voices
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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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There is little I can do about my reasonable accommodation request over the weekend, but I do have a phone number to call, or I can try to navigate their portal from a work computer. I figure I’ll just call them and expedite it, because I’ve already worked the floor once. I’ve been doing this…
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Couldn’t sleep today. Still kind of reverberating from yesterday’s unexpected and intense trigger. I had a lot of flashbacks, dissociation. Unable to eat anything. But tonight is my first night at my new job. I’m looking forward to the distraction, my mind will hopefully be focused on learning my new floor, and not on painful…
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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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I’m already at my two month mark for IOP. I can’t believe it. Today started the module I’ve been simultaneously dreading and looking forward to the most – distress tolerance. As Dr Black and the therapist in IOP explain it – emotion regulation is for day to day life and utilizing coping skills. Distress tolerance…
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I had to duck out of IOP early today – my lack of a need for sleep finally seemed to be catching up with me. I worked two extra shifts Friday and Saturday nights, trying to expend the energy in a productive manner, and only slept a few hours Sunday before coming back in for…
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Trying to sum up the last few days is difficult. My mind has been all over the place, my energy high, my libido even higher. We closed out emotion regulation in IOP, the end of week six for me. Riley the therapist wanted to see me after. I’m at roughly the one-month mark and it…
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Opposite of emotion – when feeling distressing emotions, practice a behavior that is opposite to that emotion or feeling. When depressed, force yourself to distract, go for a walk, listen to music, talk to someone (damn near impossible for me but I’m working on it). That was today’s IOP DBT skill. I felt overwhelmed in…
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IOP was so hard. I am overwhelmed. I question my ability to do this. I question any of it will work. I became slightly overwhelmed with emotion and couldn’t quite articulate how I was feeling. I was starting to open up a little bit more (it’s extremely difficult for me to be vulnerable with a…
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As I cling desperately to sanity and basic functioning, I remind myself daily of the coping skills I’m trying to incorporate into my life, something with which I’ve always struggled. It’s like the moment I need them, they fly right out of my head and I don’t know what to do. This is what I…
Documenting my journey through the mental health system 