Give the Child a Chance.

It’s a reality that this blog has drawn people to me, but it has also pushed others away. I realize that the “me” revealed in these posts isn't always the “me” that is seen across a table at Starbucks, at a family meal or on a night out with the girls.  I know that some former friends can’t deal with the more complicated “me” they meet on this blog. I can’t help that. It’s unfortunate that sadness drives me here much more than celebration does. So from that a reader may conclude that I am sad much more of the time then I am happy. But emotions are not stable, I am often undisturbed by my internal troubles and I am often a fully functional member of society.

From the time I appreciated the therapeutic practice of writing, of purging the spiraling thoughts from my distressed mind, it has been my way to survive, to protect myself. It was actually a former psychiatrist (with whom I failed to connect with on any other topic!) who must be credited with planting the seed of starting this blog in my mind.  Along with meditation, writing is my spiritual discipline. Inside my head I am torn with conflicts. I struggle to understand myself and my world, I write because I want to bring to myself and perhaps those who read my posts more light, more grace, more understanding. It helps heal the little girl who hurts, it gives her a voice. Finally.

Fitting in

I would like to feel that I was a piece in their puzzle.

I want my own little slot to slide into where only I fit, where I am received, not in spite of my unique edges, but because of them.

I want them to feel incomplete without me, for them to feel the empty section which distorts the finished image where I am missing, and for them to spend countless hours tenderly searching for me under chairs and rugs, and squeal with delight when they find me and promise not to ever lose me again.

My family is a crackled jigsaw missing lots of bits. It’s not a faultless conclusion. It’s a child’s discarded toy, too difficult to complete, and too tedious to resolve.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

‘Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, “now what?” ‘

                                                                                                                                                                                       Jon Kabit-Zinn.

I spend so much time contemplating what I will do with my time and not enough time actually doing what I plan to do, living with my head in a tomorrow which never arrives because my incisive worry quells any chance of the present moment enjoyment.

My quandary is; that I allow my sentiment control my day. If I rouse full of wakeful slumber or drudgery, I permit the emotion I encounter in that sleepy moment dictate my plan for the day. ‘Oh it’s much too cold and wet to traipse all the way into town today…’ Ah sure I will stay home and write…’ (That’s a personal favourite of my morning lethargy, and of course nothing gets written!)

I guess the point I am trying to arrive at with this post is that I must tune my mind to the present moment, live in the day I am in and make full use of each precious hour it contains. My goal this week is to make a weekly plan of activity in which I embrace the wonder of each moment. Then I must actually DO what I have set out to do in a mindful manner, just experiencing, not judging. If I feel sad or lonely… so be it… just notice the emotion.

See, what I tend to do and can foresee happening this week is; me doing anything to escape experiencing the negative emotions that plague my daily existence. My favourite method at the moment is to blank out in front of Netflicks with my cat and a gallon of tea, oh I even found myself the full price section of a clothes store riffling through dresses I can’t afford, not to mention facebook…. As I say, I wonder aimlessly though my day and then get a shock to see the day is almost over. I tut to myself how unwonderful my day has been and make a wee vow to change my behaviour tomorrow only to experience an all too familiar sense of déjà vu come four o’clock the next day.

It must end. So I am off to experience the next moment as mindfully as I can and will be back to write soon. Adios amigos. 

Yes I am Still Alive.

Oh how neglectful I have been to my dear readers. I apologize from the bottom of my heart. So far on here I have been as brutally honest as I can be without intentionally hurting anyone, and I guess I want to tell y’all that the number one reason for my absence has been due to fear. Some people that I know in my day-to-day life (including some of my treatment team!!) are now reading my blog and I just needed sometime to process it all, to reflect on how it could potentially affect me and those close to me. 

The conclusion I have come to is that I am not going to stop writing, and using this space as my outlet. I will not be censoring my topics, but I will be much more mindful about maintaining confidentiality and ensuring that nobody gets hurt by what I write. 

From the comments and emails I get from you guys, I gather that having such open access to my therapy journey is helpful. I know I would have given anything for this information before I started DBT. 

Anyway to keep this short, I’m back. I’m sorry I was missing for so long and I really hope to hear from you all. Ask me anything by the way, I have 10 months of DBT under my belt now!!! I do like pop quizzes!

DEARMAN Success with Therapist

Love this Meme!

Maybe it's the increased dose of Fluoxetine (Prozac), maybe it's not, but whatever the reason I am feeling lighter this week. I am not beleaguered by the familiar and frantic suicidal thoughts, urges, plans. My ability to stay out of trouble is surprising me. I have not binged/purged much this week, even though all the normal triggers are there. The urge is also still there, but I find myself able to resist the need to act on it. 

I had my individual therapy session today after a 2 week gap. It was because my therapist had to cancel one session due to the illness of her child and then was away on training straight after. I was deeply disjointed over  the abrupt phone call from her that day to say she had to postpone our meeting for 14 days. My immediate thoughts were; "She doesn't care about you" "Once again, you are not important" "She is glad to not have to see you" and so on....

I was really super emotional for at least 2 days after and to be honest, have only come back down to an even base level on the topic this week. Hence why I can only really describe it all on this blog now. I got some excellent support from the recovery network online, and was advised to write down how I was feeling. Which I did! 

I used it an an opportunity to practice the INTERPERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS skill DEARMAN. Here's what I wrote:

On Thursday 16th Feb you regrettably had to cancel our therapy session at the last minute due to the unfortunate sickness of your daughter. I felt disappointed that my appointment with you was cancelled. I had put a lot of work into DBT last week, and felt that I really needed to discuss it with you. I was and am very scared that you will be away for training and then away on holiday. I also feel upset in myself that I am so dependent on our session each week.

I understand that you had no other choice but to attend to your daughter who was sick, and wouldn't have wanted you to do anything other than collect her as she was unwell. I guess the reason I feel the need to write to you is that I think a back-up plan might need to be put into place for if/when this happens again as it is not the first time that you have had to cancel our sessions. I also feel that the gaps in therapy are really affecting my ability to sustain a constant motivation for DBT. Yet I totally understand they need to happen sometimes, we all need a holiday! None-the-less I feel very scared knowing that gaps are coming up.

With support to fill in the gaps when you are away I feel that I could continue with the DBT skills rather than feeling alone and unable to cope. Perhaps there is someone I could call within the service when you are unavailable that understands and is able to offer coaching in the skills?

At the moment I feel like I have no concrete support in my day to day life outside of DBT, and although we are working towards me becoming better able to deal with this, and I look forward to the day that I will be able to cope on my own, I am simply not there yet. This is why having these gaps are scaring me so much. I would like to further problem solve this difficulty in our next session.

Kind regards

Many people over the years have told me about the benefits of writing out a letter to someone about a difficult situation, And I always poo-pooed the idea, thinking it was a load of cod-ology. But I take that back. After minutes of writing this, I almost instantly felt a sense of relief, and as I found my self reading over and over it, noticed how nice it was to be compassionate to my emotions, to validate them as real and not react in way that I was ashamed of.

In the end I did not send or even show this letter to my therapist, as I felt much calmer and understanding after having the 2 weeks to evaluate everything. We came to an agreement about how to solve this problem should it ever arise again. I suggested that we E-mail each other, as I am much more comfortable with that then phoning for skills coaching. This way I always feel that I can turn to her for support, even if she can not get back to me straight away.

I am proud of how well I managed the situation, and happy that I now know I have other options rather than flying off the handle and ending up in A&E, just to feel validated. THIS is a BIG step for me. Long may it last!

*****TRIGGER*****My favorite quotes which express the topic of suicide

It’s a physical urge, huger and stronger than thirst or sex. Halfway back on the left side of my head there is a spot that yearns, that longs, that pleads for the jolt of a bullet. I want that rage, that fire, that final empty rip. I want to be let out of this dark cavern, to open myself up to the ease of not-living. I am tired of sorrow and struggle and worry. ... I want to turn out the last light. –Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. –Graham Greene, The Comedians

There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die. –Rebecca West, The Strange Necessity

Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it. –Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology

I don’t know when the idea of suicide first occurred to me. In some ways, it had been in the back of my mind for years. Yet, oddly, I would never have thought of it as an option. It was the perceived lack of options—the final, unacceptable solution to a grave and insoluble dilemma. I had always thought of it in the same way: If all else fails, if I have nowhere else to turn, I can do this. –Tracy Thompson, The Beast: A Reckoning with Depression

Even at this stage, my preparations were like strapping on a parachute in an airplane that was about to crash; the whole time I was preparing to hurl myself out the door, I clung to the hope that something would happen at the last minute to forestall that terrible necessity I felt—not hostility, as psychiatric texts would say, or vengeful rage, or a desire for attention. This was done in secret, out of a need to alleviate pain which was as implacable as thirst. –ditto

Pain or not, I would most likely walk around in a suicidal reverie the rest of my life, never actually doing anything about it. Was there a psychological term for that? Was there a disease that involved an intense desire to die, but no will to go through with it? Couldn’t talk and thoughts of suicide be considered a whole malady of their own, a special subcategory of depression in which the loss of a will to live has not quite been displaced by a determination to die? –Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

But just as a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, a little bit of energy, in the hands of someone hell-bent on suicide, is a very dangerous thing. –ditto

I guess I realize that I don’t want to die. I don’t want to live either, but—there really isn’t anything in-between. Depression is about as close as you get to somewhere between dead and alive, and it’s the worst. But since the tendency toward inertia means that it’s easier for me to stay alive than die, I guess that’s how it’s going to be, so I guess I should try to be happy. –ditto

Most people get suicide, I guess; most people, even if it’s hidden deep down inside somewhere, can remember a time in their lives when they thought about whether they really wanted to wake up the next day. Wanting to die seems like it might be a part of being alive. –Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down

And what I owned up to was this: I had wanted to kill myself, not because I hated living, but because I loved it. And the truth of the matter is, I think, that a lot of people who think about killing themselves feel the same way … They love life, but it’s all fucked up for them … We were up on the roof because we couldn’t find a way back into life, and being shut out of it like that…it just fucking destroys you, man. So it’s like an act of despair, not an act of nihilism. It’s a mercy killing, not a murder. –ditto

The knives in my apartment are only sharp enough to open envelopes with. Cutting a slice of coarse bread is on the borderline of their ability. I don’t need anything sharper. Otherwise, on bad days, it might easily occur to me that I could always go stand in the bathroom in front of the mirror and slit my throat. On such occasions it’s nice to have the added security of needing to go downstairs and borrow a decent knife from a neighbor. –Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow

Her wish to die was as pervasive as a dial tone: you lift the receiver, it’s always there. –Joyce Carol Oates, “Summer Sweat”

It was my last act of love. –Sylvia Plath, after her first major suicide attempt

The only option for a pure idealist is to commit suicide. –Wu Guoguang, “Gate of Heavenly Peace”

Though this was my only bona fide suicide attempt, it began in me a lifelong relationship with that temptation. It seemed to me I had a “virus” inside me like malaria that could flare up at any moment, and I needed always to be on guard against it. On the other hand, I would court it, even in times of seeming tranquility. I seemed to derive creative energy from the assertion of suicide as an option. This morbidity left me freer to act or write as I wanted, as much as to say: No one understands me, I’ll show them. It also became my little secret that, while going about in the world, and functioning equably as expected, several times a week I would be batting away the thought of killing myself. How often have I thought, in moods of exasperation or weariness: “I don’t want to go on anymore. Enough of this, I don’t want any more life!” I would imagine, say, cutting my belly open to relieve the tensions once and for all. Usually, this thought would be enough to keep at bay the temptation to not exist. So I found myself using the threat of suicide for many purposes: it was a superstitious double hex warding off suicide; it was a petulant, spoiled response to not getting my way; and it was my shorthand for an inner life, to which I alone had access—an inner life of furious negation, which paradoxically seemed a source of my creativity as a writer. –Phillip Lopate, “Suicide of a Schoolteacher”

The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort: with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night. –Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

An English novelist who had made two serious suicide attempts said this to me: “I don’t know how much potentially suicides think about it. I must say, I’ve never really thought about it much. Yet it’s always there. For me, suicide’s a constant temptation. It never slackens. Things are all right at the moment. But I feel like a cured alcoholic: I daren’t take a drink because I know that if I do I’ll go on it again. Because whatever it is that’s there doesn’t alter. It’s a pattern of my entire life. I would like to think that it was only brought on by certain stresses and strains. But in fact, if I’m honest and look back, I realize it’s been a pattern ever since I can remember.” –ditto

Who am I?

I have no stock answer to offer about a life-changing experience or a moment of enlightenment, and it is hard for me to give a comprehensive proclamation of who I am, for my identity unfolds more every day as my experiences grow.

I dislike saying "I am trying to find myself" because my identity is not lost, it just needs more uncovering. Luckily for me, what I love to do and want to be helps me uncover more about myself. I want to be a writer. I may not end up a professional writer but I will always write, even if I am the only one interested in my work, because writing is my self-reflection.

When writing, I sometimes get worked up into such a fervor that I barely know what I am saying. I just let my fingers fly over the keyboard and the ideas pour from my head. When I go back through the jumble of unpunctuated ideas, I notice a theme running through the writing. I don't try to put a moral in the theme, but invariably it happens. Evaluating the theme and the rest of the writing helps me interpret my own character and decipher my at times bottled-up feelings.