Thanks @Portia_RO yeah understanding thought patterns is really good, but doesn’t stop them being painful.
So true that therapy is not an easy ‘fix,’ but soooooooo much hard work. I already knew therapy isn’t a ‘magic wand,’ but I never expected it to be this hard. There are so many things to deal with at once.
When I’m already overwhelmed and exhausted by my symptoms, it makes it even harder to do something that also feels overwhelming and exhausting, even if it’s important. It also doesn’t help that I have a stubborn brain that repeatedly tells be to self sabotage instead of trying to help myself feel better. Which is hard to understand/explain.
It feels like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I don’t want to feel like this forever, I know that because thinking about that prospect makes me feel overwhelmed and leads to suicidal thoughts. But on the other hand, my brain tells me to self sabotage instead of helping myself, saying this is impossible, too hard, and I don’t deserve it.
Just sitting in therapy means I can’t ignore the mess in my head, which can be quite confronting, overwhelming, and discouraging.
I’m not very good at looking after myself. And I still find talking just in general about my mental health so hard and unpleasant.
After therapy I tend to either mentally/emotionally shut down with intense distractions or letting my level of dissociation increase. Or I just ignore whatever I’m feeling and get on with living as if I’m ok, like if we have family over or when I was at TAFE/school, working on my assessments.
I’m not that great at being kind to myself, for lots of reasons. Unrealistically high expectations, feeling like a burden, hating my mind and body for being sick, feeling bad because I feel like I’m not trying hard enough…
I learnt back in primary school (when physical health issues were the main problem) that if I stayed home every day I felt sick, I would never leave the house or get anything done. I learnt how to push through the pain, nausea, fatigue, medical appointments, blood tests, because pain-killers didn’t help. I didn’t even realise suicidal thoughts where an issue, let alone that I was experiencing bipolar episodes, when they started overlapping with my physical health issues.
8/10 years later I still apply that principle and expect myself to function to high standards no matter what I’m going through. But I’m starting to see it means I don’t look after myself enough. And since I managed to function when I was at my worst, I expect myself to function now because I’m quite as bad as I used to be, even though I’m not ok and I’m not coping.
Yeah I was thinking it’s probably a good idea to bring this up with my psychologist. Because it’s kind of an important thing to address to make progress. And it hasn’t disapperd with the change of psychologists like I hoped.
I’ll probably put it in my pre-appointment email because then it’s already brought up. It also gives me a chance to try and word it accurately. An hour can go so fast.
Thanks for the encouragement, I don’t really have a choice but to try and show up for myself. Thank you genetics.
Hope everyone had a good day 💕
