anxiety

  • I spent all morning waiting on my laminate flooring only to learn of a miscommunication and now I won’t get it till tomorrow morning and it is so irritating. I wasted three hours of my life sitting around. I had to remember my anger management/IOP skills for anger and supreme irritation. Sometimes therapy feels like

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  • Am I Normal?

    Am I Normal?

    Is this what normal feels like? I know, I know, a problematic term. Who is really normal? I get it. But you know what I mean. We know what normal looks like. People who function, are rational, don’t hear voices, don’t try to kill themselves. When well-adjusted people go through life, they tend to finish

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  • Distress Tolerance

    Distress Tolerance

    I expect to be able to approve the final draft in the next day or two. The publisher is waiting on it. I am digging deep into the IOP/DBT skills for distress tolerance. I have stressors on all sides. My mother, my house, my Sacred Heart job and all its constant triggers. Being a federal

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  • Publishing Imminent

    Publishing Imminent

    My last night off. Tonight, I intend to sing, it’s my last chance. I’m trying to get Ceila to come with me. My book – the first roughly 120 posts of this blog – was sent back in final form from the publisher. Acknowledgment and dedication have been added. I am re-reading it, again, looking

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  • Disciplining my Anxiety?

    Now I have to have the discipline to structure and occupy the time I have to myself. By myself. I’ve struggled with this in the past – it’s why I thrived in a military environment and why I work almost every night – I like to have a structure. I respond well to that. It’s

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  • My Mind on My Time Off

    My Mind on My Time Off

    Today I get my new living room light fixture installed. My coworker has a lot of experience with stuff like this so he’s doing it for me. Ceila invited me to her bonfire/barbecue tonight. The weather is unusually warm for the pacific northwest. As I type that, the weather just took a turn toward rain

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  • At last, after a marathon of 60-hour work weeks the last three months, I’m taking a week off. I don’t have to be back at work till next Thursday. I am anxious about my flooring project. I still haven’t heard from my installation coordinator. I worry they won’t be able to do it in time.

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  • Promotion

    My new job wants to promote me. I’m not sure if I’ve already mentioned this, but there is a senior CNA position opening up and they put me in the class required for the promotion. I will have an expanded scope of practice which isn’t saying much because our scope is always limited. But I

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  • Just a Taste

    Just a Taste

    I forced myself to engage in the DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) skill: building positive experiences – and got up early to go to a comedy show with Ceila. I’m hammered with triggers at work. Currently my formerly catatonic patient is back in restraints for violence, and I have a patient almost identical to me in

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  • Bipolar Balance?

    Bipolar Balance?

    They say you can control your mind, your emotions, your thoughts and how we respond to the things that happen to us. What a crock of shit. I have always felt like a prisoner of my own mind. During a manic phase, I am certain of my superiority and special knowledge known only to me.

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