I get knocked down, but I get up again…

I need to care for myself better than I have been.  We had to put our 17 year old dog to sleep last Saturday.  I haven’t allowed myself to grieve because I’ve wanted to be strong for my family.  Due to the economy my husbands job has taken a hit and we are not doing well financially.  I had to part with my guitar, hopefully temporarily,  but I don’t know if that will be the case.  My guitar has been my faithful companion since I was a young girl.  It’s been my outlet.  I have put on the mask of indifference but in reality I’m ashamed that it’s come to this.

One common thread in my spiritual quest has been Buddhist meditation, strangely enough.  The treatment center that I went to used mindfulness as part of their tools of recovery and mindfulness is a core part of DBT skills.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about choices and paths and such.  I feel sort of like a modern Hecate at the crossroads, but I’m no goddess, I’m just a crone stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Anyway, I chose to start climbing out of that hard place in the midst of the shame and yuck.  I chose to use the Buddhist Metta meditation.

My understanding of the Metta meditation is rusty, and probably very simple at best.  Here is what I understand it to be.  It is the loving-kindness meditation.  First, we are to direct loving-kindness toward ourselves.  Loving-kindness is defined as the sort of love that a mother would feel towards a newborn baby.

So I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths; I follow my breath in and out.  I breath in and silently say:

May I be filled with loving-kindness.

I breath in and out and I imagine what it would be like to feel loving-kindness toward myself.

This is very difficult for me.  I am used to hating myself.  Loving myself actually hurts.  But if I am to live, I have to do this.

I follow my breath for a few breaths.

The next step in the meditation goes like this: May I be well.  This refers to physical health.  I silently repeat this, and imagine what this would be like as I watch the breath.

May I be well.

May I be at peace and at ease of well being.  This refers to emotional health and day to day living, for example, may all your traffic lights be green, may you enter the short check out lanes at the grocery store, etc.

May I be at peace and have ease of well being.

May I be happy.  This seems so simple, doesn’t it.  But for me it’s one of the hardest to fulfill.  It’s a wish.  I breath,

May I be happy.

Once we’re done going through this with ourselves, we are to direct the meditation toward someone we love, then someone we are familiar with, then maybe someone we don’t really know but interact with like the checkout clerk at the store.  Then perhaps someone we dislike, going outward from there until we are able to do the meditation for the whole universe.

The Metta meditation is more complex than this, but this is a good  beginning point to practice.  Beliefnet has a good audio meditation with Sharon Salzburg that is very good.

Mindfulness has been proven to be healing and beneficial in so many ways.  I need to do this regularly.  Why is it so   easy to be addicted to harmful crap, like alcohol, or drugs but not meditation??

Battling my demons tonight.   I’ve been battling these demons for awhile actually, but tonight it’s been hard.  That ever present inner critic beating me down.

I begin to think that I can rise above all this, go to school and learn some skills so I can get a job and that damn inner critic starts in: you’re pathetic, a loser, stupid, ugly, inept, worthless…

and I can feel the physical weight of these accusations.  I can’t fight them off anymore.

I ruminate about my recent doctor appointment, feeling shame because the doctor must see me for who I really am, shit the whole world must look at me and see what a worthless piece of junk I am.

I can’t fight these thoughts off tonight.

butterflies

We went to the zoo today.  I specifically wanted to see the butterfly exhibit.  The weather was beautiful, sunny, mid-70’s.  A little crowded, though.  I did ok with the crowd.

It was beautiful.  There were many, many different kinds of butterflies fluttering around, and it was planted with many different flowering plants.  Soft, instrumental music was piped in to add to the atmosphere.

I became overwhelmed with emotion and I started to cry.  I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from all out sobbing.  I have no idea why I had this reaction.  I was so embarrassed.  My two sons were with me and heard me sniffling, asked me if I had allergies.  I just nodded my head and turned away and tried to get a grip.   I don’t understand what’s wrong with me.

…

Tomorrow I see my old therapist and I am already freaking out.  I am filled with anxiety.  I am not usually like this, not with therapists.  I will go, I wont run away.  But something happened at that last therapy session with my dbt therapist that has caused me to associate therapy with bad things and this isn’t good.

Tomorrow is the new moon, a time for beginnings.  I hope this can be the beginning of healing for me, a new chapter.

I had a doctor appointment today, pretty routine, mostly to keep a prescription for blood pressure and thyroid meds filled for another year.  I disclosed my psych meds, and the nurse practitioner asked if my diagnosis had changed from depression to bipolar because of the medications.  It has and I said, yes.  So, it’s now on my medical chart that I have bipolar disorder.  I’m not comfortable with that.

In a perfect world where there is no stigma against mental illness this would not be an issue.  I don’t live in that perfect world.  People who wear labels of mental illness do not get taken as seriously as people who don’t wear those labels.  Depression doesn’t carry quite the same stigma as bipolar disorder, and if the label borderline personality disorder ever becomes attached then man, just forget about credibility altogether.  I don’t have that diagnosis,  I really feel for those that do.

I wonder if I can get that removed from my chart.  I wonder if I should lie about my meds.  I will if I feel that I’m being stigmatized because of my mental illness.  I’m pissed off that I have to be concerned about this at all.

Addictive Personalities

Here is an interesting article from Divine Caroline on why some people have addictive personalities.  I most certainly have an addictive personality.  I am an ex-smoker, I was up to 2 packs a day before I quit.  And then there is the wine habit that I acquired and then had to get rehabbed out of me. I seem to grab on to whatever catches my fancy like a pitbull, wringing out every last little bit of pleasure out of it before I can let it go.

And it can be anything.  Crocheting doilies, for instance.  Smoking cigarettes.  Baking bread. Reading up on a subject, any subject, parrots, for instance.  Exercise, all facets of it.  Music.  Watercolor painting, even though I’m no artist. Fractal art.  Make-up.  That one was a stupid. Tarot.

I’ll stay up all night long, driven by this demon.  It’s crazy.  I guess that’s why the second step in AA is: we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity…

Those addictions are filling a hole inside, I know.  The trick is to fill it with healthy things.

the status quo

The Ask Amy advice column in today’s paper struck a chord for me today.

Here it is:

Dear Amy:

I just got back from my family reunion. A situation arose that caused unpleasantness. Some family members suggest that I owe an apology. I would like your opinion. As the day wore on, more and more alcohol was consumed. One of my cousins (age 50) had been seen drinking frequently, and two people voiced concern because he was intending not only to drive home, but also to drive another cousin and his elderly mother.

I chatted with both mother and cousin, who voiced some concern. I offered them sleeping accommodations. I took the drinking cousin aside and said that some were concerned that he was drinking enough to jeopardize his driving. I offered to try to find some sleeping space at my mother’s house, where the reunion was hosted. He said he would be fine. I asked him if he didn’t mind telling me how many beers he had consumed. He said that he had drunk eight or 10 beers, and I said, “That’s a lot.” He then got visibly angry and said he was tired of these games. He told his mother and cousin that he was driving them home “now,” and did so. He drove home without incident.

Some felt that this proved I was wrong to question his drinking. My cousin is now mad at me. Some have suggested that it was none of my business how much my cousin drank and noted that I was the cause of angst when everybody was so happy before.What do you think?

TRYING TO DO RIGHT

Amy says:

Following the reasoning of your family members, your cousin would have had to crash his car for your concerns to be valid — or perhaps his arrest on drunken-driving charges would have sufficed. You don’t owe anyone an apology. When someone is drunk and leaves a gathering where he has consumed alcohol, the people hosting the party can be held responsible for whatever happens once that person leaves. Your cousin’s belligerence when confronted with his drinking is typical and to be expected from someone who has a problem he won’t face.

In dysfunctional family systems, there is the unspoken rule that the dysfunction must be maintained at all cost. This was certainly true in my childhood.

My dad is alcoholic. My mother had binge eating disorder. Her mother came from an alcoholic family. My great grandfather was a violent drunk. My grandmother, who was the oldest of many children, remembers gathering her siblings together and hiding in the closet when her dad came home drunk from the bar. My grandparents did not drink, but the dysfunctional behaviors remained.

I have an aunt, now deceased, who was a severe alcoholic. She never left her house and called people asking them to bring her booze. One of my fears was that I would become like her. I don’t think anyone ever tried to get her any help.

I remember getting beers for my dad and sneaking sips when I was very young. When I found out that my dad was giving my infant daughter sips of wine I knew that I would have to put a stop to that. It was one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do, standing up to my dad. I told him to stop and he did.

I’m trying to take a good hard look at my own family now, and see where my blind spots are, where am I trying to stick with the status quo? What dysfunction am I trying to protect?

I try very hard to hide my struggles from my kids. I try to keep my fight very private. I think I’ve been successful in this. They never saw me drink or drunk. I was lucky. I hope this isn’t one of my blind spots.

the mother-in-law

Oooh.  Just checking out this blog of 10 more extremely bizarre phobias tonight and see that I have a name for one of my phobias, something new to add to my list of ailments.

Pentheraphobia: Fear of Mother-in-law.

This is a woman who told me, “Hubby was a good boy, until he met YOU!”  and she wasn’t kidding. This was the final insult.  I had endured multiple digs prior to this but ignored them, not really knowing how to deal with it.  It was then that I made the decision to stop associating with the in-laws.  I am polite.  I don’t visit them.  And I don’t feel bad about it, either.

strength

Sigh.

I think I can write about it now.  I’m stronger than I thought.  There was a point two weeks ago when I honestly thought that I wasn’t going to make it.  I really thought that I was going to die.

I’ve been going to my DBT group for 1 1/2 years now.  I loved my group.  One of my struggles is that I tend towards agoraphobia.  This group has been my source of social support.  I’ve learned so much, and not just the skills.  I’ve learned that I’m not the hideous monster that I’ve made myself out to be.  I can fit in with a group.

Therapy has been a struggle.  When I read back I see that I’ve had doubts about it for a long time.  T can be very validating at times and therapy can feel like a battle.  I think that’s par for the course.

Therapy has gone wrong.  I don’t want to get in to the particulars, but I’ve lost all trust with him.  He happens to be co-leader of DBT group.  I’ve decided to stop both.  This was a heart wrenching decision that brings me to tears, even now and it’s been 2 weeks.

T has called me twice in that time.  Both times, when I saw his name on caller ID, I started shaking, my legs got weak, I started to cry and my heart began to race.  What in the world is going on with me? I don’t understand the fear response at all.  Nothing happened in therapy to warrant this response, yet it’s happening and it is very real.  I am not usually like this.

We had been opening up old wounds in therapy.  Painful ones, obviously, deep ones.  They’ve gone unresolved.  At our last session, I brought in a journal entry, like I had been doing in previous sessions.  This one wasn’t pretty.  It had been a very difficult week.  I wanted him to see exactly where I was at so I didn’t censor as much as I usually do.  He couldn’t have been more invalidating in his response to what I wrote.

One of the things that got to me the most was I journaled about an incident with a person who had sexually abused me when I was 13.  My t then discussed what I had written, spoke the names out loud, actually got the name of my abuser wrong, and then I don’t remember anything, I don’t remember what he said except that I found it to be so hurtful, so cruel even.   Then he said that I was creating my own emotional pain by staying in emotion mind.  Said journaling is fine if I want to relate facts but not if I want to relate emotions.

I journaled about another very painful memory.  I felt like it all blew up in my face.  I shared some really painful stuff and he shit all over it.  And this isn’t the worst of it, but I’m not going to get into the rest right now.

I don’t understand my response to his mere phone calls.  It doesn’t make any sense.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

I felt so alone, so hurt.  I stayed sober.  I called my old therapist.  I made good decisions, healthy decisions in the midst of the storm.  I didn’t know that I could do this.

To Write Love on Her Arms

I discovered this web site last night, To Write Love on Her Arms.  I was awestruck by what I read, by the love and compassion these people have shown to a group of people that are generally stigmatized.  Depressed, addicted, suicidal people who engage in self injurious behaviors.  People who are without hope, who are despairing, who have given up on themselves. They reach out and try to help, they try to rescue the lost, bring them some hope.

We need more people like this in the world.

Endings

I don’t even know where to start.  I have never felt more alone than I do right now.  My world has shrunk yet again.  God it hurts.

Therapy has gone so wrong, trust has been destroyed, I wont go back.  And because of that I’m going to have to quit my DBT group that I loved so much, which was my only source of support, because my therapist was also a group facilitator.

I don’t think there is any other way to make it right.

There is so much stress in my life right now.  Work is slow for my carpenter husband, so money is tight.  Not enough for bills.  Our 17 year old dog is at the end of her life and that is not easy to see.  She will be euthanized very soon if nature doesn’t take its course.  Therapy has been a trial, I may blog about that another time.  Marriage is rocky.

Worries, mind spinning, wanting to escape, the ultimate escape.

Providence, too.  I came here for the first time in months and find comments that give me strength.