REPERCUSSIONS
Over the weekend, I contacted a number of friends asking how they felt when they found out about my overdose. While sometimes the truth hurts, I’m so very grateful for their honesty.
Over the weekend, I contacted a number of friends asking how they felt when they found out about my overdose. While sometimes the truth hurts, I’m so very grateful for their honesty.
A lot can happen in two weeks. You can lose everything, as so many people around the world are now discovering. You can become isolated, locked away, afraid and no longer in control of your life.
Bipolar II is… my diagnosis. Not my choice. Bipolar II is characterised by Dr Jim Phelps as “mood swings but not manic”.
People with eating disorders often talk about the eating disorder voice that natters away, telling us what to do. Or not. Undermining recovery. Making us doubt ourselves. But I wonder what that means to someone without an eating disorder voice? Or even what it means to other eating disordered people – I doubt we’re all the same.
I challenge anyone not to collapse to some degree under all the stress I experienced. The grief and trauma of losing my mother and sister, as well as my grandfather, both my in-laws and a handful of aunts and cousins – eight deaths in six years. Dealing with my teenage son running off the rails and looking dangerously ill, and taking in my adult nephew with all his issues after losing his mother. Our marriage in utter turmoil. My grandmother’s decreasing health and cognition requiring constant care and demands from me. Ending over three decades of performing and teaching music. Losing my identity as my children left home, my career was gone, and my youth was a distant past. It was a lot to deal with.
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:
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…
So in contrast to my previous post on resilience, I now concede that in some areas of my life I can become and behave in an extremely resilient manner. There are areas I need to work on, but for now I’m surrounded by professionals who will gladly work with me towards those goals.