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 love to write. I need to write more than I realize. I want to work towards writing every day. It’s one of the best ways I can process my emotions and thoughts. I excel more at doing so through writing than I do through speaking, and since I’m an introvert it works better for my needs than it does through speaking. My inner life is so rich that I should definitely be writing the stuff down that goes on inside my head. My inner life is much more active than my outer life so it’s best if I make use of that through writing.

I frequently think about how I want to want to improve myself. I frequently think about how I want to get back to having good, productive daily habits that are in line with my values and strengths. I was reminded of something I learned about years ago when I went to the training I went to last week. The speaker brought up “Flow Experiences” and I was reminded of how they really do increase your happiness levels.

Flow experiences are experiences in which you are fully engaged in what you are doing because you love whatever you’re doing. You end up losing track of time and are completely in the moment. Typically flow experiences result from doing things that you are passionate about or strong in, and so they are truly fulfilling experiences. Multiple Positive Psychology books talk about how the more often you engage in Flow Experiences in your day to day life, the greater your happiness levels will become. This is one way to slightly improve your baseline happiness levels.

My flow experiences include hiking, writing, reading, creating music, making art, and meditating. If I were to do these six things regularly, or atleast a few of them every day, I know I would feel happier. I would be doing the things that I truly love and am good at, and would be living a life that’s more congruent with my values.

One good thing is that for the past several months, whenever I have a day off, going hiking is a priority of mine. I don’t always make it since the daylight is gone by about 4:30 pm lately and I have a second-shift schedule, but I atleast have the internal motivation to atleast strongly want to go hiking on my days off. I also want to get to a point where I go hiking or atleast walking before I go to work too.

I forget what year it was in college but I think it might have been my first or second year when I started to really get into meditating. What motivated me to do so was when I start to get panic attacks a lot, and I also had tripped not long before then so that reminded me of just how spiritual of a person I truly was. Before then I was an atheist. During that trip I was opened up to the spiritual plane and it was the most amazing experience of my entire life. I actually saw energy itself, in everything. I saw the energy fields around the people I was with, I saw how people had different aura colors that were more predominant than other colors. At the time I didn’t really know what energy fields or auras were but I got really into them after that.

Everything in the room I was in, which was filled with creative/abstract/psychedelic art, was alive. All of the pictures were animated. The room itself was filled with this translucent yet multi colored goo type stuff that filled the room starting from the ceiling and was formulated in large cylindrical coil shapes. I understood this as matter itself, which I then learned that matter itself was composed of energy, which is primarily spiritual. This experience felt more real to me than any other “sober” experience I had ever had before. My ego was torn away and I was exposed to the spiritual realm, which was directly in conflict with the reality that the ego had formulated and controlled for all of my life before this.

I did experience “ego death” before the highly positive/spiritual part of the trip began. The ego death was the scariest experience of my life. It was like a panic attack times 10, and when I looked in the mirror I felt completely dissociated. I was sure I was going to die, so my panic got worse and I puked a ton. I didn’t know it then but what truly died at that time was my ego, and it’s scary as fuck when it happens because it questions your entire perspective and understanding of reality. The ego convinces you that are in complete control, that you are the center of everything, and that nothing is real except for concrete/factual based information. Ego death reverses all of that programming and so your mind and emotions are given a complete shock. The ego re-gained control later on, but this trip changed my perspective on life for good.

A bit later I went to get Reiki done. Reiki is a spiritual practice in which imbalanced chakras are balanced, blockages are opened up, and repressed emotions are brought to the surface. Your spirit is interacted with in a way that can be felt strongly, even physically. During this Reiki session my Reiki practioner told me that I was an Indigo child. At the time I didn’t know what that meant but I looked it up later and it made *so* much sense. The way that I had experienced my entire life was finally clarified and so instead of feeling like an outsider/alien, I felt like I was here for a reason, for spiritual and healing based purposes, and so I felt special. Again this was a complete turn around from how I felt for all of my life until I was given this information and this experience. After this session I started to meditate daily or every other day for a few months. I felt amazing and my external circumstances didn’t control my emotional state anymore. I felt at one with everything and that was exactly what I needed.

I want to start meditating every day again. I want to start writing every day. I want to start making art every day, like I did after my trip for awhile. I want to hike as much as possible, in as many new places as I can possibly find. I want to re-remember that these are the things that I am here for, these are the things that truly matter, and these things are what make life worth living. Of course having deep connections/relationships with others and spreading as much love and understanding as possible are equally important, but the aforementioned passions are all internal/individually based things that fulfill me the most without depending on any other people to do so.

I have so many damn thoughts in my head all the time I most definitely should be writing them down daily, not once every several months. I don’t even remember the last time I posted on here.

This is probably going to be very random because that’s another thing that happens often in my brain–random and intense thoughts and realizations. It’s not like I can’t focus or something, because once I’m on a certain topic I think about it until there is no more thinking to be done. Then I move on to whatever the next random thing is.

The past couple of days I’ve been reading a lot about/thinking a lot about spirit animals, i.e. totem animals. Most people think it’s total bullshit but I know it isn’t. Plus I don’t care if people think it is or not so I don’t know why I’m even bringing that up. Anywho, there’s also a difference between your spirit animal and your spirit messenger. I believe I have multiple spirit animals, and I think most people do. Any one person is too complex to only have one. Right now mine is a fox. I’m going back and forth in my head about whether or not this is my actual spirit animal or if it’s a spirit messenger for this point in time. I’m starting to lean towards the former. I’ve come to remember that I have seen foxes randomly much more than any other animal. I can think of several specific times when I’ve seen them and where that was as well. What’s making me more certain about this is that for the past two days I have seen a fox in the daytime. They typically aren’t about during the day. So that makes it unusual right there. Also, today when I saw a fox, I was literally 20 feet away from it and I was on foot. I was JUST thinking about the whole spirit animal thing too, while on my walk. I casually happen to look over to my left and I see a fox slowly running in the other direction. I was so close to it. Yesterday I saw one right at dusk, and it had run across the road. I saw it when I was driving. Last week, I saw a fox too. I was driving down the highway, and it was around dusk. The fox ran right across the highway, which is also a pretty rare thing (usually it’d be a different type of animal like a raccoon or a possum). I remember seeing foxes frequently around the place I grew up.

The one unpleasant experience I had with foxes was when I hit one with my car It was about 2:30 AM. I was driving back home from my brother’s house, and I was going over this part of the road that has a big hill in the middle of it. Right after the hill the road goes downhill. When you are approaching the uphill and the whole time you are on it, you can’t see the rest of the road ahead of you. This time TWO baby foxes were just playing right in the middle of the road. Since I couldn’t see the part of the road where they were at and I was going somewhere around 40 miles/hour (speed limit on that road), I saw them too late to miss them. Also, what was even more weird, was that they each ran in opposite directions. The left one was able to run out of the way, but the one that ran right wasn’t so lucky. I had slammed on my brakes, but I have an old car and the brakes aren’t great. I was able to slow down to like 20 miles/hour, but my car hit the fox that was running to the right. I felt SO horrible. It was so weird that this happened. It didn’t make sense. Why were they playing in the road that late at night? Why wouldn’t they be playing in the tall grasses and fields that were on both sides of them? Also, I’ve never come across multiple animals while driving that were simply just playing on the road. Almost always they are trying to get to the other side and they notice the car coming towards them too late. It just crushed me that this happened. I am an avid animal lover. I am hurt so much by seeing or hearing any animal in pain. Why did it have to be the largest type of animal and one that I love as well? The answer I’m realizing now, is because the fox is my spirit animal. It has showed up in my life on several different occasions, and it’s rare to come across a fox anyways.

I’ve been reading so much about spirit animals. It fascinates me and I wholeheartedly believe what I’ve read. The Native Americans were very wise and I believe they were spot on about what’s to be valued in life. Native American beliefs don’t sound odd or nonsensical to me at all, unlike for most people. I love that they would use every single part of an animal after they killed it. They knew they had to kill animals to survive but they also knew just how sacred animals are, and so they made sure not to waste any part of them. I really wish people would still be that way. I hate the idea of hunting. The fact that people consider it a sport, the fact that most people hunt simply for enjoyment. They cut off the heads of their kills and mount them on walls. They take pictures of them grinning next to the animal they killed. They act like this animal is a conquest of theirs and it is utterly sickening to me. This kind of behavior would never be accepted if it involved only people, i.e. people hunting other people just for fun. I hate that so many people believe that animals are inferior to humans. I hate that people forget we are animals as well. I hate that people believe animals don’t have emotions and that they aren’t capable of thought. What is the basis of this? People need to learn that just because something isn’t glaringly obvious to you or shown right to your face does not mean that it doesn’t exist. There are so many things about life and all that it contains that cannot be seen, heard or put in words. There are so many experiences that different species have that are not the same for other species.

Anyways, I’m so glad that I have my own beliefs and thoughts. I’m so glad that I haven’t fallen victim to other people’s belief systems and I’m so glad that I question everything. I’m glad that I want to understand as much as I can, and I’m glad that I’m also able to withstand being around people or groups that have values that are the opposite of mine without starting an argument with one of them. I cherish my inner world and it has guided me more than anything else. I spent so much of my life having no choice but to have a constant earful of unwanted advice and lectures from my parents. Yes I am opinionated but not in the same way that my parents were–to the point where they were completely closed off from considering different points of view. They were so damn inflexible and close-minded.

I’m glad that I now know that I am the key determinate of my own life. No longer am I a part of the crowd that believes external forces are in control of our lives. No longer am I stagnant in my beliefs and mindsets. Now I am so interested in change. I love change. I love transformation. I find that most of the time it’s positive. I do believe that when you are a kind person and when you keep an open-mind, life will reward you. I’m also glad that I’m not jaded into an imbalanced point of view on the positive end of things. I don’t think that people are bad for doing bad things or that “bad” things are to be completely rid of. Bad things are there for a reason. If we didn’t have the bad we wouldn’t learn about the importance of change or about just how great the good is when we experience it. There are so many people that believe the world is mostly comprised of bad things and that some things/people are just plain evil. I know that the key to enjoying life is to always try to keep it balanced. I believe there are just as many good things in life as there are bad, and that each requires the other to exist. I believe that people are mostly good but I’m also aware that everyone has the ability to do evil/to be a bad person. The thing that I’m getting at is that I believe there is always choice involved. I believe in free will. I believe that the individual has a lot more control over their life and how it turns out than what the media and other people have lead them to believe. I believe that there are some conditions and disorders that will never go away, but I also believe that there’s a lot people can do to cope with these things. I believe there is always room for improvement, but I also believe that some things just plateau and that that’s OK too. No one is perfect, and everyone has a reason for being the way that they are.

I am much more interested in dissecting the factors that lead to someone becoming a certain way and in being empathetic about that, than in fixating on the negative behaviors this person has had in the past or still has now. Everybody has a need for acceptance and love. I believe having a lack of that, and people growing up without having consistent and unconditional love, are the ones who come out damaged. I think that’s the fundamental cause of disorders. I don’t blame the individual. I do think the individual needs to take responsibility for their wrongdoings and needs to try to be better, but I don’t expect the individual to completely eliminate that behavior. As much as I hate when people say this, it makes sense to say now. It’s not realistic to think that people will completely eliminate certain parts of themselves that are there because of some deep rooted issues. I believe that if you give everyone a chance when you first meet them, if you are immediately friendly or atleast nice to a new person, it sets a good foundation. Not only does that person feel comfortable around you and feel warmth coming from you, but typically that person will also show the better sides of themselves to you. I know I’m getting vague here, but I don’t want to go into the details now. I’m interested in the bigger picture of life, but I also knows how important the details are as well. Nothing is to be discarded. OK end philosophical grandiose post HA.

I can’t really even remember the last time I posted or what it was about but, a lot has changed in the past couple of months. A lot of good changes. A lot of changes that have been needing to happen for a long time.

On the last day of June I moved out of my mom’s house (finally!) and into my boyfriend’s apartment. So I’ve been living here with him and his brother for a few months now. It’s been pretty great for the most part, other than being really overdue on electric and internet bills and other than all of us being broke and not being able to buy much food. Outside of those things it’s still oodles better than living with my mother and being utterly miserable, feeling like I’d never move out of Granby and like I’d never progress from where I was at. I now have a good job, which I’ve been working at for about two weeks now. It is SO different from all of the other jobs I’ve had, and though it is a lot more demanding in ways that are different than my other jobs, it is demanding in exactly the kinds of ways that I want to be challenged. It is mentally demanding and a bit physically demanding too. I’m the best at mental/emotional work anyways, and I could certainly use some improvements in the physical realm of my body/life, so it’s all good.

I also have a car now, too. I owe my mom a lot of money, as she bought the car outright for me and so I owe her half of what she paid. So I owe her about a grand and a half, and I owe her 50 something monthly for insurance. That is all ok because I’m making good money now. I got my first paycheck last Friday and it was like $330. Of course I ended up going on a shopping spree right after and didn’t realize I’d end up spending $145 in the first couple of hours after I cashed my check, but oh well. I REALLY needed a lot of the clothes I was finally able to buy, after being utterly broke for so damn long. I also contributed a big chunk of cash towards an overdue electric bill that we had. At this new job I make $11.40/hr. It’s pretty awesome, especially considering the fact that I was unemployed for the past two years before that, and even the last time that I was employed I only made $8/hr to do a really shitty food service job. We get paid bi-weekly at my new job, which is one downside if you don’t budget your paychecks very well (which I obviously didn’t this first time around, but I’ll learn). The next time I’ll get paid is this coming Friday. It’ll be a pretty nice check though.

Another good thing about this job is that it’s a set schedule of hours. Every week I work Sundays from 7 am-11 pm (yikes, 16 hours), Mondays 3-11 pm, Tuesdays 4-10 pm, Wednesdays I’m off except we have a 2 hour meeting each Wednesday, Thursdays 3-11 pm, then I’m off every Friday and Saturday. The 16 hour shift is a bit nuts but luckily the job is pretty balanced in terms of what is required throughout the shift. I’d say about half of the time there isn’t much to do and you can somewhat chill. The other half of the time you have to balance helping four different women who have brain injuries and spend most of their time in wheelchairs. All of them need help going to the bathroom (basically being transferred from their wheelchair to the special toilet chair things they use, and then back to their wheelchairs afterwards). Many of them need help to actually pull their pants down and we even have to wipe them sometimes too. This kind of help is the worst part of the job though, and it’s actually not so bad. All of them are pretty interesting people and they all have their own little quirky traits.

I’m developing friendships with all except one of them, the one who is the most disabled mentally and physically. The other women can hold their own weight if they have a bar or walker to hold on to at times, and they can communicate ok, even if it is hard to understand at times. The woman that is the worst off is extremely underweight and cannot hold herself up at all. She needs assistance to do everything. She needs a lot of help to get out of bed and into her chair, and it’s extremely hard to get her seated in it right because she also is very tense muscularly because of her condition. Often she is not seated right because it’s so hard to get her back right up against the back of the chair, and every time we have to help her do this she gets very upset too, so we don’t do extra adjusting because it would make her even more upset. I feel very badly for her, but at the same time she is a very finicky person and she essentially will not let us learn how to help her in the ways she wants/needs to be helped. We have to feed her, and she has trouble swallowing so if she is not fed in a very particular/careful way, she starts to cough for a long time and it’s scary. She is vegetarian and VERY particular about the foods/drinks she will ingest, and so for every meal a special meal has to be made for her. Luckily one of of my coworkers is just as particular/healthy food obsessed as she is, so she knows best how to placate her.

I have made friends with all of the other women easily because they are easy going and not super hard to please. Sometimes they are demanding but they are generally ok to be around. The other woman really makes it clear that she is not willing to be flexible in terms of how we can help her. She makes it really clear that it is unacceptable for us to have trouble understanding what she is saying, that it is unacceptable for us to ask her to clarify often, it is unacceptable for us to switch up who helps her, it is unacceptable for us to explain things to her that she has actually previously asked for us to explain. She is the only one that truly depresses me to be around. It’s not because she is the most disabled, it’s because she is a difficult person to please or get along with. I know what happened to her is a part of why she has become this way, but her behavior seems to be a deeply rooted thing that I am pretty sure was already there before she got sick. It’s just upsetting to be around her because it seems like she is actually trying to make it more difficult for us, in that no matter what we do it’s still not good enough or even mildly ok for her. She constantly does this verbal grunt thing when she gets upset, and she crosses her arms and closes her eyes and starts to cry or almost cry. It takes not much at all to make her get this way, and once she gets this way it’s even harder to help her. She is already being selective in who she wants help from too. She expressed the other night that she wanted to be fed by the same person and that she didn’t want it to keep switching. We explained to her that we had to switch up which coworkers help her because we have to make sure it’s  balanced and we all have to learn how to help her and how to help each individual in the house. This explanation was just disregarded by her and she just said it was not working for her. I totally understand that she is extremely unhappy and her quality of life is very poor. What I can’t be super understanding about is how she persistently lets it be known that she is only thinking of herself and she wants everything to perfectly appease her and her wants/needs. She refuses to bend at all and she refuses to take part in anything that isn’t within her fixed opinions/beliefs. Disabled or not, no one has the right to be that selfish or to expect that someone change everything to be just how they want it to be without considering the fact that there are several other people around that have individual wants/needs as well that are not the same as theirs. 

The newest woman to move in is definitely the sweetest, most appreciative resident in the house. She doesn’t ask for much, and whenever she does ask for help and we help her, she thanks us a lot and says she appreciates it very much. She is so polite and I could tell that from the minute I met her. I first noticed it just through her eyes. She has eyes that are not only pretty but they also emanate how good of a heart she has and how sweet she is. I’m so thankful for her presence in the house. I wasn’t sure how the four and final resident would be but now that I have met her I am so relieved to know that she will actually be the easiest resident to help. It’s really great that she has such a good attitude and she treats people very well, and that she is aware of the fact that the employees are here only to help her and that we care about people very much. The fact that she acknowledges this awareness and expresses it to us makes me feel good. She is essentially bed-ridden but she is still such a sweetheart. She talks like she is from a really rural area and I can relate to that. Her and I have talked about a mutual appreciation for nature and serenity. She has said many nice things about people she has known before and she has expressed her understanding and empathy for others.

I realize that talking about this woman in this way right after talking about the woman on the other end of the spectrum is an example of cognitive “splitting”, but I don’t mean to do that. I have just really noticed how different these two women are in terms of how they treat people and interact with them. Their life perspective seems to be very different as well, and I can’t help but notice and think of how one is the most difficult/hardest resident to help and the other is the easiest/most enjoyable resident to help. I’ve been working a lot, and this job/the residents are certainly taking over my mind a lot. I think about the residents a lot. I suppose I may be obsessing them a bit but I don’t see how I couldn’t when this is the first time I am working a job that heavily involves what I believe to be my best strengths/strongest interests. The core of my being and what it consists of is actually being used in a practical manner, and for the first time that is happening in a more appropriate place/with more appropriate people. For the first time I am helping people in need who I am not related to, friends with, or dating. The job is very interesting and I feel like I am finally succeeding in a job and it is the right fit for me. It certainly could be more psychologically based to be even more suitable to my strengths and would then fit me even more, but regardless this job is still the closest I have ever been to using my skills. It is very rewarding and challenging, and it is also varies between being enjoyable and being difficult.

Anyways I did not intend to write a gigantic post that is almost entirely about my new job, but apparently that is what my mind has been focused on and most affected by in terms of the new changes in my life. On a few different occasions in the past week or so I had a few realizations. One time I was driving and all of the sudden I thought, “Wow I have all of the things I thought I’d never have before. I have a good job, a car, and am living independently from my family”. Another time as I was coming back home from work I thought “You know I have it pretty good”.

This job and the changes in my life have put A LOT of things into perspective for me, and it has hardly been overwhelming to me in the way that I thought it would be. I was afraid of all of these changes before and how they might go, I didn’t believe I could handle them, I didn’t believe I was able to maintain these things never mind actually achieve them at all. Everything has transitioned pretty damn smoothly. I’m not saying it hasn’t been hard at times, or that I haven’t been really tired from it all. I’m just saying that things have finally changed for the better and that all in all I really like change. It has proved to be positive to me in the grand scheme of things.

 

“Mood Disorder NOS.

The diagnostic category of Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified is used when a person is experiencing an atypical depressive pattern; such as showing the highs and lows that are similar to Bipolar Disorder but to a milder degree, or having significant anxiety in conjunction with depressive symptoms. Children and adolescents with Mood Disorder NOS may demonstrate strong swings in their mood and be extremely touchy and irritable, but will not experience mania.”

 

This just cleared so much up for me. I’ve looked up my diagnosis various times and never found something that was specific in any way. This definition is really specific and it describes my psychological problems perfectly. My father and my brother are both diagnosed with Bipolar (1). My mother definitely has had many episodes of Depression and definitely has Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Since I was old enough to understand it and started learning more about mental disorders through living in a crazy family(ha not trying to be offensive here, I’m one of the members) and through my own research, I felt like I had some mix of several different disorders. This Mood Disorder NOS definition is great. I certainly have had a lot of atypical depressive episodes, in which I met all of the criteria for depression, except I still had mood reactivity. I am actually on an atypical antidepressant and it definitely pulled me right out of that horrible depressive episode I was in for so long, so that makes sense too. Also I have always felt like I had a form of Bipolar but I knew it wasn’t Bipolar (1), because I had a lot more depressive episodes and that would only vary with hypomania, not full mania. So I have a low grade form of Bipolar, essentially. The depressive episodes I’ve had, well particularly the last one that I had that was substantial, consisted of the typical depressive symptoms but had a really strong component of anxiety, which is where the terrible insomnia came from during that time. So, I was definitely severely depressed, but I was also agitated in that my brain was STILL too active and overly analytical, so much so that I barely slept at all for about eight months straight. So, I felt primarily numb and dissociated, while also feeling extremely anxious and panic-ridden. I felt like I was living in a non-stop panic attack and I and everything else around me felt unreal. I could barely sleep also because of the anxiety being so high that I literally thought there were demons/bad ghosts in my room at night that were messing with me, and I literally was so panicked that I could not let myself fall asleep. I felt like I might disappear if I did so. I felt like I was locked in my head and living on the wrong plane of existence. I didn’t even feel like I had any variation in my energy levels and I didn’t have an appetite at all. I essentially felt like I was stuck in this permanent state and I didn’t feel like I was alive anymore, yet my brain was still going non-stop and my moods could still be altered to an extent.

 

I went to this support group with my brother earlier in the morning today. He told me about it a few days ago or so, and when I told him it sounded like something I could use as well, he invited me to come along. Apparently you can’t become a member until you provide documentation of your diagnosis. I do have a diagnosis, it’s Mood Disorder NOS. But since I’m in between therapists and psychiatrists right now because I finished umass not that long ago, I don’t have a reference from my psychiatrist yet. In order to get this, since the guy i’m seeing now knows me a lot less than the woman I had before, I have to make an appt with him and tell him who my last psychiatrist was, so that he can get the documentation from her. I don’t know where/when I’ll have to sign a release form for this transfer. I hope this doesn’t become more complicated than it needs to be. But now since I don’t have the van anymore, I can’t just bring myself to my appointments. And the location of the office of this new psychiatrist is in a unique spot in Amherst, so if I can’t borrow my mom’s car then I’ll have to take 2 different buses to get there, and then of course 2 back. Ugh I hope I can just take her car. I really wish all of these psych doctors could get their shit together with the new technologies and that they would just contact my old psychiatrist and get the info from her. I don’t see why I’d need to go through my new psychiatrist who would have to go through my old one, when she is the one that diagnosed me and it isn’t as if my disorder just went away. Couldn’t they just assume that I still have it, obviously I do, since I’m even seeking this place out in the first place. I don’t even see why they need the technical documents. Why can’t I just explain it to them, since they are claiming it’s for the purpose of getting to know me? Nobody would go to the length of faking a disorder and claiming a particular one and then seeking out a support group that requires time and energy. There would be different means to get attention if someone wanted to fake a disorder that wouldn’t be so complicated.

 

Anyways, there’s more I could write about but my posts are typically way too long so I’ll just end it here.

 

My own computer has decided to start being a twat, and it cannot reach the login screen, it keeps going in this stupid loop where it can’t finish the final stage of these updates (which my computer told me I needed to do, and there were 8 of them). After it gets to that stupid screen where it says it’s on the third stage…the screen just goes black and then my computer restarts itself all over again. It’s really irritating. Especially because this wouldn’t be happening if I didn’t do the updates, which I thought were supposed to be things that *helped* the functioning of my computer. Also, it seems that every time I actually fully shut down my computer, somehow that makes my computer worse the next time I go to use it, which makes no fucking sense. Usually I just let it hibernate when I’m not using it, but somehow giving it a total break makes it have more trouble working again. I suppose that’s a bit like humans, actually. People normally get sick as soon as they fully stop running around being really busy. As soon as they take a break from that, that’s when they get knocked down by viruses and whatnot. But what the fuck computers are supposed to function better than humans ha.

I’m on my mom’s computer, and it’s so slow. Don’t get me wrong I mean I am really happy/glad that she has one because I’ve come to realize how dependant I am on my computer. Everyday I check the weather for the whole day online after I wake up so I can figure out what to wear when I go to take my dogs out. New England weather is so fucking erratic that this is relatively necessary, but then again it’s also one of the things I’m OCD about. I like to be fully prepared for whatever weather change their might be, and this was much more important when I was in college still because I couldn’t just come home easily and change if the weather changed. Now I just do it out of habit I suppose. I also go on my Facebook a ton which is a total waste of time but being unemployed and having finished college, while still living in an incredibly towny-town at my Mom’s place, where we are the only ones that live here and she’s working a lot, I tend to be home alone most of the time. So my computer and fucking around on the internet are small things that keep my sanity. If I were a more motivated person I would probably read for hours a day and make art and do things that are actually productive. But being as I’m not except on random days, I tend to waste away my days on my computer. I check this site a lot too and read the blogs that I follow, and I’ve been writing here more often. So I suppose that’s a more productive thing as it’s still all reading and writing.

This computer shit wouldn’t be a big deal if I had thousands of dollars in the bank as i could just buy a new one, but as of now I have about $40, split between two banks, and no income. So that’s not an option, and I’m certainly not going to ask to borrow a ton of money from my mom for a computer, as she works really hard as is to pay for everything and she just worked overtime the past two days in a row, and is now at work again. Asking her for that would be selfish and it would weigh on my conscience as well, because basically that’d mean she’d probably be working even more overtime to help pay for that, while I’d be here sitting at home as usual fucking around on my computer. So I can’t do that. My brother is a computer expert and I emailed him about the issue in detail and I’m waiting for a reply. But again since this is an emergency to me but not to anyone else, I don’t want to continue the selfish behavior of expecting other people to drop what they’re doing to fix a problem of mine.

Basically this has made me fully realize how much time I waste on my computer, and how it affects my brain. When I went outside to walk my dogs, it was nearly silent in my head and I felt very calm. Normally it’s very loud in my head and my thoughts are swirling all over the place. Normally I’m really anxious in one way or the other, and I suppose my computer usage might play a role in this. I’ve always had more mental than physical energy, and my addiction to my computer only fuels my mental energy while continuing to not use any physical energy in order to get more physical energy.

The walk I took with my dogs was less happy as it was really cloudly out and kind of cold, but I went in this cool area in the woods that how more of a desert type feel to it. It’s all sand and rocks, with plants that look like ones that’d be in a dry/hot climate. It’s really cool, it’s almost like a portal to an earlier stage of the Earth, because the rocks there are also really interesting and different. All I could thin was “Moon rocks”. They looked like peices of the moon or other planets, and I collected a bunch of them. I spent awhile just looking through them and being in awe, and then even though I was enjoying myself, I had the thought that I am just a big kid. I’m fascinated by nature and rocks, things that most people don’t even notice or care about, and everytime I see something a little different it’s as if it’s the first time I’m seeing these things. I just felt childish, not necessary in a totally bad way as that means I’m more aware of my connection to the Earth and I’m more appreciative of it than the average person. It was more that it was like I didn’t know what to do with my days if I didn’t have a computer, then I went looking at rocks and collecting them, then I thought about how badly I need a job and income but how much I have trouble and how much I hate the process of finding one. It just made me realize how much time I spend alone too, on a regular basis, and how most people are out working or atleast in civilization for several hours a day, while I’m almost exclusively on my own, and hardly in civilization. I feel a disconnect from society. Whenever I do go somewhere in civilization to do something simple like pick up my meds, I feel dissociated/out of place. I space out and try not to make eye contact with anyone, and I feel like people can tell that I’m different or out of place and feel self conscious about that. That’s why I’ve started to avoid looking at other people directly when I’m in places like that now. Normally I used to look at like *everyone’* face, and a lot of them wouldn’t even see me but I’d basically get absorbed in watching other people.

I’ve just always felt like I didn’t really belong anywhere, yet I belonged everywhere at the same time. Like I could be a member of several different groups but I couldn’t be a member of just one group. I like way too many different things and different people to just choose one, and I never feel like I can just pick a few out of several things. I like a lot of things equally, and a lot. I often felt like people always wanted me to choose their group if I was part of it but not a complete member. When I was taking art classes at umass, I was an art minor and a psych major, and I always felt like the art major students didn’t want me there. It’s like they were insulted that I liked both subjects a lot, they were insulted that I chose to make Psych my major. I also was essentially the only person in every one of my classes other than like two other people that made abstract art. People didn’t like that either. They’d insult my art by saying it was basic or like doodles or that I could “do so much more”. They’d get annoyed that I couldn’t give them a concrete answer as to what it was that I made, and even a few of my teachers wouldn’t accept that I couldn’t explicitly verbalize the process behind my art. I don’t get why the process would need to be explained…I mean art is the exact opposite of language and usually artists are not as good at language because they think primarily in images. I just always felt like somebody somewhere was always trying to push me one way or the other. Essentially no one just accepted that I had so many different interests and I didn’t find anyone that liked as many various thing as I do until my last year at college. Everyone else seemed to just be really into like one or two things. I’m just not exclusive like that with my mind and interests. The world just has way too many awesome things in it for me to just choose a few and ignore the others. I want it all. And I don’t mean I want to possess it all I just want to be connected to a lot of it and I want to be invested in a lot of it.

I guess I feel like a bunch of different circumstances in my life have lead to me feeling like I was different than the average person, leaving me feeling alienated from a lot but more connected than others to more concrete things like nature and animals. The only people I’ve felt really connected to or a lot like are other people that are odd like me, other people that also don’t fit in and they do stand out, other people that the average person might label as a “freak”. I’ve always felt very connected to nature and animals though, and to music too. Even since I was a little kid. Maybe part of the difference is the level of acceptance and openness. Nature and animals alike are very open and accepting. There aren’t requirements for being connected to them, and anyone can have the same interaction with them. Animals don’t pick and choose between people, they love most all people, unless you are a bad person in which case they can sense that and they don’t like you.

I feel both adult and childish in a number of ways, and the the thing is outside of the fact that I don’t have a job, money, or my own place to live, I still feel mentally/intellectually mature. The thing is, in society you aren’t seen as mature *unless* you can show others how you can financially take care of yourself. It’s almost like the mental/intellectual aspect doesn’t even matter. I know so many adults that can support themselves but are very deficient in mental/intellectual/people skill based things.

I do want to get a job and make money so I can buy new things I’ve been wanting/needing for awhile and so I can comfortably move in with my boyfriend, and I do want to be able to start my own completely. I do want to see more people, to interact with more people, and to have more of a purpose. I do want to have a routine again, I want to make structure of my life and I want to be able to see a future.  I want change and I want to change. I want to be more active and balance out my over-active mental energy with physical energy. I want to feel more hope and joy in life. I want to be able to save money to travel. I want to feel excitement to face the day in one way or the other, rather than feeling like I’m wasting my days away. It’s just that these things take time, lots of time, energy, and money. They take persistent energy, they take discipline, and they take confidence.

I did up my dosage from 300 to 450 MG yesterday, and today too. Yesterday it was either the placebo effect or the dosage really did make a difference. I had so much more energy. I took my dogs on a longer walk at a more brisk pace, I did a bunch of chores, I even went for a run! I got a bit over zealous on the running part as I started off running the pace I used to keep when I was an actual runner and was in good shape, and ended up having to stop a few times out of having no breath and having huge side stiches ha. But atleast I tried. Atleast I actually did some cardio. I did it in the rain too, I didn’t care that it was raining. It felt good to do things out of my own motivation, out of my own desire to change. I want to continue that way. I need to keep believing in myself and reminding myself that I feel so much better when I do things on a regular basis like exercise, make art, make music, work a job, read, write, and do chores. I can become better and I want to become better. Than myself, not than anybody else.

So this morning I went to my new Psychiatrist (well he’s actually one I was seeing in the past but then switched to one at umass). Now that I’ve graduated I can’t continue with UMass Mental Health Services. I realized I definitely miss my therapist and I need a new one for sure. I haven’t had therapy in probably a few months and I can tell I’m not doing as well as I was when I saw mine every couple of weeks.

So yeah this Psychiatrist is a SUPER Irish dude, I mean his name is Killian O’Connell, you can’t really get more Irish than that. He’s got the accent and everything. Wicked cool. I love Irish people haha and I always feel like I’m more than just a quarter Irish. So anywho I made this appointment because I needed a new script as the last one ran out and I can’t go back to my previous med doctor. He agreed to write me the script and he asked me a bunch of questions since the last time I saw him was two years ago when I was severely depressed.

I like the guy I mean he boosted my mood a lot just by being his jolly hopeful Irish self and I felt like he’s really accepting of me for some reason. I guess I just felt comfortable and that had to do with his warmth. So I asked him a bunch of questions too about my med and other stuff, especially because he was suggesting I increase my dosage from 300 mg to 450 mg. I have read things before about Wellbutrin becoming more of a risk when you go above a certain dosage, which I thought I remembered was anything above 300, but I guess not. Apparently after 450 mg that’s when the seizure threshold lowers. He asked me about my current energy levels and how I sleep and things like that. I said my energy levels are ok, and my sleep is ok, but when he asked if I had trouble getting up in the mornings, I went on to tell him how I’m a night owl and I stay up really late and sleep really late. He also asked if I “take caffeine” haha. I said on and off. And then he asked if I noticed any interaction between caffeine and my med. I said yeah I definitely feel a boost from it.

I wasn’t immediately going to be like “OH SURE I’LL TAKE 150 MORE MG of what I’m already taking, and increase that much in just one day!” I happen to know a fair amount about psychology and psychiatry and I’m also a skeptic/someone who questions things instead of just taking it at face value. So I asked him a bunch about the possibilities of that dosage increase and he later went on to tell me he could tell I was anxious and that’s another reason I should increase my dosage. I said how can you tell I’m anxious and he said well you asked me a lot of questions and you were pretty concerned about that 1% seizure risk (? or something). This is actually kind of hysterical to me that he said that. He can tell that I’m anxious just because I asked a lot of questions. I don’t get how that makes me anxious lol. It just makes me someone that is cautious and thinks things through a lot before just jumping into them. Especially when it comes to something serious like pharmaceutical drugs.

Basically Psychiatrists are just swanky drug dealers with PHD’s. It’s pretty funny how differently they are viewed from regular drug dealers simply because what they are doing is legal, though it really is no different than what a drug dealer does. Psychiatrists are such med pushers, they will prescribe you any and all drugs they think could possibly help you, and they don’t take very long to make that decision. You could easily totally fake a condition or disorder and in a heart beat they’d prescribe you with some super strong drug. They fucking love drugs lol.

Another thing that was funny was that he told me that if I went up to 450 I’d be having a lot more fun. !! hahah that could mean so many things. To me that comes off as “If you increase your med which is between a stimulant and an anti-psychotic, you will be HIGH off of it”. Basically I felt like he was saying I’d be inducing a hypomanic state, though I don’t think he realized what he was communicating to me hah.

So he was pretty convincing and his whole delivery I guess worked on me because not only did I essentially agree to the dosage increase but I also walked out of there in a mood that was atleast 5 times as good as the one I went in there with. I feel like I got amped off of his energy and I think also what he said gave me some insight into why my med doesn’t affect me as much as it used to. I think I got pretty used to it and I can tolerate a higher dosage so I actually required a higher dosage to maintain the same effects. When I first started taking it, for the first like 3 months or so, I felt hypomanic. And this happened DIRECTLY after I had been in the most severe depressive episode of my life. The med worked so fucking fast and all of the sudden my thinking was really sharp again, my head was clear, my energy levels skyrocketed, I felt elated, and I could finally sleep again, the severe insomnia finally faded into the background.

Of course at this time in my life it was a BEAUTIFUL summer, really great sunny/hot days and I had just met Zak, who I started dating not long after that. And I got a job at Target then. So basically at that time I went from utter despair to total elation. In the course of like 2 weeks. After being severely depressed and an insomniac for about a year before that. It was fucking sweet to be pulled out of that and to be sent all the way up in the other direction. But then I got fired from Target at the end of September so I had only worked there for like 3 months, and things started to go downhill. I was really torn up over being fired because I felt like I had finally found a place I could succeed at or atleast a shitty job that I could atleast maintain, only to find out a few months later that I “wasn’t a good fit for the job”. And I had some bitch who was barely around from management proceed to tell me how I worked and where I fucked up. After that I started going into a mild depression, and if it weren’t for being with Zak at the time, I probably would’ve gone down way deeper.

Anywho I feel kind of hopeful right now because I feel like this med increase might actually get me back to the good spot I was in that summer. I have felt like I’ve been depressed for the most part for like a year now, not the entire time but for a lot of it. I also felt good after the visit because it made some things clear to me. Which may or may not be the truth, but it explains some things that I had been just internalizing/blaming on myself. If my med essentially dissipated, that explains why I went back to a depressive state, atleast in part. Of course other circumstantial shit is part of it too, but I’m glad to know it wasn’t *entirely* my fault. And regardless it always feels better to know *why* something changed or what the reasons are behind a complicated issue, because it clarifies it. And it makes it more possible to be understood/dealt with.

So he wrote me up that script, which of course I can barely read because apparently like all doctors and psychiatrists have the worst chicken scratch ever. I don’t know how pharmacists can read that. I will bring it in soon, I have a few meds left, maybe i’ll bring it to a pharmacy tomorrow because I think I want to try going to 450 mg tomorrow. I forget how that process works, I forget if they have to take the script paper thing first and process it or something and then have you come back later to pick up your first refill. I hope they can just process it there, but I suppose they’d have to get the pills all together and whatnot.

I’m still a little hesitant about upping my dosage that much but Killian made the choice more up to me by prescribing me 150 mg pills, which I would either take 2 at once to maintain my regular dosage, or I’d take 3 to get to 450 mg. So basically he left it up to me. He said he’d ask me if I tried the higher dosage but that’s about it. There wasn’t any additional pressure. And he told me that I would know in 48 hours if the dosage was too high, because I’d feel like I drank a whole pot of coffee ha. So then I could just go back to 300 mg.

He said that caffeine is not normally tolerated along with Wellbutrin but since I can tolerate it, that means my dosage isn’t high enough. He said that at the proper dosage caffeine can’t be tolerated along with the med. So that would be good too, if I could feel as energetic as coffee makes me feel without having to drink it anymore. I don’t know which is worse for your system though- caffeine or Wellbutrin.

He said a few other things that I didn’t necessarily agree with because they are too black and white. He asked about my sleep and when I told him I’m kind of nocturnal he said that Wellbutrin is supposed to make you “like all the rest of us” in terms of the sleep schedule. He said it is supposed to make you wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night. That may be true but he’s kind of ignoring the fact that there are plenty of other influences behind why people have more night-shift type sleep schedules. My reasons are that I 1) Started staying up a few hours later than usual because Zak wasn’t getting out of work until 11:30 at night, and I’d start hanging out with him after that. 2) It is in my genetics to be really awake/creative late at night and really…not in the mornings. I have my Dad’s biorhythms. and 3) I am a creative type/right brained person. I am certainly more right brained and so that means I am primarily emotional, creative, holistic, visual, artistic, etc. And it is really common for creative types to be at their best mentally/artistically in the late night hours. and 4) I am essentially choosing this sleep schedule in a way too, because it’s not that I can’t do a ‘regular people’ sleep schedule, it’s just that I need to be in a routine and to be working or going to school to be able to maintain it. And if you are choosing to stay up even later than you normally would, of course you aren’t going to be able to wake up early in the mornings, and then when you sleep late, you stay up late again the next night. That’s just the way it goes.

Hopefully this whole post hasn’t been disorganized as I have a feeling it has been a bit. I’m just feeling more mentally active right now than I would be at this hour (lol meaning like 2 pm). I slept pretty badly last night, couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, then slept lightly, then was woken up several times by noise. But I didn’t feel too bad when I got up via alarm at 10 strangely enough. So I’m kind of proving what I just said before. I’m more alert now at 2 pm than I normally would be because I have been awake since 10 am. But on the usual when I sleep till 2:30 pm, I’m not really mentally alert until like 6 or 7pm . Sometimes later than that.

There was some drama this morning having to do with my mom’s lovely notes but I’m in too decent of a mood to write about that now. I think it would only make me feel all pissed off and down again to write about it at the moment.

So I hope everyone has a good day, even though I don’t think many people read this! Ha

So I have a light version of a sinus infection again, starting when I woke up (at fucking 4 pm, after sleeping probably a total of 12 hrs). I had a really bad sinus infection a couple of weeks ago and it knocked me out for essentially an entire week, where I spent like 4 of those days just in bed watching TV shows on my laptop non-stop, and living off toast with jelly for the most part. I got better at the end of that week but then for this past week my boyfriend has been really sick with some sort of cold type thing and I’ve been seeing him every night still, starting really late at night most of the time. He’s generally been working till 11:30 pm again, so I generally go pick him up when he gets out and then we hang out until about 4 or 5 am. Then I drive home and don’t end up going to bed until 5:30 or 6 am. And then sleep moderately deeply until like 2 pm, but I’m often woken up a few times by some noise or whatnot.

This sinus infection thing isn’t as bad as the other one and it’s a little different but regardless it’s irritating and it’s been a long time since I’ve had sinus infections back to back like that, normally as long as I use my nasal spray every day I just have the chronic sinus issues but don’t get complete infections. I suppose this time the whole sleeping shitty hours and going to bed too late combined with hanging out/swapping germs with my sick boyfriend every day, is probably why it turned to an infection. The weather has been so erratic too, one day it’s like 50 or warmer and really sunny, another it’s 20 degrees and snow/raining, then there are days in a row that are one way and then suddenly change to something else. It’s totally unpredictable and definitely making it nearly impossible to adjust to.

Anywho so what I wanted to get into are not these details on being physically sick. I wanted to talk about more psychologically related stuff (surprise, surprise, right?)

I’ve been reading this blog on Borderline Personality Disorder nearly every day and for awhile every time I read it, I think I stumbled upon it via adding a FB page on the topic, and basically I’ve been reading it so much because I can relate so much to like everything I read on it. I started reading the blog more often because I had a serious meltdown like last week and my boyfriend and I got in a massive fight that spanned across a few days. We both said really hurtful things to each other and of course as usual it eventually resulted in me balling my eyes out and feeling like absolute shit, feeling totally alone and misunderstood, feeling like nothing but a burden, feeling like I don’t deserve him because in my mind he’s much better to me than I am to him, etc. Basically I couldn’t turn those thoughts off and during the midst of this two day bullshit I kept switching back and forth between feeling like he wasn’t considering or noticing how torn up I was about the whole thing, and between thinking that the whole thing happened just because of me and my issues, because of me and my undiagnosed but obvious Borderline.

I definitely believe that for every disorder there is a spectrum from low to high severity, and different forms in which the disorder expresses itself. I have only technically been diagnosed with Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified…but I believe that is because there is so much of my psychological problems that are not seen, and mostly felt just within my own head. Unfortunately it seems that these supposed specialists are not so good at seeing beyond what is readily obvious to them in terms of behavior, and they are not so good at digging deeper to try to get to how the person really feels on a regular basis. I don’t feel enough questions are asked, and I know therapy is more about getting to talk through all of your feelings without feeling like you are being judged or misunderstood, but I feel current psychology could use a little bit more of an active approach.

Ugh again so I haven’t gotten to my main point ha. What I’m getting to is that the more I read about Borderline and the more I read the blogs of other people who have it, the more I feel like for once there is a place that I belong psychologically. I have a few close friends that I believe also have low-grade versions of it, but they too are undiagnosed. They are the only other people I can relate to to that deep of a degree, outside of that I can only really relate to the blogs and people I have found on the internet that have it.

Now I’m aware that I’m not a psychiatrist but I think I have been in my own head for long enough now, I have paid an insane amount of attention to how my mind works and how my close relationships work, and I went to college for psychology, as well as had a life’s worth of personal experience with serious disorders. On the Borderline spectrum, I believe I am somewhere between low functioning and high functioning. I’m very good at putting on a mask to the outside world, the one that doesn’t know my true self, and I’m very good at acting like I’m really confident and really put together, as if I’m not afraid of anything. This is apparent at places like school/college or at work. This side of myself is only half of the picture, and it’s not a total facade, it’s just exaggerated and I don’t even consciously chose to do this, it just happens. Of course in hind sight it’s easier to recognize.

Then on the spectrum of Borderline that goes from Introverted to Extroverted Borderline, I’m somewhere right in the middle, although maybe a little more towards the Introverted side. Meaning that I internalize a lot of my experience in life, and more than anything else I experience within myself by reflecting and reacting to my true feelings when I’m alone. This includes holding in the urge to cry many times over when I’m around other people, then eventually getting by myself, usually after like a month of this happening, and then letting myself ball my eyes out for hours. Until I have nothing left and I finally feel relieved, I finally feel lighter.

So even on the Borderline Spectrum and even within the subtypes of it, even then I’m on the borderline. Meh. No wonder I feel like I expend so much energy on a regular basis just to function never mind what it requires to do basic or what would be considered ordinary responsibilities to the average person.

So yeah still haven’t gotten to the main thought/realization that lead to the creation of this post. So even though I’ve only been awake for like 3.5 hrs now with this sickness, I’ve already gone through some mental shit. I texted my boyfriend about being sick and all and he said sorry that he got me sick and I said that wasn’t the only reason it happened, then I proceeded to send a few more texts about how shitty I felt and all my thoughts behind it and how I needed to fix my sleep schedule and shit. He didn’t reply for a little, then I started feeling guilty that I was talking so much about me and so I sent him a text asking how he was feeling today. My mom had called me earlier asking me to do a bunch of stuff for her/to help her with various things, and I had told her I had a sinus infection again. She said I’m sorry you’re sick, but then proceeded to ask the same things of me, as if it didn’t make a difference.

Basically these two interactions made me feel guilty about being sick and made me feel like yet again I’m being selfish because I’m focusing on how I feel and what I need rather than focusing on how they feel and on what they need. I constantly feel guilty when I’m trying to just take care of me, because it does take a lot of time and it’s not easy for me to even take care of me, so then other people end up trying to help and they can’t really do much either, so then I just feel more guilty. And feel like more of a burden. They help me out a lot financially and with physical things but nobody can truly help me in the ways I need most except Zak from time to time. But even then I can tell it takes a lot of energy out of him and he has a hard time understanding even when I describe everything as best as I can. And I understand this, because my psychological workings and my types of disorders are so fucking complicated and contradictory/impossible, so of course it’d just come off as one big clusterfuck.

I know I should be doing more, I should be trying harder to do regular every day things like normal people do, I know I should contribute more to other people and express my appreciation more outwardly, I know I need to be more proactive. It’s just really hard to make big changes like that when you wake up feeling totally exhausted and unmotivated every day, even though you aren’t even working a job or going to school, and have next to no responsibilities other than to walk your dogs and do some chores from time to time.

What makes it even more hard is that it seems that *every* time I finally get more motivated and active and I start to think a lot about *how* I’m going to change things and *how* I’m going to try harder, I seem to get sick or knocked down right after that. It’s like as soon as I’m coming up a little bit, I’m knocked right back down, and generally lower than before.

I know I need therapy again, I know I need to find another psychiatrist and psychologist since I can’t keep the ones I had that were through umass now that I’m done with umass. I only have like 10 or less of my psych meds left and I’ve still yet to do the work to find a psychiatrist just so that I can have a new script written out for me. I just struggle so much with basic things like fucking making a phone call to any one or any place that isn’t something or someone I know extremely well, and I always feel like I’m going to fuck up my words and sound stupid as well as fail at the simple thing that I’m trying to achieve. I have this belief that if I seek out a new psychiatrist I’m going to have to go through *all* of the same beginning bullshit again just for them to write me a new script for a medication that I’ve been on for a year and eight months, and I don’t wanna have to describe my life story all over again to someone who utterly sucks at understanding that stuff (psychiatrists generally have no “bedside manner” as they call it). Basically they are really skilled with Neuroscience and the like but they have next to no people skills, yet they frequently try to also play the role of therapist too, and generally just make me wanna knock them out and steal their script pad thing.

I just don’t see why I should need to go through this BS. I wish that a regular doctor could just write on a fuckin piece of paper for me to get that new script, since at this point there isn’t any more thinking that needs to be done in this department, I just need to be able to keep getting my meds. And I don’t want to have to pay a fucking $20 copay for one useless visit when I only have like $80 to my name. It’s just fucking ridiculous. And why does the US have to be so difficult with providing mental and physical resources to its citizens when essentially every other country has UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. Why does it seem the US cannot figure out the same shit that other countries have, the other countries that have citizens that are much happier and who are sick a lot less often, and citizens that don’t have a ridiculously hard time just getting their physical/safety needs fulfilled?

I just feel like the things that people REALLY need, the support that people REALLY need, are the things that are so difficult to get, and are the things this society and culture try to make you feel ashamed or weak for needing. It’s fucked. I could use a “life coach” probably beyond anything else, because atleast then I could have assistance and support from someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing and knows how to help and WANTS to help, someone who could help me get my own two feet on the ground and learn how to support myself financially and whatnot. But of course that costs money that I don’t have too.

I’m not trying to blame the US or this society/culture for everything because there are things that involve me not being responsible enough, but I do feel like living here certainly helps to continue feeling helpless, lost, alone, like a burden, like I’m totally on my own even though technically I’m not. This Individualist society is fucked, and Collectivist societies work much better together *and* help the individual as a result…but what would be better than both of those things would be a society that lies BETWEEN Individualist and Collectivist. The problem is definitely related to how much our culture encourages dividing people on the whole into one category or the other, when the exact opposite should be the concern/focus. We should be focused on UNIFYING our society and doing what is best to benefit THE WHOLE, not just the individual.

I planned to write a post a couple of days ago but as usual I got distracted by several other things and didn’t end up actually writing like I needed to. So this post may come off as really disorganized, but I doubt many people are reading this anyways so whatever haha.

I obviously think a lot about psychologically based stuff especially in regards to myself and to people that I’m close to–I can’t help but not do so-my family life growing up definitely put that whole thing into place. I feel I have gotten over some of the larger trust issues that I had before because of growing up in a chaotic/unstable environment with sweeping changes between super loving and super..well, not. I’m not one to believe in deterministic viewpoints but I won’t deny that how your parents treated you initially and while you were growing up, as well as how your family worked as a whole, has a large impact on the individual you become. Of course then it is up to you to have to work through all of those issues once you are close to an adult and onward, which certainly isn’t easy when patterns have been well put into place for most of your life. It takes significant work/time/energy to work through psychological issues and get them under as much control as you possibly can. Not to sound pessimistic but I think that there are some behaviors/though patterns that are essentially permanent if you had a chronic, traumatic childhood. In that same line of thought I don’t believe that medication can totally heal psychological disorders…I think it simply keeps things in check and lowers the severity of symptoms/episodes. The rest is up to you to manage and I think a lot of therapy is necessary.

What I’m getting at is that I feel I still have some solid psychological issues despite the fact that I’m on an atypical antidepressant and despite the fact that my environment has significantly changed (I still live in the same house but now just with my mom, not with my Dad or others that really kind of fucked me up over time). I’m certainly not close to my mom or happy with living with just her and I definitely did not have an easy time at all adjusting to the severe change. I went from living with a couple incredibly over-involved, no boundaries type people for years to then living with just one person that I had no emotional connection to and who often wasn’t home anyways due to having to work a lot. Mind you this period I’m talking about was only a small portion of the environmental influence I had. From about age 10 till about 20, I lived in an incredibly tense environment and I could not get away from it, along with being stuck in a super isolated town and not really having any long-term friends, certainly not ones that could provide me with the support I needed. But then again I don’t know if anyone would have been able to do so because it was my environment that was the problem. I went through many, many years of severe depression, long periods of insomnia, a couple hypomanic episodes, many more episodes of severe depression, chronic panic attacks and general anxiety, and a whole lot of depersonalization. None of my issues are anywhere near as severe or chronic as they used to be, but a number of important factors still weigh heavy on my psyche, and I am finding myself still battling some things that I’m sure are based in what I went through in the distant and recent past.

I have been with my boyfriend Zak now for about a year and a half, and let me tell you that is the longest relationship I have ever had. It definitely has been a lot more stable than previous ones as well, but I definitely have gone through a lot of emotional turmoil both internally and with him. It took about a year for me to finally stop questioning how he felt about me and to stop having serious trust issues with him (none of which did he do anything to provoke them, he’s been faithful and consistent for much of the time). The only thing that truly provoked my trust issues/insecurity is the fact that he was my romantic partner. Well, he still is but I said was because I’m referring to the beginning of our relationship. I know that I have severe trust issues with romantic relationships and with friendships, and I’m pretty sure that is due to the fact that nothing was emotionally stable about my family life. I could never feel secure in relationships because they were incredibly insecure in themselves. All of the most important relationships I had (with all family members), were the most complicated and traumatic ones. There were also no boundaries and you know what there still aren’t!! The only way it’s not affecting me as much now is seriously because I do not live with or see all of them on a regular basis anymore. But I literally had next to no space/time/energy to focus on me and to develop my own identity because the issues between my parents and between basically every one of us with one another, drained me over and over again. I was put in the middle of so many fucked up relationships, I was used as the middle man for several relationships, and I had been expected from day one to emotionally carry my mother and father. No wonder I majored in Psychology in college..

Anyways I still haven’t got to the point hahah. So I will now.

I noticed the other day that I had a very strong emotional reaction simply to the fact that I had asked my boyfriend to pick me up from my house this time because the weather wasn’t good for me to drive the shitty van in…and he had just woken up from a nap when I asked so he said yeah but said give me 45 minutes. As soon as I read that response I got extremely angry and hurt, and somehow took it as some sort of rejection. I went from a neutral mood to a really bad mood in an instant. I cried a bunch. All because I felt hurt that he acted like it was a huge inconvenience for him to have to pick me up, especially because I have been driving a lot to see him for the past month or more because my Dad left the area and left me the beaten up van to use. Before I had the van Zak was the one doing all of the driving if I didn’t take the bus to see him. I think he has gotten used to me driving there now and so that’s why I was so pissed when the one time I asked him to get me he acted like it was a big deal and all I could think was “Jesus christ I’ve been driving so much to see him and would drive to the moon and back if that’s what it took to see him, and now this one time that I ask for rides he acts like it’s asking a lot. I would never feel that way towards him if things were the other way around.”

Basically he explained to me that it wasn’t that it was a big deal it was just that he wanted to lay down longer because it hadn’t been long since he woke up from his nap, and so that’s why he said he would get me in 45 minutes. That explanation did not make a difference to me, I felt exactly the same because apparently I was already deep in my emotional reaction, which I now know stems from a much deeper source. And it doesn’t have to do with him personally. It has to do with the fact that I have been forced into having little to no control over my life for much of my life, and I also had many many times where my Dad made me wait around for hours before he’d give me a ride somewhere, when it was never a far away destination that I was trying to get to. I desperately needed to get out of the house and away from my family and I of course didn’t have a car or really any friends that cared enough to help me out, and then he’d go and drag shit out for no reason, just made me wait I think partly because he loved the fact that he could have another way to control me.

So apparently that kind of shit was so prevalent in my life growing up that it is still with me. I am still pretty damn paranoid and quick to assume that any change in plans or whatever, signifies a change in feeling and that it’s always that people don’t love or value me as much as I love/value them. I assume if they don’t answer a text message for even a short period of time, that that means they are ignoring me and don’t really want to talk to me or be around me. That they are sick of me. The other day I also had another one of these instant shitty paranoid thoughts. Both a new close female friend of mine and my boyfriend had told me they took a nap on the same day, and I literally thought “It’s because I’ve exhausted them, I’m exhausting to be around”. And then I go on to fully believe this thought and end up feeling like utter shit because then I think why the hell do I keep doing things in relationships that drain people when I try really hard not to. And then I’m convinced that I haven’t changed at all in relationships and that I am just as dependent on lovers/friends as I always have been. I know in the past I had have very close friendships or relationships that involved mostly me being very dependent on them and me constantly needing to talk to them all about my family and personal issues. I essentially didn’t know how to not talk about it. I think because it was all that I could think about. I think my initial fucked up relationships with my family put a large cloud over the relationships and friendships I developed personally. I have been working on not continuing the same patterns and because I’m now on medication and have been for about a year and a half, I do feel I have had significant progress in how I function in my relations with other people.

I just really wish all of the past shit would just go away, so much of it is very old baggage yet so much of it isn’t that old at all. There was just SO much of it and it was so traumatic that I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully normal in relationships. I don’t think I’ll ever have ease in making and maintaining close friendships and relationships. I will always feel insecure about them also because many people have left me because I was way too heavy to be close to.

Now this comes to what the title of this post is about. I have heard about attachment styles in many of my psychology courses in college and I’ve known this for awhile but I’m kind of learning again how I have an anxious/preoccupied attachment style. This makes a fuck load of sense.

Just to elaborate on what an anxious/preoccupied attachment style consists of: a constant obsession with and worries about all relationships, a chronic craving for intimacy, validation, and approval, frequent insecure worries/doubting of sincerity/loyalty in the relationship, extreme emotional highs and lows within the relationship, and a near insatiable expectations  in relationships.

That is exactly right. I have all of that shit. Like I said I don’t feel it anywhere near as severely as I used to atleast not with Zak because he has been the most consistent, honest, loving, and loyal person I have met and had a relationship with. But it is obvious that I still have all of the features of an anxious/preoccupied attachment style, which still shows itself when the most trivial things happen that cause me to think they don’t love me as much or that they are sick of me or any of those useless and distorted thoughts.

I don’t know how to tackle this issue necessarily, other than to just keep trying to trust people, especially ones that have given me good reason to do so. I think I have three solid people right now in my life that I really trust, two of which I trusted a lot quicker and a lot more easily than the third. And surprise surprise those two people are two female friends. One of them I just started to be friends with/hang out with and I already trust her a lot. The reason being is that she is almost identical to me in personality and I have never come across someone so similar to me especially not in friendships. So basically I know that because she is a lot like me she has very similar emotional tendencies as well (we also talked about this stuff in depth), so then I don’t feel I have to worry. Because since I feel I know myself so well and because whenever we do talk or hang out everything flows like a river and so there are no discrepancies in how we connect. Apparently that’s the only way I can trust someone completely and quickly. Anywho this post is extremely long by now so I’m going to end here.

I haven’t written here in awhile…and I know part of that is because most of what I write about/read about on here is related to heavy psychological stuff. Which I’m all about in general but when I’m facing some of it in real life I don’t necessarily want to read or write all about it because I feel it might make me focus too much on it. I’m not going to try to summarize everything that I’ve felt/thought/experienced since the last time I wrote in here because that would take ridiculously long. So I suppose I’ll just write about the most recent stuff.

I really should be reading a bunch of articles for this upcoming final Psych paper on Near Death Experiences. I love the topic (I got to chose it myself), but the articles are all long and very dense. Many of them are about medical details and things that I often find hard to wrap my head around. I can always get the concepts and the main points but the perfectionist side of me finds it almost impossible to just scan articles and revisit them later. I end up trying to get everything out of every article, which takes me a really long time, and at this point I really don’t have the time for that. I have an about 9 page paper due by the end of tomorrow night, which is about 30 hours from now. I also have 3 hours of class tomorrow to go to, and of course having to get ready and all that before I go. I’ve been really sleep deprived lately. I went to bed too late again (I go to between between 4-6 am every night, and sleep until 2:30 or so). That’s been my typical sleep schedule for I don’t know like, 4 months? So anywho I had a therapy appointment at 11 am this morning and since I went to bed at probably like 5 am, I felt like utter shit when I woke up. After the appointment I came home and took a nap. It took me what felt like forever to even fall asleep for this nap, and then when I finally did my dreams were SO intense.

I’m finding it hard to get them out of my head now, and I’ve been up from the nap for almost 2 hours now. I was planning on continuing to work on my paper after I got up from it (and that’s essentially why I even took the nap to begin with, I didn’t think I could do any work without a nap). I’m not exactly the most self-motivated person to begin with, and especially not when it comes to huge papers.

My dreams were just insane. This seems to always be the case when I take naps, but these ones were even more intense than usual. They were mostly about my father, who I currently don’t even know where he is or what his exact mental state is other than pretty damn manic. He’s caused some drama over the past few weeks, and he definitely knows how to make everybody worried and stressed out. I don’t really want to go into describing all that happened because it’s far too much to explain right now. But I will say what I can remember from the dreams.

Basically it was a “what if” type dream where it was showing what could happen when my brother comes home to visit the family in a couple of weeks (he’s been living in Sweden for awhile now). So in my dream my brother had come home, and at the same time my Dad had randomly showed up at the house (which is where I live now). He was being all crazy as he normally is in these types of situations. Brendan was trying to not even look at him because I think he knew what he’d be in for. He probably knew our Dad would start flipping out on him. I can’t remember the specific details but I remember my Dad just showing up and also remembering that yeah there’s a restraining order against him (put in place by my mother), that says he can’t come around our house or even contact my Mom in any way whatsoever. So even though I was dreaming I was still aware that he was violating the restraining order. I can’t remember exactly what he was saying but I do remember that a mass of other people were all swarmed either outside of or right in the area of our front door, which was partially open. I don’t think I even knew all of them. It was just a chaotic amount of people, in which my father was the one standing out in how he was acting and all. That is typical too.

The details are hazy but I remember my father and my mother ended up being in some huge crazy fight (in which I remember I went after them in the attempt to make sure it didn’t get too out of hand). I think I remember that someone was driving the van, and my mother and father were standing on each ledge of each van side, and were fighting across the top of the van. So, basically they were standing opposite to each other on the small ledge beside each door next to where the back seats would be, while the van was in motion. It was a pretty bad argument, and I remember intervening and trying to end it, but to no avail. Also typical.

I can’t remember the transition from this scene to another but then I remember just being around some campus that I didn’t recognize but was really large and really detailed. I remember color being in this scene very vividly, as if it were really happening. I remember looking for my father because I didn’t know where he went but I knew he was somewhere around this campus, and I felt like I had to find him to make sure he didn’t do anything totally insane. I eventually found him, but I can’t remember exactly where it was. I remember something about a huge wooden door that lead to a deeper, basement type area in one of the buildings. I think that’s where I found him. I think I also remember there being a lot of water in the depths of this basement area. It was flooding in the background when I finally found my Dad, and I remember him rambling craziness and that I was saying things to him to try to talk him down from it. I remember just breaking down and balling my eyes out, telling him that I loved him and I cared about him. I think I said I wanted him to be ok. And then I hugged him and cried even harder, and he did too.

Then I remember leaving that area. I was in some fancy building, the same one I was just in of course, and I remember a ton of people being around but they were all scattered. Some of them said things to me, some of them I recognized, but most of them were totally foreign to me. I remember still feeling hysteric and desperately trying to find my boyfriend, because I really needed him. I needed to talk to him about what had happened, I needed to be physically close to him and to have the support that he provides me. The stability. The empathy and the limitless understanding that he provides no matter what I’m talking to him about. The fact that he never gets freaked out by me having a melt down, and he never tries to escape it. The fact that I just plain needed him.

I’m remembering some other details of the dream but I think they may have been from an earlier part of the dream. I remember that while the crazy van fight crap was happening, the van was on it’s way out of the condos, and though I can’t remember where I was right then, I do remember seeing my boyfriend and hearing him talking to various band members or friends about music. About their music or about recording some. I remember viewing this as if I were just an observer, and I was semi far away but I could hear all they were saying. I wanted to be with him then but for some reason I couldn’t. Probably because I was still preoccupied with trying to keep my parents from like killing each other.

I eventually found my boyfriend at the end of the dream, and I remember sitting with him in some small area and just venting it all to him, still balling my eyes out. I think he was mostly just listening, but I felt a really strong urge to just be held by him. I needed to be. I was falling apart. And in this dream I really thought it was reality. Which just made the whole thing worse. I woke up from the dream just a few minutes before my alarm was about to go off to wake me from the nap, and I remember right before I became fully conscious I let out a strange murmur of stress. A delirious one. I heard myself doing it first, and then I came back to reality and realized I was just dreaming. Realized it was 4:30 in the afternoon and all hazy out. I felt soo disoriented and stressed, still having the craving of needing my boyfriend.

I haven’t remember a dream this detailed in a very long time, and although it was unique in its entirety, it was very similar to the millions of other dreams I’ve had in the past that were about the same type of thing. Now it just feels so redundant because I had bad dreams about family related stuff the past couple nights in a row, then I talked about them and the situation with my Dad in my therapy session, and then I came home and took a nap only to dream about the same exact topic. Ugh. Dreams can really be so tormenting when they are happening. I don’t see how they are being helpful at certain points. Sometimes I really prefer not to dream, because way too often I have really bad dreams that are just reliving traumatic events or traumatic feelings. There is no need for me to relive these things now, they aren’t helping me and I have more than enough insight into how I feel about it all. I just want a break from the negative patterns in my brain. That is mostly why I regularly smoke greenery when I can afford it and all. It makes it so I can focus on the positive sides of my brain/my thinking/my perspectives/of life. It just takes away my tendency to feel and think negatively, due to things I’ve been through which lead to negative thought patterns and feelings. They just aren’t useful at this point. They are only destructive. There really isn’t any more insight I can get from them now, they simply make me feel like shit and reduce my quality of life. And make me have a harder time focusing on positive things, and certainly on being able to concentrate and get work done. It is incredibly draining.

Anywho I don’t even know yet but I hope this can help me to start getting into a really productive state from the remainder of the night. I don’t know how much I can get done but i have to really try to concentrate and get some things done. Especially because if I don’t that means I only have from about 4-12 pm tomorrow to read the rest of the articles and write my entire 9 page paper. And I know I wouldn’t even work that entire time either so, I NEED to make a large dent in that.

Alright, more later.