SaB's 2nd journal

Started by SharpAndBlunt, September 03, 2019, 06:22:12 PM

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SharpAndBlunt

I want to keep journalling. It has been just over a year since I found and joined the forum. I've learned a lot. But I'm also at the beginning of recovery.

I have just started on Sertraline/Zoloft which seems to be helping with anxiety/panic. But I'm still anxious and fearful.

I have been given an appointment with a psychologist this Thursday, to repeat every two weeks. This is big news for me. I'm frightened about the work ahead. But mindful I need it too.

I hope this journal can help. I want to keep posting and recovering.

Hope67

Hi SaB,
I hope that your Journal will help, and I hope that you are able to keep posting and recovering.  I wish you the best, and sending you a hug of support, if that's ok  :hug:
All the best too for your appointment on Thursday with the psychologist. 
Take care,
Hope  :)

Three Roses


Jazzy

All the best with the psychologist and your continued recovery! Keep up the good work. Take care! :)

SharpAndBlunt

Thank you Hope, Three Roses and Jazzy!

Met with the psychologist and was very encouraged. Talked about my background and was able to get most of my story out, and felt it was heard and understood.

Technically I am still under assessment at this stage but I am hopeful that the therapist and I can work together on my issues.

I was able to say that I get scared sometimes and clam up and want to run away (emotionally I mean) so that was good because now she is aware that might happen and we can deal with it.

We talked about the anti depressant a little and how it is separating me from my emotions a little. While this helps in some ways to cope with emotional swings I also feel it leaves me feeling a bit cut loose, disconnected. I'm going to continue with them until I can talk to the psychiatrist about it.

I've been having headaches since I stated the pills. I realised last night in bed that my jaw is extremely tense. Usually this extreme tension is in my back or legs. It seems to move around, if I concentrate on relaxing one part it just moves to another. Looking forward to being more mindful of this and letting it seep out slowly and calmly, it just is not healthy to have that much tension making it impossible to relax. That's part of the internal negative feedback loops I want to break.

Lastly I re read Pete Walker's short chapter on abandonment depression and found it described a lot of my symptoms perfectly. It was fine for me to read but might be triggering for some. I can provide a link to it if anyone is interested.

Feeling a bit encouraged and a little hopeful but also acknowledging I have work to do ahead.

SharpAndBlunt

I decided to take a short notice day off work tomorrow. This morning I felt exhausted and thought about not going in but I did go in and decided to do this instead. It's been a busy week or two for me, socially, and I want some quiet time to decompress.

So, I asked if there was anything important on tomorrow and when I got the answer 'no' I said if it's OK I'm going to take the day off. That was fine. Then I told them I'm really tired and I'm planning on having a duvet day.

My workmate exploded with "You boring...!!!" and never finished. I can imagine what she was going to say.

Probably, not so long ago, I would have joined in, laughed along, been like "Yeah I know haha how boring" or probably more likely I would have made an excuse in the first place.

Thing is, I know I'm not being boring. It's because I haven't been boring that I need this day off. I have the annual leave and I'm entitled to it. What I do with it is no business of hers.

Well, I think that this person might be kind of boring and maybe is living with her own frustrations. But, I'm kind of done with caring about that. Me and probably everyone here and other people I know work so hard to address issues and problems, and it seems some people still love to just discuss others' problems at length. Well, that is gossip and it is not good for anyone.

Back to the point. I am completely exhausted. I have been very tense and very aware of it. I think before I have not been aware. This afternoon I fell asleep briefly and it was like being unconcious. I don't remember sleep feeling that restorative for years even though I must have been asleep only 20 or 30 minutes.

I hope I can get more of that quality of sleep. Tonight I think I will be back to light sleeping. The tension and crowded thoughts are back. But, tomorrow I can lie in all day, under my quilt and in the dark if I want.

Here is to that, and I'm calling it self care. It is self care. I never had to care in the past what others thought but I always did. I'm learning to care for myself. If I could only lessen this tension somehow that seems to settle in me without a ground for it to sink away into. My muscles must be straining all the time so it's no wonder I'm always tired and jumpy.

Not Alone

Yes, it is self-care. I think taking tomorrow off is a good way for you to be kind to yourself.

Snowdrop

 :yeahthat:

A duvet day sounds like a good idea. I'm glad you were able to sleep so deeply.

SharpAndBlunt

Thank you, notalone and Snowdrop. I want to say that yes the duvet day was a good idea and I have enjoyed doing nothing much of anything.

I want to write a little also about the anti depressants I have been on for about four weeks now.

At first it was hard to get used to. I was disorientated and had headaches.

Now the physical side effects have settled down a bit.

The effect on my anxiety has been pronounced. My levels are way down. This in turn is making it easier for me to encounter emotions without dissociation. I still feel triggered and get those urges or instincts but somehow it is easier to deal with. I don't feel quite so hopeless any more and I seem to be able to recognise negative emotions for what they are, and not as some kind of unpleasant truth about myself.

I am starting to think of my depression like an awful horrible monster, it makes me believe the worst about myself, and the world.

Somehow with this medication I am able to see that this is not truth, any more than any other point of view is truth.

But, I find it scary how persuasive those ideas are when I am depressed, as I still am. This medication seems to have given me a lift. But now I am dependent! (maybe, we will see).

With therapy I hope is coming my way at last (still under assessment) I may be able to address the issues underlying.

One of the worst things about depression for me is the constant sense of alienation, of being cut off from myself and from everything else too.

The cptsd aspect is responsible for the unbearable anxiety, which leads to acting out or self destructive behaviour, or self sabotage.

Cptsd and depression is a really miserable combination. At times (in fact all the time) I thought it was impossible to beat and was just my lot in life. This may seem like self pity but that's actually how it felt / feels.

I start to see that it is possible to make connection, to feel involved. What remains is my fear, of intimacy, of connection. Probably because I fear it will be withdrawn at any minute. Or shot down at no notice. I short, I still don't trust. So, there is that to work on.

In the meantime I will try to be nice to myself and take downtime if I need it. Everybody needs it and that's how people function. But when it's been go go go like I've felt, running away or being a perfectionist, downtime feels scary in itself! It's not, and that's something I'm glad about. Hope i can remember that.

SharpAndBlunt

TW: This post has description of emotional abuse and difficult emotions including anger.

Raised by a violent abusive and smothering NPD m. with an emotionally absent f. happy to play the nice guy role. Retraumatised by m. traumatic illness and death and subsequent exposure to full force of f. 's co-dependence, abandonment depression and emotionally abusive alcoholism.
Siblings all escaped and too busy dealing with own disfunctions to help.

I read elsewhere here that waking at 3/4 am is a sign of depression. I certainly have that and I wake early every day.

Raised to m"s expectations to what I am and emotionally on my knees by the time she died, I was close to escaping, for better or worse, only to be recaptured by the black hole of f's depression and alcoholism. I was beat.

My confusion, rage and impotence at not knowing my own life, what I was for and where I should go next. My own despair followed by chronic depression and self alienation.

I never was able to live my own life.

I am so angry that this has happened, and angry at myself for a long time that I let it happen to myself.

I am so angry for everyone here for knowing what I'm talking about instinctively and instantly because of a recognition of the symptoms that it has taken me my whole adult life to come close to understanding.

I'm angry but I will get through it. I don't know how because it feels like one step at a time with many mis steps.

At least now I can call it abuse and see it for what it is. But even typing this 'out loud' is threatening an e. F. So I'll stop. I'm coming to terms with what happened to me and it's taking so long because it's one step at a time, careful, easy does it. I feel so much for everyone who has gone through anything like this. To be devalued and not loved is a horrible thing. I feel also a little bit of a fraud sometimes because there are so many different ways abuse can happen, I tend to invalidate my own experience as not serious enough for consideration. But that's how it gets me. Denial and self invalidation resulting in emptiness and no idea of self. It may sound dramatic but that is my experience. This anger is only a phase, and I will find peace on the other side of it, somehow. The impotence I felt in the shadow of this suppressed rage I had for years won't stay with me forever. I won't let it. And with the suoport of people who understand and care I know that things will get better.

I am so grateful to have this space to express myself without fear of ridicule, abandonment, scorn. The people here are far braver than that. Thank you all for being here.  :grouphug:

Three Roses


SharpAndBlunt


Anjulie

#12
Thank you for sharing your anger, it feels powerful and it makes so much sense. Thank you for being angry for us, too. It is like sending out love to us.
:grouphug:

"Denial and self invalidation resulting in emptiness and no idea of self."
You were not sounding dramatic, it was a relief to me to hear your words because they describe exactly what I have to deal with.

Hope67


SharpAndBlunt

Thank you, Anjulie and Hope.

Anjulie, I'm sorry you feel this way too, it is so confusing sometimes  :stars: but thank you for validating my anger because it is not often I have felt justified with it so I still feel vulnerable even expressing it.

:grouphug: