. I still have a lot to think about, but at least I think I have a direction. I am not ready to write about it, but it does make me feel better to have decided.
I think I am ready to DO something this week, or early next week. I need to discuss it, and think about it.
Friday was a mixed bad of emotions. I started out feeling a lot of stress about figuring out what I could do for the weekend. I wanted to go out, but had to figure out what I could actually get thru.
Late in the afternoon, I finally had it! It felt really nice to have a doable plan. And it would be fun too!
The problem was that I had so drained myself during the day, that I was a wreck by late evening. That is when I crashed – 11pm Friday night. I did not get up until 7am Sunday morning. That was 32 hours of sleep – on and off. Sunday I lasted only about 10 hours.
I did not eat very much all weekend either… but that does not bother me very much.
Now it is early Monday morning, and I do not know what to do. I feel mentally drained, and I start the week pretty much empty.
These things happen.
I do not know what will happen in my brain. I think I will get better, but this Blog could record my decent into madness… not likely though. So… not to worry…
I have been sleeping too much. The bedroom is a sort of sanctuary for me. It is easier to relax and let the day fade away. But it means I am not spending much time up, and active. I do not have much energy for it.
There are many times during the day when it is all I can do to stay awake – I want to sleep. Everything has been getting harder, so I have to push myself more, and that uses up energy. And the days get shorter.
I have not finally decided what to do about therapy – except that I need it. My psychiatrist thinks I will need more meds too. But I need to get my thoughts straightened out before we can be sure. I only see her for meds, so I will need to find a new therapist… or try to go back to the old one.
Neither of those 2 thoughts hold much attraction. Contrary to what some people believe, my loss of my psychologist was mostly the result of a misunderstanding. But it still hurt too much. And maybe I should try someone else anyway. But it is so hard to find the right person – especially now. I know more about what works and doesn’t work for me, so I need the right person.
That search will create many new problems, and anxieties. There will be plenty of opportunities for failure. I may have to try more than one therapist. I am not looking forward to that.
This is going to take months to work out, whatever I do. The Fall is sort of set aside for it. I can not really hope to do much else.
But I know I have to find a way to get going again, and start recovering my brain. I can now also see that I will probably always need someone to help me sort thru things. I think way too fast, and about too many things for my own good, and I need someone to slow me down, and keep me on track.
My friends will be there for me… though I am not good at asking for help. Some things sound good, or fun, but just drain away too much energy. So I pick the things I feel sure I can do, and work on them. I am tired of letting people down, and cancelling at the last minute. It is not fair to others. So I tend to avoid plans with most anyone.
It does not help in the long run, but makes it easier to get thru the days.
I need to Blog. It is how I communicate with the world. I can not stop it now… when I need it more than ever.
You see… I have been gradually falling apart the last month or so. Things were getting difficult before that, but I have had a more and more difficult time holding myself together. It has become hard to get thru a whole day without some kind of crash to deal with.
Now I spend pretty much all my time just trying to hold my brain and thoughts together. That is about all I do… and the dishes.
I do not need advice here – I know my options, and I know I will have to make a major decision very soon. So I do not need any extra distractions. There will be times when I will need, and ask for advice, but right now I can not handle it.
I know I need help. The current situation in untenable. So all the options I am looking at involve getting that help.
For me… part of getting any help includes this Blog. I am going to use it to share what I am doing, and dealing with. As I have done.
There may be some dark times ahead. But I will always be able to communicate here… at least most of the time. I may need breaks, but I now realize that my Blogs are part of my therapy. I need them.
Anger may, and does cause problems, but anger is a symptom of something deeper going on. Find that thing, and anger can be resolved.
I found that thing.
I do have trouble with anger from time to time, but who doesn’t? Once I understood where it was coming from, I was able to put solutions in place. And I was able to understand. My anger stopped being such a problem.
But there was a time when it was. A horrible time in my life.
So I work on these issues every day. I work myself slowly closer to where I want to be. And with the help of my friends, and Lori, I will get there. I can almost see it now.
This was written by someone with NO understanding of the facts of the situation. This person was my “Domineering Parent” growing up. It has been discussed many times in therapy.
“So many of your social problems, including the loss of your therapist and friends and family, are the result of lashing out at people.”
I may have lost friends because of my past anger issues, but not family. My mother and I talked about this many times. She could see what I was talking about for herself. And she tried to help me understand it.
My loss of my therapist had nothing to do with my losing my temper. YES, I was angry – as I have said – but I did not lash out at anyone.
This person is one of the main reasons I am where I am – not thru malice, but thru action.
It has been pointed out to me that I used to have an anger issue, and I have not written much about it. That is true. When I started seeing a psychologist, it was the first thing we worked on. I also had a year of group therapy on balancing my emotions. The big difference came from the meds I started taking, and my sessions with my psychologist (hundreds of them).
Anger is no longer a part of my problem. Once I knew where the anger was coming from, and how to channel it, the anger mostly went away. I learned how to properly integrate my anger into my whole self.
My anger came from extreme anxiety – I take 3 meds now for anxiety with pretty good results. I do not lose my temper like that anymore… not for about 9 years now. For those who have it, you know what very high anxiety can do to your brain, especially when you do not know what it is.
The person who suggested this is many years behind in what has been happening in my life. That person has no way of seeing how I have changed and improved, and learned to look inward.
For the last 8+ years I have been working on the causes of the anger in my life. Once I understood it, I was able to start working on the real problems. That is what this Blog is about.
That person has ABSOLUTELY no place in my life, and should mind her own business. She is one of THE major causes of that anger while I was growing up. She is “toxic” to me – as a psychologist, and a psychiatrist have both pointed out.
I have struggled with anxiety, and depression all my life. I had my first full-blown panic attack in the 2nd grade. I can still see it all happening very clearly in my mind. I started having bad depressive periods in middle-school. Of course I did not know what they were at the time.
I am almost 60 years old… I do not have the energy I once did. But life demands that I do as well (or as badly?) as I always did when I was younger. There are things I can not do anymore.
I can not play volleyball, or racquetball… I can not hike high mountain trails. And I can not push myself mentally as far as I once could. So what do I do?
One of the first things I learned in session was to pick my battles. I can not solve everything… some things I will never be able to resolve. But the most important point of this is that I have to pick which things I can improve, and which things I can’t improve. But I also have to look to which things are more important – which will give back the most rewards.
A few months back in session, we worked out a plan for cutting back on things that were disproportionally stressful – things that cause way more anxiety than they were worth. And that has been my approach the last several months.
It works great!!! Now I am getting far more done on my own at home. And with far less total anxiety. This does not deal with my phobias, or depression, but it is mostly the anxiety the stops me. So things have taken a decidedly positive turn in my mental life.
But there are other battles, and I am losing them. Even my first success is falling into question. I can not keep following that path. I have to get “better” and get back to doing more – doing things I used to do. So rather than moving forward, I now have to move back to putting more energy into going out for errands and such.
That means less energy for all other things… including the having fun part. Once more into the breach… with no hope of success.
I have responsibilities that I can not ignore. Not that I have actually ignored them. I have been trying to obtain balance. But I have to balance that with the lives of others as well.
So I need a totally new plan. What I really need to do is be like I was 20 years ago… well… only the good parts of it. I need to be able to DO more. I will have to deal with the turmoil in my brain some other way.
I have all sorts of mental problems… we all know that by now! But I am not alone. The great majority of people like me are hiding in the wings. They will never set foot on the stage.
I am not sure why I have chosen such a public path. I know it is no-one’s fault that I am where I am. And my struggles are not a creation of society… or of myself. So why do I write about it here on the Internet? And why don’t more people read it?? I will leave the latter question for others to answer.
As to myself. I think the answer is somewhere around my need to understand, and to connect. The connecting with other people part has always been a complex mission for me. And for so long I did not understand where the problem was – it was me. More precisely, my weird brain chemistry.
There is no more I can do about the chemistry part, so I have to work in other areas.
But that does not really answer the question either.
I have never seen much of a need to hide my physical, or mental limitations. But I have kind of gone the complete other direction from hiding. I know it burns some people out to read all I write. It seems like a never-ending story. But at least you guys are not stuck with it all the time!
I wonder about all those other people out there like me. I have met a few thru this Blog, and discovered a few that I had already known – we get very good at “blending in”. It helps to know there are others who share my experiences.
I think that is what I am looking for – understanding. Not just from people how understand by experience, but those who can learn to understand, and accept. It is as if we live in another world, and we just want human contact like everyone else.
Is that so much to ask?
I think too much. Just like the Paul Simon song – “Maybe I Think Too Much”. There are times when I can not control the direction my thoughts will take.
When I have things to get done, I have to build a careful plan. I need to consider every aspect of what I need to do, and set priorities for each thing. This helps me get thru tasks without having to rethink them too much.
So I have a sort of outline for the day – when to think about what. I can put off thinking about something, if I schedule when to think about it, and I already know the basics. It works pretty well for me usually. (“when” means in what order, not what time).
If I do not plan, and control where my thoughts go, and when, then my brain runs rampant, and I can not control where it goes. All other considerations get pushed aside. I get stuck in a loop of over thinking.
So this plan works… some of the time.
The problem comes when something upsets the “plan”. It can be any of a number of things (yes… zero is a number, but I mean a bigger number). Once that happens, everything falls apart, and the planning has to start from scratch. And that usually means planning on the fly, which is almost always doomed to failure.
Last second planning takes on a life of it’s own. My mind becomes swamped with some new direction of thought. And I can not control where it will go. But for sure, the old plan is dead.
This is how things I really want to do, don’t get done. Those things invariable fall to the end of whatever “list” I might have, and those things usually do not get done at all. There will not be enough energy to fill in for that planning by late in the day.
Sometimes the upheaval is so strong that I end up getting nothing done, because the planning stage burns me out, and I shut down. This happens a lot!!
This is where most of my least productive days come from. One small event, and the whole thing – water, tub, and baby – all get thrown out, and I fail.
Sadly… this is one of the things I had been working on in session before it’s early demise. I will slowly figure it out though – it actually is a lot better than it used to be. Removing the grocery shopping has taken away a lot of my Stoppers. That alone accounted for at least 2 lost days per week.
But I can not eliminate all the Stoppers, so I need to find a way to deal with them. I will keep looking.
Another night full of nightmares, and restless “sleep”. I would just stay in bed all day if I could… there is very little point in being up.
Except there are things I need to do…
At least it is clear there is more to this than just having gone out for errands Monday. That may have started the ball rolling, but it is collecting plenty of moss now. If I may mix a few metaphors.
The big problems I face now are all the things I really need to do today, and this weekend. I think I will be okay if I can pull myself together, and enjoy some of the time. That has been known to happen.
The problem gets worse when I want to get some of my things done. I have even less motivation for those things… there is less reward to them. So I will do what I can, and just try to get thru the day.
I know I am hurting partly because of my sudden increased aloneness… but that is what it is, and I need to just get used to it. I do not have someone to help me thru these issues. But that is not new. I have got too used to having my back protected.
Okay… I have to find a way to move on. It is not doing any good to suffer alone. I have to find new things that will help. I need a better attitude, and more optimism. I need to build something.
Thursday morning, and I do not feel better from my errands Monday! I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night, and had nightmares most of the night. I feel almost as mentally drained as I did Tuesday.
I went out to get the mail this morning, and almost had a panic attack – that has not happened for a few weeks! It was not a pleasant experience.
There must be more to what is going on in my brain, than just those errands. I know I am getting more upset about my psychologist – it was not right! But I don’t think that is everything either.
There are a lot of projects staring me in the face, and that adds anxiety, but this is more than just anxiety. I know how to handle anxiety.
And it’s not depression – I know how to recognize that.
It is more of an emptiness… just not caring. But I care that I don’t care. Does that make sense? If I were depressed, I would not care about not caring about anything.
It feels like the day after I went out on errands – trying to recover my energies. But it is not getting better like it should have. So there is more going on. I have to think about it, even though I do not want to. But I need to understand!
When I get closer, my anxiety goes up, and I feel drained. There is something there.
I just need to wait it out for now…
About a year ago, I started taking a new med for depression… it did a very good job. My depressive episodes decreased in number, and became much shorter. I had forgotten what more than a week of depression felt like.
Now I remember.
I find myself just sitting much of the time… not really even looking at anything. I would be in bed, but there are things I need to be doing throughout the day. So I sit here.
I am not sad, or bored, or much of anything. I am empty… but still there are things I have to do. There are errands I need to run. I should be doing “fun” things with Lori on her day off. But in reality, it is hard to care about any of it. The not caring is part of depression. A part that hurts those around me.
Most of the time I am here alone. So I can stare at my desk all I want. But I feel some guilt when Lori is here. There is not much I can do about it… People can get mad at me, or feel let down, or discouraged. I hate it, but it is not something I can fix.
The last 3 days have been the worst. We had to cancel a trip because of things I need to be here for – 2 sick cats. And it is all my fault. At least it is my fault that I can not substitute anything for that trip… I am not prepared to go anywhere.
Fortunately the pattern in my desk has some interesting contrasts. I sort of watch TV some of the time. I am not really interested, so it has to be something good, and something I know well enough to ignore.
I don’t care.
All of that is just to help the time pass more quickly…
These are the times that nightmares are made of. As time goes by, I am increasingly feeling cut-off. It has only been a week since I “lost” my psychologist, and I have not yet seen its full impact. I know that will come…
This is all my own fault… I should have been more clear why I was not coming back to session at times. But whatever the cause, I am now cut-off from anyone impartial to share with. There is nowhere to discuss my ideas… and no-one to help me refine them. Friends are too close, or too far away.
That is my greatest loss. That can not be replaced, and it will bring me to a halt before I can implement new ideas. And the biggest loss, is my loss of trust in anyone.
I am sure this is just the beginning of a decline. At least it will be far more difficult, if not impossible, to move forward. Why would I risk going out of my safety zone? Why bother trying to make changes if I have no test in reality?
The way ahead is dark, and nothing but mystery to me now. I have felt some anger about it, but that is overwhelmed by fear. And this will only get worse…
Now I feel like I have to start over… from the beginning. My confidence in the system has failed, and with it I have lost most of my faith in what I have learned. I am not seeing therapy as a positive experience.
I can not trust anyone enough for therapy now.
It is entirely possible that I should have started to transition to a new therapist, but it should have been done in session. It would have taken a lot of time to do, but would have been possible. The email was not the way to go. Also she made it sound like a done deal… I was shocked.
I know session helped me, but it still feels like it did not matter. And I am not up to starting over, from the very beginning. Actually, it is worse now, because I doubt the effectiveness of sessions. The meds work though.
There is no way I am going out the front door to any kind of session, or to see any kind of therapist. I’m done.
So basically… Start again? Not going to happen.
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