goodbyes suck.

she was so nice.  by nice I mean kind.  she gave me a belated card.  I will not let that go.  she got teary when we started, when we addressed this being our last session… I bumbled on through topics, avoiding talking about anything meaningful for very long…  I touched lightly on the fears that have pushed back into my head.  I flitted around the stress of not having the money to move.  I did not voice the memories that have floated up.  I did not acknowledge the thoughts that skimmed across the surface of my mind.  I refused to go too deep into those waters because I knew I only had an hour left in person with her for quite some time.  I wanted to say all this, but it got tangled on my tongue and never made it to my lips.

she refuted the irrational fears I managed to speak.  she reassured me that I will not be forgotten.  she offered a spot to come back to… then she asked a difficult question: what will you do there without therapy?  my brain drew a blank.  I smiled coyly and answered: breathe… then I giggled nervously.  she offered that I could call her if I needed.  I joked that I would be calling her every hour if I did decide to call my dad to help us get down there…  she smiled, then shook her head: “how is that a good idea?” (referring to calling my dad)  I had no answer other than: “at least we would get down there”  she then reminded me that getting down there would be of no use if I proceeded to fall apart after the drive… ok.  so calling dad and sacrificing my sanity is not a good option.  “it’s an okay last resort, but why would you pick that option if you had others to choose from?”  I don’t really feel like there are other options.

at the end of the session, I awkwardly tried to stand, but my body felt glued to the chair.  I was willing myself to shift my weight to my feet, but I was having a very difficult time convincing my muscles to move.  I was trying hard not to cry.  finally I managed to stand, then came the battle to move my feet to the door… I flailed around mentally, and found some random topics to get myself distracted enough to shuffle along.  just then, she touched my arm and gave me a hug.  it took every fiber of my being to not burst out in tears at that moment.  someone actually cares and I believe she is genuine… and she has no other reason my brain can come up with for “having” to care, she just does.  she can’t retire in the time I am gone… she has to be around to come back to.  she didn’t run when she saw my worst.  she believed (without any real evidence) that there was a real person somewhere deep down inside of that mess that presented at her office.  she believed in me when I didn’t think anyone would, and she trusted me to make my own calls to keep myself safe (despite the fact that I didn’t always manage to do so, she kept giving me the benefit of the doubt that this time, I will reach out).  she didn’t try to convince me that I was one diagnosis or another.  and she was ok with different approaches to therapy and treatment when the traditional therapy wasn’t doing the trick.   please still be here when i get back…

now I have to contact that new therapist.  only I don’t have insurance for a month after getting there.  it’s hard to find someone who will do a sliding scale and bill me for later…

my heart is just a little broken over this “extended vacation”

It’s all coming back to me now…

All the insecurities and fears that i had managed to put in neat little boxes in the back of my mental closet have found their escape routes and made it to the forefront of my brain.  Loss is hard, and there are a ton coming up right now with this move. I woke up with an immense headache.  I’m secretly hoping we win at least some of the money from this powerball drawing, at least enough to get us safely to our destination…

But first there are goodbyes… this one will be really hard… I’m sitting waiting for my therapy appointment. I have a lot of crap around having to change therapists… this time will be no different 😦

Thankful

I am thankful for everyone and everything in my life: my wife, friends, family, critters; that i have a roof over my head and a car to drive; that I can wake up and walk… freely.  That i have the ability to make money and struggle to support myself and my family… the ability to up and move to help make life better. They make it meaningful and loving. They make me see the good in life…

I am also thankful for the things I don’t have in my life: the constant, looming cloud that was present for so many years; the people that have left and taught me many valuable lessons… the screaming taunts of my addictions.  These are things that have been so prominent in the past, but today they are short struggles that can be more easily overcome…

While I still believe that people should have the freedom to end their lives when they wish, I am glad mine did not end when I tried…  life is still difficult at times, but there is so much happiness also…  if you read this love, thank you for sticking by me and not giving up. You are truely a wonderful person, and I’m so glad we met… ♥

figured out a bit of why DBT triggers me rather than helps…

I was rambling on in my therapist’s office today, mainly about the move and all it was triggering. Then we got on the topic of finding a therapist once I move. I told her about the program run by the psychologist she had mentioned, and how they make DBT a required part of the program. I was telling her that I am not really sure why it triggers me so much, but it always does… She asked if it had anything to do with the way it is taught. I had to think about it and we talked about it. We came up with that being one of the huge triggers of the program for me. It brings up so much of my childhood and my interactions with family and well-meaning friends… The style is just too harsh for me. And it doesn’t let you process what comes up, just tells you not to indulge the feelings it brings up, and how to get through the feelings… While it is not intended to be invalidating, it comes off as very much so (to me). I also have trouble asking for what I need, because I often don’t know what I need. The lack of processing then makes it difficult for me to understand where to go next.
With that realization, I now have a better answer for clinicians when they ask me “Why don’t you want to try DBT again?” It also got us on to a discussion of why it is that so many facilities and clinicians push the DBT model on their clients… Wasn’t it developed by Marsha Linnehan because other popular treatment strategies did not work? She saw a need for an alternative, figured one out, and marketed it well after proving it successful with some. It seems like since that breakthrough, everyone has decided that it is the best (and often times the ONLY) option offered to anyone struggling with emotion regulation and self-injury. What happened to the knowledge that one approach does not work for everyone? What happened to trying to find alternatives so that people are not left in the dark when that one option doesn’t work for them?

I think i found a focus for my dissertation whenever it is that I go back to school… We need alternatives to the DBT and CBT approaches for people like myself who do not benefit from the way they are structured (tho the info and skills are good)… Just sayin’….

Who do you talk to when no one it’s available?

What do you do when you have no one to talk to? They are all busy, or have no concept of what is going on in my head… I’m looking for someone to talk to that may relate to the craziness… I want to know that I’m not alone.  I want to know my craziness is not unique to me, because if it is, then I’m really, really messed up…
And I want to know that this all fades at some point. I want to know it won’t be something I’m struggling with until the day I die…
I laugh inside (and sometimes out loud) when people tell me I’m going to hell for the life I live… they have no clue that I have been there.  I’ve lived in hell for most of my life, with only glimpses of life outside without pain… its only been in the last year that I have lived truly happy for more days than not… hell is here on earth, not some mystical underworld. It’s very real for so many people… yet we are all isolated from others in our own little worlds.

Trauma really warps people…

Think about it; how in the world would anyone come to think of self-injury as comforting without something changing that self-preservation instinct.  If you grow up being hurt over and over, you start to feel that it’s normal.  Half the time i self-injured, the thought would cross my mind that no one could ever hurt me more than i can hurt myself.  No matter the damage they would try to inflict, i could always do worse (and creep them out enough in the process to keep them from trying anything else)… at least, that thought was there in the beginning, back when i first started in high school… the thoughts have changed since then. It had become more automatic, with fewer thoughts involved.  even when it got to the addiction stage though, i never once felt any pain when I went through with the act. Pain would have triggered me to stop, and had a few times.  It was only ever relief; like being able to breathe again after taking an inhaler for an asthma attack.  There are times i only vaguely remember doing it, but being somewhat amazed that i felt nothing from it, so i would try again to see if i could feel anything.  I am just now getting snippets of memories from my last really dissociative episode.  It lasted at least 2 days, well, i was in the hospital for 2 days without any memories of it.  I have faint hints of being really out of it.  I think i only remember parts of it because others told me what happened.  I do remember piercing my wrist at one point.  I somehow managed to convince the dbt therapist i was talking to that i need to go to my car for some reason… i remember sitting in the back seat of my car with the large safety pin from my first aid kit.  I remember being amused by the little pop my arm made as the pin punctured something inside.  Then i remember being back in her group room and intending to take only 1 ativan, but then i see her face and hear her ask me what i was doing… she was mad at me… that’s all i remember until i realized 2 days had gone by and i was in the hospital again… needless to say i was booted from the program…  apparently i was desperately trying to seek help while i was dissociating, but i guess i didn’t say outright “i need help”… 
I do not remember what lead up to that episode.  I’m not sure what pushed me over the edge, but something did.  I wish that therapist would have gotten back to me and told me what happened, but i never heard from her again.  I liked her. She was though. She called me on my Shit, but also listened when i needed it… i can’t remember her name for the life of me right now, but i remember her face as she walked in on me taking the ativan in her room… her anger is what i think allows me to remember that instant… it’s what allows me to remember that i wasn’t dissociating for that split second of her seeing me do that and me realizing what i was doing… but i don’t remember anything else around that day…
I wish i could talk to the people in that program to get a better idea of what happened.  I would ask what to look out for if it ever happened again…

roadblocks (originally should have been published in July… now it’s out of place)

I finally got some energy and drive to look into other jobs, but I’m faced with more roadblocks then I can count.  I had wanted to apply for a Vet Assistant Certificate program, but there is no financial aid for that, and it’s nearly $2000 for a 20 week course.  I do not have a spare $2000 hanging around, so I will have to wait.   There are no animal jobs out there that don’t require a degree in a science, or a ton of formal animal experience.  How can I get experience if no one wants to give it to me?  I’m tired in my current field.  I want a change, but there is nothing that pays more then minimum wage when you start a new field…

It’s been a while… the world has changed.

Things have changed for me quite a bit since the last time i wrote.  I quit my job at the shelter, and have gone back to my part-time jobs.  The thing that cemented that change was a 2 week period of hell with the girls. There are only so many nights i could stand of being assaulted, screamed at, taunted, and told what would be done to me if she had 3 minutes alone with me.  The final incident wasn’t even all that bad, but it broke me down. I cried the whole way home.  The next day, i called out of my shift (as much for the pounding headache as for the need to make a decision about work).  I talked to my boss over the phone, as both a boss and a friend.  She told me that she valued my contribution, but i needed to do what was best for me.  Neither of us wanted to see me back in that cycle of self-destruction…  i quit that night over the phone, and agreed to give my 2 weeks  notice the next day, dating it for the previous night. 

A huge weight was lifted from me.  I was able to respond better to the girls and their antics.  I stopped caring about being therapeutic and just gave them my genuine reactions… it was the easiest 2 weeks yet.  I annoyed the hell out of the girl that made it her mission to annoy staff.  She suddenly listened to me…  it made me think that all our training sometimes blinds us to the need to be genuine.  Kids don’t want a censoring of what you think. They want the truth.  It made me think of myself in the countless “therapeutic” relationships I’ve encountered in the recent past… the best ones were the honest ones… they meant the most and helped the most.  I’m not advocating inappropriate relationships in the helping profession, just more human ones.  I know it takes away the veil of omnipotence, but we are all just human after all. Some of us happen to have more expertise in one area over another…
That said, the changes continue to come. My wife and i are relocating to where i grew up, if only for a short time.  The opportunities are immense.  We can save money. We can go back to school. We can breathe a bit… the challenges are also immense. We are leaving behind all our friends and family in exchange for moving in with the one family member i still have in that state… we are leaving our supports and providers to get a chance at bettering our lives when we return here… that is a scary concept.  I have not lived there for almost 15 years… the last time i was there for more than a visit i was in the midst of a break-down.  The potential for triggers is great.  My support down there is slight.  I made the scary step of trying to find a therapist for when i move.  My current therapist and i came up with an emergency escape plan should one be needed within the first month.  I then called a local trauma speciality center to try to get info… I’m awaiting a call back.  Memories of running away from there creep back into my head. Irrational fears of coming completely undone flood my thoughts.  I’ve been cranky and distant much of the day. What will it be like to be back there after so long? What happens if my dad comes to visit (HUGE trigger)? What if i need someone to talk to? Will the new therapist be as good?  Will i be able to trust this person? So much at stake with this move, but the benefits might be so much more.