I’m thankful I’m not a turkey! Hope your day is wonderful and yummy I’m also thankful that my furnace is working once again!

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Sometimes that’s a pretty hard thing. Especially forgiving myself. What do I need forgiving for? Being mentally ill, being so depressed that I couldn’t hold it together for my own kids. I know it was beyond my control so why can’t I forgive myself? I think I’m a pretty forgiving person, if it had been anyone else I would have complete sympathy. Well, I do hope I figure out how someday but I must admit I have no idea how, or why it’s so hard for me.

There are three essential parts to self-forgiveness. First of all, one must acknowledge the commission of an objective wrong and accept responsibility for that wrong. Secondly, one must then experience feelings of guilt and regret. Finally, one must overcome these feelings (i.e., self-forgiveness), and, in doing so, experience a motivational change away from self-punishment toward self-acceptance.~http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/share/320

I take full responsibility, I’m full of remorse and shame, it’s the overcoming part I’m having trouble with. So let me voice my regret; To my dear daughters, I’m sorry for all you lost when I became ill. It eats at me that I could not keep it together just when I needed to most. Melissa, it was worse for you. At least your sister was old enough to remember a time that wasn’t like that and a me that wasn’t like that. The worst is, that if I had to go back and do it all again, I don’t think I could have changed the outcome. The outcome has changed me irrevocably as it has both of you. I have always wanted only the best for you, you are my heart.

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As to forgiving others, I think I’m pretty good at that. I don’t hold grudges (much). Yeah, I’m not perfect, but I think I’m pretty easy about that sort of thing.

Just to let you know I’m not a complete angel, I don’t forgive my “friend” with the prosthetic leg who stole my car. I still swear if I ever see him on the street I’ll knock him on his ass and steal his leg and see how he likes having his transportation stolen.

Perhaps I find it easier to forgive unintentional offenses, but then do the others really deserve forgiveness? I know it’s supposed to be for your own peace of mind but I’m not sure I’m capable of that. If they expressed regret, I could forgive easily. If they have no remorse, no they aren’t forgiven.

Once, back when my depression was a minor thing and I still believed in myself, I could handle anything thrown at me. Need to work 12 or 16 hours to earn my paycheck? No problem. Need to do it while dealing with a screaming baby? Still no problem. Squeeze in an hour to take my four hour math final? No problem! (I even maxed it). I could do anything. Now I have to portion myself out, physically and mentally. No more just seeing what needs to be done and working on it until it’s finished.

The physical part is my complete lack of muscle tone (even after a few weeks working out at the Y) and the fact that for some reason I get hypoglycemic every time I get a bit too strenuous, even at the Y. I’d love to know what’s up with that. I can eat a nice high protein meal first and still get that way. The mental roadblock is the harder one to deal with though. It’s such an effort to push myself out there sometimes, especially when out there means outside my house. Getting to my groups, the store or even mowing my lawn takes extreme effort on my part. I’m probably the only one freaking out about voting because of all the people that will be there.

Let’s just look at inside my house for now. Since someone came and played with my furnace and I now have heat for the first time in over a week, now there’s the dirty dishes, the dirty laundry, the cat hair everywhere, the unpacked boxes, the dirty litter boxes. The clear priority is the dishes and if I have a good day hopefully the laundry. Oh to have the ability I used to have to completely clean my house from top to bottom and have everything in it’s place. In fact, even though I’ve been here over two years now, everything doesn’t even have a place yet. That’s another challenge that seems beyond me. My sense of overwhelm is much lower than it used to be.

Today is Sunday. That means that I most definitely need to do dishes and laundry so I can eat and have clothes to wear the coming week. My cats would love me if I manage to take care of their litter boxes too. Never start with the little things because it’s a sure thing you won’t get the big ones done. Three slices of me right there.

Tomorrow I see my therapist and go to the Y and hopefully I also get up the courage to go vote. Three HUGE slices. Anything outside of my house and dealing with other people is a major effort.

I was reading a forum about disabled people and invisible disabilities, where I found a link to this post. I feel like a fraud that I feel the same way because of my mental state and not a legitimate physical problem, but I can so relate. I realize that I do exactly that. Need to make doctor appointments? Spread them out, never put two in the same day. I will say that I’ve gotten to be expert at prioritizing and knowing just which things can be put off indefinitely. I’m even better at rationalizing that I don’t need to deal with it at all.

I am in a serious slump again (as if you couldn’t tell) and crawling back out of the hole is always so hard. The slump started because I have been sitting here freezing my butt off for days. Impossible to do anything when chilled to the bone and huddling with my heating pad under a mountain of blankets. I am so annoyed at how hard it is to jump back in and me take a slice of life. In fact, it’s been years since I have been able to think of it as me taking a slice of life instead of life taking a slice of me. I hope I reach that point again someday and then my sun will surely be shining.

I’ve heard that depression can change your brain. I wonder if Borderline Personality Disorder does too? I read this article at NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) that says studies have shown that the grey matter functioning in BPD patients is impaired in an emotion regulation circuit (I can vouch for the fact that mine is faulty!). Since I’m a believer that our upbringing  causes this disorder, then I have to assume  that the trauma we under went caused changes. Either that or we were born with this shortcoming which in turn caused our caregivers to be so totally annoyed with us that we ended up with BPD. I have to give that theory some weight because I was surely more intense and high-strung than anyone else in my family. My problems go back farther than my memory does so I have no way of really trying to analyze that. Not that it makes any difference in the fact that this is something we have to live with but maybe it gives me a sense of legitimacy. Maybe I can let go of some of the shame of having such an untreatable, horrible disorder that even the mental health community looked at me with disdain.

While I’m at it I’ll mention another article just to show that untreatable myth is slowly changing. Age is supposedly on my side too. I wouldn’t really know since for the most part I live the life of a recluse. It’s not Borderline problems that cause me to isolate, it’s my complete loss of confidence in myself. I can tell you that is a hard thing to get back. When I was in my twenties and bouncing from one problem to another, I still tried. It took a huge toll, having to project the image that I was okay and had things under control (when I clearly didn’t). I used to be so much gutsier than I am now. I am not flighty like I was when I was young, I am more stable in some ways. As far as emotion regulation? I spent over two years in DBT (Dialectical behavioral therapy) supposedly learning how to regulate my emotions, and I still have no clue how to actually do that. What sends me off the deep end?  Well, the DSM-IV-TR puts it this way “Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.”, I say rejection (or perceived rejection) pure and simple. Some times it’s real, many times I believe it’s only in my head. I don’t frantically try to avoid it, as I did in my youth, I avoid getting close enough to risk feeling that way in the first place. Not a great solution but it does keep me stable and out of the hospital and even non-suicidal.  That makes it worth it to me because I hate it with a passion when I get that traumatized, out of control, awful feeling.

I believe the day will come, if we don’t manage to destroy ourselves first, when they not only will know which areas in the brain cause or contribute to certain mental illnesses, but that they will know how to treat them much like they treated my brain tumor. In fact, I’d volunteer now to have those faulty areas rewired or removed!

I believe I am, after all this time, indeed coming back to life. I thought I was too far down to ever climb back out of that hole. Wow am I thankful I was wrong. It’s a terrible thing when all you feel is pain and joy is not even a distant memory. Okay, enough of that gush, even though I feel that way and wanted to say it. To feel joy is a precious gift.

Firstly, I completed my goals of setting up all my doctor appointments. The getting to them will be easier than the reaching out and calling to set them up was.

Then, after group today (as per my ambitious plan), I stopped at the YMCA. Wandered all about all on my own and finally found the cool equipment I was looking for. Even better said equipment shows how to use each machine and tells you which muscles it works (can you tell I’ve never been to a place like this before?) so I didn’t have to get brave enough to ask for help. I was set! Rode a bike that measured my heart rate til my legs gave out. Then I found the room with all the cool machines. So I used every one of them til my muscles felt like they’d had enough. I expected, with the state of my body, that I’d last maybe 10 minutes in there the first time. I was there for 45! We’ll see how my muscles feel tomorrow. My plan is to go the days I go to group since it’s right on the way. That will be Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m so glad I got the courage to actually do it. I just feel so much more competent already. This might be hard to understand for someone who hadn’t lost all that they were (or at least thought so). Yeah, I’m stoked!

Oh, and my therapist told me today he thought I was ready for the advanced DBT group. Wow, only took me two years to pass the beginner one I’m not so sure of course. I know the skills extremely well after all the repeats, but do I actually know how to use them? I feel like that is a big no. Part of the reason for that is being a total recluse and moving to a city away from my family and everyone I know, I have had no one to practice on (or would that be with?). If he thinks I’m ready, I’ll go for it, which is not something I would have agreed to 6 months ago.

All in all, life could be better, as in actually have friends and doing things, but that wasn’t possiible when I was filled with pain, self-hatred and shame. For now, I am happy and life feels fine.

I’ve repeated my DBT class several times and here I am off the rails again. How the heck do I regulate my emotions!? Well, the answer is clearly that I don’t. This is out of order in the class but I needed a quick refresher course.

Understand Emotions You Experience

• Identify your emotion. Okay, that would be depressed, agitated. stressed out, frustrated, invalidated, doubting myself.
• Understand what your emotions do for you. Well, if it was fear and I was being chased by a bear that would be very clear to me. Are these emotions telling me I need a less stressful life? I’m already almost a complete hermit. I actually know a couple of the reasons I’m stressed but I can’t say to those companies, ‘leave me alone and quit picking on me, I’m too stressed to handle it’. So my feeling is these emotions are only hindering me.

Reduce Emotional Vulnerability

(oh boy, that’s the kicker)

• Decrease negative Vulnerability (vulnerability to emotional mind). Okie dokey, none of these are going to help me a bit. Treat physical illness, Balance eating, Avoid mood-altering drugs, balance sleep, get exercise, build mastery. Did all that, don’t feel a bit better. Gah
• Increase positive emotions.
• Short term: Do pleasant things that are possible now. Do one thing each day.
• Long term: Make changes in your life so that positive events will occur more often. Build a life worth living. I’m so far from that it’s laughable at this point.
• Be unmindful of worries. ………..

Letting Go Of Emotional Suffering

• Observe your emotion. Note it’s presence, step back, get UNSTUCK from the emotion.
• Experience your emotion. As a wave coming and going.

• Try not to block emotion. Try not to suppress emotion. Don’t try to get rid of emotion. Don’t push it away. Don’t try to keep emotion around. Don’t hold on to it. Don’t amplify it.
• Remember: you are NOT your emotion. Do not necessarily act on emotion. Remember times when you felt different.
• Practice loving your emotion. Don’t judge your emotion. Practice willingness. Radically accept your emotion.

Okay, I am over my head again/still. I just need to hang in here until I learn how to make this stuff work for me. I will never love feeling this way, of that I’m sure.

On my journey through this 13 year depression, which I saw no hope of ever coming back from, I have made huge progress. Sometimes you backslide again, and that old hopeless feeling hits. That is the worst part, that when you are in that place, you can see no hope, no surety that this is temporary.

The very worst moment I ever had, well it wasn’t really, but it signified all that I had lost, so I’ll recount it here. I left California to come back to Michigan, where I had already sent my kids since I was unable to work. Rented a huge truck, paid some people to load it up and drove across the country with my pets and everything I owned. I slept in the truck at truckstops since I didn’t have enough money for rooms. Got to my parents house and cleaned out my dads barn so I could put my stuff there. Then he told me I couldn’t. I wish he’d told me that before I brought it all the way across the country at that huge expense. I was at the end of my rope, had $20 left to my name and it was more than I could deal with. I came home because I was too far gone to work. So I got a couple of guys from 2 men and a truck to unload it (paid for by my friends who had my kids) and I told them to take whatever they wanted and throw the rest out in the horse pasture to burn. They thought it was Christmas and brought friends with trucks to haul away all my appliances and furniture (I still miss my beloved china cabinet). Then my dear father called his girlfriend (yes, he was still married to and living with my mother) and told her to come over and help herself to anything out there she might be able to use. The pile sat in the horse pasture for months and I was wandering out there one day and I found a Christmas ornament Melissa had made in kindergarten, made with popsicle sticks and her picture. I will never get over how I felt, finding that tossed out there like so much junk. That is when I knew there was no coming back from this one.

Well, I was wrong, you CAN come back from just about anything. I still waver between thinking my brother had the right idea with his suicide, because some of us aren’t fixable, to seeing hope for my future. I don’t know if I will ever reach a point to say that suicide is not an alternative. But for today, at least, it isn’t and that’s all I can hope for right now.

It has been slow progress these years and a great lack of any real help. Of course, when you are that far down I don’t think there is much they can do. I finally had ECT. Why it took them so long to decide on that I have no idea. I was in the hospital more times than I remember. But ECT was the beginning of the long road back for me. Even after that while I wasn’t actively suicidal, I saw no future or hope for the future. There were a few times I had to get it together; in 2003 when I had to make a decision about my growing brain tumor and successfully handled getting it scheduled at Duke and getting myself there, in 2006 when my daughter graduated and I had to move (the ssdi benefits for her cut off at graduation) and I could find nothing I could afford in Michigan, I looked on realtor.com and ended up buying a house I can afford (with nothing down!) in Indiana. But between those periods I’ve had many weeks of hiding in my hole as I call it.

So I suppose it’s not surprising that I went from functioning extremely well (for me) the last few months to a familiar revisit with my old friend depression. What was the trigger? Nothing that I can figure out except a 5 day migraine that is the worst I ever had. But doing nothing but lying around in pain and being able to do nothing but THINK about that pain was apparently enough to set it off. So here I sit, I won’t go out to get Saturday’s mail because there are always PEOPLE out there. I won’t go mow my front lawn for same reason. My dishes need doing, my house needs cleaning, my garden needs weeding and I need a bath. I stink and I don’t care, no one here to smell me anyway, right? It seems like it’s been much longer than a week since I saw my therapist, how’d I lose this much in a week? I hope I manage to drag myself in there tomorrow morning.

The memory of my recent steps forward haven’t faded yet so I am hopeful this is just a slight backslide. Maybe slighter than it feels since I’m actually putting it on here for the world to see. This is an image (contains nudity!) I did a few years ago. I actually posted it at 3DCommune at the time and had a critical comment and immediately deleted it. I have since reposted it as part of my story so to speak. I never welcome these visits but I know them like an old friend…no, an old enemy.

Goals of interpersonal effectiveness

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Objectives Effectiveness

Getting your objectives or goals in a situation

• Obtaining your legitimate rights
• Getting another to do something
• Refusing an unwanted or unreasonable request
• Resolving an interpersonal conflict
• Getting your opinion or point of view taken seriously

Questions

1. What specific results or changes do I want from this interaction? 2. What do I have to do to get results? What will work?

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Relationship Effectiveness

Getting or keeping a good relationship

• Acting in such a way that the other person keeps liking and respecting you
• Balancing immediate goals with the good of the long-term relationship

Questions

1. How do I want the other person to feel about me after the interaction is over? 2. What do I have to do to get (or keep) this relationship?

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Self-respect Effectiveness

Keeping or improving self-respect and liking yourself

• Respecting your own values and beliefs: acting in a way that makes you feel moral
• Acting in a way that makes you feel capable and effective

Questions

1. How do I want to feel about myself after the interaction is over? 2. What do I have to do to feel that way about myself? What will work?

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I’m feeling too lousy to go into discussing this and besides, I couldn’t say it any better