I feel haphazard inside, and I am wrestling with typing a response because it's coming out very haphazardly and disjointedly. Please bear with me. I so appreciate the feedback.
My brother is a heroin addict. He started when he was 19, it was an extension of his self-medicating in order to cope with his bipolar. He tried to get clean three years ago - so that was after 11 or so years on it. Did the process through a methadone clinic, tried to drop the methadone, and had a total psychotic break. After that, he went back on methadone, and now is actually taking his bipolar meds and doing OK. He'll be on methadone for the rest of his life. It is very, very rare to get completely clean.
This is a very good reminder of the hell of the drug... thank you. I'm sorry for what both you and your brother have been through. It is one nasty drug. Not a good path. I have to run from it. I have to.
What happened, if you don't mind my asking? I've followed bits and pieces from your posts, but maybe if you share the whole picture there could be better advice?
In a nutshell, the plan was for me to come back from the PTSD intensive treatment program, continue working with my now former trauma therapist on processing all the family trauma I had been processing (most of it for the first time ever) and been in 3-6 months consider doing some family therapy, and then, if things progressed as expected, my therapist would write a letter I needed to return to school.
Instead, I came back on Friday May 1st. My local (also now former) psychiatrist increased the new medication the PTSD intensive treatment center put me on ("not because you absolutely need it but because it will help you be less obessive and stubborn") and I spent the weekend as planned with my friends. It was a good weekend. A really good weekend. Then on Monday, I MELTED DOWN. It was partly due to seratonin syndrome that the increase in medication caused. IIt was partly due to the doctor increasing the medication that comes with a black box warning that it can cause "sudden impulsive suicidality" - and I didn't know about this warning. It apparently isn't the typical SSRI warning of the risk of possible increase in suicidal thoughts or behaviors.
The melt down was probably partly due to multiple adverse effects of the sudden 6 fold increase in this medication on that Monday. It was also due to ... I don't know what. There was more to it.
I woke up anxious, but ok. Then someone sort of attempted to assault me. I responded to the assault initially with the right things, and then I suddenly was drawn to call old abusers. Even my father. Whom I never contact. I got the expected verbal abuse back from all of them. When I realized I was rennacting trauma by calling them, I became very panicky. I remember thinking I am failing, I have failed... without much thought, I suddenly grabbed a whole bottle of pills and swallowed it and then two other bottles. Then I freaked, and I puked them up, dragged myself to the ER. They didn't really take it seriously at all. They should have. I texted the therapist. I was a mess on text. I told her I had to go to the ER I was suicidal, I needed to reschedule, and she told me to come in for my appointment and I lost it. I VENTED at her on text. I went on and on about how no means no, I can't come in... She continued to push me to come in, gently. Concerned. I went to the building. I walked in and I walked out. I called her and said I can't do it.. I still don't quite understand why. She called me, and told me I needed to come in and still my efforts to reschedule didn't work. I went in with the intent to reschedule. I screamed at her. For about a minute. I was dripping sweat from the seratonin syndrome effect and I was a shaking mess, and she....
I scared the hell out of us both. I just yelled, but I yelled "no I said no, f you, I said no...."
I feared she would quit and I began to look for another therapist.
At my next appointment 3 days later, she quit. Terminated me. Tearfully. Said she was shocked that she had to do that. She said we would have two weeks to transition. A week later, she canceled all the transitional sessions on text too. I can't really write much about this because it is so mind baffling.
The three places she referred me to all turned me down.
I have been left with all the trauma we opened up in the intensive treatment and now this loss of the first person I was probably attached to ina remotely healthy way - and I lost it by basically traumatizing both of us. And suddenly. She kept saying if that one day had not happened, we would be working together still, processing the rest of the trauma.
I haven't been able to get back to my contractual part time job, to any regular volunteer work (today was a one time event.) I am tearful, and I have lots of panic attacks. I keep losing any sense that I will exist. It is some kind of attachment and dissociative related thing - at least that is what I have been told.
I have continued to be suicidal, but less impulsively so. I have gone from feeling ok or even better being alone, to being in a state of overwhelming sadness and fear when I am alone. I'm having flashbacks about family/childhood trauma left and right, and I am having nightmares about childhood neglect and abandonment that I have never had before. A lot of childhood trauma stuff is very stirred up - and a lot of grief (that is the right word!) is very stirred up about all trauma, and about this therapist being gone. So gone. I cry. A lot. I panic. A lot. I shake and shiver and... I'm exhausted. I obsess a lot too. I keep trying to eat but I have lost about 15 lbs in the past three weeks (and every notices and not in a good way.) I have been self injuring after intakes for new treatment. I get so stirred up by every intake... I've been had an obsessive level of intakes! The self injury had stopped, for a long time. Now? The damage I have done is pretty bad. ugh. I'm a mess.
My friends... it's a mess there too. I reached out to two friends (they both know each other). One of them handled it well. The other did not. The other told other mutual friends I was struggling, and some weird things about how they should help me, and it's been a mess. I have cut ties with most friends I have in order to get space from a lot of really intense rescuing and wild assumptions and attempts to co-dependently care take or pressure me into changing...
Then my mother decided to fly out. She got here yesterday. She lives 1,000 miles away, and knew I wasn't doing well. She is now here, in town. Much of the time she is very dissociative, and when she is not, she is trying to rescue me from myself while making me feel so incapable. I am struggling to hold boundaries with her of any kind. It's a mess.
Just asking - did they mean that you wouldn't benefit anymore at that facility, or that you would not benefit, period?
They believe I would not benefit, period. They would not explain to me why. I did request my medical records to try and find out why.
Please - take the Ativan. Don't do the heroin. If you need it, take it. Benzo addiction vs. heroin addiction? No contest.
You have a good point. They did give me Ativan while in the ER, and it didn't do much. That scared me. It made me sedated, but I was still hyperventilating. So a friend called my doctor and they called in Valium, and I took it... and then I couldn't quite stop taking the Valium. I took 3 times much as prescribed - int he first 24 hours. Valium made the anxiety actually stop. But then it would begin to wear off and ti was driven to take more. So after 24 hours, I tossed it.
if I am at the point where illegal drugs are seeming like a possible option, then yeah, it might be time to try the Ativan again.
What do they say they will treat you for, since they don't do trauma? Is there an aspect of that diagnosis that makes any sense to you?
Their main focus is people with psychosis. My old psychiatrist told me he believes all forms of dissociation are actually psychosis. No one has ever before said I have psychosis. (I even called the treatment team out of state and they told to me to run from any place that believes I am psychotic or that dissociation is always psychosis.) My old doctor and several other therapists and clinics refereed me to this place. They occasionally take people with eating disorders or mood disorders or other problems. They say they have worked with people with PTSD before. They offer a model where there is therapy during the week 2-3 times a week, and then a treatment team that helps overall stabilization - "but we call it synchronization with the mind heart and environment rather than stabilization." They have licensed therapists come and meet in the home or other places and help the person basically deal with life, get back to work, etc. That part of it makes sense. They also have a focus on basically what is working well for the client and maximizing it rather than always focusing on the pathology that needs to change. That might be a good shift for me right now.
Nothing else about the clinic fits for me. It's really into some spiritual beliefs that I would support others using if it worked for them, but that I would struggle with. They really focus on "emptying the soul as a path to health."
I get panicky just thinking about that.
There is always a way. There is always a way. Sometimes it is a bitch to figure out what it is. But there is always a way out. It's so exhausting and painful, I know - my heart hurts for you. But let's throw everything at the wall and see if we can find the way through this, yeah?
I want to believe so much there is a way...
I feel so lost in all of this. I have worked so hard and I have tanked it all, again. This is my pattern. Moments before I reach success, I tend to tank my life in massive ways. I just did it again. I had this great prognosis and future, and I'm tanking it.
I'm really glad for this forum and for your responses and helping me think this through. There had got to be a way through. Somethings gotta shift!
What about working with someone via Skype? Or something online? It wouldn't be ideal, but it might be better than nothing?
This is a good idea! Googling now...
That's a pretty good prognosis, so you must have been doing something right. I suppose moving forward assumed continued therapy. Have you contacted the inpatient place to see if they have any suggestions?
I did call them. They were really at a loss. They suggested I move to another state with better mental health resources. They also kept telling me "your recovery is not over..."
How good are you at "feelings"? I'm not so good at them myself. (Which is why I asked!) Sometimes I don't know what the actual feelings are. I get "fear", "dread", stuff like that, but sometimes more elaborate feelings just come through in kind of a "really good" or "really bad" way that can be confusing and frightening. I wonder if that's not part of what you're running into?
I think this is a big part of it! I feel stuff, just stuff, so much stuff, that I have purposefully never left myself feel for a long time... and then I started to let myself feel... and then... now I'm here. Scared of my own feelings that are really confusing to me.
I never got REALLY attached to anyone until I was in my 30's. Then I met someone who really cared about me and took the time to get to know me. Which I'd always thought was totally impossible. And, when he knew me better than anyone else ever has, he still, somehow, found me to be lovable. Weird deal! It's still hard to believe.Then he died. And I thought the world had come to an end. If it had been an option, I'd have curled up on his grave and died myself. There were a lot of things I learned from him that were good and valuable. When he died, things kind of spun out of control for a few years. I think I mostly lived through it because I knew it was what he would have wanted. To this day, when I remember things I learned from him, it's very bittersweet. I can't remember the good without also remembering the loss. But, I WANT to remember the good. And it gets easier with the passage of time.
I'm so sorry he passed away, and that you have had to go through this pain. It really helps to read this too. I feel so alone in what I feel.
I wonder if part of what you're dealing with, when you try to use those coping skills, isn't "grief". It would be a totally legitimate thing to feel. And it's definitely a "bad" feeling!
Grief. That's it. One of the intake therapists I met with recently said "you seem to be in the shock phase of grief."
At the intensive PTSD treatment center, they said I had a lot of grief work to do. I think I am grieving a lot more than just the loss of this therapist and the treatment that was finally working for me...