Over the past three years my mental state has varied in its’ health. After completely breaking apart, I have just been slowly – ever so slowly – getting better. It’s not a straight line – sometimes I went backwards – but if I look back at the overall trajectory, I can see I am a long way from where I was three years ago.
Whatever our individual faith and beliefs may be, we all have an inner spirit. That little voice of wisdom and love that talks to us. No matter how many ugly voices are talking in our heads, there is always a little voice countering the ugliness. Sometimes the destructive voices are so overpowering it’s impossible to hear – but it’s always there.
And according to Susan David, we need to consider emotions in the same light. Not adorable – but as neither good nor bad. They are just emotions – all valid and no qualitative labels required. Apparently most of us are expert at either brooding or bottling our emotions, and we live in a world full of forced positivity where, “being positive has become a new form of moral correctness”.
Every day – every moment – of my life, I change and transform one way or another. My body constantly regenerates – most of it anyway. Some cells every few days, some every few years. And a few important cells in the brain we apparently need to treat carefully as they’re just one-timers. But overall, my body has been changing and transforming since that winning sperm first introduced itself to a welcoming ovum more than 52 years ago.
I am still struggling with high levels of anxiety and resorting to moments of scratching at my hands – but it isn’t escalating. I have an appointment with my new psychiatrist tomorrow and managing the anxiety is going to be top of our chat list. I’m still on clonazepam and I’d like to be off it and find a longer term solution. I feel the improvements in my eating regime have contributed to my sense of fragility and vulnerability – escalating my anxiety.
It’s been a wild ride. My last two days at the clinic were focused on discussing healthy ways of managing my out of control anxiety issues. I had one day of leave cancelled altogether (Sunday) as I couldn’t be trusted not to harm myself. I didn’t even trust myself. The next day was escorted leave and Tuesday – my final day as it turned out – back to full unescorted pre-discharge phase.
Forty three days down. Nine to go. I am ready – but glad to have these last nine days to consolidate what I’ve learned, set up support at home, invent a new life for myself, and gain the confidence to know it’s not only possible for me to recover – or even probable – but I have to believe I will recover.
g things I have to share. And it’s not because I only focus on the negative – I promise! It’s because life in the clinic is fairly routine and dull, and unless I’m having some kind of emotional crisis, there’s nothing to share. And today I’ve had no emotional crisis. I have in fact had a great (but slightly dull) day.
Today’s psychology task – write two letters. One from my body to me. One from me to my body. Here goes:
This morning I woke to the news one of our founding members, mother to the firstborn of the August 1996 babies (arriving early, in June 1996) passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.
Today I’m very sad. I guess it was inevitable. After 25 years of marriage I don’t normally blink an eye when spending time apart from my significant other – but this is different. We’ve been apart a month and will now be apart another 2-4 weeks. Which in the big scheme of things will become a blip on the radar, but today we’re surfing the blip.
One of our tasks in group therapy today was to “create three characters to live in your own ‘Land of Oz’. Give them each something to search for that YOU are searching for through your eating disorder (NOT related to weight). Give reasons why the Mighty Wizard would say that you already have what you are looking for.”
Today I am afraid of recovery. I’ve been in this place before – where I’ve felt the beginnings of change and then become overwhelmed with the fear of that change and what it might herald. so I rush back to the safe and familiar.
As I may have mentioned once or thrice, I suck at art. And the thought of doing art therapy leaves me feeling cold and slightly nauseated. However, it is also true the art therapist is not only a lovely person, but also a very good therapist. Plus she’s nice to me – and by that I mean, she often lets me write in lieu of drawing. So here’s a few of my art therapy, “works of art”. Spontaneously produced. Unedited. Raw. Cheerless…
I’ve spent a lifetime as a highly anxious person pretending it wasn’t so and secretly not coping. Nobody knew. I hid it. Very well. Now I don’t want to. I want to accept and manage it instead. It won’t solve all my problems but it will be a good start. I have no idea how to manage it…
