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Sadielady3's Diary

I did end up sending the email to my T. He offered to talk about what was bothering me but I couldn't. Sometimes I think he's a magical mind reader though because we did end up having a conversation that I found very reassuring. I did catch him up on the after effects from the last session and that I think he's right about me having parts.

We worked on the block that my mother loves my brother but not me. We ended up talking about "son love" and how some Asian cultures engage in treating the sons like they are flawless while the daughters as though they are dispensable. Maybe somewhere in my mom's mind this was a belief she had for some reason. I don't know. But maybe I am starting to accept the fact that this was her issue, not mine. Looking back at all of the ways we were treated differently for whatever reason I think helps in a strange way.

My T had me try to install positive beliefs using slow bilateral stimulation. It made me nauseous. He found that interesting. We discussed how getting compliments and validation makes me nervous because I always feel like someone or something is going to take it away from me. We discussed some specific incidents from the past that conditioned me to feel that way.

Next session we're going to discuss a future template in regards to how to deal with my mom. I told my T that I hadn't spoken to her in over six weeks. He nearly fell out of his chair with delight. I guess I now know how he feels about that relationship, lol. But I went on to say that I don't plan to cut her out forever because of other factors in my life so having a way to better navigate and be less affected by that relationship is still a really good idea. He said that he understood my stance.

At the very end I asked him what comes next after the EMDR. I told him that I wasn't so sure about doing parts therapy because it seemed overly cheesy to me and I might punch someone if I tried it. He chuckled and said that it was entirely up to me if I wanted to continue after EMDR. I told him that I didn't want to be a waste of time to him and he said that he doesn't feel at all like I'm malingering and he would tell me straight up if I wasn't being productive enough in therapy. I said that I didn't want to stay too long and wasn't sure what was reasonable. He told me that he himself is in therapy, has been for a while, and plans to be for the foreseeable future. He said that he thinks life is hard and if you feel like you need support then go get support. I am going to take this as being welcome for as long as I'd like to stay and continue working. I haven't managed to scare him off yet. I'm still worried that eventually I will but even if he gave me a very earnest soliloquy about why that wouldn't happen, I don't think I'd believe him. There's too much he doesn't know yet to be able to say that to me and know what he's committing to. He also hasn't dealt with "going to work" me yet so he has no idea how much dysfunction I really have under normal conditions. Some of it may be gone due to the work I've been doing in therapy but I doubt I'll be doing all that well out in the real world. But at least I know he's not going to be sitting there thinking that I am taking too long. That helps a bit.
 
I've been massively depressed today. Lots of suicidal ideation. My guitar teacher stopped trying to teach me guitar and instead just sat and talked to me for a little over an hour or so. I couldn't stop shaking or crying.

The thing is, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to end therapy. I don't think talk therapy is going to help me much and I feel tremendously guilty for wasting my T's time. I've been in therapy for over a year and I go to all of these groups. Maybe the work I've done is the work I can do. The feeling of being a burden has been so strong lately. I look around at my messy house and I want to clean it but I don't have the energy. My T once remarked that I don't know how to have fun. Maybe that's why life feels like a slog to me.

I have so much work that I need to get done and yet I spent hours laying on a sofa crying. My husband just brought me a sandwich because I stopped eating again today. I don't even want to eat it because I'm just not hungry. I feel guilty for getting the second shot of the vaccine tomorrow because it should go to someone who deserves it more. I just can't escape this horrible feeling of wanting to not be here anymore. And I know I should tell my T what's really going on but he's on vacation and, even if he wasn't, I'm too worried I'll get locked up if I tell him. That's the problem with talking- too many bad potential consequences.

Maybe this is the after effect of EMDR this week. I don't think so though because I was on this path before Friday. Hopefully getting out of the house tomorrow to get my vaccine will perk me up a bit.
 
I went and got my second shot today. Didn't even feel it go in. It's a bit sore now though.

It's a long drive to the vaccination site. It was a struggle to drive without dissociating. I kept looking for things to focus my attention on and rolled down my windows to stay grounded. I'm getting pretty disoriented at this point.

I did reach out to the Urgent Care service. Hopefully it'll be the guy I like or someone else who I haven't ever spoken to that can be helpful. Also, I feel fortunate that I have tomorrow off since I get a free day off for getting vaccinated. And I have X's group tomorrow night. Hopefully I can come out of this tailspin I'm in.
 
Well, Urgent Care was pointless. It was someone new. She couldn't figure out how to use the camera. She also shamed me for taking too long because, according to her, I'm only allotted ten minutes for an appointment. Since when? No camera and cutting someone off very quickly (I've always been allotted an hour before, sometimes longer). Makes me wonder if she's scamming or something. She also had no concept of what group therapy is and shamed me for having so many appointments. Also, didn't know what EMDR is. Good thing I'm a teacher and could educate her...

I tried to explain to her that I was worried about not being able to get better. That this hopeless bleak life is all I'm going to get. Her advice was to terminate therapy, if I feel like I can't get better. I know the truth of things is that I need to find my voice when I'm actually sitting in front of my therapist. I need to find a way to get the normal functional part of me out of the way and let all of that irrationality fly free in that space. I generally find my T reassuring. I honestly think it would be okay. He might think I'm crazy or know I'm hopeless afterwards but I also know he could take it. I really need to find whatever scraps of bravery I have floating around in the primordial soup that my brain is these days.

I feel like me not getting better is just letting everyone down. My friends, my therapist, but most importantly, my poor husband. He deserves a much better wife than I'll probably ever be capable of being. How much better off would the world be if I wasn't here anymore. Especially him. And yet I can't find the bravery to leave this world either. People say suicide is cowardly but I feel like it takes a lot of bravery to go that route. I can't even find the courage to say a few words to a paid professional.
 
I went to X's group tonight. I somewhat brought up my concerns about how I feel stuck and lost and how I feel like if this is it for me, I don't really want to stick around. X actually addressed this as our topic tonight. Lots of people chimed in, feeling similarly in one way or another. X also commented that he knows where my T is planning to go next based on my comment that he said I don't really know how to have fun. Hopefully, my T does have some ideas on how to help the things he is seeing. Maybe my impression that I was supposed to be done with therapy after EMDR was mistaken.

I still think I want to find an external therapist outside of my HMO to do more EMDR during summer vacation. I really think it has been helping me. I can think of one devastating memory that still haunts me and that changed the course of my life forever that it would be helpful to process and put to rest. It's not really that I want to die, I just don't want to live like this and, quite honestly, don't think I can keep living like this for a normal lifespan. Life often sucks but if you can't find the good moments and really enjoy them, what's the point? I've made changes like not talking to my mom in just about seven weeks now. Eventually I'll talk to her again but I need to finish EMDR first. I need a plan with her moving forward. She doesn't get to cause me pain anymore. She's robbed me out of a lot of things already in life. She's the reason I am the way I am. She doesn't get to keep stealing my energy away from healing and enjoying life.
 
What you write does resonate with me. Don't know how to have fun. I have rare occasions where I do entertain myself but they're brief and generally need the presence of someone else. I struggle a lot to get out of certain states of mind and everything seems grim. What is "funny" for others wasn't for me. I developed a despise towards fun. Until I learnt how to be social again. And the bupropion. Both together. I wouldn't say that I'm okay with the way things are right now, but I'm okay with the way they are likely to turn. Even in short or middle term. Having a short term goal allocates the space to do something and being towards sort of relieves me from the guilt of not being productive and then only I manage to relax a bit more and activate the right vagal mode if I can speak like this. It's very very recent. I've never felt like this in my entire life. But it's taken important dramas and questioning and medication and pain to get some peace. And it's not that peaceful, but at least it is in movement. I do know that this movement is a trick I place to myself as to carry on, but in the meanwhile I do find interesting things and hopefully don't get too bored. I find it more difficult when you're living with someone. I don't know if any of what I wrote here makes sense, but I hope it does and helps. Courage in your journey. There is desire to live and open your landscape of experiences in the world here.
 
@ruborcoraxxx , yes, this very much resonates with me. Even when I'm "relaxing" and playing a video game, I am very goal oriented. It's like I can't give myself permission to not be productive. I don't understand people who go to the beach to relax. How can you just sit there and not be doing something? I can't meditate because that activates a lot of scary thoughts. I know I have so much work still to do to even be somewhat in the realm of normal in life. I really need to learn to be patient with myself and understand that I'm on a journey, not trying to reach a destination. I rationally know this but emotionally, that message just isn't resonating.
 
Ah, the relaxing too! I don't even know what that word means. And yes meditation is hard. I've been very confused by the way mindfulness is presented in western settings and wary against it because I suspect it suffers heavily from deformations such as making you mindful to make you more efficient, which reinforced the scare of doing nothing. I'm currently reading the dhammapada and it's really agreeable. It's a sort of vademecum of sayings about thoughts and feelings. I find it contextualises meditation much better and it feels less scary to do it in a frame made for it. There is a bit of religious rambling against bad thoughts though but at least it takes it into account and they have a place and a sense on which you can control. It's about taming the feelings.

I also discovered that it's when I'm idling that I'm actually being productive. If I do things out of a sense of obligation, I often manage to do them badly and get fired. I need purpose in what I'm making in the now. On this I found the writings about "flow states" and optimal experiences in psychology really interesting. Flow (psychology) - Wikipedia
 
I had X's group tonight. I was nearly a half an hour late because I fell asleep. I've been starting to sleep a lot. Lots of dissociation too. When I logged in, it appeared the conversation was about grieving losses. Then, X asked if any of us had anything pressing. I spoke up about being nervous about going back to school. I explained that when I was last there, I was falling apart. I'm not really sure how much all of the work I've been doing in the past year was going to translate to the real world. People chimed in with their support, telling me about how helpful I've been to them and that they believe I've got this. They were kind words but I'm not so sure.

I have a perfect storm of things bothering me these days. I just feel lost. And I can't stay conscious and present for long periods of time.
 
I had my T's group tonight. Lots of technical difficulties. At the end, it wound up being just me, my T, and another longtime group member. It was nice to just chat more casually with a very small group like that. I brought up my reluctance about returning to school and my concerns that I might not do well being back in the building. I was asked by the other member what my plan was for dealing with that. I jokingly said that I wanted to bring a flamethrower but didn't think that would go over well. Then we talked about Covid shots and just normal everyday stressors.

My anxiety is still flying really high these days. Hopefully, I will come down from this soon.
 
Well, it's been a week since I wrote on here. There hasn't been that much to say. In truth, I'm starting to sound like a broken record and it's the same crap, different day with me.

On Thursday last week, I had my T's CBT group. It went fine. I don't think I got much out of it but I don't feel uncomfortable with going and with the increased anxiety from returning to school next week, it doesn't hurt to have the support, at least for now.

I had my individual session with my T on Friday. I was so in my feelings that I couldn't really talk about anything. I'm very lucky that I don't have the kind of therapist who will just sit in the silence. He kept probing to get things out of me. I didn't really tell him the things that I should have and I felt truly lousy afterwards.

On Saturday, A took me out on the town. We went to lunch, went to a craft store, went to Target where I bought a Nintendo Switch, and then went to a CBD store where we picked up some CBD infused items. I bought gummies and some vape cartridges. The gummies just make me sleepy but then again, I've been really sleepy and always fighting the urge to take a nap these days. Maybe it will be helpful when I am a little more calm but still in need.

Not speaking up bothered me tremendously over the weekend. So I wrote a letter. What was kind of interesting, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, is that I wrote the letter while I was teaching a class. So I don't know if it was the multitasking or just being too distracted to overthink things or what but I definitely wrote one hell of a letter. And even stranger for me, I didn't think to go back in and proofread and edit the thing to death. I simply saved it as a PDF and sent it off, giving my T blanket permission to read it whenever he so chose and that he could simply read it at my next session if he didn't want to waste his time on it outside of my scheduled time. He read it almost immediately. I got a response within two hours. He thanked me for writing such a detailed note and said he wants to discuss it at my next session. He also told me to reach out to Urgent Care if I felt unsafe. Definitely won't be doing that. My friends and husband are far better resources when I'm in crisis except for the one guy who works there. If I knew I could get someone like him, I would call but most of them are useless. Some of them have even been detrimental. He told me to stop digging through the suicidality stuff on my own as well and to stop "trying to get to the bottom" of those feelings and thoughts. Then he thanked me for my honesty. When I read through his email, I got curious about what I wrote. So I went back and read it. I was ashamed of some of the things I wrote, not because they were untrue but because of how deeply true they were. I also felt a sense of relief come over me because it was the majority of the things that I hadn't been able to say for a long time now. I got real about how I view myself and was pretty blunt about the suicidality stuff. So next Friday is going to be a bit like going to the principal's office for me. But I guess it was time, past time really, to shit or get off this pot. He can't help if he doesn't know. He knows at least 90% - 95% of what's really going on in my head now. I will say that his response simply sounded very professional, not angry or emotional in any way. I think things will be okay. Time will tell I guess. In the meantime, I return to school next Wednesday. One major stressor at a time. At least I was finally assigned a room at the big building (I always had one at the little building, where I am valued and respected as a professional).

No X's group yesterday- he was at a training.

I did have my T's group tonight. I felt like he aimed the topic right at me. It was all about dealing with burnout and what coping strategies one might use when the stress from one's job is overwhelming. *Sigh* I know the return to school is kicking up a lot of anxiety and fear, and as a result, a lot of depression. The Switch has actually been helpful because it's been a good distraction. I didn't want to talk about that though so I said nothing tonight. Then, my T wanted to finish the group with a muscle relaxation exercise. For reasons unknown to me, I find muscle relaxation exercises triggering so I bowed out early. I didn't really feel like going to group tonight but his email told me to continue with my groups so I was there. Honestly, I go back and forth throughout my days between anxious and numbed out. I could feel the anxiety just running through me so it was probably better to just leave. All I honestly ever want to do these days is sleep. But I'll make it to the end of next week somehow.
 
Glad you told him Sadie. Doesn't matter how or when ya'll have a place to start now. Glad you wrote it and sent it. Unedited. Hope things continue to open up for you. Hopefully, you will find the SI decreasing now that you are getting these very painful things out in the open.
 
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