I want to take agency over my life

[heatherstorm]

Hi, this is my first journal entry. I'm 28 years old and am only now realizing that I've been living with toxic shame all through my teenage years until now. I've been ignoring my needs to a point where I would regulary almost pass out, letting the inner critic go havoc on me and also been TW having passive suicidal ideation and also tried to commit several times.

Some month ago I've been diagnosed with Cptsd and so much makes sense to me now. The constant feeling of emptiness, helplessness, being disconnected to everyone around me, the dissociation, freezing, the many heavy depressive episodes and having extreme heavy fear of failure.

Recently I came out of my third inpatient stay, which lastet 8 weeks. I admitted myself after I spiraled into a heavy depressive episode. The trigger were being around my classmates in Occupational therapy school and comparing my seemingly empty life to my classmates lives, feeling less knowledgable then them, the fear of failure and not beliving in myself to pass the final exams. I started to avoid everything by sleeping the days away and stopped eating and drinking.

During my 8 weeks inpatient stay I was mostly laying around in bed or sleeping, unable to participate in the sports therapies. I didn't help me to be around people that also had depression. Instead I compared myself to others. "At least they already graduated from university" "At least they found a partner for life and built a family" "At least they had already lived their lives". I would frequently hide in my room just to avoid interaction because weirdly enough I felt ashamed that I'm a 28 year old that only graduated high school and hadn't worked a full- time job yet. I felt so disconnected again, because people actually had a childhood and youth unlike me. (My parents would isolate me and I wasn't allowed to go out and make friends. And if I did there were harsh consquences). I was so afraid of not being ale to hold a conversation. My whole stay I felt like a child that desperatly wanted to be saved. I was even unable to actively participate in one on one sessions with my therapist. Because of my dissociation, deep shame about being mentally ill and feeling of inadequacy, many times I couldn't even answer her questions and my whole body would tense up. There was a big resistance within me to do the homework that my therapist would give me (she is CBT based). It felt to me like I failed again, altough I've already had several therapists throughout my life and two other hospital stays, where I learned skills and other tools to combat my depressive episodes. The shame didn't subside during my hospital stay. To be honest in those weeks I just wanted someone to scoop me up, hold me, cure all my symptoms and do the work for me. I was beyond exhausted from hearing all the same content again...I felt like I wasted everyones time and was extremly lazy.

After 8 weeks I couldn't take it anymore and went home. I realized that the only one that can help me is myself. Of yourse I'm still going to therapy, but therapy in essence is just helping you to self- help. Your therapist can guide you, but you have to do the work and change your routines, behaviour and use the tools provided.

 
Now that I'm home I started to look after myself more. Everyday I try to eat 3 meals, drink enough water and listen to what I wanted to do, instead of feeling guilty that I didn't do anything productive. I'm also working on self- compassion to conquer my toxic shame. Im planning on going back to my Occupational Therapy school within 3 weeks if my self-care routine sticks. Also I'm starting to adress my fear of failure with my therapist using EMDR soon. Although my anexity is very high and there will be a lot of stressful exams coming towards me, I know I can't run from it forever.

I'm 28 years old and am only now realizing that my cPtsd has caused me a great lack of self-worth and made me feel like a helpless child. I've been dealing with my mental health issues for a while now. But little by little I want to make positive life style changes. Because I want to take agency over my life and belive in myself.