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. 

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!

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.

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.

Trauma Work - Week 1

Warning: this is an extraordinarily long post. And it's kind of tedious.

I've been promising to tell you about my therapy. Today we began the trauma work, and it was every bit as painful and difficult as you might imagine. And yet, my therapist contrarily makes it easier to go through the trauma. 

I cried today, a lot. I normally do not cry in front of people, including myself. I hate to cry. Not just a little hate. Hate with a fervor reserved for rival drug lords. However, I felt comfortable crying in front of Karen. My stomach didn't clench. My shoulders didn't tighten.

By now you are asking yourself, "Sure, sure, but what the hell is 'trauma therapy'?"

I believe that now I begin the end of my anonymity among those who know me IRL.  As long as employers and clients do not find me --- and I'm not sure how they could --- that is fine with me.

By mutual decision, Karen and I decided to start with my latest and most debilitating trauma: the death of my mother. Her death resonates with earlier deaths, but I believe I need to deal with Mom's death first.

I began with the beginning, because I am OCD enough to like to do things sequentially. Beginning with when I first found out she had cancer, I listed what I consider the major points from beginning through her death. Then I wrote the facts for each point, including my own feelings and the dates of those facts where I have them.

Today we began the next step: I read the points for one portion of the story. And as I read, my emotions came flowing up, along with tears. Karen interrupted here and there to question feelings and to tell me how she felt and to mirror my feelings back to me. After I finished reading, we continued talking about that portion of the story and my emotions. She continued to mirror back and to question for further depth my emotions, and to tell me what she felt and thought as I read. I told her feelings I haven't told anyone. We talked about the multiple layers of how I felt. And I continued to cry. I even hit the point of gasping. Thankfully, I avoided sobbing, but I can see the potential for this. That will suck big time.

We switched to a more intellectual perspective that allowed me to calm down before I left her room. I may have had red eyes, but there were no tears pouring down my face.

As I drove away, I found that I felt odd. It seemed that I felt lighter and calmer, but I questioned those feelings. Still, that was how I felt. As I walked from my car toward the grocery store, I found myself walking differently, looser, and feeling a bit like my old self. Could just one little bit of this therapy truly have that much of an effect on me? Not sure.

Perhaps I'd still be feeling and wondering, if it weren't for the buzz kill. When I got was in the store, I received a call from my apartment complex office. Checks had been stolen from their drop box, and the boxes of the nearby complexes. And my check was among them.

I feel angry. It's as if the universe is keeping a very close count of my happys and sads and making my life balance on a very tight schedule. This happened after I jumped off a bridge and felt strong and confident --- five days later my car slid on the ice and ended up half in a ditched, totaled, and that event stole those feelings from me, leaving me feeling fearful and powerless. A year and a half ago, my mom was finally free to travel and do anything she wanted, mostly with me --- then she died of cancer.

Yes, I feel angry. And my world view that the universe has it in for me has not changed. Sorry, Julie. Maybe later.

Hypothetically Positive

One of my past therapists suggested a behavioral way to affect my mood when I am depressed. There is a corresponding cognitive aspect, as well.

When I was feeling down (and at the time, it was always), I was to smile, to make sure my posture was good --- shoulders back, head up --- and pick up my feet when I walked, rather than letting them kind of shuffle. These are behaviors most of us have when we feel positive and cheerful. (And I do find that when I am feeling most depressed or anxious, my head is bent way down, I look at the ground, and it requires much effort to not only bring my head up, but to keep it up.)

Cognitively, I was to consciously make positive statements to myself. If I found myself making a negative statement (I'm such a clutz!), I was to find a way to state it more positively (I may not be a ballet dancer, but I can get where I'm going!). These may not be the best examples, but I'm having difficulties making positive statements out of negatives right now, which is weird because I had a fairly good day. Except for eating all that chocolate. Why do I even buy it?

A friend of mine has been working on changing her mindset to a more positive one, and she says it seems to be working. I vaguely remember it working for me in the past. Therefore, I'm going to work on it. 

A sample of negatives I want to make more positive:

• I have no control over my eating and can't stop eating all the sweets in the house.
• I'm fat, and I'm stupid for not doing what I need to do to get healthier.
• I'll be alone and lonely forever.
• I'm lazy and I'll never find new work and I'll always be poor.
• I never pay my bills on time. I'll have bad credit and never be able to buy a house.

Now I'm just depressing myself. If this is what's going on inside my head (and there is more), then no wonder I'm a wreck. I need to spend some time thinking about how to reframe/reposition these statements. More fun for me.

I accomplished many things today: I ran errands; I bought some things I needed for the house and for personal needs; I bought an iced tea machine because I just don't make it myself --- this will be a lot easier; that damned candy, some of which is in the fridge, so I didn't eat it all; priced out things I'd like, such as curtain rods for the living room and bedroom and hand mixers; and I just shopped without buying. I saw pillows that would look great in my bedroom. I some perfect ones for the living room. But ... I'm not earning money, so it makes no sense to spend money on non-necessities (the iced tea machine is so a necessity; it's cheaper than buying pre-made tea or soda!). I've been thinking I should consider buying a simple sewing machine so I could make things for the apartment, instead of buying them. Right. Not like me to try to load myself down with too many things to do or think about.

So I will work on being more positive, and I still have my therapy homework to do. 

Is there something in your life that you could frame in a more positive way? Do you want to be more positive? What are your strategies?