Much Improvement - Keeping The Faith?

[MesaRock]

I am wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the stage where you're finally making noticable improvements but it's hard to hold onto that knowledge and believe that things will get better. I'm no longer having 4 hour morning panic attacks but get them under control in about 45 minutes, I'm responding less drastically to triggers, I'm keeping busy around the house and keeping up with the basics a lot better - eating, relaxing, geting better about self care. I only rarely make crisis calls to friends and family at ungodly hours (5-7am), and I dont want to die. I have a morning routine that gets me to about 11am ok (dishes, shower, tidying up, playing with dog). It's just....

It's just that there are a few things that are really entrenched - it's hard to leave the house, impossible to focus my brain on my freelance work, and I don't have a normal life with my partner (too anxious to go to restaurants, etc). I can't seem to make myself go to a yoga class or spend time around people, and movies and books and music all seem to set me off somehow. I still have to call on my support network two or three times a day when I get into a hole of negative thinking, where I think this might be my life for a long, long time. I have fewer AWFUL days, but I'm not up to days where I feel satisfied that I'm doing a good job and am a worthy person.

I feel immensely frustrated - like this handful of entrenched things are such a huge stumbling block and I really don't understand why I can't make that last leap over into a life that's more functional. I started therapy in August and it's now almost October and yet I still feel huge worry that I will never get back on track with the things that used to bring me joy.

Is this just the next horizon, and i"ll get there soon enough? Or have I just made the easy recovery steps and....trying not to get hopeless about it. I'm sure there are no answers for it. Just writing it out somehow feels necessary.

 

[MesaRock]

Maybe I'll start a daily book where I count my tiny victories, and list them on a page each day, so I can look back when I'm feeling like I'm not making progress. Maybe the progress is just going to continue to be incremental,and one day I'll put in the book "went to yoga" or "met a friend for lunch" or something, but for now I should celebrate "didn't call my mom crying at 6am but instead got through it by using my tools."

I felt good on Saturday because I ordered some new cozy fall clothes in colors that are cheery - I've been wearing solid black dress suits from head to toe for a year now, and I thought maybe it would help to get out of that rigid uniform that I used to wear when I had a diffferent life. Now I'm very nervous just about making the change to color. Sorry this is so incoherent and desperate-sounding. I used to be so high functioing, and suppressed all my feelings and emotions.

I don't recognize myself anymore and I'm eager to have a self-identity that has some positive self-worth attached to it.

 

[deer_in_headlights]

Dear @MesaRock,

It's wonderful to see your progress!

I think your idea of writing down your daily progress in a book, so you can be encouraged when you have down days, is a fantastic one. That would be a good place to list your resources, too, so you can refer to them if going into tunnel-vision, panic-attacks or suicidal ideation during a triggered or rough day.

You can begin a dairy, here, too:

Link Removed

You don't sound at all incoherent to me, although I understand the feeling. I used to tell my therapists that I felt like I was speaking Swahili. They all reassured me that they understood me just fine.

It is very disconcerting losing (temporarily) our high-functioning state, but it's so much better to be breaking out of our stoic shells, and being safe enough to do the difficult working of acknowledging and embracing our wounded souls, of letting them speak and be heard, feel and heal.

The high-functioning will return, and you'll be a more fully realized MesaRock.

I read a difficult, but powerful book: "Positive Disintegration". The title pretty well sums up the power and process of deep healing from trauma. You don't even need to read the book, you can take away great hope that as you heal, and become new, that this crumbling away, turmoil and Job-like suffering is all so necessary and a good, albeit painful (to put it mildly), process to be able to become more fully who you are and can be.

Pain hitting, gtg, my heart is with you... I hope you have a beautiful, healing day!
:hug: Deer

 

[MesaRock]

Wow, there are so many helpful things there I don't know where to begin. "It is very disconcerting losing (temporarily) our high-functioning state, but it's so much better to be breaking out of our stoic shells, and being safe enough to do the difficult working of acknowledging and embracing our wounded souls, of letting them speak and be heard, feel and heal. The high-functioning will return, and you'll be a more fully realized MesaRock."

It's that last sentence that I need to hold onto.

And it's the searing grief of what you so aptly call "the crumbling away" that gets me. What will be left afterwards? A vestige of a human?

 

[MesaRock]

wow - I just read the Dąbrowski entry in wikipedia. everything in it rings true. thank you. Now to just keep going on a day to day to reach the higher ground.