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ms spock
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I have been practising all these skills for years and years and years now. The more you do the better you get is what my psychiatrist always says to me. We work through issues, and then I discuss with her what I am doing for the week. It is part of my therapeutic process, it is really hard, and I am moving really slow (glaciers are no longer moving slowly but pretty much in that arena).
Because part of getting well, for me, is learning the skills that I need to do the things that assists me living my life without immense reactivity.
I have unsuccessfully tried to go off medication on multiple occasions (under medical supervision) and each of those forays taught me that there were a whole host of skills that I needed to learn so I can come off medication. So it is usually a year between attempts, and I work hard at getting the skills up to go further. Now I have enough skills to go off medication, and I have the work ethic and the ability to work out the skills that I need to do, and ways of breaking them down to learn piece by piece what the next skill I need to learn.
For a long time I didn't think I would ever come of medication either, but as my skills base grew so did my goals.
True, and I come with a history of severe and unremitting trauma, that began when I was a very small child, who never had a chance to have a personality, likes, dislikes, ideas, throughts without the trauma permeating every arena of my life. So I work my butt off with a whole range of skills. I do Mindfulness, meditation, social connectedness, exercise (it was raining this morning so we walked in the local mall car park area) dietary changes, portion sizes, CBT, DBT, learning boundaries, learning how to communicate, learning how to be in my body with another person in the room, (which is still really hard for me), learning not to engage in self hatred or self hating self talk, how to manage waking up with panic during the night (I have comedians on in the background now and that really helps). I am constantly problem solving in regards to my PTSD and Complex Trauma symptoms. I am still highly avoidant and have many issues to work through, but I am almost at a manageable level.
I have skills building projects in multiple arenas, and I work hard at different skills at different times. I am going to have a life, have a small modest job, and have a community where trauma is not the forefront of our discussions. I want to get well, and manage my symptoms really adroitly, and some days I do do that, and other days I don't but overall there are improvements in every arena of my life, but I have worked about a decade to get here? Maybe longer, I kept breaking down what I need to do, and then doing it.
No I am not pushing too hard. I am going pretty slowly. My psychiatrist is encouraging me to move forward. We just took three months to paint two bathroom ceilings, and two window sills. That is very slow for two mostly able bodied persons, that is about fear of being punished for getting it wrong, and severe procrastination. I severe procrastinate most of the time, but I am getting enough done now so that I am gaining ground. For me to live a (relatively) normal life I need to be training like an Olympian athlete
But you don't go from 0 to 100, that is not how I started. I started at 0 to 1 then -10 then back to 0 then 3 or 4 then 0 and back and forth and back and forth. I started with a few skills and at the beginning I could only manage a few minutes here and there. I had nothing or no time to refer back to pre trauma, so I was lost and lingering in the corridor for the longest time.
But you don't just do a whole range of skills all at once, I have built up over years and years and years. I am pretty scared at getting a job, but it is not a realistic fear, it is just my generalised fear.
But really baby steps over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, for years and years, it is a cumulative thing. I am like an athelete running 10, 000 kilometres - there are decades worth of training going into that. I have literally done decades worth of inner work to get to this point, and for the longest time I didn't think I was going to get very far, but I did it anyway, and over time things every so slow, like rock being weathered to be the grand canyon, it didn't happen in a day or a year, it took a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time. I just persistently did stuff to assist me to get better.
I am not sure about this. I feel not good enough so I am not good enough to have good stuff.
I do, every day, I also slack off some days as well, some weeks are slack weeks, but I do stuff all the time to improve my brain, neuroplasticity is such an important part of the way that I live my life. I am always doing something, and I am always circling around and around ever so slowly, but over time things have started to get better.
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