It’s been awhile again since I have last blogged. I don’t know why I never make a habit of this when I love to write so much and I know it’s a strength of mine as well. It helps me process things and it goes right in line with my introverted self and needs.

I’m totally off of Wellbutrin now. I have been off of it completely for about two months now I think. A few months before that, I had gone about a month without it then too. I went to see my psychiatrist yesterday and let her know I was totally off of it now. She knew that I was considering tapering off of it and that I had gone off of it before. It’s so nice that she didn’t guilt me at any point about doing this. So many times they panic and think it means you’re not doing well psychologically. Maybe the difference is that I chose to go onto the medication in the first place, and I sought out the help without it being forcibly done for me. My oldest brother and my father did not have the same experience. There’s quite a difference between Bipolar type 1 and Bipolar type 2 (which is what I’m pretty sure I have even though I’ve only been diagnosed with Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified).

I felt really liberated having that quick talk with my psychiatrist and with her seeming to believe in me being able to stay off of it. After going through what I have gone through in the past with my psych issues and worrying that I might permanently need to be on Wellbutrin, I felt so free leaving that office. Only time will tell how I will be months from now, but all I know is that I never expected that I could come off of Wellbutrin so easily and barely notice the difference. The psychological reality that I was in before I started Wellbutrin was absolute rock bottom and I honestly never thought I would be anything other than suicidally depressed after that last episode. I had never been so low for so long and I also never thought I could be happy or at least stable again without being dependent on Wellbutrin.

This whole thing has me thinking a lot about the impact that your environment has on you. It’s HUGE. My circumstances were totally different when I went on Wellbutrin. I was still living at home with my mom and felt totally and utterly hopeless about my future. So many things have changed in my life since then. I have been living with my boyfriend Zak for a little more than 3 years. We have been together almost 5 years now. He’s helped me so much in reclaiming my sense of self. He’s a staunch individualist and I have always respected him a lot for that. He’s taught me how to develop and maintain healthy boundaries and how to work on not feeling guilty about doing so.

I also have kept a solid job for almost 3 years now. I transferred to another program in October 2014 but I’m still at that job now. Before this I couldn’t hold down a job either. This company, as corrupt as I have realized it to be, at least recognizes the strengths that someone like me has and it allows you to be an individual still. I do appreciate that and I fit right in working with individuals that are complicated and strange themselves.

I’m still a very emotional person but I reign it in a lot more now. I seem to have finally learned how to channel it enough to not let my issues spew all over whoever I’m around. I have learned when to hold my tongue and how to act in certain situations. It still tires me if I ever have to perform but for the most part I can be myself where I work and that helps a lot.

I got a bit off track here. I started talking about environment. Environment is huge. Now that I no longer live with the dysfunctional people in my family and I no longer am sucked right into their issues or their boundary issues (because I rarely seem or talk to them), I’m doing so much better. I’m am Empath and so growing up in the family I did and being around them far longer than I should have been really took a toll on me. I still have some trouble balancing family with my life except now it’s the opposite of how it used to be. Now I don’t make much time for them and I chose my own needs over theirs (which is exactly what I needed to do before but honestly couldn’t physically do it while still living with them).

Living with Zak has been really nice for the most part. He’s been healthy for me to live with, in that we are both introverts and both respect each other’s needs for time and space to do our own things. He’s easy to be around, he’s level headed, he’s pretty psychologically stable, and he’s really calm most of the time. That is so the opposite of what I grew up around. I feel like I finally got to recover from my past by living with him. He’s allowed and helped me to grow more into myself and my own interests, whereas my family always kept me so absorbed in their own drama that I eventually ended up not knowing who I was anymore.

I still have high standards for myself that I’m not meeting. But I’m not quite as hard on myself as I used to be despite that fact. I want to make more of a habit out of writing, reading, and making art. I love all three and I know I am good at them. It’s just hard being an introvert because my job is something I’m constantly having to recover from. Most of the time when I come back from work I just watch TV shows I like, smoke weed, and eat food. I tend to not feel like I have the energy to do my hobbies instead, or something. I’m on a mini vacation from work right now, which is probably why I actually started writing a post. I could write so much more but I’m going to leave it at this. As always, I want to strive towards self-actualization. I just need to find a good balance between being patient with myself and pushing myself to put time into my hobbies.

I constantly have to put tons of effort into being more positive and into getting closer to staying with those emotions once they do come around. It’s not enough that I’m on anti-depressant, the only one that has ever worked for me. I haven’t been in therapy for a few years now, also partially because of the issues I have. I have a phone phobia and trust issues, so it’s insanely hard for me to even pick up the phone and call different therapists. I like to think that I don’t need a therapist anymore, that I have shit until control now, but I don’t. I need to admit to myself that I am still a damaged person, and that no matter what I do I will never fully be “healed” from the emotionally abusive and controlling childhood I grew up in. I can work on it, I can try to get help in various ways and try to help myself in various ways, but it’s never going to just disappear. It’s something I have to live with. When I started to have panic attacks in my early college years, I was driven towards meditation/spirituality. I sought out books on meditation, and I started to do these meditations fairly often. I started to eat healthier. I did get a lot of help from doing this. I was able to significantly reduce my panic attacks from this. It wasn’t until years later that I finally got on the anti-depressant that got rid of my panic attacks, and significantly improved the other psychological issues I had that lead to me functioning very poorly.

I haven’t lived with my whole dysfunctional family for years. My dad did the most damage on me psychologically by far. My mom did too, but in a pretty different way. After years and years of constant and frightening verbal arguments between my two parents, and years and years of being controlled in every way by my drill-sergeant-esq father, I got pretty fucked up. I also had to watch my oldest brother go through a few different mental breakdowns, as a result of our crazy upbringing. When I was 12 years old I went downstairs in the basement to find my dad holding my brother up against a wall by his throat. My brother had his face all painted up in Mudvayne-esq style. He hadn’t slept in days. My brother was having his first Bi-polar mental breakdown and my insane father thought he could fix him. The problem was that my dad was the one who needed fixing, and no amount of therapy and medications ever really did fix him, or get him anywhere near normal functioning.

I remember seeing my brother taken away by an ambulance. I remember visiting him in the hospital and my dad crying when he told me how my brother said “I’m sorry” to him when he got his first Haldol injection, to take him out of his psychotic episode. I remember feeling such intense sadness and sympathy for the both of them. They were both and still are such damaged people. I tried for so many years to make things better for them, to be there for them, to try to psychologically support and care for them in a way that most people couldn’t. What I did and what they fostered was mostly just a really unhealthy and psychologically dependent relationship with the two of them. I’d like to try to “re-frame” my upbringing but it’s really no use. The damage was done and all I can do now is try to heal. All I feel I can really do is try to learn how to cope in a healthy way. But at 25 years old I have still yet to learn how to do that.

I’m not the same exact person I was as a moody 13 year old. I don’t spend my time feeling sorry for myself or being depressed all the time. I don’t feel hopeless about everything like I used to. I’m free from the bonds of my family that lead to fuck me up so badly. But like I said before the damage was done, and it will last me a lifetime.

I believe I was born a Highly Sensitive Person and an Empath. Then I grew up in a household that was terrible for someone like me. My upbringing would fuck up people who are minimally sensitive, never mind someone as sensitive as I was/am. My parents were/are both really sensitive people as well. But something tells me they aren’t as sensitive as I am. I felt everything that happened between the two of them, between me and each of them separately, between my two brothers, between my brothers and my parents, all so strongly. I felt the impact of all of it. I’d rather view myself as a survivor than a victim but at the same time I don’t think I’ve loved myself enough to validate the fact that I was a victim. I

feel like no one truly understands me. I have felt like that for most of my life. Every time I get anywhere near close to feeling like someone understands me, I find out in one way or another that they don’t. They have no idea what my mind is like, they have no idea just how emotional I am. I know I can’t use this as an excuse for me to treat anyone any particular way, but I feel like I put so much fucking effort into treating everyone really well. I feel like I’m generally super caring towards most people, and I generally love people. I see the best in everyone, much more than most people I know. Because I have such a deep understanding of psychology though and of emotional sickness though as well, I can clearly see other people’s issues too. Because I am so empathetic and highly aware of how people can be emotionally affected by others’ words though, I refrain from criticizing people as much as I can. It’s really hard for me to be open and honest with people when it comes to their faults, even though I try so hard to be.

I hold so much in. Since I have taken the Myers’ Briggs Personality Test, and got the result of INFP, things make even more sense. I’m mostly introverted and also very much driven by my emotions, I internalize my emotions. I have *so* many emotions too, and I know the whole spectrum of them very well. There’s so much that I don’t verbalize to other people, for the sake of not bringing them down. I also don’t open up about these things either, because the last thing I want to do is be the way I used to be. I used to be so unraveled that I couldn’t help but talk in depth and way too often about my problems and what I’ve been through. I lost many friends and boyfriends for this reason. I had a close friend tell me that I needed professional help, and then he stopped being my friend. I’ve had many people abandon me. I understand why. Now I shut down more than ever when I’m emotionally upset or stressed. It’s been so rare that people would actually be empathetic when I did open about these things, and it’s also been so rare that I have not been judged or criticized for being as sensitive as I am. I learned not to trust people. I learned to put their needs and their emotions ahead of my own.

I am so tired of having to explain myself, and then that not even helping matters. I’m so tired of trying so hard not to hurt other people, and chose to hurt myself instead by bottling things up and being hard on myself. I have one close friend now who is the person I have felt the most similar to in my entire life. I don’t get to spend time with her very often though. She has yet to be confused by my reactions to things. She has understood where I was coming from every time, and has been more than empathetic and supportive. We’re so much alike. I think she has been through more trauma that I have though, and as of right now her life is much worse than mine. She tells me to contact her whenever I feel I need to, but I find myself refraining from this because I don’t want to bring her down any farther than she already is. I know she has so much stress and negativity around her as is, the last thing I want to do is add to this. I only want to help her. She’s the only other person in the world that I have actually felt is enough like me to understand why I am the way I am. She’s the only person who has ever actually completely validated the level of trauma I’ve been through. She doesn’t judge me. She just understands and listens. She knows what to say and when to say it. God I wish I could see her more often. But more than that I wish I could learn how to provide myself with that same level of care. I wish I could comfort myself when I get in a dark place. I wish I could make myself feel better, or regulate my emotions. I’ve come along way from where I’ve started but, I still have so far to go.

When things get extra stressful, chaotic, or just overwhelming, I retreat. This is what I’ve learned to do. I withdraw and shut down. Sometimes I will vent to people but that only helps momentarily, and even when I do vent I feel bad about it. I wish I could turn my emotional sensitivity down a few notches. I wish I could also become more assertive. I wish I could fully learn some of the Chakra rights. I need to learn that I have the right to speak and feel without fear of punishment or judgment. I need to learn that I have the right to be and to have. That I have the right to my own personal space and that I welcome and wanted in the places that I live or am. I was never really allowed that when I was growing up. I’m glad that I got into spirituality at that time when I really needed it, but I have lost touch with it again for years. I have been sucked into the responsibilities and realities of adult life. Everything is so serious and stark now and it’s hard because this is a new reality to me. My previous realities were terrible and I never did believe things would get better. They have gotten better but now I have a whole new set of harsh realities to face and I feel like I’m suffocating. I try so hard to remain positive. I somewhat succeed but a lot more so when it comes to other people. I can have generally positive viewpoints on people and I’m good at emotionally supporting other people. But I’m pretty terrible at emotionally supporting myself. I never did learn how to do that. I was never taught how because I was never given consistent and healthy emotional support. In fact most of the time I was just never good enough and whenever I did express emotion in the form of sadness it was invalidated and denied. I was told to stop being a baby, to get over it. I don’t know if I will ever will get over being told to get over it. It’s like the coldest thing you could say to someone in pain, other than worse things like telling them they are worthless (which I have was told many times over as well).

I just want to move into the new chapter of my life and get away from all that is negative or makes me feel hopeless.