Friday, 12/09/16, 11:33am
I haven't written in over a week, and maybe that hasn't been the best choice, but it's also kinda just been the same old. Partially I don't feel like I have much to update. I still feel like I'm working hard to avoid those breakdowns, and I'm exhausted at the end of the night, every night. Maybe that's a side effect of all the medications.
Tonight and Sunday afternoon are choir concerts. RG and me. He is in one of the children's choirs; I am super proud of him. And I have a solo in these concerts. So kinda exciting. And kinda a big deal, but I haven't really been thinking about it much. Well that's not quite true. I have been practicing a lot, and I randomly burst into my solo to get another run-through. But until typing about it now, I've been avoiding the nerves. Crap, now I'm nervous. At least the Friday night concerts aren't as well attended. So maybe I'll feel more ready for it.
One of the hard things about this time of the year is all the social gatherings and plans and things to do. I'm having a difficult time being "social" right now, being peppy and happy and whatever else that's expected. We have a holiday party to attend tomorrow night, one where many of our favorite people in this area will be in attendance, but I'm finding myself with lots and lots of social anxiety. I missed several parties last weekend due to the hit of a bad day, and I'm already terrified that this weekend will be a repeat.
I'll do what I can. My biggest priority for this weekend is the choir concerts.
PS, y'all, since I think few who read my blog would guess the song on the post title. It's a tough one though. That line is my solo. It's Swahili.
Showing posts with label social anxiety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social anxiety. Show all posts
Friday, December 9, 2016
Sunday, August 21, 2016
on a stormy sea of moving emotion, tossed about, I'm like a ship on the ocean, I set a course for winds of fortune
Sunday, 08/21/16, 3:44pm
It feels like I've been fucking up for the last several months. Most especially, since the tragedy of Adam's death. Since then, everything has felt off, everything I've done has felt like a failure, and I've personally let down several people in my life, maybe.
I feel like I'm shirking responsibility for my own life by putting this all in perspective of Adam's death. But I have been rather affected by it. I've talked about this at length in the past, but the grief isn't magically gone now that more than 3 months have gone by. I feel like some of it has been delayed and pushed away at times.
This summer, despite some great travels, has been hard. We've needed more our little family time and less social obligations. We've needed more downtime, more allowances for messy house/screen time/fewer activities. But now we're trying to get ourselves back to normal, since the school year kinda requires us to. And it's hard.
RG was sick this week and he actually missed the first two days of school. It was a real bummer and definitely threw me off a little since I had much different expectations for those days. But being a good "take care of my kid when he's sick" mom helped improve some of my self-confidence.
I'm starting to wonder about changing my meds right now. There's also several other changes happening in my life too: kids are starting up school again, TK in kindergarten, we'll be in a new routine, I'm going to have some more free time to get in exercise and therapy appointments, and I'm also trying to get back into practicing mindfulness. It's hard to ever have a more controlled experimentation of medications, but it's so hard to reduce all the variables. It's not like I want to avoid getting back into an exercise routine right now in order to remove that as a variable. It's possible that I will be getting much better in the next few weeks due to all theses other changes, and not necessarily the medication.
It just makes treating mental illness that much more difficult, accounting for all the variables.
Did you know that Adam's death certificate lists (not sure if it still does since there was some family effort to change it) the cause of death as "suicide"? It's probably easiest to label it that and I'm sure they saw "schizophrenia" and figured there really is no other thing to list since it was probably, at least in part, caused by his mental illness. I've gone back and forth on what I think happened, and I think we all probably do. I think I have to not call it suicide, for my own sanity and because of my own fears for my self in my lowest of lows. But sometimes those thoughts creep back in of maybe it was suicide and we didn't see the signs because he was good at hiding that part. It's possible. With mental illness, it seems like there's so much of hiding from other people.
I understand why we hide our struggles, and there are so many reasons to do so. For one, we don't want to worry those that love us. But I think there's this big part of it that is perpetuated by the stigma of mental illness. We don't want others to look at us as "crazy" or "weak" or "mentally unstable". We don't want to be seen as a failure because we aren't able to just overcome the illness.
I think it's critical to be more open about our struggles in order to receive the best treatment. We have to be honest with our care providers, our doctors, and our therapists, but we also have to be honest with those who can support us, those who care about us. I think the support network thing is a huge component of the treatment, and yet the pressure to keep these things silent prevents getting all the support we need.
We had a surprise birthday party for my sister and her husband in celebration of their 40th birthdays (a month apart from eachother). It was a success, although I still feel awful over the people we forgot to invite, or didn't have email addresses for, etc. I did another specialty cake, this time to honor their love of skiing.
The backstory here is even though they are both normally skiers, my sister is snowboarding because now that she's 40, she feels ready to try new things. :) Finding skier figurines in August did not prove to be an easy task.
Although I mostly just got pictures of the cake, I got a few of us getting ready to surprise them.
I haven't been social much lately, mostly due to recent sickness, my depression, the grief, social anxiety, and some Nasser stomach troubles. But last night was nice, it was the right setting for me, the right people, to feel supported through it all. Unfortunately Nasser and TK were sick yesterday (probably from whatever RG had), so that made for a more stressful day, but the success of the party was enough to make me feel more normal last night.
It feels like I've been fucking up for the last several months. Most especially, since the tragedy of Adam's death. Since then, everything has felt off, everything I've done has felt like a failure, and I've personally let down several people in my life, maybe.
I feel like I'm shirking responsibility for my own life by putting this all in perspective of Adam's death. But I have been rather affected by it. I've talked about this at length in the past, but the grief isn't magically gone now that more than 3 months have gone by. I feel like some of it has been delayed and pushed away at times.
This summer, despite some great travels, has been hard. We've needed more our little family time and less social obligations. We've needed more downtime, more allowances for messy house/screen time/fewer activities. But now we're trying to get ourselves back to normal, since the school year kinda requires us to. And it's hard.
RG was sick this week and he actually missed the first two days of school. It was a real bummer and definitely threw me off a little since I had much different expectations for those days. But being a good "take care of my kid when he's sick" mom helped improve some of my self-confidence.
I'm starting to wonder about changing my meds right now. There's also several other changes happening in my life too: kids are starting up school again, TK in kindergarten, we'll be in a new routine, I'm going to have some more free time to get in exercise and therapy appointments, and I'm also trying to get back into practicing mindfulness. It's hard to ever have a more controlled experimentation of medications, but it's so hard to reduce all the variables. It's not like I want to avoid getting back into an exercise routine right now in order to remove that as a variable. It's possible that I will be getting much better in the next few weeks due to all theses other changes, and not necessarily the medication.
It just makes treating mental illness that much more difficult, accounting for all the variables.
Did you know that Adam's death certificate lists (not sure if it still does since there was some family effort to change it) the cause of death as "suicide"? It's probably easiest to label it that and I'm sure they saw "schizophrenia" and figured there really is no other thing to list since it was probably, at least in part, caused by his mental illness. I've gone back and forth on what I think happened, and I think we all probably do. I think I have to not call it suicide, for my own sanity and because of my own fears for my self in my lowest of lows. But sometimes those thoughts creep back in of maybe it was suicide and we didn't see the signs because he was good at hiding that part. It's possible. With mental illness, it seems like there's so much of hiding from other people.
I understand why we hide our struggles, and there are so many reasons to do so. For one, we don't want to worry those that love us. But I think there's this big part of it that is perpetuated by the stigma of mental illness. We don't want others to look at us as "crazy" or "weak" or "mentally unstable". We don't want to be seen as a failure because we aren't able to just overcome the illness.
I think it's critical to be more open about our struggles in order to receive the best treatment. We have to be honest with our care providers, our doctors, and our therapists, but we also have to be honest with those who can support us, those who care about us. I think the support network thing is a huge component of the treatment, and yet the pressure to keep these things silent prevents getting all the support we need.
We had a surprise birthday party for my sister and her husband in celebration of their 40th birthdays (a month apart from eachother). It was a success, although I still feel awful over the people we forgot to invite, or didn't have email addresses for, etc. I did another specialty cake, this time to honor their love of skiing.
The backstory here is even though they are both normally skiers, my sister is snowboarding because now that she's 40, she feels ready to try new things. :) Finding skier figurines in August did not prove to be an easy task.
Although I mostly just got pictures of the cake, I got a few of us getting ready to surprise them.
I haven't been social much lately, mostly due to recent sickness, my depression, the grief, social anxiety, and some Nasser stomach troubles. But last night was nice, it was the right setting for me, the right people, to feel supported through it all. Unfortunately Nasser and TK were sick yesterday (probably from whatever RG had), so that made for a more stressful day, but the success of the party was enough to make me feel more normal last night.
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
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.
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.
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