like a hurt, lost and blinded fool, fool

Wednesday, 08/03/16, 8:55am

I probably should have blogged last night. I was in a bit of a depressive episode, brought on by a fight with the kids and social anxiety. But I felt a little too lost and alone to blog. Strange to say that considering I usually turn to my blog when I feel lost and alone. But something about the widely sharing aspect of my blog has made me less likely to turn to it lately.

I don't want that to be the case. I don't want to feel afraid to blog or afraid to be totally and brutally honest. Because really that's what my blog has been about since day 1, being totally and brutally honest about my struggles with depression and anxiety.

Well despite my inability to blog last night, I'll still strive to be honest today.

I've been tracking my moods more with an app on my phone. It has the capability to graph the results which is what I consider to be the most useful part. So far I haven't felt good about the results in the last several days. It feels like I'm more down than either I expected or used to be or something. That in turn feels like a failure to me. Depression and anxiety episodes typically feel that way for me. I get triggered by something in my life, but then I spiral downward because I feel guilt and shame over my thoughts and feelings.

Of course, last night, I had the intention of going to see the movie "Bad Moms" with some friends. So when I was crippled by my anxiety and depression, I felt further guilt and shame over backing out on something. And not doing what would have maybe been better for me in the long term.

One of my friends in that group has really stressed to me several times about how this group is a safe place and I can come in whatever state I'm in. And I get that and agree with it, when I'm in a better state. When I'm in that lowest of lows though, hiding from all people seems like what I need most. And maybe that's mostly the stigma of the mental illness that I still have. Despite being honest in blog form, it's still really really hard to show up and be honest in person.

I do think my depression has been harder to handle as of late. It feels like it's been more out of control this summer, and I know that some of it has to do with the grief over Adam, which has felt different and complicated and so so painful due to the nature of his death and his illness. My mother-in-law has said that it's been hard lately to think about him in the happy times, and she keeps going over the bad times with his illness. That makes his death so complicated for the grief. It's not that the grief is harder necessarily than other deaths and grief, but the nature of it all makes it "complicated". My therapist helped me to accept that and be less hard on myself soon after Adam died. Accepting the complicated part is what I mean, not accepting his death. I'm not in the acceptance phase yet of grief.

I've found that the stages of grief can be really messy and complicated. You can bounce between them at different times and they don't seem to happen chronologically. Maybe some people go through the stages chronologically, but I have a feeling that it's messy with most difficult deaths.

I can't spend too much time in the blog on Adam today, right now that feels more painful and harder to improve my mood for today. Today, it's more dangerous for me to focus on him. Of course, knowing that, I feel shame over pushing away the grief.

Trying not to spiral downward though.

I do think that tracking my mood right now is going to really help in my treatment. I think that I often sugarcoat things with my doctor, sometimes with my therapist too, and I need to be fully honest to get the right treatment. And it's not like I try to lie about how things are with them. If I'm in a good state when I go to an appointment, I feel like I've mostly been doing pretty well, and if I'm in a bad state, then I mostly feel like that's my life all the time. I get a pretty warped view of things depending on my state of being.

Tracking my mood, that's one way to help.

Blogging, that helps, but it's less concrete in looking back to see how I've been doing. Plus it would take a bit of work to go through old posts and try to figure out how often I was in an episode. Plus it's not like I blog all the time. Blogging captures a subset.

I know I've been vague in some respects about my depression and anxiety and grief today, etc, but that's about all I can handle with blogging right now.

Today I need to focus on being "ok" and pushing away the guilt and shame over how I felt yesterday and lately.