IOP
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On Friday morning last week, I finally had to demonstrate my competency so they could check me off and fill the hospital and legal requirement to be competent in quick release knots for restraints. I had a couple days to mentally prepare. I came to the office of the unit manager, and there she was,
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I had a couple days off, but my weekend was rough. I started getting a headache Friday afternoon which morphed into a migraine later. I took Advil and Ativan, knowing it was probably from lack of sleep – I had worked the night before and had not been to bed yet. I always puke when
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During IOP process hour yesterday morning, I was more forthcoming about my difficulty with depersonalization and dissociation. I go back in time to painful memories, past traumas, the things that give me PTSD and sometimes keep me up at night. I’ve tried to use the coping skills I’ve learned to get through it – grounding,
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The core of it, the core of so much suffering, aggravation, anxiety, and despair, is the inner critic – that voice inside that tells you how stupid and ugly and unlikable you are, how you never get anything right, how you’ll always be a failure. It’s a shadow that follows you around, no one can
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I’m developing a routine and process in my new job. The floor is intense and busy with very sick patients. I get a lot of crazy looking vital signs like high blood pressures, low blood pressures, and low oxygen saturations. I’ve got patients in a lot of pain. There are kidney transplant patients and right
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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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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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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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I called back my new unit manager, Jana. She talked to me about the somewhat long process to get a reasonable accommodation, and that in the meantime, it was quite likely there would be patients in restraints and since they’re short staffed, I might be the only aide on the floor. That is the case
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My weekend was rough. I did not sleep much before work Saturday but I made it to work. It is very surreal, this new job. I’ll get into that in a bit. My mother came back Sunday morning and I picked her up from the airport. I had been at my house, giving it a
Documenting my journey through the mental health system 