Math

I learned a fun new math equation this week...

Anniversary of a difficult termination with a therapist

+

Unexpected visit to the hospital that I was at when it happened (this time was for work reasons)

+

Current therapist telling me that she has to take a leave of absence for 4-6 weeks

=

Fastest spiral into negative coping ever.

So yeah. Bad news is that I went from being pretty OK to being in a horrible cavern of despair in a matter of hours. I lapsed into some bad habits that I feel incredibly guilty about. However, the good news is that instead of letting myself sink past the point of no return, I actually reached out for help by calling the on-call service at the mental health clinic I go to. I was completely terrified of doing it but I ended up feeling so much better for having done it. The person I talked to pretty much convinced me that I'm not a complete failure and that I'm not overreacting about something that seems really stupid, and she set up a little bit of extra support for me for the next week. And on top of that I felt pretty good about myself for reaching out for help like everyone always tells me to... 

I guess that even though this situation felt pretty shitty, it was still another learning experience that I can use to help me next time something like this happens. Luckily, I think there's very little chance that this particular equation will ever repeat, since it was pretty much a bunch of really bad timing. But it will definitely not be the last time that I have to deal with sudden overwhelming feelings, so I hope that I will remember this situation and think more about what to do and what not to do.

Paralyzed

Rip

October 29, 2012

This drawing is actually based on another drawing that I did a while ago, which is the first drawing that can be found in this post. The previous drawing actually had a double meaning. One of the meanings is what I wrote next to it. The other is that it actually represents a specific memory as well. It's too disturbing to write about what it represents but the pink/beige line represents me as a vulnerable child. The grey spikes (which my roommate said look like nails ripping into flesh... an excellent metaphor for the picture and inspiration for the title) represent one of the people who abused me. The brown represents another one. The black space is pretty much pure paralyzing terror. This is one of my worst memories and images from it have been following me around and popping into my head. I thought that maybe drawing it could help me get those images out of my head for a little bit. It did actually help, so I'm glad I made myself draw.

Good News!

First piece of good news - I have a guest article about art and trauma on Michele Rosenthal's PTSD website and blog: http://healmyptsd.com/2012/10/healing-art.html

Aaand  second piece of good news (with excellent timing in view of the first one) - I started drawing again!!

---

Desperate Pain

October 20, 2012

This drawing was a release of some of the strong emotions that I have been experiencing after some of my memories reintegrated with the feelings associated with them. Many of the memories I have are detached from many of the overwhelmingly strong emotions that I experienced when they were happening. Through various coping mechanisms, I managed to avoid feeling anything too scary for me, either at the time or after the fact. Though this was a good survival mechanism for a child, it turned into unhealthy coping and now it only does me harm. So even though it doesn't feel very good right now, it's actually a positive thing that I've started to feel the full extent of all of the fear, pain and helplessness associated with some of the memories. But I definitely needed a way to get some of it out of my head, so I'm glad that I finally listened to my therapist and picked up my pastels again.

Re-experiencing Feelings

I forgot to make a little celebratory post last month... It's been over a year of no cutting!! Something I'm actually kind of proud of... I still really really miss it sometimes and get urges, but I think of how long I've gone without and I don't want to start over. I can also see how not doing it has really improved my self-view in some aspects. I used to feel so horribly guilty about cutting and I would beat myself up about it and then that would make me want to cut more - it is just a really vicious circle of self-hatred and punishment.

I was actually struggling a lot with urges to hurt myself in the past month. I was feeling so helpless, not in control, and confused. Part of me kind of knew that I was going to remember something but I refused to accept that idea so I pushed it away and ignored any scary thoughts that I was having. But these memories always find some way to sneak   their way in... They wait until you're not expecting it and your walls are down - this one waited for me to be in the process of falling asleep to attack. Strangely though, once I remembered and figured out that the feelings I was having were my childhood feelings being re-experienced, I felt more in control and therefore I was having fewer urges to hurt myself. My therapist also had me think about what happened from an outside perspective so that I could see that it makes sense for me to be feeling trapped and confused because what happened is just too much for a child to handle. So even though I hate having this memory in my head and it makes me feel horrible, I can tolerate having it because I understand why it's making me feel bad and I can recognize what I'm going through emotionally.

I am thinking about starting up some art again. My therapist has been trying to convince me that I should because it has always been a good coping skill for me. It would probably be a good thing at this point to find an outlet for the scary feelings.

The Void

I don't really have much to say, but I haven't posted in a while...

I've been trying to pay attention to what triggers this feeling of emptiness that I have sometimes. It's a really strange feeling - I don't feel incredible depressed, it doesn't make me want to curl up and never move - but I still want to just disappear because it's a pretty unpleasant feeling. It feels like nothing can fill the void so when I feel like that I just move around from one thing to the next trying to do something that will make it go away. I did a lot of cleaning last week, and it helped to distract, but it always comes back when I run out of things to clean.

It definitely gets triggered by being by myself - it's like the emptiness of being physically alone triggers the feeling of being empty inside. I also notice it sometimes when I get triggered with trauma stuff. I'm not really sure what it is - sometimes it makes me feel like my life isn't entirely real... so does that mean it's derealization? Am I dissociating a little bit to deal with anxiety? I don't know, it's confusing. I've tried to talk about it in therapy but I got even more confused because I couldn't describe how I felt.

When I was little, before anything bad happened, my family went on a vacation to California and we visited Alcatraz. I was completely freaked out by it - there are pictures of me in a jail cell and I look completely miserable. I remember that afterwards I had this weird fear that I was still really trapped in one of the cells and I was just asleep and dreaming my real life. It's kind of a good analogy for how I feel now. I'm trapped in the jail cell of my mind and the rest of my life is just a dream.

Feeling Progress

Wow. My most ridiculously stupid post, in which I tried to say post as many times as possible, is already one of my most viewed posts... Kind of strange. I'm not usually that crazy! I swear!

On a different note, I talked a bunch this week with my therapists about how I've been frustrated about talking about trauma stuff and feeling like I'm not making progress. It helped me realize that just saying what happened isn't really enough - I've been trying to avoid facing and dealing with the feelings associated with the memories. So I ended up asking my therapist to help me talk about that part more and I also asked her to kind of validate what I talk about in a way that might help me stop minimizing what happened. I was so nervous about asking, but my other CBT therapist has been encouraging me to ask for things that I need. So I tried to ignore all of the thoughts that tell me that I don't deserve to ask, or that she would think that I was criticizing her or that I was being indulgent, or even that she would just reject me, and I asked her. It turned out to be so empowering and positive. She was glad that I had asked and told me that I should always bring something like that up because she wants to know how to best help me. We also talked about progress and how sometimes it's so slow that I feel stuck but it helps to look back a year and think about where I was then. This time last year I was between hospitalizations and I was just reacting and not really coping all that well. Now I am making choices about what to do, I am coping, and I am (with the help of medication) not feeling so horribly depressed and anxious. I felt so much better after our session and I'm now feeling really positive about how things are going.

Just Some Thoughts

I've been feeling pretty frustrated recently about what to do with my traumatic memories. A lot of things keep triggering me into having intrusive thoughts - the meds keep them from being all-consuming and overwhelming, which is a huge relief - but I don't know how to process my past, so I'm feeling a little bit lost. The same memories play over and over in my head and talking about them helps a little but I feel like I shouldn't talk about it more than once because that just seems indulgent to make someone listen to it multiple times. I know that's probably not something I should be worrying about, but I feel ridiculous bringing the same crap up all the time.

On a completely unrelated note, I've noticed that my body has become really good at keeping me from getting too drunk. For a while after my suicide attempt, while I was doing really badly, I wasn't really interested in going out with my friends at night. Going out and not drinking made me depressed because watching my friends all having a good time while I was feeling like shit wasn't really all that fun. And if I had gone out and had a drink, I would have become completely suicidal. But since I've been doing really well recently, and I'm off of the medications that were dangerous to mix with alcohol, I've been able to enjoy a few drinks. I don't know if it's because of the medications that I'm still on, but I'm no longer able to have more than a few drinks before I feel sick. And I'm totally incapable of taking shots without gagging and having to suppress the urge to throw up. I'm actually mostly happy about that because it stops me from getting too drunk, which would still probably be really bad for my mental health. And it also means that I don't have to suffer through horrible hangovers,  which is great.

I don't have any art to share because I haven't felt like drawing anything recently. I have a few ideas in my head, but for some reason I don't really feel like putting them down on paper. So I guess for now I'm just going to write random thoughts and ideas down until I can bring myself to draw again.