Exhausted

I used to be able to spend entire days in the company of other humans and still function when I got home. Today I spent a few hours with a friend after my therapy appointment and I can barely function now. I’ve always been an introvert who needed her time to recharge, but it feels particularly brutal today.

Overall it was a good day, I’m just really, really tired now…

In therapy we talked about the concept of putting on masks both as a child to keep up the facade of a happy family, and more recently to keep the facade of a functioning adult. There aren’t as many masks today, but they are still very practiced and easy to slip on. Dr C reminded me that I can be my genuine self with her (she wants me to be)… It’s so easy to be fake that it’s now second nature. I actually have to think about doing it to be able to drop it… go figure. It’s exhausting to fake appearances, but it’s actually more exhausting to drop the mask…

Dollhouse by Melanie Martinez (link to lyrics)

http://genius.com/Melanie-martinez-dollhouse-lyrics

struggling

having a really rought time again, but I don’t know why. i’m throwing every coping skill I have at the overwhelm, but I just want to curl up and cry. i know crying would help, but i can’t seem to let the tears fall.

I should have gone to bed…

I should have gone to bed when L did. I wasn’t tired at the time though. I thought I could watch tv for a bit then head to bed when I was tired, only now the panic has set in.

Just gotta breathe and head to bed. It’s just L & the cats in there (and the reptiles…). I’m safe. It’s 2015. I’m an adult. The dogs are in the living room. We are the only ones who live in the apartment. It’s 2015. I’m 36. I am safe. It’s all good…

depression and frustration

Woke up wanting to cry… that spot I was hoping to avoid is exactly where it feels like I’m headed. I’m resisting the desire to call out of work for today. I’m torn between thinking it would be good distraction, and fearing I will be too mired in my own shit to be competent at the job. Maybe if I we’re just in the back with the dogs, it wouldn’t matter, but I’m up front running the customer service today. It’s lonely up there, and there’s too much opportunity to think and feel…

I want to cut. I want to escape this overwhelmingly uncomfortable feeling of worthlessness and hopelessness. Calling out today would put another notch in the “worthless & hopeless” column, but so would going in and fucking up with the customers… I feel like I can’t win.

The house is a mess. No matter how much I try to organize and clean, the entropy of the mess dictates that it will remain. A surface gets emptied only to be re-cluttered later on the day. I put things away so they are not talking up the little space we have, then they are too out-of-reach for L. I can’t win… I don’t want to keep doing this anymore. I’m so tired of trying, only to have it return to its original state…

I just want to sleep (and maybe cry more).

This wasn’t a good time to stir up all this. It was threatening to break, but I kinda had it under wraps. It might have held out till next week or the week after. I might have made it through the end of December without falling apart. Fuck… I Fuck up everything I try. *This* is why I’m scared of trying a real career again. I can’t hang on for more than 6 months without a breakdown…

Therapy is kicking my ass…

Went in today to process what came up yesterday. In doing so, we hit upon some other hugely emotionally charged things…

For some reason, her apologizing for a mistake (something I don’t see as her mistake so much as mine) triggered a huge overwhelm of fear. All I could do was apologize and ask her not to be mad at me in a barely-audible whisper…

Now I’m exhausted. Not quite sure how I made it home. I should have taken her up on the offer to hang out in one of the rooms for a while. It just didn’t feel comfortable. And once I managed to will energy into my body to move from the chair, I figured I might as well go to the car where I could blast my music…

I might be asleep by the time L gets home. Not sure I can stay awake right now…

(On the way home from therapy, Good Enough by Sarah McLachlan, Telling Stories by Tracy Chapman, and Angels & Airwaves by Angel Haze came on the ipod, in that order… fit perfectly).

Leaving stirred-up after emdr

I went in with an intention to avoid doing more emdr on the unidentified stirrings that I’ve been running from. We hadn’t talked about doing emdr again today, so I didn’t expect her to have planned on doing anything, but she pickled up where we left off Thursday.

I didn’t really want to do it. I had questions about it all. What if all of this is simply another way to stuff things? What if, because I don’t know what exactly I’m “processing”, it will just come back later, with more of a vengeance? Can you really process someing you can’t even identify? I don’t want to be sucked back into that downward spiral again. I don’t want to spend another year and half in and out of the hospital again. I don’t want to feel that hopelessness again…

So we decided to tackle the fear of falling again. It was easy enough to put myself back into the head-space of fearing being so out-of-control again… it quickly branched to remembering what my files for disability read: that I was hopeless and a lost cause… we processed that a bit more, and it continued down the self-hate spiral.

The only thing today’s session brought up was the worthlessness and hopelessness and self harm urges… I kept thinking to myself; “please don’t leave me here. Please don’t leave me stuck in this helplessness…” but I never voiced that.

Then time was up. Way too fast. I was still in the middle of feeling and remembering how shitty it felt 6 years ago… all I wanted to do was cry and hide. She offered to have me stay, but my afternoon was packed. I left with tears in my eyes.

It certainly wasn’t a good place to stop, but it was what it was. At least my afternoon was busy. If I had been at home, the self harm urges would probably have won. I’m still struggling with them (and the urge to completely self-destruct), but I’m sitting with it. I’m not alone at home, so it’s going to be ok for the night. I work tomorrow morning, so that will be ok too. I see Dr C again tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully then we can pack away all of this…

I’m so tired of fighting this all the time. I’m tired of having so much to wade through, only to find so much more each time I think I’m getting to the end.

I’m just tired.

Still running…

Noticed today I’m again “running” from whatever it is in my head that’s threatening to consume me.

I still cannot pay attention to only one thing. I have to keep moving and keep bombarding myself with stimuli. It’s almost got an adhd quality to it, but it’s more pressured and deliberate (well, ok, as deliberate as your actions can be during a frenzied escape from whichever horror movie antagonist you choose to imagine)…

As Dr C said at the end of Thursday’s session; “there’s more work to be done”

I’m covering part of a shift for one of my coworkers tomorrow. I hope that proves to be an ok distraction.

Back to emdr

During Monday’s session, I talked about feeling like I was running from something; something terrifying. I had no real concept of what it was, just that I’ve been running from it for the past several weeks. She asked if I wanted to do emdr around it.

Sure. It’s helped before, why not?

Only this time, it was an amorphous, looming feeling I was working on, not any tangible or comprehensive memory.

It took me a while to get started on it. I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to “go there”. I didn’t really know where “there” was, only that it terrified me and made me want to run away crying.

She was good about it though. She gave me permission to back off and do a lighter session instead. I fought with myself for what felt like an eternity. We ended up going through with it.

It was different this time. Not having a cognitive memory to go with made it both more difficult and a bit easier at the same time. I found myself putting more effort into the few sentences I was able to mutter to her during the process. I was more open to admitting that I wanted to destroy my body because of what I was feeling. It alternated with intensified body memories… and all of that went back to feeling like I shouldn’t be lying…

This session didn’t make as huge of a difference immediately, especially compared to say, the spider phobia session, but the terrified feeling isn’t as strong. It’s certainly brought up more stuff to process (well, more emotions that I have not felt since the move), but it has also maybe had a dampening effect on the intensity of it all…

Group was right after the emdr session, and I’m glad there was more time to just sit in a safe place for a while longer…

I’m not sure how I feel tonight. Body memories are back and constant for the first time since the move, but they also don’t bother me as much. We specifically worked on my desire to destroy my body in an effort to stop feeling them, so the desire to cut and smash my body to pieces isn’t as compelling tonight despite the intensity of the body memories…

Long story short: emdr can totally be worth it (easily more helpful for all of this than dbt. While it’s triggering in its own right, I find I can handle the triggering after emdr way better than after dbt)…

Tonight I’m just left with a weight in my chest and a nagging desire (but inability) to cry. At least I don’t feel like i’m a constant fuck-up like dbt had me feeling.