I hate starting out each journal entry with something that basically says ’shit… I haven’t written forever… oops!’ The problem is journalling is about talking to yourself, and I really haven’t been talking to myself much. I think being very depressed and suicidal has broken some trust. In some ways it’s splintered me into parts, parts that are very ill and want to die, or hide away, or just remain as numb and quiet as possible, and the part of me where that spark of life lives that wants to win back the me of previous pre-depression years, that part is what brings me here. Writing is communicating to myself, and I need to do more of it, need to rebuild that trust. Need to open doors into my psyche and my feelings, and not worry that if I do my entire world will come crumbling down.

The psychiatrist I was getting assessed by and myself decided he wasn’t the one for me. Basically, he does really intense deep work, ie, raises a lot of intense emotion, and right now I need more ’supportive’ style therapy than ‘explorative’ type therapy, I simply am not able to handle deep emotional work yet. Also he requires a long term commitment, 5-7 years seeing him twice weekly, and if you miss any appointment for any reason, sick in hospital, vacation giving him 3 months notice, what have you, any any reason, you pay the 160$ fee for that or those appointments. Simply can’t afford it. Thats why I have to see a psychiatrist, since it’s covered by medical here in Canada, a psychotherapist, isn’t. Lots of great psychotherapists looking for work, unfortunately, I can’t afford to hire them. Lots of people needing psychotherapy, and psychiatrists are in short supply comparitively, you would think someone in the health system would make some changes there… hmmm? Thankfully, the mood disorder specialist that works through the local community mental health group is willing to follow me, it’s not therapy so much, but at least someone who -really- knows the chemistry behind depression is managing my medications, and it is making slow steady positive progress.

However, he did drop a bombshell on me the other day, might not seem like much to some people, but the news was this, I needed to start getting up at 8am every morning and not napping at all during the day. Period. Ummm…. For a while I had been ‘numbing’ a lot of my emotional pain using anti-anxiety meds, clonazepam, he felt that was probably not helping the depression, so out that went. I coped. Then I decided that I really had to start fighting for my physical health again, from gaining so much weight from the depression and the medication. I started Jenny Craig, and have been slowly but surely losing weight, but another big comfort and numbing coping mechanism, food, comfort eating, gone. So, what would I do when I felt I just couldn’t deal that day, and time of day or night, I would sleep, glorious sleep. Or if I was edgy and wired from my emotions, knowing I wouldn’t sleep well, I would go on all night tv watching sprees and escaping into blissful day sleeping the following day. I LOVE sleep right now. For a while about a year ago now, ended about a year of solid nightmares, never a good night sleep. But the last year, sleeping has been mostly all good. I’m a vivid dreamer, and in my dreams, I’m happy, I have energy, I do things I love, I meet exciting people, I’m thin, active, vibrant, sexually active, I have orgasms in my sleep even though my libido dies on awakening. It’s weird I can be just about at the point of climax in a dream, and I’ll wake up, wet between the legs, but the feeling of desire, closeness fades fast. It’s like a big part of my subconcious mind is HEALTHY!, but I can’t access it during my concious waking hours. To make a long story short, I felt in the office when he told me to restrict and schedule my sleep, like I had a huge security blanket ripped from my arms. No, he’s not a big meanie. He’s really up on all the latest studies and keeps really current on depression issues. Studies have shown that with extreme depression cases (like mine, goodie) no matter how good the therapy and medications, if a person doesn’t have good sleep hygiene, getting the right amount of quality sleep each and every night during night-time hours and being awake and alert during daylight hours, that they WON’T recover from their depression. AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So far, well, it’s bombed. I try to stay awake and face the negative feelings, try to work through them through listening to music, or meditating, but I just can’t seem to chase them away. I had basically perfected the technique of forcing myself to go to sleep when stressed, and, now I have to force myself not to, but then, I don’t know what to do with the feelings, and they’re too much for me to handle. I found myself having the first actively suicidal yearnings again during those moments, and that’s terrifying. I’ll get to talk to him on teusday about it, and hopefully figure out a plan to implement, maybe I just need to ease into it. I don’t think I can take on a new sleep schedule ‘cold turkey’. I know I can’t, I haven’t been.

It’s Valentines… love yourself, so you can love others, and know that if you are loving others, somewhere a part of yourself is still loving yourself. Love love love.

Leila

And for my alter-ego (and when I say ego I really mean EGO )

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 13th, 2005 at 10:34 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.