Anniversaries

[oak]

I'm glad you're hanging there, SwampWitch.

And, IME, sobriety really gets fun starting at six months. My senses returned, and the cobwebs of my brain cleared.

[Swamp Witch]

Hey there

I thought I might post another update seeing as the last one was so very dark and sad.

Rereading my own words...it startles me how much pain is there. I hardly recognize myself. It makes me wonder, is this part of the nature of bipolar? While I've experienced many depressive episodes over my life I am still pretty new to the diagnosis, there must be ways I can better manage it. Maybe I should be writing more regularly. Maybe I shouldn't wait until I can't stand it anymore to take a moment and explore my emotions and try and articulate them to myself. I have made a commitment to write every day of November, both personal material and short fiction works.

Thanks for the solidarity oak!! It is really nice to have nearly a full year sober under my belt! I believe I'm what's known as a "high-bottom alcoholic" since I didn't have to destroy my entire life to quit, and I'm so grateful for that. The genetics in my family are quite dangerous to be playing around with booze and drugs, so I'm just tryna stay wise and abstain. I'm sure the holidays will be bit of a trial haha but I'm confident I can weather it with tools I have now.

Thanks for reading and for the support,

Swamp Witch

[manuel_moe_g]

Take care, Swamp Witch. Please share you November writings, if you feel so inclined, we would love to read them

[Mental Fairy]

Swamp witch

I’m so glad your back. Your story is often one I think about. The condition your health was in and your processing of this is a journey only you know how to navigate.

Healing or helping ourselves through medical issues, mental issues or other takes time and shitloads on confronting courage.

How you write, where you write and in what context comes down to your feelings at the time.

Little side note, see if your writing in the morning is the same as writing in the evenings.

Why?

Well if your tired when you right you might find more comes out. It’s more in depth at times and your emotions from the day and your observations become rather interesting.
If you write on the mornings then you may notice a completely different observation of your thoughts. Depends on if you are a morning or afternoon or evening person I guess?

I would be interested to hear your thoughts day to day, you have been through so much and it needs to be acknowledged that your strength and will power may show up at times in your writing.

Take care and chat soon!

[Swamp Witch]

Hey guys

Well I failed the November writing commitment, I got a little bit of work done but we had a big stupid Thanksgiving that got in the way of my goals. Ultimately I chose to support my mother's Thanksgiving endeavor (which exhausted us both so much that we have agreed to never do something on that scale ever again) and maintain my fitness routine and that left little time for writing. Oh well.

However! I did get asked to join a small writing and critique group, and our first virtual meeting is tomorrow afternoon. I've been having a lovely time reading my peers' work this week and writing out critique to hopefully help their work shine.

My therapist and I have begun EMDR therapy but we've only done one session, the one where you set up the "calm safe space". I was supposed to have my first real reprocessing session yesterday but my therapist had an emergency with another client. So, next week we will start.

My sister told me of a job opening she heard about, and helped me update my resume to apply. I don't know yet if the job would be a good fit, but certain aspects of it sound completely awesome. If it's not, at the very least my resume looks great now.

This new job (or any job that pays more than my current pathetic wage) would allow me to finally gain some financial independence and build my own life, live by myself for a while. Which is something I have wished for for a very long time. It's the kind of wish that makes me start tearing up just thinking about it, makes me want to not tell anyone and keep it a silent secret. If no one knows I didn't get it, then I can just pretend it never happened, pretend I am not in debilitating pain from the disappointment. I am good at pretending.

Question: Do any of y'all have this huge aversion/sensitivity to disappointment?? Throughout my life I've always experienced disappointment almost like grief. It hurts like there's been a death. Recovery could take weeks or months. Even though it's just that something didn't work out this time, or that a situation changed or didn't change. So because disappointment feels like every sweet innocent wish I ever had has just been butchered alive in front of me, hope became a very dangerous thing. I trained myself at a pretty young age to never dare to hope, ever. For anything. I know this thought process has kept me from reaching for better things.

If you have felt this too, I am here for you. You're not the only one.

This is something I would like to reprocess in EMDR therapy. Until my next session, these days will serve as an exercise in allowing myself to feel a glimmer of hope and light alongside the fear and the darkness.


Thanks for reading. I hope you are well.

Swamp Witch

[Mental Fairy]

Hi Swamp Witch

Yes, i totally understand the feeling of disappointment. However, i take it out on myself. That is something the therapist pointed out to me. It ranged from a dish i cooked that didn't turn out how i wanted. A run that wasn't good enough like the one i had yesterday. There was a lot of negative self talk afterwards. The plan was to repeat it today but i had to take that negative side of me and slap that b*#! up side of the head and remind her it's ok. Plus i was running in the bush with shocking wind blowing all over the place! I think this is why i only take part in solo sports. I put all the blame on myself. I would rather hurt that see someone else hurt too.

I have every toe and finger crossed you get an interview for this job. If it doesn't work out there is always other jobs.

EMDR is something i have never done and wonder if it would help with my sleep walking and night terrors. I just can't face going back to the therapist. I feel so ashamed of that.

It was so nice to hear from you again. I did wonder how you were doing.
Mental Hugs

[manuel_moe_g]

Question: Do any of y'all have this huge aversion/sensitivity to disappointment?? Throughout my life I've always experienced disappointment almost like grief. It hurts like there's been a death. Recovery could take weeks or months. Even though it's just that something didn't work out this time, or that a situation changed or didn't change. So because disappointment feels like every sweet innocent wish I ever had has just been butchered alive in front of me, hope became a very dangerous thing. I trained myself at a pretty young age to never dare to hope, ever. For anything. I know this thought process has kept me from reaching for better things.

i know what you are talking about, i am taken back to very fragile times in my life, this was my pattern with relationships in my youth and as a young man

[Swamp Witch]

Thanks for dropping in on me guys.

I have been job searching for the last month or so, and nothing has come of my efforts just yet. But! Im in career counseling offered by the college I graduated from, and I have learned so much about how to more effectively search for jobs, who to contact, how to network. It has been very encouraging, and I'm certain I will be in a more fulfilling job and that much closer to independence within this year, if not the next several months. Big changes are coming for me, and while I don't feel ready for any of it, there is no question that the change is what I want.


I have had a session of EMDR since I last posted here, and I'd like to tell you about it in case you are considering it. Just as an FYI, if you are considering doing this but are hesitant bc you don't want to say or rehash certain things out loud, this therapy would be perfect for you. You do not have to talk about every detail, the therapist will just ask you to focus on the experience, or on the thoughts, the sensations, whatever it may be, and your brain will do the rest.

It was honestly, incredible. EMDR has already exceeded my expectations. It really helped put a very sad, very formative event from my past into some larger context. For this first reprocessing session I chose to focus on the day my childhood dog was hit by a car and killed. From the earlier experience of losing my father, I learned that pain and loss, is what life is about. Carrying heavy burdens of pain, that's what being alive is about. It's not like I, personally, deserve to feel this way, it's just that this is what life is like. Losing the dog reinforced these ideas for me, and I kind of believed from an early age that the meaning of life was suffering. I also heard over and over how hardship makes you a stronger person, how there is a reason for everything, and think of all the folks who have it worse than you and be grateful for this pain, be grateful it isn't something worse. I never really believed any of that, but I was very young (lost my dad at 9, lost the dog around 11) and couldn't articulate my feelings about these horrible platitudes. Hearing these things did nothing but teach me to not acknowledge my own pain, that my feelings were not important, and instill furious resentment toward the world and everyone in it, including myself.

This session also helped me see that....it was sort of ok? that I learned these sad things about the world. How could I have learned anything different? These were the data presented to me. The sad things I thought and believed, would occur to any child in the same position. As a sort of reaction to the harmful platitudes, I accepted that it was ok to feel these things...to be wounded by an injury is only natural.

EMDR helped me see how a painful & heartbreaking experience could be more than another damaging shard of my past; I had come to view it (and my other upsetting core memories) as part of this suffocating pit of living quicksand, with huge sharp blades of glass in it, that regularly I would sink down into, be swallowed by. With EMDR, I was able to sort of float?? Up to the top of this awful experience of losing my dog, so that it supported me, held me gently as I stared up into the sky. EMDR is SO powerful, y'all, as the stimulation was turned on, I literally felt like I was floating, floating on that pool of now calm and sturdy quicksand, on the surface of the experience of losing my dog, and looking up into a freaking James Webb Space Telescope image, just a mind-blowing and perspective-shattering image of space and time. It was incredibly powerful.

It helped me see more clearly, and more importantly, start to actually BELIEVE that death, suffering, pain, grief and loss, these things all stand in rightful places in the universe. Are they fun to experience, no. Are they easy to bear? No. Are they sweet and fluffy roommates to have in your brain with you? No. They are not.

But.

They stand in rightful places. They are not things to be shelved away or buried, shunned and locked out. They deserve attention and respect. They deserve the energy and time that they demand. But, at the same time being alive does not revolve around suffering and pain. These are not the only pieces. They stand alongside joy, beauty, fulfillment, recovery, tenacity, contentment, peaceful sleep. They all belong here, with us in the universe, just as my life and mind belong here.


I don't know if I feel super different in my day to day life yet, haha but I was so so encouraged by that first reprocessing session. My next session is this evening, and I'm sure it will be just as profound.


Just thought I'd share that with you guys, and thank you for reading my words on this forum.

Hoping you are well,

Swamp Witch

[manuel_moe_g]

Hi Swamp Witch!

Glad to hear your EMDR session went very well.

What technology or mechanism is your therapist using for the bilateral stimulation?

[Swamp Witch]

Hey Manny

So my therapist uses a system called Remote EMDR. I was skeptical at first bc it's done remotely, but I found it to be very effective. This system is very customizable to you. There is a pair of dots on the screen you follow with your eyes, you can choose the speed and whether or not there is a little sound when they hit the edges of the screen, I choose for the dots to be silent. There is also a sound that plays, of your choosing. I use large, over-ear headphones for this. For this session I chose the sound of ocean waves crashing. It sounds really nice and not robotic at all, and the sound moves back and forth between the 2 headphones. So you get bilateral stimulus via your eyes and your ears.

Side note: For speaking to my therapist, I had kept one ear out, bc they are noise cancelling and I wanted to be able to hear my own voice as we talked. but part way into the session I started putting the second headphone over my ear when the stimulation was on, and it became SO much more effective, I felt it immediately. Lol pretty obvious but still, I can't figure out how to get the mic to pick up my voice and just let me leave both cans on the whole time. So, for anyone that wants to try it I do recommend you use comfortable, noise cancelling headphones for this!

My therapist also has said that there's an app called BiTapp, and that connects to Bluetooth earbuds, and provides alternating vibrations through the buds coupled with the sounds. That I have not tried, but it's another option if you haven't got big ol headphones.