i'm a little disappointed that i didn't get to complete the A to Z blog challenge but there has been so much going on in the last few weeks it was hard to keep focus.
to top it all off, i decided to quit smoking. one day i ran out of cigarettes and was kind of busy and never got around to getting more, then the next day i had a shitty day and didn't want to get out of bed and so on and so forth until i realized it had been a few days and i hadn't been smoking. today marks my 3 weeks no smoking and 5 days no cutting. two major addictions that i am determined to take control over.
the good news is that i didn't quit group after all. i did, however, change the time of day in which i was going and that has made a huge difference. in the mornings the group is smaller and it feels less stressful to me. the therapist for this group is marvelous! Dr. Sims is very warm and motivating. she uses a lot of humor to help us relax and open up a little but she is also very real and very honest (she reminds me of a few of my fb friends) so it has been a more comfortable experience and i am starting to take an earnest interest in having a life less disheveled.
i know that i will never be able to "fix" the schizophrenia, that part of my brain is fu@ked and wired wrong, but at least i am gaining the skills necessary to deal with emotional regulation, distress tolerance, social awkwardness, paranoia, and dissociative behaviors. geez that sounds bad :/ i've been in therapy for what seems like my entire life but i never really "studied" or took a good long look at what was going on inside my brain. it just seemed weird, like "i KNOW what's happening to me, i don't need YOU to tell me what is happening to me because no damn textbook could EVER begin to describe the HELL that is living with this 'monster' inside you that you cannot control!" i've always been so emotional about that. even now i'm crying because i hate that i am this way.
ok, i had to take a few minutes and collect myself.
The Whisper...
sunday i think i had a bit of a meltdown. i was quite heavily feeling the bitterness of not connecting. sometimes i get angry with myself for not doing better socially and throw that anger all over the place i felt horrible for being lonely and horrible for acting horribly. :/
i know i have said a thousand times how wonderful Kc is but he really is my God send. all of this time i have been waiting for something epic to change my life and instead i was gifted this funny, kind, and patient man. he's not flashy, or dramatic, in fact he's one of the most adorable nerds i have ever met! he's always doing these silly little things that would not seem like a big deal to anyone else but me and the fact that he gets me and the fact that he does these silly little things to give me courage and make me feel good about myself...oh geez, i'm in tears again; i promise this time they are happy tears. :)
so, after having my boyfriend tell me he broke his "no fu@king way will i ever get a facebook" rule so that i would never be lonely on fb and always have someone there i could talk to and then having him come home and sing christina aguilera's"beautiful" to me very, very badly i might add, i realized...maybe i am someone who is worth something...
and then yesterday morning in group something finally clicked and i had my first "ah ha!" moment. after all these years of "being there but not getting it" as my therapist would say, i finally stopped covering my ears and squeezing my eyes shut to the fact that i am capable of handling this!
instead of rebelling against the whole process of "treatment" i'm starting to not only grasp but accept the concept that there are things that i will learn about myself that i may not like and may not be positive (hypersensitive emotions, mood swings, not feeling like i am human, disconnecting...) but with the right set of skills i can learn how to regulate the way i respond to the every day things that most people don't even have to think about.
each session we are given material to read on different skill building exercises. the group is run somewhat like a class so we have a workbook and different assignments. it's weird because when i was dealing with my ex, he would often tell me that his therapist would give him certain things to read up on and such. some of the things i have are similar but in his case he would always make it seem like these were things that i needed to do in order to "validate" him or to work on my communication skills. i guess that is one of the reasons why i fought this so hard in the beginning. he always made it seem like it was some sort of test that i was failing at and i was like "i don't want to do this because i've already failed". now i am learning that maybe the full concept of the assignments may not have been explained properly. idk i'm trying to be open about giving the benefit of the doubt but the way we are learning the same set of skills is far different. we are learning them in a "heal thyself" sort of way. in no way shape or form are we asked to dump all of these expectations on the people around us. instead we learn how to recognize these things within ourselves and use those skills to take control of how we respond to different instances.
Anyway, this week we are learning "mindfulness" so i will have to take that and put it in a box and label it "stupid ex shit that shouldn't bother me anymore" and throw it in the ocean. :)
(ps if you would like to follow along in what i am doing you can visit this website DBT self-help: Life Skills for Emotional Health. this site is one of the best that i have seen so far that clearly outlines each step of dialectical behavior therapy )
for the first time in my life i can see hope. not as a light at the end of a tunnel but as the tunnel actually crumbling and falling away.
