depression

  • My Shitty Mental Health

    My Shitty Mental Health

    I am so upset and frustrated with myself. I finally got some sleep…and slept right on through IOP Thursday morning. I was just going to take a nap… It was an important day too. The final wrap up for distress tolerance and and all the skills therein. The most important module and day of IOP,…

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  • Intensive Outpatient – Week 12, Stages of Grief, Grounding

    Everyone knows of it – the five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Everyone grieves something – lost family/friends, a lost job, lost opportunities, lost hope. No one goes through the five stages in a linear fashion and in fact, we as humans are all over the place. I realized as we talked…

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  • Accept That You’re Meaningless

    I went to IOP yesterday and we talked about Radical Acceptance – the concept that you can take back your mental and emotional health by accepting the pain and accepting the things you can’t control. This frees one from the distress of resistance and fighting. It does not mean giving up, giving in, or tolerating…

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  • Intensive Outpatient – Week 10, IMPROVE Model, Holiday Stress

    Sometimes I get so discouraged. In IOP, in work, in life, in everything. Today I felt discouraged in IOP. I have before, worried it was too much to take in at once, that I would not be able to get better at the different coping skills, that others would get better while I stagnated. I…

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  • Past and Future Problems

    Past and Future Problems

    My mother is having a little bit of a meltdown and left town. She’s in Portland right now. I mean, on the one hand, good for her. She needed a change of scenery, and god knows I can’t get her to do any of the things she used to do and I can’t make her…

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  • Intensive Outpatient – Week 10, Distress Tolerance, Self-Soothe, SAD

    I’ve made it to week 10 and an important part of IOP, maybe the most important for me – distress tolerance. This is the key to hopefully preventing relapse, or at least violent detainment. This morning the first skill the therapist wanted to go over was self-soothing, or small acts in the moment that ground…

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  • Intensive Outpatient – Week 9, Distress Tolerance, 2-Month Assessment

    After IOP Thursday, the therapist wanted to meet with me for my two month assessment. It has gone by fast. “How do you feel therapy has gone? Is there anything you need help with specifically?” “At first I was overwhelmed with the material and I felt like I wouldn’t be able to incorporate it or…

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  • Reasonable Accommodation?

    Reasonable Accommodation?

    Day three of orientation for my new job – also the last day. I had clinical content, part of a whole slew of legal regulatory requirements. I wasn’t thinking much of it – it’s all review, I’ve been doing this 15 years – till the instructor got to restraints and whipped them out in front…

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  • Future Cost

    Future Cost

    I got decent sleep today, with medication I slept seven hours and only woke up twice. I had a terrible dream despite the prazosin medication I take for nightmares. This wasn’t so much a nightmare as it was a memory. I dreamed I woke up tied to a bed in the hospital, and subsequently fighting…

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  • Justice and Mental Health

    Justice and Mental Health

    I’ve completed the health screening for my new part time renal care job. I have latent TB and completed a course of rifampin to ensure I never develop an infection and that always raises eyebrows when you do patient care, so I had to bring all my documentation for that and hope they don’t make…

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