Katie's blog on life

Friday 7th February 2020

Overall, on reflection, this week has mostly been a good one. I’ve managed to maintain an air of positivity whilst also living and breathing in a setting in which I do not necessarily thrive. My therapist asked me today but what has happened to make it it so and well I guess I didn’t really answer. I mean the good days are more often than not so few and far between I rarely take in what has made them good. I just roll with them until they become indifferent.

But maybe L is right, maybe something has happened. It’s weird. I’ve had this panicking feeling in my heart all week that well because I have less than one year of therapy and I’m going to be honest, I haven’t used it terribly well. I am always in and out of crisis. My ability to remain stable is somewhat haltered at the 3 week mark. Sometimes before, sometimes after but generally within 3 weeks of a good spell things begin to change.

I don’t think I allow myself to get better.

I have now officially spent more than half my life battling mental illnesses, maybe more. This is just what I can remember from the age of 14, starting with depression and some anxiety. I was always the odd kid. As I said to my therapist earlier today, maybe I was never meant to fit in or get better. Maybe this is all I am. I said to her, on good days I know I’m worth more than I give myself credit for but on my bad days I don’t believe I’m worth the good times.

This in itself is a hard thing to sort out in one’s own brain – those coflicting extreme viewpoints – almost pulling me from one side to the other. L also mentioned today that my group therapists, L and I are going to have a meeting next week because apparently I keep walking out and I am having too much contact with the team at the moment – outside of my sessions. So even though I am there, I am not using group and when I am present in individual, I do use it but those are few and far between. This got me thinking, I am using the team because I’m trying to stop myself from falling deeper into the depths of hell, instead of falling deeper into my mind. But maybe I shouldn’t – maybe I should go back to looking after number one. This meeting has upset and worried me.

Am I doing the wrong thing in asking for help? Am I meant to suffer?

It’s got me thinking again how few people understand me and how my brain works. I feel like I need time to just stop. You got it. Stop. No breathing, no cooking, no working, no eating, no excersise, no talking. Just stop.

But this is life, raw honest and beautiful and it just keeps going on and on and on.

Why is accessing my feelings so difficult?

Yesterday, I began to write an open letter to my therapist explaining or rather trying to explain some of my emotions that I am currently experiencing but fuck me it was hard. I actually went from talking about a certain situation to to being absolutely cut off. And that was writing down how I was feeling. I found it tricky to stick to the feelings of hate, anger and sadness. It was almost as though as soon as they came, I needed to exchange them for something else. I couldn’t sit with them. I think personally it was the sadness that I couldn’t actually sit with, thinking back to yesterday. I think this is what happens in therapy. I get sad. I subconsciously change my mood in order to not have to deal with the sad emotion. In therapy I am often angry or hyper and my therapist always asks me what is underneath that and I always say nothing. I am blank just because I am. But now I fear that simply isn’t true. Underneath all this is just sadness, maybe grief. Maybe I am in the process of grieving for so many lost things, Things that I know, and those that know me know but that maybe I’ll go into on a different post.

How does one learn to stick with emotions and feelings? Rather than going straight to the extreme of the emotion. How does one learn to stay in the grey area? This is something that I struggle with a lot, black and white thinking, feeling, acting. Having everything as one or the other, not the in between. It’s normal and automatic for me. But I know that it is indeed not normal to go to such extremes on a almost daily level.

When I am thinking and not feeling I find it even harder to fit within the moulds that people, society and this world have created for me. I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. And on some days I’m okay with that but on most days, this sticking out makes me feel like a fake, weird. It affects my self esteem and whether I think people love no wait like and care for me,

And as I said it’s a difficult thing to try and change but I’m sure as hell trying to,

Sleep

Can someone please find a way of telling my own brain that sleep is pivotal and conducive to better mood and less destructive thoughts. Having been up since 4:30 AM I am well and truly over this day. I mean as things go, it hasn’t been too much of a crazy one but also here at half past 10 I am yet again struggling to sleep.

It is crazy how much an eefect a bad night’s sleep has on you. It leave my mind jumbled and forgetful, unable to spell or think. I feel like I am in some kind of trance all day and then when it gets to sleep time again, my ears are itchy and my eyes sore yet my brain is on over drive. I feel over emotional and want to count sheep. I@m aware it is also half way through the week tomrrow and one of my longest days and I already can’t wait to get home to sleep.

Tried to organise 2 x appoints with medical professionals today to help me with medicayion but no such luck.

Wish me luck tonight with the whole sleeping thing and hopefully I’ll be abel to type clearer tomorrow

Extreneous noise

Today has mostly been a good day, I mean I didn’t sleep very well with lots of horrible dreams but I guess when do I actually sleep well haha. So anyway, I digress I woke up in an okay mood despite the sleep and was working through the morning at work. Everything was going well blah blah blah, I’m boring myself now and then I had to leave for group therapy.

Normally when I have therapy I’m a bit sketchy emotionally which is perfectly acceptable considering it’s therapy, but today I was still good by the time I got to the hospital. I even had a joke with the therapists – shock horror! I know not like me at all. I’m just trying to get out of my survival mode. Anyway, so after check in the first person started talking and I thought “ Great, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna stay present all therapy session” and that is when the noise started. Fuck me! It started with someone trimming the bushes or lawn, that grating noise rrrrrrrrrrrrr over and over. It was so loud it felt like it was in the room with me. Followed by some I don’t even know how to word it, banging but like into the ground Bash bash, bang, bang rrrrrrrrrrrr and a man kicking off with all of the shouting and swearing and aggressiveness fuck you, what you gonna do about it bruv. I am a patient here. You can’y kick me out bang bang bang rrrrrrrrr. Every time I got settled another noise came, louder and louder.

Today, I used all my strength just to stay with people talking but those extraneous noises did something to me. They made me feel sad, and out of it. The noises made my legs shake like no end and they made me so angry! They were so loud I couldn’t physically hear or remember what was being said to me by the therapist or others and I tried and I tried and I tried to stick with it.

After the hour and a half of noises had finished I felt exhausted but also more numb, I’m not sure. Like something had exploded in me and I just needed to curl up in a ball and cry. Gosh I needed silence and to cry so many tears.

But I had to fix my brain, go back to work and try and crack on. The afternoon was okay too to be fair and I managed a run and to make a crab, chilli and vegetable papperdelle. Meal one from scratch this week done.

But it got me thinking how fragile my brain is to noises and things I can’t control.

It’s a funny old world isn’t it?!

Honest, raw and vulnerable

That is what I’m going to do here, today. Be honest, raw and vulnerable.

I have been up from 07:30 pondering life, actually I’ve been pondering how I have fallen very much so, during the last 2 days. I’m not going to lie, or sugar coat or try to make excuses today.

Last week was really fucking shit. Let me tell you that from the start. I felt my energy deplete, the self critical, destructive voices in my head got louder and louder. This has been happening for a few weeks and I’ve been trying to remain strong and positive but last week it all came to head. I self harmed 3 days in a row, not in ways that are obvious to anyone but I did. Talking to my therapist about it on Friday and she seemed appauled. I have a weird relationship with self harm anyway, I never see it as bad as it is on myself but maybe that’s because I don’t care enough about myself to see it as atrocious. But yes she seemed appauled at my actions and behaviour and if I’m honest a little frustrated. With me, with having to go back to crisis plans and crisis management which we have done 50 billion times over.

Sunday evening, all of Monday and Tuesday I don’t really remember. And it is that which worries me more. It’s like my own brain is failing me.

But what I’ve come to realise is that I’ve been getting steadily worse over a 3 – 4 week period and that is the amount of time my alcoholic flat mate has been back. I have noticed that I’ve just stopped. Stopped caring. Stopped trying with life, people, friends, therapy both group and individual therapy. Stopped thinking. Just stopped. And I think or rather I’m more certain than not is that I’ve been thrust back into survival mode, never knowing what is going to happen when I arrive home, making sure that my reactions aren’t too much or cause trouble. Feeling insecure and unsafe in myself and my surroundings. Going back to and reliving the same emotions that were within me throughout my whole childhood and unable to stop or control them.

I am doing the bare minimum to get by. I am in some kind of automatic mode, in a weird world, whereby time just flies by and I don’t know what day or hour or season it is. Whereby everything just accumaltes into one big mass until pop, I’m done.

And I know the signs very well but when I start falling I can’t stop until I have fallen off that bridge, caused havoc or stopped. I can’t tell anyone what is happening until it’s over and I begin to start to have a little bit of strengh to start trying again. To start breathing and noticing things. To see the seasons start to change by the flowers starting to grow and feel the wind on my face and to feel sad and lonely and upset and angry and just okay. To not go to sleep and wake up exhausted but to sleep and be a part of this world once again.

This time round, I appear to have noticed the fall quicker or maybe I’ve fallen quicker but I am trying to work through this, even if it’s forcing myself out on my bike to get some food which I can’t really afford but it gets me out, or if it’s sticking ridigly to routines and attending therapy and going to the cinema on a lazy sunday rather than watching the rugby alone and running 3 times per week and going to work and making food from scratch, All those things that fall by the way side when my mind is not okay. When I know that I’m not okay.

Maybe today or tomorrow I will begin to laugh again and sleep better and feel a tiny bit better.

Thank you, if you’ve managed to get to the bottom of this long post, I appreciate it!

Have a great Sunday x

Friday night

I feel flat and numb and exhausted from all of this week. I have been lying in my bed in the dark and silence since 7:30 pm. All day it has felt like noise is too much, any noise from people talking at apparently normal volumes and it is almost as though I’m on hyper alert. So here I am at 8:15, writing in the dark with my eyes almost shut hoping for the say and the week to he over. Like I said I am exhausted beyond anything, I can’t keep my eyes open. My jaw is clenched and I feel no ease. It is like I am in another world, cut off from all emotions. Just numb. I don’t know what has happened. I feel like I have broken down. My mind has stopped working.

Flat, numb, cut off

Time to sleep now I think

zzzzzźzzzzzźzzzz

Trust

This is such a hard fucking topic for me. Trust is such a key thing in order to open up and tell people what you are feeling. Even with those closest to me, I find it hard to tell them about my most authentic feelings and I still hide what sometimes feels like, the real me. And it’s weird cos I do trust my best friends, utterly, entirely but something in my mind stops me from divulging my most difficult feelings. It’s like I think I am going to be judged for how I think and feel even though I know deep down that I’m not. That they are good people and haven’t given me any reason to even suspect that off of them. But my mind just goes nope.

And it’s the same when I call my psychiatric team. I know that I need a bit of extra help but I don’t actually know how to ask them for it. And when I dp get around to calling them I kinda skirt around the issues, making things seem better than they are. It’s a coping mechanism. I never really let anyone get too close. Guess this means that they can’t hurt me by abandoning me mentally or physically.

And I don’t know why and I am not terribly sure how to change it but I do know it’s changing. 2 years of therapy has helped me be more open, no I’m not completely open but I am a lot more open than I was 2 years ago,

Baby steps. We just gotta take some baby steps.
My therapist.

Cycling in the dark

I can’t do it, especially after a day with glasses on and concentration full blast. When I ride in the dark, my mind plays tricks on me. I see shadows and figures of people and things lurking in the unseen. It scares the shit out of me but also makes me worried about my own mind.

Am I going crazy?

I just don’t know.

Bath tub musings

What does it require to heal your heart and your mind from trauma or or loss or disappointment? Does it require inner strength as well as outer strength?

Cos I believe I am a strong person but I am struggling immensely with healing and understanding why and well lemme just say life has become difficult again. I’ve hit a cross road in therapy but it is not as though I don’t want to heal it’s that the problems are too difficult. They are suffocating me when I try to talk about them. I’ve come to a stand still. Not taking in part in group therapy, I mean I’m there but I’m not proactive- zoning in and out, white noise in my ears, no concentration and I’m engaging in old destructive habits that I know aren’t good for me but help me feel calmer, make me think straighter.

How do I talk about what’s going on for me when I’m such a deeply feeling person, when although I know I can’t change the past, I am indeed stuck in it. Hoping and waiting for it to change, for my childhood to be different, to take away the memories and the hate.

I’m worried I’ve fallen but no one knows because I won’t tell them and even if i do tell them I don’t know that they understand me or who I am or what I am / have been through. Being a survivor isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s like living in my worst nightmare, struggling to breathe. When I sleep, I don’t sleep. I toss and turn and cry. I wake up more exhausted than when I went to sleep.

And no one knows……

Slow Sunday’s…

I’m not gonna lie, it’s been a bit of a slow Sunday with too much time to think. I came back to London early doors this morning and did the menial tasks when I arrived back like my food shop and washing. Then I tried to distract myself with ‘ The Grudge’ at the cinema. But my god was it shit ha.

Feeling not so well physically today, with an annoying tickly cough which doesn’t quite ever go and a runny nose. So I’ve taken some night nurse and hoping to have an early night. Tucked up in bed already with my blue screen on and gonna try and sleep.

Catch ya on the flip side!