Half A Glass

“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” — Helen Keller

Being positive isn't easy, but as the quote says, being negative won't do much for you. When I was younger, I was quite the optimist, even a bit pollyanna-ish, but sad and bad things happened, my life became much more difficult than I could easily manage, my positivity turned over into negativity, and all I saw were spilled glasses of milk everywhere I looked.

So I tried to at least be practical. Engineer-like practical: there is half a glass of liquid. Or my favorite: that glass is twice as big as it needs to be. But the pessimism remained.

Let's face it: life has kicked me in the face a lot. I don't need to re-enumerate how right now, but my childhood optimism could not stand up to it, and pulling optimism out of the Abyss takes time and concerted effort, as well as energy that I am generally in short supply of. (Yes, I ended the sentence with a preposition. Does that bother you? Did you understand the sentence? If you understood, then the sentence is linguistically just fine and report me to the grammar police if you don't like the way I structured it.)

My friend Julie has made it her job to work on my negativity, to banish it and to train me to be more positive. I appreciate her efforts more than I have articulated to her. (Thanks, Julie!) I am a tough case, I know, and sometimes I actively resist being positive. Why? Lots of reasons, I figure. The Devil you know. Resistance to change. And the one where, every time I started feeling positive and good and upbeat, it seemed some severe catastrophe occurred. Someone I loved died (and I have three very concrete examples of just that scenario). Something I wanted — love, a job, a stable life — fell completely apart. Wants and needs were denied. (Julie will disagree with me on the 'need' part here, but that varies according to belief systems.)

Whatever has occurred in my past, I want to let go of it. I want to learn to be more positive and less negative.  (Do I sound a bit too much like Wednesday in Addam's Family Values after she spent time in the Happy Shack? Don't worry about the oddly strained smile on my face, really! And no, I don't want to be perky.) I want to be realistic and give the good in life at least half a chance to show itself.

There are things I want to do in my life and I need hope and a belief that things will go they way I want, or at least in a good direction, if I want to accomplish them. 

So I'm working on my thinking. I've ordered the SOS Help For Emotions book, which I and Karen the Wonder Therapist will work our way through. Maybe you'll actually see me writing entirely positive posts on this blog on an almost daily basis. We'll see. After all, I can't just say "yes, of course!" when I don't have any evidence of it. Not yet. Sometimes, faith has to be learned. 

Now I have to go fill my glass, because pessimists and optimists can agree when a glass is entirely empty. 

My Thoughts Hurt Me

Some time back, a woman I know online wrote about her young daughter's newly discovered OCD and said that her daughter's thoughts hurt her. That's what obsessive thinking is like: your thoughts hurt you. They beat at you without stopping.

Most of my obsessive thoughts are divided between being abusive to myself ("Stupid! Ugly! Fat! Irresponsible!", things that mostly have never or rarely been said to me) and visualizing bad things happening (such as using a knife to cut vegetables and cutting my hand open, or standing near a ledge and falling over to my death ... things that have never happened to me). Even benign thoughts such as getting a song stuck in my head hurts; I most often get such "earworms" that are of sad songs, songs of lost love and loneliness. And having any song stuck in my mind on a continuous 24/7 loop (whenever I wake up, there it is) makes me want to drill holes in my head to let the demons out (thus the reason why some cultures still practice trepanning).

So Karen the Phenomenal Therapist and I are going back to working on cognitive therapy instead of the other therapies for the time being. As she put it, better to work on what currently has the greatest negative effect on me. And my negative thinking is almost literally killing me. After all, you have to talk yourself into suicide, and I almost did. 

There is no rational reason for me to consider myself so worthless and disgusting, but I frequently do and what you believe about yourself tends to become true. I have come to believe that I don't have integrity or follow-through, and that I will eventually disappoint people, especially people I work for, and they will eventually become unhappy with me. Ta da! It happened with someone at work who I was working for. The fact that this occurred due to "broken thinking" that led to a self-fulfilling prophecy is besides the fact, almost like a coincidence, in the way my mind considers it.

So yesterday I began wearing a couple of wide rubber bands on my wrists (representing two different issues) to remind me to think about what I'm thinking and feeling. What am I saying to myself? How do I feel when I do so? 

As we get into the book that Karen recommends, which I've ordered for myself, I'll learn how to fix my broken thinking so I won't always have to be on the lookout for it. But by then, I will have developed the habit of mindfulness, which is a good thing to develop. 

The book is SOS Help for Emotions; Managing Anxiety, Anger & Depression by Lynn Clark, Ph.D, just in case you think it might be useful for you or someone you know. So far, it looks good. 

I hope we get through the book fairly quickly, because I see myself going nowhere good as long as I keep thinking the thoughts I currently think.

Back

Well, for those of you playing along at home, you may have picked up on "Quitter" that I wasn't only referring to Camp Fire Girls and Job's Daughters but about my life. Raise a hand if you caught the barely veiled references to suicide. Anyone?

If you don't know it yet, I brought that bit of prose to my therapist and, on her very strong urging, I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital for Thanksgiving. 

I was in there for a week. The first two days I spent most of my time in my room. I came out to the Day Room for meals and meds, I was examined by a physician, and I went to a couple of group sessions. While the group sessions were fine, they were nothing earth-shaking. The meds were supposed to be what I brought, but the pharmacy apparently would rather bend me over provide me with their meds rather than use what I brought and somehow everything got messed up and I was off my two primary meds for three days, and off one of them for another two after that! So I was experiencing weird withdrawal symptoms as well as being in a strange place both spatially and mentally. 

11.11.11 — Welcome to My Party

Depending on who you listen to, today's binary date brings either great evil (Zombiepocalypse anybody?) or great good (The Rapture, if you are of a specific belief system; The Rapture, if you are the rest of us). All I know is that I have fallen many steps backward in my journey out of the Abyss. As I told a friend last night, I'm just a goopy, weepy mess right now. Kind of like a puddle in the Abyss. A goopy puddle. And this is my Great Big Goddamn Pity-Party.

I'm stressed about all the stuff I still haven't done, especially the Estate bills so we can close out and I can get my damned money (you would think that would motivate me; maybe I procrastinate so the others won't get theirs?), and the manager/coordinator job, which I haven't done much at all with. I feel guilty and I beat myself up over it. And no, the apartment is no better ... it's worse. It's almost a year since it's been entirely clean. Almost a year since the carpet (which is not entirely visible) was vacuumed. I'm afraid to look under some of this stuff — I know there will be dead (please oh please oh please no) bugs under it, or in it.

Getting fatter, not getting stronger. Eating junk with lots of sugar, something I have such an addiction to that I seem powerless in the face of it. If I have sugar, then that's all I want. It's overwhelming and compelling. I'm not walking, nor am I exercising. At my age, I need to change this. I need to be as strong and flexible and mobile as I can be; there is no one to take care of me in my old age.

I feel lonely, in that "I have no family" sort of way. No family, no partner, not even any friends who love me enough to invite me to be with them during xmas or New Year's. Except my BFF, but if the others don't seem that interested, there's no point in flying all that way. And feeling unloved. My BFF and his whatever-she-is are nice enough, but exceptionally dysfunctional (pot? kettle?) that it's sometimes uncomfortable to be with them. And BFF and I have minefields galore. And I have no friends here who are so close that they will spend significant (if any) time with me, much less holidays. I love my online friends, but that's what they are: online.

I need to touch and be touched. I desperately need to be held; I have had little of that since Mom died. I need it for comfort and to fill a physical need that connects me, to the ground, and to other people. I feel so inexpressibly alone.

All of which leads me to the goopy, weepy mess. Fat & flappy? Check. Self-pitying? Check. Weepy? Check. Sliding backward, erasing months of progress? Double-check.

Thoughts (which Karen the Therapist would tell me I should address with Cognitive Therapeutic thoughts, but I just don't feel up to it, or even deserving of it):

• If no one else cares enough to take care of me, why should I care enough?
• I'm going to disappoint everyone eventually; might as well get it over with.
• I'm going to live my life alone. I'm going to end my life alone. So what's the point of it? I'm not suicidal, but some days the thought of slurping down the entire bottle of one of my meds seems attractive.
• Maybe some people are right and mental and emotional problems only get worse as we get older — never better. That would suggest that I am engaged in a futile waste of energy.
• I cannot have the man I love. I have seen him less than 5 times this year. It's not entirely rational, but I feel unloveable and always second-best. Hell, the guy I lived with for a few years even chose computer games and video recordings over me. Given my experience — decades of it — I have to conclude that men just don't want me particularly. They don't value me particularly. It's all written in invisible neon lights over my head.

Well, that should provide a selection of what I'm thinking and feeling. I'm a mess. I'm weepy. And I am gloopy — disgusting and flabby and disturbingly sticky.

I don't like myself. I don't like my life. I want out. But I don't see any way to like myself or get a life I like, so I'm stuck. I don't see anything — possible — that I want or that is more satisfying that what I have.

If you are still reading, then thank you for attending my pity party. Time to go now. I feel another cry coming on.

I am a Mystery

So said my therapist today. It takes awhile for a therapist and client to get to know each other, and for the therapist to discover important things about the client. I have a history of surprising or dumbfounding my therapists.

All of this stuff — the being barely functional, the depression, the anxiety, the paralysis — she thought was just since Mom died. Some things are so old-hat to me that I don't think to mention them, or else I think I already have.

Today's session was fairly free-ranging due to my unfocused and sedated mind. (My psych bumped me up to 4 mg of Lorazepam a day, which can be taken singly or in combination not to exceed two, and rather than diminishing my anxiety, it's just sedating me, which kind of increases my anxiety.) I led Karen the Wonder Therapist all over the place.

Eventually, I got stuck talking about my ex. This is the guy I moved in with and lived with for three years. This is the guy I wanted, and fully expected, to marry and have children with. This is the guy who so diminished and battered me verbally and emotionally that I think he broke something important inside me. This is the issue that Karen thinks may be more important to explore than the sexual abuse. And when we got to where I said I felt as if something had been broken inside me from my relationship with him, she thought for a moment and then said, "You are a Mystery." She had just discovered that my dysfunctions didn't start with Mom's dying. She perceived more of the big picture that is me.

I kind of like being a Mystery (yes, the capital M matters), but I'd rather be a Mystery for something more cool than my mental and emotional dysfunctions.

Current homework: attack the estate bills in small increments, earning computer privileges. Karen is one savvy therapist.

The Cure

If you could be completely "cured" of your oddities — your moods, your tics, your dysfunctions — would you?

In the past, I have fought against reining in my moods because I didn't "want to lose my creativity or lose my real self." I was in my early 20s then and felt that having large mood swings were integral to who I was and that losing them would make me dull and boring. I fought my therapist on this point and, after a particularly bad phase agreed to consciously control my mood swings. Guess what? They weren't integral to my personality and losing the extremes didn't make me dull or boring. 

I fought going on medication for my depression, because I didn't want drugs and I was afraid they would tamp down my personality, make me dull. Neither happened in that case, either. It took years, but I finally accepted that I would need to be on some medication for my whole life. I became okay with that.

I have not come to terms with the amount and levels of medications I am currently on. I have good reason to be against this on a long-term basis because last year at this time I was on just two of these meds, and at significantly lower dosages. It's my belief, thought, and opinion that once I've healed to some specific extent, or once I've dealt with enough trauma through therapy, or once a fairy drops enough pixie dust in my hair, I will be able to drop back to last year's medication regimen! 

Last year, I felt good. I felt right. I've always had and always will have mood cycles — we all do, but most people's don't affect how well they function — but they were controlled both by the medication and by me. My anxieties — free-floating, social, PTSD-related — were controlled, probably almost all by the medication. Or else, enough was controlled by the medication that the rest of any anxieties became insignificant, maybe weren't even there because the big stuff was fine. But I felt Just Right. The way I would feel if I hadn't had to struggle with this mental and emotional crap.

I'd love to be cured of needing medications. I'd love to be fully functional for the rest of my life without wondering if and when another bomb will drop me into the Abyss again. But would it be good for me to be entirely free of them? And would being free of my "cycling mood disorder of unknown origin" and my PTSD and other anxieties also "free" me of my idiosyncrasies and quirks? I know that I've always been afraid of losing myself and all my quirky bits. So afraid that a "cure" will cure me right into being just like "the norm" rather than the endearing little statistical outlier I have always been.

I've learned self-discipline (which I always seem to forget about) when I began to control my mood swings. I learned self-awareness by becoming aware when my moods were becoming negative; I could use the discipline and skills to dampen the intensity. Maybe I would have learned them some other way, but maybe I wouldn't.

However, there is no reason to stay handicapped if you don't have to be. My mental and emotional turmoil have handicapped me for months, keeping me from being able to even look for work, thus taking me to the very brink of absolute poverty (I'm not kidding here — I need money NOW). I would agree to be cured of my mood disorder and my anxieties, but not my personality or my way of looking at things from my own special perspective or even those times when I think I'm being perfectly normal and everyone else is looking at me like "and how long have you been visiting our planet?"

I'm pretty sure that no one knows where mood disorder stops and personality quirk begins. Maybe it's all just about how well you function.

Karen the Wonder Therapist wants me to not define myself as "mentally ill" or by my mental and emotional problems. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't; it depends on how they are affecting my life. I have felt terribly ill since my mom died and have been barely functional for most of the time since then. Insurance isn't paying for my therapy — they obviously have decided I'm not sick — but I'm not exactly well.

I'm just me, swimming around in the Sea of Life, looking for hospitable land and trying to not drown in the meantime. I really could use a life preserver about now.

What Do You Think You Feel?

Most people consider thinking and feeling to be two separate things: you think thoughts or you feel emotions. Not me. I tend to mix them up a bit.

If I feel something, I have to analyze it. "I feel sad" — am I sure I feel sad, that it's not depression or a headache; why do I feel sad; what else am I feeling; is this a true feeling or a habitual one. If I can over-think it, I will. I was surprised when a previous therapist informed me that not everyone thinks about their feelings.

Then there are my thoughts. Often, if I have a thought that isn't one of my every-day thoughts (need milk; remember to take clothes from dryer; where is my turquoise ring), then I ask myself how I feel about that thought. "I wonder if I should move?" — do you feel lonely; why would you want to move, I thought you were happy here; it's scary to move; you'll be sad if you move.

Today in therapy, I read my therapy homework that I had managed to pull together this morning. Afterward, my therapist suggested I get back into the routine of writing my homework as a narrative. Doing so will incorporate the emotional aspects better. The last two times I've done this homework, I've presented it as bullet points of events. They've been quite unemotional. If I keep doing my trauma work that way, it won't provide me with any benefits. I don't know if I've been doing the homework like that because it's quick and easy or if I recognized the lack of emotional content in doing it that way and so went with the lesser emotional content path. Because, doing with full emotional content hurts like hell.

One of the problems with therapy, especially therapy that goes for years, is that nothing seems simple. Every thought, feeling, and action has layers and layers of meaning. A banana is not just  banana. I'm not sure if I was naturally this self-analytical before I started therapy or if therapy created it in me. Or if I had a tendency toward it (I think I've always thought about my feelings and felt about my thoughts to some extent) and therapy merely enhanced that in me. See? Always questions, seldom answers.

I would like things in my life to be simpler. I'd like to feel an emotion and simply feel it. No questions, no analysis. I'd like to think a thought and if I don't accept the thought as is, then the only thing I want to do to it is think other thoughts about it. No more screaming meemies or greyhounds on hamster wheels or anything else that keeps my mind going and going and keeping me awake or keeping me from simply thinking or feeling or doing in relative silence.

I'd like my mind to simply shut the fuck up already.

Motionless

Our bodies are made for movement. To whatever extent a body can move, it needs to move. Recent articles tell how all kinds of non-good and even bad things happen to and within your body when you don't move it.

I have barely moved in 10 months. My muscles are shortened and tight. My body hurts, yet walking causes pain as well. While I fear what I am doing to my body, my inner paralyzation controls me more than that fear. As my therapist says, what you do depends on which fear is strongest.

My life has been motionless as well. I haven't looked for work (and even if I'd had an interview, I don't think I'd have managed it well, given how messed up I've been). I haven't pursued help for financial problems. I've been a little mouse in a little hole who fears a cat is waiting right outside the hole.

This is not how I want to be! I used to climb trees and ride my bike. I also used to lie on my bed and read for hours. When we had a swimming pool, I could swim laps for hours, enjoying the feel of the water and the movement of my body. (And one time, when no one was around, I swam naked, which is the most blissful feeling in the world.) I used to dance in my house in the evening with my stereo turned up and the only light the flickering of candles.

Of course, I felt safer then. When I was a child, I didn't have to worry because my parents took care of us. After Dad died, I felt the beginnings of the instability of life. Later, I usually had enough money to get by. Even when I had no health insurance, I was healthy and young and didn't need it. I had work, I had enough friends, I had comfortable homes, even if I did move rather a lot at first. For all the problems I had and the traumas and griefs I endured, I still felt a measure of safety that allowed me to move.

Then, in my mid-30s, I had my first immobilizing depression and anxiety. I eventually overcame them, or they went away, and I recovered. I had a few other times that weren't quite as bad, but still I moved less than before. But none of those times of immobility were as long as this one, or as completely paralyzing as this time. Even at the worst of those times, I would get up and move — dance just a little, go into the garden and pick something to eat, walk around the block or on the beach.

I'm old enough that everything I do physically is more significant for my future than anything I've done until now. If I want to be physically fit and in good condition so I'm self-mobile and can take care of myself for a long, long time, I need to move now. I need to exercise now — not the run-a-marathon type or the body-builder type or the gym-rat type. However, I need to be able to walk long distances, briskly, while holding a conversation. I need to be flexible and strong (yoga, pilates perhaps). I need upper body strength as well as lower-body and, most of all, I need to enjoy moving my body, and to move my body because I enjoy it.

Maybe part of my immobility comes down to enjoyment: I don't do what I enjoy. My mind is a strange and sometimes unfathomable place, even to me — it wouldn't be impossible that I am punishing myself for some perceived fault. Fear or punishment, does it matter? I hold myself motionless, strapped down with invisible bonds — and not in the good way. I've emptied my life of so much I enjoy, other than the hurtful binges of fat and sugar that only mimic pleasure, that I'm empty of almost everything but fear and pain and grief and longing ... and the memory of everything good.

Years ago, when I owned my first home, I bought an orchard ladder: a very, very tall three-legged ladder made for people picking fruit from tall trees. I've had a fear of heights since I was a child, but it was my house, and my fruit. As I told my friends and myself, "I will not live my life controlled by my fears." For some time, I lived by that credo. Even a few years ago, when I made a major, unbelievable change in my life, I chose to do so in spite of my fears.

The incalculable grief and loss of the last year, all the changes in my life that I had absolutely no control of, the feeling of falling from a high cliff toward rocks many miles below — through them I forgot how brave I am. I forgot my credo from many years ago. I forgot me.

I'm still walking a tightrope with no net below me and each day is scarier than the last, with my continued unemployment and my dwindling resources and my beloved safety net gone forever.  But I can do it. I can do this. I have endured and overcome so many, many things in my life and I have come up from the Abyss again and again to smile, love, and enjoy my life. I need to remember: it never wins.

Remembering this, I must get up again and smile and love and live. Because pain sucks and just existing sucks and if I run out of money and have to go live in someone's basement it will suck, too.

Smiling and loving and living won't hurt me any worse than I hurt now. At least they will make room in the fear and pain I've surrounded myself with so I can move. And the next time that I get knocked down, get my feet wet in the Abyss — because it will happen again and again in my life — the voice inside me will remind me that it never wins and I'll get up and walk and dance my way out of that damned Abyss, out of the paralysis of fear and I will win, because I have done so before. If I can do it as many times as I have, there is every reason I can do it again.

So move.

Homework in the Aether

Karen the Wonder Therapist had a good idea today: how about I write my homework for my blog post once a week. I'm writing almost daily for the blog, so I already have the time available and habitual. And either post it, because this is a blog about my therapy and growth, or delete it and just bring it to her, if it seems inappropriate or too much information to give.

It makes sense. I'm already writing, most of the time I'm already writing about my state of mind or my therapy, so I'm in the right attitude. But I wonder if my therapy homework would be wrong for my blog. It's details of a trauma; currently the trauma involving my mom. Of course, I can always not post it on the blog and just use the time for my homework.

The other thing that concerns me is that I write this blog around 9 pm, or later. That's not prime deep thinking time for me. I would do better to write my homework earlier in the day, no later than between 7 and 8 pm.

However, it's a very good idea and I will give it a chance. If it helps, then I win!

Today's therapy was mostly talking. We talked about how not to get too negative and too focused on what I'm afraid of (money, work). We talked about how I forget planned tasks and activities and how to remember them: my current idea is to print out the week's and day's tasks and post them in the places I go to a lot: kitchen and bathroom. Then I would always see them. The rest of it currently escapes me, but I'm sure it will come back.

After therapy, I did my usual post-therapy walk and grocery shopping, then a stop at a favorite fast-food place for lunner (late lunch/early dinner). Then that was the end of the productive part of my day.

I feel okay today. I've been a bit down; I know it will pass. Feeling lonely and wanting my mom is all. I had a good mom — I knew I could go to her and she would help me and reassure me (mind you, she did better at this when I was an adult, and not so good when I was a kid). She was my safety net. So, just missing her.

I Am Me

Ever since Karen the Wonder Therapist talked to me about some of my distorted thinking (Broken Thoughts), I haven't been thinking those thoughts. I don't think that I am Lost or Floating or Untethered. It could be that I am having sufficiently good days right now that I don't feel those things. Or it could be that simply having talked about them and being given truthful counter-arguments was enough. It will take some time, and some bad days, to see which it is.

I like saying to myself that I am not untethered: I am grounded by my values and my beliefs. These are part of me, something I continue to believe even if I never read another book about them or even talk about them. My values and my beliefs are my bedrock, even during times when I have broken thoughts. Given that I have had those thoughts to some extent off and on through my life (well, I did think of my mom as my anchor, no matter what), I never thought that I was grounded, or had a rock-solid foundation, or that I had a center. I now I know that I do. Oddly, feeling like this, having counter-arguments to these false thoughts, makes me feel free, even though I am feeling kind of crappy tonight.

The trauma and cognitive work seem like magic to me: they appear to have strong and immediate effects. The behavioral, well, that is very different and so far is slow going. At least I think about the better behaviors, the behaviors that will take me to where I want to be, which is important. Sometimes I need a lot of repetition to learn something (which didn't quite work with the times table, unfortunately; I still use my fingers). Behavioral change appears to be one of those somethings.

I am grateful that I have found therapists, both now and in the past, whom I clicked with right off. Each has helped me to some extent. So far, in a much shorter period, Karen has achieved more than any of my other therapists did, aside from the therapy that helped me with issues from childhood sexual abuse that my first therapist did. However, that took longer than change is taking place now and thereafter we didn't make much progress on anything else. I don't know that I would have had the nerve to keep looking for someone I clicked with if that first therapist hadn't.

I still need a lot of work — there is still a lot of distorted or traumatized junk inside me — but I have so much more hope that I'll get over all, or nearly all, of my debilitating thoughts, feelings, and behaviors through working with Karen. Luckily for me she's still fairly young (a year or two younger than me), so she won't be retiring anytime soon! I need her to help me out here!

If only there were a therapist who could help me make money.

Broken Thoughts

I mentioned earlier that a blog I read had a post about Fear the other day; I may have mentioned that Fear and I are really far too close for my comfort. Even just reading the blog and the comments, most of which were about how others deal with fear and overcome fear, made all my fear reactions stand on end and I had to take a pill to calm me. I do not want to be that woman who "must take a little pill to calm me down."

Well, today was therapy. As I had not done my homework, we talked of other things, such as fear and how I'm doing on my behavior changes (we looked at what I had succeeded at, not what I didn't do, thank you Julie). The talk about fear merged into talk about some feelings I have that are pretty constant. I have quite a few, but we talked about how lost I feel, how I feel as if I'm floating, and how I feel untethered. That's when Karen the Wonderful Therapist took me through some focused Cognitive Therapy.

These thoughts are lies that my mind tells me and the only way to fix the distortions and overcome the lies (eventually getting rid of them altogether) is to combat them with truths. Luckily for me, she outlined true statements for me to use, because if we'd left it to me, I'd still be in her office!

For example, when I hear myself saying that I'm floating, I counter with I'm not floating. I am moving in a direction. I am making choices daily. For one thing, I choose to be in therapy to help me move in the direction I want. And that's all true. But I feel as if I need to write notes on my hands and arms to remember it all.  :)  Perhaps just a folded up cheat sheet I carry around.

It was very weird, hearing her statements for me to use to respond to these fear-based distortions in my head. I could really perceive the power of opposing these thoughts with true statements. For one thing, I have to think through the truths, so it's not just a mindless phrase to throw at an issue. And thinking will make it all stick better. It's like when I write something down, I remember it better, even if I don't reread what I wrote. (Not applicable to all things — I have to reread the truth responses to these first three distortions because they are complicated enough that I can't yet remember them off the top of my head.)

A lot of what I'm doing right now behaviorally and cognitively relates to grounding me, creating a foundation to build on. This same concept is what my outside life is about as well: I need to basically build a new life, and I don't have a stable foundation for it, either. The therapeutic work I'm doing will most likely help me to do the outside work; as one part stabilizes, so will the other parts. 

This is all more or less clear in my head. I'm not sure it's as clear on this blog. I can't say I know where I'm going yet. But I can say that I have a lot more hope that I will get there, wherever it is.

This is the Best. Therapy. EVAH!

Baby Steps? Maybe for a Baby Bird!

Sunday:

Tiny, little, eensy baby steps. I did wash my dishes from my meals (but not from my evening snack yet). I did two smaller tasks and one load of laundry, but haven't approached my therapy homework or the two projects I have to do for other people. I did the easy stuff, basically. But I did something.

I still didn't leave the apartment. I did not do any exercise inside. And I have not picked up around the place. Still, I did something.

I tend to have overly high expectations for myself, making disappointment almost a given. The only way to avoid disappointment is to refrain from expectations. That is one of the things I am working toward.

Update: I did do my therapy homework, but that was it for the evening. No dishes.

Monday:

Today was therapy, and we discussed my plans. Karen believes that setting up the basic living habits — getting up, showering and getting dressed, and leaving the apartment, even to pick up my mail, which I should do daily — are fundamental. The extent to which a person lacks the basic living habits shows the extent of a person's depression. Guess where I am. So we agreed that getting those basic habits, plus adding a minor thing to work toward healthy eating habits (a fruit and a vegetable a day; or maybe it was a fruit or a vegetable a day — I'll do what I can without over stressing about it), is essential. These things will form the foundation on which to begin rebuilding my life skills, and, my life.

Today I went to therapy, went for a walk, went to the grocery store, filled the car with gas (when it was almost out), picked up some not-excessively unhealthy fast food, and that ended the productive portion of my day. I then watched movies on my laptop for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Tomorrow, I begin doing the basics. I'll keep track and post.

As for therapy: I did my homework, we went over it, and I cried. Not as cathartic as previously, but it was a shorter piece and it was a less-emotional piece. I think that the real catharsis and "emptying" occurs when the emotional content is higher, and the trauma greater.

Not a thrilling post. Just one of those daily kind. I expect there will be a lot of those, as I begin my new Self-Rebuilding procedure.

Decent day — good day

When I was thinking of the title for tonight's post, I thought "I've had a good day.  A decent day." The fact that I downgraded it from good to decent struck me. Why do I so often diminish the good, but the bad is always way up there — awful, horrible, terrible? When I exchanged greetings with someone I know around the complex, he said he was "good" and I said I was "not too bad." Am I afraid that I will attract The Bad by giving attention to The Good? It's weird, whatever it is.

Therapy Day today. I still hadn't done my homework, so we talked about all the other crap. Then I learned that while I thought I'd been doing cognitive therapy in the past, I hadn't done it in the orderly manner that Karen does it. 

We were discussing, hell, I don't remember all of it specifically.  We discussed my living in the past and the future. We discussed my meltdowns of last week. Then she asked me if she'd gone over the Cognitive Distortions checklist. No, she hadn't, and I'm glad she thought to do so today. I have a lot of the distorted thinking patterns on her list. For example, All or Nothing thinking, where everything is black or white. When my meltdowns occur, that's the first place I go. Or "Mental filter: you pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water." Might as well put my picture on that one. One bad thing can color the rest of a predominantly good thing for me. 

My current homework is to note these distortions when I think them, label them, then replace them with corrected, undistorted thoughts.

I've been in therapy for over half my life. I was told that much of it was cognitive therapy. But I've never had it targeted this well or been given such specific information and ways to deal with it.

My other homework is to get some balance in my life with the computer. I've let the computer be my escape from reality, my distraction from thinking or living. Now my intention is to use the computer as a tool — for writing, for communicating, for doing work — and to not use it for escapist activities. Nope, no planning any prison breaks on the computer for me! Oh, not that kind of escapist. And if you check out my blog list down on the right, you'll see "zen habits." In my previous post I mentioned the blog author's book, Focus. Well part of that book talks about becoming addicted to the computer and allowing it to control you rather than the other way around. Luckily for me, this book has come to me at the right time to help me with this specific task. Oh, and with the next one.

In order to deal with my forever living in the past and the future rather than the present, my homework is to practice mindfulness and get out of my head. Think outwardly, not inwardly. Yeah, that will be easy. I worked on it while on my short walk. "Oh look, pretty trees. Ow, my feet hurt. Listen to the birds. The sun is in my eyes. Smell the scent of trees and pine needles and dust. My feet still hurt." It was like dragging a toddler along on my walk! Which, in some way, I guess I was. That inner child thing.

And, of course, I need to continue on my trauma homework.

It's a whole lot of work, certainly. I must make it a priority or I'll never do any of it. And at my advanced age, it's high time I stop suffering from my past and fearing my future and simply begin living my life. Because being miserable has lost its glamour somehow.

Therapy knocked me down and made me cry

Yeah, that therapy is a big ol' bully. Makes me cry. Makes me look at things that hurt me. Knocks me clear on my butt and leaves me sore and tired all the rest of the day. Sheesh.  Therapy is a mean muthuh.

What made me cry? Well, we talked about Mother's Day. I didn't get teary or even emotional yesterday. But I cried on Saturday because someone told me she was aware that this, my first one without Mom, would be extra hard and that she was thinking of me. No one else said anything to me, until they read the blog. Not my oldest friends. Not my mom's friends; not even her best friend who was supposed to adopt me. I felt ignored and that the people who say they care simply didn't think about me or felt it wasn't important. I felt even more alone and isolated than ever.

So when Karen-the-therapist and I began talking about it, I began crying. The more we talked about it and how I felt and why, the harder I cried. I even became inarticulate from time to time, I was crying so hard. It just wouldn't stop, all my feelings of loneliness and missing Mom and feeling that my friends don't think of me (whether they do or not, this is how I feel) came flooding out. 

I was a mess.

I read something in a blog comment today that really bothered me. Someone had written in about how isolated and hurting she felt, and how hard it was to see how well the blog author was doing after a year and the woman who wrote in felt she'd made no progress. 

One of the commenters was trying to be helpful and going on about how the only person you can count on is you, that only you can do this stuff, and you always have to do it alone. Except, I don't think the commenter is all alone. I think she has family. When you have backup, even if you are doing things yourself, you are not in isolation. It bothered me because I truly am doing things all alone and I'm not doing so well or quickly. It's harder than the commenter made it out to be. But I didn't want to be mean on the blog, even though I didn't think it was good advice to the woman who had written in.

So many of my buttons were pushed in therapy: loneliness, abandonment, fear of total isolation and friendlessness, anger that someone has diminished my experience. And therapy caused me to live through and describe each one, which hurt like hell.

That's how therapy beat me up, knocked me down, and made me cry.

Stole my lunch money too, but you have to pay for the privilege.

Alphabet soup

OCD. PTSD. ADD/ADHD. MOUSE. Some days I think my own name ought to be something like THX 1138. (Geeks will get it.)

OCD: Basically, I feel obsessed about certain things, or compelled toward certain actions, or both. For me, it's tidiness and organization. So why is my apartment chaos incarnate? Just look at my mind and my heart: I'm a total mess, paralyzed with pain and anxiety and depression. The worse the untidiness and disorganization, the more it pains me and makes things worse. When I make even one small area clean and tidy, I feel the very muscles in my body relax noticeably. 

I also have an compulsion toward collecting things. That one I've been controlling, until now. I have so many catalogs and magazines I haven't even read yet. Oh, and I collect notebooks and blank journals. When I go through my storage, I will find a large box of them. Mom hated my collection of them, but I stood my ground and would let her make me get rid of the better ones. Collections make me feel stable and rooted and protected.

Lost in the aisles

In therapy today, we wandered. I neglected to do my homework last week due to the usual, plus some days where I couldn't sleep until 3 am. (I am feeling somewhat better, which means I cannot get away without my homework next week.)

Instead of homework, we talked about other things. Last week, when I was making a comparison to illustrate how I felt at one point, I told her a story about something that happened when I was a child. It happened several times: I lost my parents in a department store. I would stop to look at something and when I was done I'd look around and they would be nowhere near me. I'd go from aisle to aisle looking, panic growing inside me. When I was too short to look over the top of the aisles, it was like I was caught in a maze; even when I went to the same aisle again (in case my parents were looking for me), it looked different. And I never asked another person for help. 

I always found them. And every time they'd say "Oh? You were lost? We didn't know that." Way to go folks. Kind of lost parenting points there. Even to this day, I stay close to friends when I'm shopping with them because I feel that panic start to rise if I cannot find them immediately.

Since my mom's death, I've experienced a lot of that lost, panicky feeling. Today my therapist told me something she'd forgotten to say last week, which was that she sees me being in that place of being lost and unable to find my family — permanently. And now I have to find a way to become okay with myself and with being here. Without my parents, my brother. Just me.

The idea of being lost in the department store for the rest of my life punched me in the stomach I know she didn't mean it that literally, but I am a literal person in unexpected ways. And I kind of do feel as if I am lost in the department store. One of the darkly funny things about that is that some of the scariest movies I've ever seen — seen when I was a kid — took place in department stores.

Have you ever been lost? Did you look for your parents, or did they look for you? Who was panicking and who was calm? I've known kids who felt it was their parents who were lost, not themselves. No panic. Just hanging out doing what they wanted until their parents came running to find them. These kids didn't understand why their parents were so upset. I suppose I have to become that kid, because no one is going to run around looking for me.

What do you think are the qualities a person needs to adapt to the department store, to being alone? Yes, i know I have friends, good friends, but in the end, it is me and my aisle in the store and no one running around trying to find me. I've got to get home by myself this time. I'm not sure how.

Exploring pain

Therapy was rough today. In fact, it hurt like hell. And this is going to be a very long post explaining why.

I told Karen that she needed to be the leader, because if left to my own devices I tend to wander, especially if I dread the topic of the day. So today we jumped back into the trauma therapy and continued to read the first section I'd written about.

Now, this first section only covers from the point I found out about Mom's cancer to the point where I got on a plane to fly home.  There is a lot more geography to cover, hills and valleys and even fruited plains (truly — there were clover fields between Mom's house and the cancer center that we watched go from green to greener to magenta to ... mowed, and I didn't manage to get a photograph, even though I passed those fields five days a week). Given such a small section of the whole, it seems reasonable to think that there could be only a small amount of emotional trauma to discover. Even as I read through what I'd written, I felt little emotion ... until near the end when I spoke of the fear I felt. That's when I began to weep.

I expected that, from our last session doing trauma therapy. Weep a little, recover a little. Before we began, I grabbed a tissue because I knew I'd need it.

Then Karen began working me deeper into my experience and my feelings from that time, almost a year ago. I went through a second tissue and started on a third. She asked about my mom and about our relationship and meaningful conversations we'd had. We laughed at one or two of my stories.

I had no idea how deep we could go, how far back emotions can connect and resonate. We reached the topic of how I feel with Mom gone, how mothers can be anchors, which mine was for me, and so on. What came to mind for me was what happened from time to time when I was a child. 

Did you ever wander off in a store as a child? Did your parents panic when they didn't find you, or did you? I had a tendency to stop to look at something more closely, or to keep going when my parent(s) stopped. Eventually, I'd look up and not see my parents. A touch of panic would grab me right away. I'd look in the next couple of aisles and not see them, then the real panic would set in. I never called out, I never cried, I just felt dread and fear squeeze my insides as if wringing out a wet cloth. 

I always found them. They would be looking at something and had no idea that I'd gone "missing." They'd even tease me about worrying. "We're here," they'd say. "We wouldn't leave without you." But I'd always end up doing and feeling the same thing.

This panic went deep. Even within the past few years, if I lost track of my friends in a store, I'd feel the panic and look for them. This sense of being lost and alone generally led me to stay close to them, whether what they were looking at interested me or not. In fact, that behavior has become routine for me. If I am in a crowded situation with someone, I will hold onto a piece of their clothing, if I cannot hold their hand, so I don't get lost.

"So how do you feel now," asked Karen. "Now that your family is all gone?" All the fear and the sense of isolation and panic and the knowledge that my fear I would end up alone has been completely validated surged up and out of me, first in words then in tears and finally in sobs that shook me so I could barely breathe — I don't know how long that lasted. I do know I went through two more tissues.

I knew this work was going to be difficult, and I knew I would cry. I did not know that I would actually sob my heart out in this woman's office; I have only done that in front of one person ever in my life (at least in my memory). I hate feeling this much pain, I hate crying, and I particularly hate sobbing where my body shakes and I can't keep noise from coming out of my mouth — the part of me that stands aside and observes always comments on how stupid those noises sound. I hate them. Doing this in front of another person simply added to the intensity and distress.

We talked me down and I was calm and tear-free when I left. I even took a walk at the park. But I'm going to have to figure out a different strategy: I also went to the grocery store because I needed a few things. Unfortunately, not only do I not manage lunch before my appointment, I also feel a sense of need for comfort after pouring out my tears. I bought goodies. And ate them all. Even if I'm burning off calories by crying and by walking, they aren't enough to balance out the comfort foods.

After an intensely emotional event, I generally move to a phase of "reduced affect" where I feel and display very little emotion. I have a polite and civilized aspect, I think. Given enough of these events over time to think about them, I've concluded that the follow-up phase functions both as a self-protective mechanism and a control mechanism. When I experience such intense emotions, I fear that I will lose control completely, and then what?  Therefore, after such events, my mind and body shut down to limit me and protect me from that intensity for a little while so I can recover. After today, I wouldn't be surprised if I shut down for the next week.

Cognitive therapy has nothing on trauma therapy. Nothing.

Big love, bright life

Today I was drenched in prayers and good wishes from many friends in my extended community and now I feel light and shiny. 

How different from just a day or two ago!

I still have my depression and anxiety, but today I am feeling noticeably lifted above them. It feels good. Between good therapy and an amazing response from these friends, yes, it's a good day. This good day feeling directly recalls yesterday's post about the feel-good brain chemicals produced in women's conversations.

Along with the light and shiny feelings comes exhaustion. I conjecture this exhaustion comes from the emotional outpouring I made, and the emotional inpouring I received. How amazing the power that can be transmitted via email and cell phone!

One message that friends told me and told me was that Depression Lies.This message aligns with what Karen and I discussed in our session today. She said that whether or not I have some social developmental problem doesn't matter. The fact that I believe I do makes me act as if I do: I feel awkward in social situations, I don't know how to make small talk, I feel clueless and am tense, sure that I'll say or do something foolish or stupid (and in the past, I often have). Belief can create reality. (Julie, no crowing!)

Thus, I have another task, trying to change my belief and hoping it changes my behavior and thinking. I'll put it on the list.

I'll leave off some of the other things we talked about in today's session, because I don't want to bring down the tone of this post. 

I feel good. I feel a remembrance of when I was an optimist and rather bouncy. I can't wait until I get my new med — it may take me back to that place where I feel confident and calm. I'll hold onto today's light and shiny feeling for as long as I can, and I'll come back to this post to remind myself, when the dark days come, as they will do as I continue my therapeutic journey.

Thank you, my friends, for everything.

Signed,

Tinkerbell

Feel-good chemicals in the brain

Today a friend told me that women develop "feel-good" chemicals in their brains when they have long talks with friends. Given that I'd already had two long talks prior to electronically "talking" with her, and that I was feeling better, I'm predisposed to believe her to some extent. (I'd like the citation, though.) Then I spent quite some time online with her; anecdotally, I have to say that online talking provides feel-good chemicals as well.

If this information is correct, it would explain why many women enjoy talking for hours with their friends, especially their female friends: they are all getting the same happy drugs in their heads. 

I remember spending about four hours one evening last spring talking with a couple of girlfriends outside a restaurant. The restaurant was the kind that you order at the counter, then sit where you want. No waitstaff. It was a weeknight and the place wasn't crowded, so we sat at a table outside in the warmth and talked. The first friend had to leave about half an hour after friend #2 arrived; friend #2 stayed for nearly 3 hours ... until 9:30. We talked about many different things, most of which I don't remember now because they weren't long-term-memory topics; the important thing was the talking. The bonding. Feeling terrific.

The majority of my conversations and contacts currently are online. I do talk on the phone to one friend about every other weekend or so, but we'll talk for two hours. I talk on the phone to my BFF off and on; sometimes we'll talk every day, sometimes two weeks can go by and all we'll exchange is a few texts and some quick emails. My best girlfriends from way back don't call and they don't write, but if I come to town they seem happy to see me and spend time with me. I don't understand that, but I am rather clueless about many intersocial things. (Karen the therapist and I think it's due to my missing out on some important developments at key stages in my early years.)

I would love to add more friend conversations to help with both my brain chemicals and my social development. Given the recent boom in online-friend-making that I've come into, more long talks with friends may be a possibility. I'd much rather talk than take more medications. Good conversation seldom leaves me feeling drugged or hungover.

I don't think it's worth asking what gives men feel-good chemicals in their brains.

Note: Oftentimes, writing a coherent piece — be it blog post, non-fiction, or fiction — takes time and many revisions to make the piece logical and flowing. Sometimes — this time — the piece writes itself and requires very little editing or revision. Of course, maybe I'm seeing it that way due to the medications ....