Stalemate

If you don't change, nothing will. Random messages from my therapist will pop up in my head at seemingly opportune moments when I am struggling. This is a message that's been replaying a lot lately.

Since I started seeing my therapist during IOP at the end of September, I really honestly haven't made too much progress. It's not that I expect to make these huge astounding changes, but I haven't made as much progress as I would have liked at this point.

One of my biggest struggles continues to be meal plan fulfillment. To me, I'm not consciously doing it. The thoughts of "You need to restrict" are no longer incredibly prominent when I am planning a meal. Part of it is honestly just laziness. Following my meal plan is such a daily chore. It involves prepping, (sometimes) cooking, reading labels to check that I am getting all my calories in, actually eating, and then recording my thoughts/feelings/food on my phone to send to my dietician. Rinse and repeat 5 times a day. It's exhausting. Combine that with my stomach issues, and meal plans become dreaded chore. So, I have been skipping some, mostly snacks. It's not every day and it's rarely multiple times in one day; however, it's still not doing what I am supposed to be doing. If you don't change, nothing will.

Then, I look at my therapy sessions. I've been really stalling on the emotional component of my trauma work. As I've talked about before, I have a really difficult time feeling and expressing any type of emotion. It makes me feel very uncomfortable, so I just try to avoid it. My therapist is pushing this aspect more than lately. Part of me is ready to do it, because I actually really hate when I shut down, especially within certain relationships. It causes me to become very detached and isolate, which is not helping my depression right now. The other part of me is flat out terrified to do it. I have a difficult time trusting that my emotions are real. I sometimes worry that, when I go off irrational thoughts,  I will express things that aren't real. They're feelings based off of false knowledge. If it's not irrational, it's foreign. It feels like sharing these emotions will ultimately lead to more pain, because I've opened myself up that much. It's not that I don't trust the people in my life, but I've experienced enough times of my feelings not being validated that I just don't express them. If you don't change, nothing will.

I've had this voice inside of me that hasn't been able to come out in 15+ years. It's something that has so much to say, but no idea how to express these things. Even more so, it's worried that what it has to say isn't important. Rationally, I know that that isn't true. I know I have people in my life and the support of my treatment team that it would be okay. It's overcoming that huge obstacle of my fear to getting there. That's not an easy task. But it has to be done.

If you don't change, nothing will.

I'm ready for a change.

Safety

Since discharge last Friday, I've actually been doing pretty well. Not perfect on my meal plan, but I don't belive that recovery is a perfect process. I'm doing my best every day, even with my stomach issues, which have been getting better as well. Positives always need to be balanced with negatives though. I have been really struggling with anxiety and feelings of safety.

My anxiety is always there. Some days, it's really high; others, it's manageable. Lately, I've had higher anxiety days. It started on Saturday with a pretty major flashback. I haven't had a really bad one in quite a while, so it has been really overwhelming. I woke up really early on Sunday feeling very unsafe in my body and apartment. It's unnerving when you are so terrified of things that you rationally know would probably never happen. You just sit and fear and pray it calms down. None of this has been made any easier with the situations in my community right now.

Ferguson has been blowing up the news. While I am pretty close to downtown St Louis, a solid 25 minutes from there, it still has not added to my feelings of being unsafe. Because no one has any idea how wide spread things will be, I have a hard time using rationalization to calm myself down. At the same time, the likelihood of anything happening to me at this time is slim to none. Rationally, I know I am safe. Irrationally, I am waiting for someone to break through my door any second. So, it's been a difficult balance.

Through all this, I am proud to say that I have kept to my meal plan pretty well. I think it's just difficult to feel constantly afraid and have limited ways to calm down. I've been a homebody since Saturday. I have barely left my building, which is only making things more overwhelming. So, the next challenge is to actually physically battle my irrational fear rather than hide in my apartment and panic.

Fear is a powerful thing. It has the ability to shut everything down in an instant. We are wired to freeze or fly. It's our reactions to these fearful situations that determine how we move forward in life or stay stuck.

Transitions

The last week has been insanely difficult for me. After doing my trauma work on Wednesday, I have been left reeling. The nightmares every night have come back. The flashbacks have kicked up a little too. I have been isolating and just trying to move past the thoughts, but that is always easier said than done. It has also slightly derailed my meal plan, but I am working to get back on track one moment at a time; however, I am quickly approaching another transition in my life: discharging from IOP.

I am voluntarily discharging for multiple reasons. 1) My therapist is being transferred to another section of programming, so I would no longer be able to see her and would have to start again with a new therapist. 2) I am having increasing difficulty in balancing the schedule of my work demands with those of treatment. 3) I think it's time to sink or swim. That doesn't mean that all of this isn't terrifying though.

At IOP tonight, I spoke with all 3 members of my treatment team about the idea of discharging. All 3 were supportive as long as I have follow up care; this was not set up on my first discharge. My psychiatrist is offering to go through a provider list for me and help me pick someone who is not heavy handed with medication. My dietician gave me referrals, including one to the dietician I met with during PHP who had since left. But it was my therapist who did something amazing.

First of all, let me just say how much I love working with my current therapist. She really pushes me to connect to my emotions and push through when I want to shut down. She takes things at a much slower rate, so I can actually begin to process them rather than sweep them under the rug. I also have a strong level of trust with her, because I know that no matter what fucked up shit from my life I share with her, she isn't going to back down from it. It has been really beneficial for me. So, the thought of working with anyone else is really difficult right now, especially with the trauma work we have just begun.

Tonight, my therapist told me that she was willing to see me at her other outpatient clinic at a time that she fit in her schedule for me and a rate I can afford. I just started crying, because it was so amazing of her to do that for me, but it was the reason she told me that made me feel even better about it- "You have just been so brave about going back to these dark places in your life that I know you have never truly, emotionally discussed with anyone else. I think that that takes remarkable courage, and I can't release you to a new therapist to start over when you're working so hard to get through these things. I know I need to keep working with you, so I will do whatever I can to ensure that that keeps happening." And then, I cried more.

Sometimes when I am stuck in the negative thoughts of my trauma, I can forget that there are still good people in the world whose main purpose is not to hurt or abandon me; it's to help me. This was a huge reassuring moment for me, and I feel so much better about continuing on in my trauma work. It's still gonna suck, but I know I have strong support to go through it with.

So, I am transitioning out of IOP on Friday, but I am feeling ready. There are always those nerves, because you have to figure out life a little more; however, I am feeling confident that I can move forward and maybe let go of some of the darkness in my past to have an brighter tomorrow.

Prepping for Trauma Work

One of my main reasons for going to therapy is to work on the trauma that I have experienced in my life. For me, I am the type of person who has stuffed every negative feeling and event so deep within me that I have become emotionally disconnected from it. This causes nightmares, flashbacks, dissociating, anxiety, and more; however, in order to stop all these things, I have to unleash all of those things that I have stuffed; the things that are creeping up when I don't want or expect them to. So, how do we prepare for trauma work?

As I have mentioned before, I am currently going through my timeline, which has been no easy task. As we have gotten closer to my high school years and beyond, I have had this impending sense of doom and high anxiety knowing that my most severe trauma is coming, and I will have no choice but to talk about it. If I don't,  all of the bad things will continue, which would ultimately impact my ability to live in recovery. Now, I am at that point.

Tomorrow, we are beginning work on one of my biggest traumas. I spent a lot of time in PHP talking about it, as this event has had a profound effect on my ability to cope and what I choose to cope. I even did an hour long psychodrama, because it was the 9 year anniversary of that day in March. So, I have been mentally preparing for this moment over the last week or so through positive self talk ("I talked about this before. I can do it now") and telling myself that it is necessary for my recovery. It's just knowing how deeply angry and sad I am about this that terrifies me.

Here is a sparknotes version of this story, as I am not comfortable sharing all of these details on such a public platform. My sophomore year of high school, I had just moved to Maryland after a few years in Wisconsin. In March, 4 months after I had moved, someone I was close with in Wisconsin committed suicide after his battle with mental illness had gotten too hard. In hindsight, there were obvious signs that were clearly ignored by his parents. At 14, I knew something was wrong but didn't have the capacity to do anything about it, especially from another coast. This was my first major loss, which also kicked off the horrible trend of many of my friends dying way too young (He was 18). I had no idea how to cope, but that wasn't what made this so bad; it was the fact that his parents blamed for it. In their eyes, I was the reason he committed suicide.

Most people hear this story and automatically say, "What the fuck was wrong with them?" As an adult who has lost more friends to suicide since, I honestly feel like they were looking for a reason, as most people do in these cases. People always look for the reason that this person has chosen to end his or her life; however, we rarely find that answer. But 10 years ago, that insight wasn't there. At 14, I had no ability to cope with a death, let alone the responsibility for it as well, and I held onto the blame for his death for years. The worst part is that I never showed that guilt and pain. I had learned that it is wrong to show emotions, so I stuffed it deep inside me where I wouldn't have to deal with it. Then, I chose eating disorder behaviors, alcohol, and drugs to feel numb.

The thing about unpacking these feelings and trauma is that it is a tedious and delicate process. It's like unpacking that box of your grandma's china. You are so careful to unwrap each little piece, because even the slightest rushed movement could cause it to break. You can't rush through it; you have to do it one piece at a time. If you don't, everything could be ruined. Trauma is the same way.

I can honestly say I rushed through this event in my treatment the first time around. I spent 3 days talking about it and feeling that pain for the first time in 9 years, but after that, everything switched off again. This was also due to other things that had come up; however, without giving this trauma the time and care it needed, it got repositioned and packaged back up in that china box. A piece or two came out, but most of my trauma set is still there.

I think the best thing we can do when preparing to talk about trauma is to approach ourselves with kindness and compassion. These things have had a major impact on our lives, and they can't be fixed overnight. That is one thing I have to continually remind myself of. As much as I hate feeling things long term, if I don't continue to feel them, the negative effects will be worse than the feelings. Trauma happens to us. We do not cause them. We do not have responsibility for them. We should not blame ourselves. While all of these things are much easier said than done, they are important to recognize. Trauma occurs to some degree in most people's lives; however, it is our ability to discuss and work through it that helps us succeed in this journey towards recovery.

Flashbacks of the Past

To me, one of the most difficult things I have been coping with is memories of the past. It seems like triggers for flashbacks have been everywhere lately. Reminders of the past keep coming up everywhere and unexpectedly. I just feel like crying all day, so it's been increasingly difficult to just sit and work when my mind is in 20 different places. So how do we deal?

My biggest issue this week has stemmed from my most serious relationship,  which ended over 3 years ago now. We got engaged really quickly when we were really young, but it just seemed completely right. We grew together over the years and dealt with some really heavy shit together. Our relationship ended up deteriorating my senior year of college after we suffered a pretty major loss together.  Things were never the same after that. Enough time has passed now that I can look back and know that that wasn't the right relationship for me. I don't miss him or our relationship,  which is why today has been very difficult. 

He has a new son, who was born yesterday. Of the details I do know, I understand that it was with a very different relationship than the one we had, but he is the father that he never got to be with me. It's incredibly strange for me to feel so overwhelmed by this,  because I have been over and done with our relationship for a long time now; however,  it just brings back a lot of memories to what happened with us.

It brings me back to the talks of us having a family together, of getting married, and having that life together that we dreamed of. It reminds me of what we lost and the grief that we experienced in vastly different ways, which ultimately drove us apart. It's those life transitions that you can't avoid but that happen for the right reasons. It's just hard to flashback to those moments when you thought you had that and were set for life. You believe that nothing could ever go wrong, and you can take on the world because that person will always be on your side. And then you lose it...

I honestly and truly believe that things happen the way they are supposed to. I know in my heart that the things that happened in that relationship helped me to grow into a stronger person and cope with things better today. It's just overwhelming when you are sitting at your desk and your mind wanders back 4 years to these moments. They feel so real and powerful.

Today, I am grateful for the ability to look upon my past and current self with kindness. I am allowing myself to feel and mourn the loss of things that could have been and never will be. I am trying to focus on the current and not the past. If it was meant to be, it would have happened. It didn't,  so it wasn't meant to happen with those people or at that time. I move forward with this knowledge and try to take things one day at a time.