PTSD
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I could not sleep today. I took my meds but tossed and turned, images and memories burned into my brain, playing like a bad movie. I had a half dream/half memory of several people wrestling me into a bed and strapping me in. I could feel their needles as they shot me with drugs to…
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As I sit with a schizophrenic patient in the same locking restraints in which I found myself not that long ago, I feel a tiredness I haven’t felt in a long time. To be sure, I didn’t think I could do this, I really didn’t. I’m still not sure how I am, other than white…
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My mood is so intensely labile. I spend nights at work cracking bad jokes, riffing on everyone around me and generally being quite ornery. I spend days often staring into space, at the wall, or overcome with sadness. But at least that’s better than doomscrolling, right? I swing like a pendulum and I have to…
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Sometimes all I feel is dragging ennui. A thousand memories, fighting for space as though trapped in a compressor. I have terrible memories and I remember everything. It’s not photographic, it’s just graphic. I remember so much, and sometimes my mind just won’t shut up. I scream at them, please! I’m not that person anymore!…
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This is so fucked up. It is happening all over again. I’m trying to face and accept the fact it’s going to keep happening. I have another patient in restraints and this time I had to help restrain him. I did everything I could to avoid it. For five hours I tried redirection, distraction, calming…
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My feelings wheel is a guide to help me figure out what I’m feeling. Sometimes I just can’t tell. The feelings wheel is not giving me much guidance today. I cannot tell what I feel. Nothing, there is nothing. The mood stabilizer is likely making me flat and blank. I am having flashbacks and stare…
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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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My god, the flashbacks. I’m having so much PTSD right now. Have been for hours. I just go right back there, back in restraints, back in the manic panic, back in the fear and anger. I can feel the heavy, sick grogginess of chemical restraint. I wish I could move past this but sometimes I…
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Week four of IOP and probably one of the more important modules, at least for me, is about to close tomorrow – Emotion Regulation. I have really struggled with some of the concepts and incorporating them into daily life. One exercise involved drawing concentric circles and in the inner, writing the emotions we do not…
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I could not sleep today. I take the meds, I make a bedtime ritual, I try hot showers and meditation and even masturbation but today I could not sleep. When I finally did, I had terrible dreams. I take a medication, prazosin, for bad dreams but it can only do so much. Pills only pack…
Documenting my journey through the mental health system 