BigGreenSee123's journal

[BigGreenSee123]

[1] I always liked keeping a journal. I've probably kept every entry I've written over the years. They can be found in various spots around my room, scribbled on loose papers or written in notebooks, or filling up my hard drive on the computer. I think I must have journal entries stretching back for a solid ten years or so. I'm pretty sure the habit started (and steadily continued) because I don't actually talk to anyone. I mean I do talk to people, at least now I do. But I talk to them about research projects or when the trash needs to go out or the weather. I don't talk to people about real things... but I can only hold onto so much, it needs to go somewhere. So I put it in journals.

Tonight I feel... sad? Overwhelmed? A little hopeless, a little fearful. I had a nice week, a solidly good week. It was refreshing and definitely needed. Then I had therapy this afternoon. Therapy usually seems to mess me up. Now I feel like I'm slipping backward again trying to remember how I got myself out of the hole last time. I've been working on trying to accept my feelings as they are, I am trying to just accept this. I don't want to, though. I feel myself fighting it. It's just too scary and I feel alone again.

I'm always trying to make sense of things. I keep trying to understand how I got to where I was this afternoon (pre-therapy, pretty decent, feeling strong) to this evening (post-therapy, back on the edge of the shadows). I mean, everything went well at the appointment, really. It wasn't a hard session. No particularly rough stuff, no big emotions to grapple with.

But that trips me up, I'm not sure why... when things go well. It leaves me feeling oddly disconnected. I've been trying to trust my T, trying to allow myself to lean on another person for support. It scares me, though, more than anything - feeling dependent, feeling vulnerable, allowing myself to care about someone else. And...I don't know... I don't understand... I felt like I was starting to believe that she was in my corner and I liked it and, what's more, that both these things were okay. Then I go and we talk pleasantly and somehow I am left feeling like things have changed. I don't get it. I really don't understand. And I don't know what to do to address it.

It just feels like I was getting a taste of having someone else in my frightening, isolated, fragile little world. And now I don't. And I know, objectively, that she hasn't necessarily gone anywhere and things haven't changed. But I feel like they have, and that's so much more convincing than anything else.

These are the cycles. These are familiar places. Two days ago I was hopeful and well, today I am not; things will change back again eventually. I know this. And yet, it still sucks. I am tired and I do not feel well tonight.

[arpy1]

feeling for you, BGS123. it's a proper slog at times, isn't it? 

i relate a lot to how you feel about the therapy, for me itwas a funny kind of mixture of fear/expectation of being abandoned plus fearing wanting someone to care, plus desperately wanting someone to care, plus also the feeling that unless it's hard/traumatic, nothing is happening and the insecurity that happens when it's not hard and then back round full circle to feeling she might disappear on you/hate you etc etc.

also really relate to the trying to understand all the time. my head wants to explode sometimes!  and staying with the feelings, staying in my body and not fighting them... it's really hard and the more i try the worse i seem to be at it!  but i know that's only becos i have never tried to do this before, so no wonder it's not coming naturally.

even tho i don't have answers, just wanted you to know you're not on your own. much support 

[BigGreenSee123]

Thanks, arpy1. It's a shame you go through the same thing but I must admit it is always a relief to hear I am not alone in this. Therapy makes me crazy - I feel like am equal parts wanting it to continue and wanting it to stop. It's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do...but I do think it is doing something, so I keep going.

Luckily, I woke up this morning feeling a bit better. It looks like the worst has passed for now. I appreciate the support.

[arpy1]

 

[BigGreenSee123]

[2] I have no idea how I feel right now.

...Scratch that, maybe that's not the best way to put it. I have a funny habit of thinking that knowing what I feel and knowing why I feel it are one in the same. I have a decent idea of how I feel, I just don't know why.

I feel like I've got stuff to do but I don't have the motivation to do it.
I feel disconnected.
I feel like I just want my therapist to text me and say that things are okay, we're still on the same page.
I feel like I don't want to stay here and do work, but I also don't want to go home.
I feel stuck, frozen, directionless.
I feel a mild ache in my chest, a tightness.
I feel like there is something else going on below but I can't quite see it, can't quite get to it.

Ironically, I don't feel all that bad right now. It's not a terrible state, it's just weird. I feel weird. I'm pretty sure this is the result of something dissociated, compartmentalized, or otherwise removed from my conscious awareness. I just get this sense like something is lurking in my brain (metaphorically, of course - I don't think I've got worms up there or anything) - but it's out of reach. I've been here before; it's actually something of an old, familiar feeling. It just makes time feel like it stops a bit. I feel removed from my life, from the world, a little lost.

I slept a lot later than usual today - another sign that I'm trying to get away from something. Then I had therapy which felt weird too. It all seemed a little jumbled, incoherent, not smooth. There were people working on the building and I tried to have an honest conversation but I was so damn distracted by the hammering and the men on ladders just beyond the window. The anxiety had been particularly high coming in, too, which surprised me. My mouth was dry the whole time I was there. I kept swallowing and licking at my lips, trying to figure out what was going on for me. I never got it figure out, though. I'm still working on it.

I suspect the feelings I've stuffed away are some form of sadness. How many times will I go through the same damn story until it's done? I feel ashamed of the fact that I keep coming back to the same place. I don't think people would approve if they knew. Get over it already! Move on! What do they expect from me, though, these hypothetical people in my imagination? I could tell myself to get over it but all that seems to do is cause more trouble; dissociating doesn't ever make things better, it just covers things up until they explode somewhere down the line.

But I think the truth is that, whether or not I should be, I am back here. Back to sadness, longing, fear. Ugh, the achy combination of those things. Back to thinking about my therapist and wondering if I've got an ally. Back to just wanting to feel okay, settled, safe somewhere in my life. And walking around with this feeling like I've got to get out, to go somewhere, to not be here...without any actual place to go to. It's like that line, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

Tonight I'm just wandering, I guess. I'd prefer to go home, but I can't seem to find where it is.

[arpy1]

BGS123     really feel for you. just want to say you're not alone, and please not to feel like you 'shouldn't' feel how you are feeling. if you're feeling sad, afraid, wanting comfort, its because you have got reasons to feel that way. and it's absolutely ok to feel it. 

i am finding lately that sometimes i just have to stop trying not to feel how i feel, but actually just to acknowledge it, sit with it, stay with it and be a bit compassionate to myself for it.  even if it's confusing or painful.  just to sit inside my body and feel sad or whatever without making any moral judgments about it is very comforting and sort of calming too.

hope you can be kind to yourself for the rest of your day, you deserve it.  Yes you do!!

loads of support and a big 

[BigGreenSee123]

Thanks arpy1, your kindness made my morning.

It took a while but I eventually came around to what you suggested - being with things as they are. I very much believe in this way of responding to life. And yet, I often feel like I forget. I forget all the time. I get lost in trying to make things stop or make myself feel different, I get swept away in the belief that I can't feel as I feel, or I vaguely recall the importance of acceptance but get fooled into thinking something like,"well sure, that's true for other situations, but not now, not this." At other times I think I "forget" because I am just unwilling to sit with it. It's not easy. I usually remember eventually, though, which is a sign of progress for me I think. So, I'll just have to keep practicing...

[arpy1]

   i'm glad 

you have to laugh, this morning, i woke up after a truly weird dream, in something of a flashback state again. after yesterday which was a better day.  i wanted to weep!  i get so fed up with the one step forward two steps back (no, i mean the other way round...or was that a  freudian slip??)

anyway, all my plans to do things have gone out the window, i managed to fill the sink with dirty pots and put hot water on them, got in the shower and have cancelled the rest of the day until further notice.  sigh.  back to being kind to myself....   as you say, keep practising... you are certainly not alone, my friend!

[BigGreenSee123]

i get so fed up with the one step forward two steps back (no, i mean the other way round...or was that a  freudian slip??)

...I try and believe it's more like 1 step forward, 2/3rds of a step back but it often feels more like one step forward two steps back. I am continuously surprised when I find I've fallen backwards again after thinking I was finally done with all my problems. And I'm more surprised that I keep getting surprised because this happens all the time. The mind is a strange creature.

And it just occurred to me...where are these steps leading to exactly? Where is it we think we are getting to? With the idea of acceptance, in my opinion, is the understanding that this, right here, right now, is the only destination.

It's no easy feat, though, when things feel terrible and you had plans for the day and you just want all the dishes to be clean. Who would choose this as the destination? I'm sorry to hear it's been one of those days for you. I always liked the word gentleness - be gentle with yourself today if you can. My thoughts are with you.

[BigGreenSee123]

[3; disclaimer: quite cranky today it seems - please excuse the swearing and self-hating rants] It seems there is a pattern of me not understanding what I'm feeling. I'm not sure if this is a product of me not recognizing what I am feeling or habitually disregarding what it is I am feeling - always leaving me searching for something else. Either way, I frequently have a feeling of being confused, out of touch. It's like I get these hints that something is off but I don't know what. It happens a lot. It's aggravating.

I remember for a while I had liked severe depressive episodes because it cut through this confusion a bit. At the depths of depression it is very clear how I am feeling. I don't mean to suggest this allowed me to enjoy the depression - it was miserable. But there was also a quality to it that was appealing.

Today I am back to that feeling of something being not quite right, but I couldn't say what. It's foggy in my mind, in my body. In the most general, vague way possible - I just feel crappy. I slept late into the day. When I finally got myself to wake up I didn't get out of bed for a while. I felt off, slightly afraid, that weird disconnect between me and the world around me. Anxiety, this hum of tension.

I have work that needs to get done. Today was going to be the day to do it. I didn't, though. I thought about it a lot, I keep thinking about it; but I just feel stuck in place. Finally I got up to shower somewhere around mid-afternoon. Gosh, it makes me feel like such a bum to say that. What the * is wrong with me?

It's like this stupid * carousel, back and forth around the same things. Sometimes it turns slowly, sometimes so quick it makes my head spin. But, whatever the speed, it just returns over and over and over again to the same old * and I feel like I still don't know what I am doing though I know I've been in this place so many times before. I feel weirdly mad, like I just want to break something.

I had the house to myself for a while which was nice. I feel like I can spin out a little and not worry about someone popping in my room. But they came back. And now I hear people moving about below and I'm constantly monitoring for the sound of footsteps up the stairs. I want them just to leave. Or, I want to leave the house, to get away, but I can't because they're all down there. And I don't want to play the part of the calm, sane person right now.

I logged onto this crisis chat website earlier today. I've been on it a few times in the past. I find it helpful sometimes, especially when I feel like something is going on that I can't quite figure out. It's like it breaks up the fog a bit for me. So I went on. And I had to wait to connect with someone else in a chat. So I waited. Then I waited some more. And it shows you what "position in line" you've got. So I would start to think about just leaving the site, because it was taking forever. But then my position would move up so I'd decide to wait a bit more. And now it's been something like two (or more) hours and I'm still waiting. And I feel like such a * idiot. Because here I am, like a chump, sitting and waiting for someone to talk to me through the internet because I can't seem to talk to anyone in my "real" life. And it's been forever and I should give up on it already but I am just that desperate. So desperate that I am going to keep sitting here like a * dipshit. Just waiting. And what am I going to do when they finally come online - yell at them? Yell at the kind volunteers at the crisis chat for making me wait? No. Of course not. But I feel so dumb and I feel so angry at myself. But if I just act pleasant it will be a total waste of time. I feel like I should just go. But I can't. I've invested too much time and I've been waiting on this thing all day to try and feel a little bit better. But it's not working out and the people downstairs are there and I have to go do work and I just want to go sequester myself in the corner of my closet and sleep until everything has gone away.

I just want to * cry. But I can't...because I hear them all down there. It's not safe. I just wish they'd go away.

[arpy1]

oh honey, i am sending you big ! 

i so know how you feel, even down to the waiting for the footsteps on the stairs, the constants roundabout of emotions and confusions and things.  you are not on your own.  i don't have answers but i can offer a bit of empathy and hugs and the reassurance that though you feel like crap, you are still basically ok, still not alone, still understood.  hope it will help to remember that dear BGS123.  may your day improve as you are kind to yourself and treat yourself with compassion.

much support 

[BigGreenSee123]

[4] This feels like less of a recovery journal entry and more of a relapse (?) post. Today my T suggested that I go back on meds. I really really really rarely show emotions in front of others, but that got me upset. I don't want to go back on meds. But I know she might be right.

It got me thinking about why I am so averse to the notion of meds. I prefer not to take anything if I can avoid it, even benign thinking like Advil or vitamins. And it's a hassle to return to all the extra errands - finding a doctor, getting the prescription, paying for it, remembering to take them each day, etc. Then there's the potential for side effects...

But I don't think that's what immediately bothers me when I think about the prospect of returning to meds. Rather, I feel like I am losing something. I'm not sure what but I know I don't like it. Losing the battle. Losing a piece of myself. Losing the fantasy of how I thought this could all turn out. Though I've tried to tackle it I don't think I've completely given up on a savior-fantasy kind of scenario; I think that's still worming around in the back of my mind. And to give up on that...? 

But then I think about how much time I am stuck in states of emotional strain and I wonder - is the prospect of fulfilling such a fantasy (if it is even possible) worth all this?

I honestly don't know. If anything, my rational mind says no and the rest of me is screaming that it is, that I can't just let go.

I have no idea how to make this decision.

[arpy1]

hey hon, hesistate to keep adding my twopenn'orth, but my recent painful experience is proving once again that maybe it's better to think of this as a war rather than a single battle (that will be finally won in glorious victory with permanent peace ensuing...) it's more like a war with many individual battles, in each of which the idea is to push the enemy back a bit more and take ground until you slowly regain the territory that is rightfully yours. 

been thinking about the meds problem you describe... on the same slightly corny theme... would you go into a battle with a sword but no shield?

i wonder if it might help to try to look at meds as a tool, a weapon in your arsenal of coping strategies, not as some kind of value judgment or measure of your worth or strength.

Though I've tried to tackle it I don't think I've completely given up on a savior-fantasy kind of scenario; I think that's still worming around in the back of my mind. And to give up on that...? 

i think we're all the same, and it is so hard to give up the idea of rescue. it seems unjust that we have to work so hard and persevere through so much to get back what should never have been stolen from us in the first place.  but there's a kind of relief when i accept that i am the only person who can do this for me, becos i find my strength in that somehow.  i will do it becos i must do it, or stay the way i am for more painful decades. and becos i must do it, i can.

anyway, fwiw, that's my current philosophy. whatever else, you're definitely not on your own,. sending you big loads of support and courage 

[BigGreenSee123]

Hey arpy1. I don't mind your two pennies. I'm truly at a loss for what to do, all suggestions are welcome.

i wonder if it might help to try to look at meds as a tool, a weapon in your arsenal of coping strategies, not as some kind of value judgment or measure of your worth or strength.

It's funny, with all the stigma out there I can understand why people might hesitate to take meds, but I've never really worried about that. I'm not inclined to share with the world what drugs I'm on, but I don't necessarily feel ashamed about it either.

My concern seems to be some vague notion of what it is to be "better". I feel like I'll never be better if I'm on them. It's like I'll slap a big bandaid with a smiley face over everything and it'll look good but all my wounds will still be festering underneath. I don't want to do that.

I suspect it has a good deal to do with how I handled growing up. I was the good kid. Everything was, and often still is, "fine". I feel like it's my responsibility to not be bothered by anyone or anything. Meds, it seems to me, will just feed into this. I've yet to feel my time when things are not okay and someone else accepts that. And I remain unwilling to give up the possibility of that. How will I ever do that when I'm medicated, if I am fine all the time by way of drugs? (Then I find myself coming back to the same question - so what if I am fine all the time? Is it with it to continue feeling terrible just to fulfill some fantasy?)

but there's a kind of relief when i accept that i am the only person who can do this for me, becos i find my strength in that somehow.  i will do it becos i must do it, or stay the way i am for more painful decades. and becos i must do it, i can.

I feel like I understand what you mean here but if I'm to be truly honest I rarely feel this way. I'd prefer to feel this way, but, ashamed as I may be to admit it, I typically just feel beat down by my challenges and alone in a way that is threatening rather than empowering. This is when I really start to wonder if drugs may be the best option for me right now...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and the support. I really do appreciate it.

[BigGreenSee123]

[5] So, I think I realized something with this medication dilemma of mine. I think it one was one of those moments of progress, subtle though it may be. I think the biggest barrier to accepting the idea of medication was that I'd be giving up on some kind of dream, fantasy - one that I really didn't want to give up. Initially, after realizing this, I was still against the idea of meds. But as time moved forward I started to think less about what I'd be giving up and more about what I might be gaining. Normalcy. Was it really worth all the chaos, this fantasy of mine?

I think this realization changed things a bit for me. I am not on meds still but am more open to the possibility. What's more, I feel like I'm not so inclined to tighten around emotions. It's like there's a bit more space there. I wonder if, before, I would clamp down onto every emotional experience wondering if this would or could be the thing that is enough to warrant someone else's care and attention. Now... I don't know... it's more like it is what it is. I wouldn't say I no longer have that fantasy. But I guess maybe I've realized it's not worth me causing more harm to myself for.

I'm not sure this makes any sense. It's hard to describe. And I'm still kind of waiting to see if this realization, too, recedes as others have. But for now I do feel like things are a bit different somehow. Which is not to say I've been spending the last few weeks in impenetrable calm and contentment... not at all. But I do think maybe I've moved forward a bit, even if only an inch.

Good as this progress may be, moving forward also means move on towards facing the next challenge. With my head pulled out of the clouds a bit I can get back to the real work of facing my issues in the "real" world. For me, that means dating. To be completely honest, it scares me to death. It's funny, sometimes I can hold onto a more objective perspective and it makes no sense. What am I afraid of, really? To be with someone, hang out, talk, a kiss, holding hands... What is really so threatening about these things? Even if things go terribly wrong - humiliation, heartbreak, embarrassment. Of course, these don't sound pleasant. But, I feel like I deal with unpleasant emotions every other day. Maybe I'm being naïve but I'm not sure it could get much worse than I've already dealt with. If anything, it may be easier, because rather than the vague despair or hopped up, free-floating agitation, these things will be tied to something. For once I might be able to know why I am feeling terribly.

But this doesn't seem to matter that much. It's like I am always fighting myself - seeing these things objectively, feeling like I shouldn't be afraid, then feeling them subjectively and wanting to do nothing but run away and hide. It's overwhelming, the fear. The desire to give up. The aversion to doing any of it. It takes so much energy to try and I often feel like I may run out of energy entirely.

I try and remind myself of the progress I've already made. I used to not talk to anyone, really. I would be so anxious to do anything where people were around. Even walking around the grocery store, shopping, caused me a mild sense of panic. That's not me anymore. I still have my social hang-ups but I've come so far from that person. I think about how I worked on getting to where I am, forcing myself to engage in social events. I hated it. So, in a way, I know that even though this seems impossible now, one day this whole romance thing might not be so difficult. Yet, it still seems impossible. And scary.

I'm trying to just put one foot in front of the other. That's what I've done before. Just keep trying (or trying to try), just keep showing up whenever I can. Oh man, though, it's hard. And the hardest part may be that I'm not even sure what I'm fighting for. I've never been close with people. And I only get moments when I feel like I am reminded that I do care, that I do want to be close to people. But most of the time I feel empty. So, it's just me, pushing toward something that I've been told will be good, striving for an idea I'm not sure I have any faith in. I want to believe in relationships, in people, in my own ability to feel connection and comfort with another human being - I'd love to believe that. And I am trying to believe it. But, I am just not sure I do.

I've always loved writing. I have used it as a means of coping for may years. But sometimes....sometimes the words just don't cut it. Sometimes to type up "I'm scared" on a message board doesn't even begin to cover it....