October 2024 – jengettinglost

Therapy, Emotional Confusion, Processing, Feeling Lost

Jennifer / October 23, 2024

WARNING! Foul language ahead! I actually wrote this post a week ago, but I haven’t gotten around to uploading it since I’ve been busy with my return to work after my sick leave. The past two weeks of group therapy has been very revealing to me and left me feeling so mixed inside. Mixed because of my new understanding of what it means to have self compassion, mixed because I learned that my feelings won’t go away even after I accept them and choose to do what’s right for me, and mixed because I always thought that me caring so much was party of my personality and not a trauma response. I feel so confused as though I don’t know who I am and I don’t know what to identify with. I’m hurting because of what I spoke about in my last post, but I’m also hurting because I don’t understand if that hurt is real, an overreaction, or just all of my confusion. All the therapists in group would tell me “your feelings are valid” in response to me not knowing if the hurt is real, but honestly, it doesn’t make me feel any better. I thought that self compassion meant I shouldn’t be mad at myself or hard on myself if I don’t achieve a certain expectation I set, if I make a mistake, if something goes wrong in my life, if someone hurts me, to allow myself to stay in bed all day if I’m depressed, etc. I thought it meant that if I’m brought to tears by something or someone, that I shouldn’t blame myself for it and that I should be more understanding towards myself if I were to become depressed, anxious, or anything else that would cause me to respond in an unhealthy manner; to be gentle with myself. What I learned is that self-compassion means to do what is best for me even if it’s difficult and to understand that I will still feel all of the emotional pain from before making that decision because doing what’s good for me doesn’t mean it won’t hurt. When I was texting with a friend about this, I told him, “I need someone to explain to me what to do with my feelings ?“. He said “You feel them! lol”. Frustrated about my current situation, I replied to him “Where the fuck do you out them!? To stop feeling them? I thought my feelings would go away once I felt them? Like I’m done feeling them now.” He told me, “No lol.”, and I asked him, “Why no!? And why do you have to laugh when you say that!?”. He replied “Nope they stay. Because I know you rolled your eyes lol”. Thought to self…..I feel exposed ?, and of course my reaction was ” Fuuuuck. Like WTF. I don’t fucking like this.” I shared this interaction with my one-on-one therapist and she reconfirmed what my friend told me, and she further explained that she believes I do everything that I do to protect myself (even when I’m trying to help other people) because I feel so unsafe in the world; I’m trying to protect myself from the pain I might feel by seeing them in pain; I want to get rid of all of the pain and not feel it. “Is she right?”, I thought to myself. I was confounded about this because then I wondered “If she’s right, am I acting selfishly? Am I really not a good person? Is this something else that I’m doing wrong now?”, and now, because I’ve been made aware of this disconnect between what’s happening inside of me and what I’m presenting externally, all I can wonder is “Do people really think I’m an asshole whenever I think I’m trying to help or show support?”. This hurts so much, I just want to isolate myself again and stop interacting with everyone. I feel like I’ll never do or say the right thing with other people. I wish people could understand how much is going on inside my head all the time. Six months into DBT group therapy and my one-on-one is only now telling me that she thinks she understands the way I think (at least that makes one of us). I’m so black and white, I’m so literal and concrete, I struggle with the grey and my brain is also continually working in the “should” (I should be this way, I should do this or I’ll be a bad person if I don’t, etc) is what she tells me, and because of this, I’m always reacting, always on the defence and always scanning for what can hurt me so I can protect myself from the pain. This is why she doesn’t want to give me rules to follow during my treatment process, since I’m always looking for instructions and rules so I can stay in the black and white because that’s so easy for me to understand. I become obsessed with following rules because those are my guidelines and I believe if I follow them, I’ll be “safe” and “good”; the unknown terrifies me because I don’t know how to protect myself in the world, with other people, and against my own judgement of myself. So, my self-compassion the past two weeks has been to actually continue what I’d typically do in daily life; continuing with exercise, engaging with friends and family, running errands, cleaning my home, eating, and not fall into the behaviour that I’d typically fall into, such as isolation and rumination. Of course this has now become easy for me to do (even if I’m still hurting) because of how clearly the concept was explained to me. I’ve done it again, I’ve gone ahead and made it black and white in my head and I can operate in a literal and concrete manner, exactly what I’m not supposed to be doing. I’m already annoyed and frustrated with myself. Jen

World Mental Health Day

I’m feeling really sad today. Last night I got broken-up with, if it can even be called that. I was dating someone for a month, we both liked each other, but because of certain life circumstances the decision to not continue was made. I’m not angry or insulted and I don’t dislike the person for doing this; I actually respect him profoundly for taking the time to think about it, for sharing with me exactly how he was feeling, and for the respectful and caring way he made sure it didn’t impact me negatively. So yes, I’m sad to have found someone with all of the qualities that I’ve been looking for and to still not have it work-out, but I’m accepting of his decision in making sure he did what was best for him. This was the first time I’ve dated anyone since being diagnosed with BPD almost two years ago, and in all honesty I’ve been really nervous and worried for myself (I still am) because of how painful attachment and loss has been for me; it’s why I keep most people at a distance, even friends. But I’m so proud of how far I’ve come at managing my emotions (especially pain) since starting treatment. Two years ago this type of situation would have triggered a deep rooted hurt in me that I would have believed I was worthless or that my life didn’t have any value unless someone was in it, especially since I grew up being educated in all of the colourful ways that this was the case. Today however, I love and respect myself more, I see and know my value, my life feels fuller, and I’m better at understanding other peoples actions and words aren’t a reflection of my worth. I’m sharing this experience and these details with you because it’s so difficult for outsiders to truly understand how mental illness and mental health veritably touches every single facet of a persons life, way of thinking and way of acting, and what an outsider may see (if they see anything at all) is just the figurative tip of an iceberg. Today is World Mental Health Day and all of last week was Mental Illness Awareness Week. These dates are so incredibly important to me that the last few weeks I’ve had them in my mind, wondering what I can do to make a difference. Last year I held a very personal and candid public talk to try to raise awareness and raise funds for the hospital that saved my life and helped me through treatment. This year, well, if I’m not going to lie, I feel a bit defeated. Last year, no one donated and I felt hopeless because of it, so since I’ve been sick with long-covid for the past two months, I have fallen into using the excuse that I was too sick and exhausted to prepare anything. How can a person share with other people that they almost died, that they were on the verge of killing themselves and that they had to walk into a hospital emergency to prevent it from happening, that the mental health specialists at that hospital are the reason this person is here today, and then for the people listening to this not want to donate in support to a hospital that is so considerably underfunded they’re not able to treat everyone? It was so difficult for me not to take this personal. I felt like a failure, and as someone with BPD, my mind was equating the lack of donations to the value of my life, zero. “My life, the fact that I’m alive, isn’t important to people otherwise if it was, they would have made a donation to show it, in thanks for helping me stay alive.”, is what I kept telling myself. This is what my mental illness looks like. For the weeks following my talk, not seeing any donations coming in, I kept asking myself “Did they hear me when I said I wanted to kill myself and I had to go to the hospital to make sure I didn’t?”, “Did they not care when I said I was struggling to get the attention of professionals for a year and was even hung-up on (after I explicitly said I wanted to kill myself) by 811 and told that I need to stay on the waiting list?” “Why did I even bother opening up to people about my struggles? It did nothing and I violated my own privacy by doing so. I never should have done so. Now everyone knows these personal details about me and it didn’t help anyone or anything.” Part of my work is to try to understand the grey in life. My thinking is very black and white and I struggle enormously when things are not blatantly clear, when they’re grey and ambiguous. I don’t know what to think of them, my brain doesn’t know how to classify them and I feel like I’m grasping at straws trying to make sense of them; truly at a blank. My brain LOVES working in definitives. I spoke with my Revered and with the Manager of the Saint-Mary’s Hospital Foundation, sharing my thoughts and feelings with them, and they both tried very hard to help me see the positive in what I had done, reminding me that even though I didn’t manage to collect any donations, sharing my story will help others going through the same struggles feel less alone and less helpless. My therapist told me “I truly believe you do not have one mean intention inside of you” and that she thinks I’m trying to heal my own pain by taking away the pain of others. Those words were so painful to hear, I had to sit there in silence because I wasn’t able to say anything, and when I finally could, I said to her “I don’t want anyone else to feel the pain that I know and