Tag: therapy

Going Nowhere

Categories ANXIETY & ME5 Comments on Going Nowhere

My brain is tired.  I can’t focus.  I almost can’t even think.

I have been TRYING all day to streamline my 2 google accounts to one.  I have been trying to synchronize and change my contact email from my personal to a business account.  It is not going well.  But it could be worse.

I do not want 2 google accounts.  The first one I created way back when I had no idea what I was doing.  I had no concept or idea of branding really and now that I do I am so frustrated that I am unable to change some things and/or I do not understand how to or what I am even trying to do at times.

Ugh.  For now I think I am stuck working between 2 accounts.  I am afraid of having an “accident” and losing all my YouTube stuff.  I have thought about starting over.  I am still thinking of starting over but I don’t want to lose my screen name or come up with a new one.  Unless of course something clever just comes to me…. You never know.  Could happen.

Google is making me crazy.  All I want to do is change my main email address.  Why WHY must it be so hard.  All day.  I have spent ALL DAY working on this and I think I am done.  I may have even effed up my adsense account along the way.  Good grief. I need to stop thinking about this conundrum.

I feel like I am trying to get somewhere and I am getting nowhere.  I am going nowhere.  Except in circles.  I am going in circles.

Perhaps after I sleep on it I will be able to think with a clearer mind.

I have a therapy appointment tomorrow.  I both dread it and look forward to it all at the same time.  I look forward to getting out of the house and having some me-time but I hate that I have to spend it talking about my problems and my younger-jaded-selves.  I hate that I have to worry about parking every time I am there.  City parking is a nightmare and costs an arm and a leg for a measly hour or 2.

My mind is everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.

I hate the night before therapy days.  I always feel slightly all-over-the-place.  I want to go but I don’t want to go, I want to be finished, I want to be whole and happy and back to me again.  I had no idea it would take this long and I wonder if I will ever find me again.  Sometimes I feel like she is there and other times I feel like she is no longer me, and I am no longer her.  The days I can feel her are the better days.  The days that I feel as if I am no longer her are the days I feel the loneliest and the darkest.

I feel like a shell.

I feel like I am invisible.

I feel as though I might just take an adivan and go to bed.

Goodnight, always hoping for a good morning.

THERAPY THURSDAY | July 2016

Categories ANXIETY & ME1 Comment on THERAPY THURSDAY | July 2016

I started therapy before my Dad died, before I quit my job, before everything got really bad.  I am still here and I am desperately trying to finish what I started.  I have quit a few times only to return in need of help.  I went with the goal of receiving and completing EMDR Therapy (what is EMDR? click here to learn more ).

I am currently pretty much smack dab in the middle of reprocessing.  I am in the third and final stage, the home stretch if you will, and I hate it.  I want to be finished.  I want to be finished and I hate it not because of the therapy itself but because of how I am feeling physically and emotionally towards my environment and surroundings.  I am starting to see certain people for who they are and it makes me very sad.  I hate living in the my mother’s basement and I need to get out.  I should have gotten out a long time ago.  I should of used my inheritance to get myself out of here.  This environment is crushing my soul.  It is very negative, tense, and close minded here, it makes me feel like I am suffocating.  My boyfriend lives with me and for that I am forever grateful.  Without him I would crawl into bed and just stay there.  But we both know we need to get out of here.  We want out so bad.

EMDR has been monumentally helpful to me since the very beginning.  What is hard is seeing people and situations differently.  Realizing you need to and want to make changes but you can’t yet.  Feeling yourself change.  I am feeling myself change.  I was really worried about this change in the beginning – who will I be? what will I like? will I like me?? – essentially WHO THE HELL AM I REALLY? but the more we press forward in EMDR the more solid in myself I feel.  The more I understand why I feel so overly sensitive, why I decided to silence myself and essentially just give in to the constant yelling.  I understand why I was giving up.

A person can only take so much before they give up and after living through multiple traumas since the age of 2, by 28 I was out of gas.  I was out of gas and my best driving buddy – my dad- had just left me.  Needless to say, I trashed the [metaphorical] car.  I stopped sleeping, I stopped eating, I started drinking because nothing would take the pain away.  I looked worse and worse, I bleached, coloured, and dyed my hair so much I had to chop it all off a la pixie.  Somewhere along the line I plucked almost all my eyebrows out, which I am STILL trying to grow back.

It was in that time period when I looked and felt my worst that an Angel came to me.  To this day I truly believe my Dad had some hand in it, I think he was watching from above and knew what I needed.  Who I needed.  It was a few weeks after I had started drinking. I was already (back) in therapy but I was struggling.  At this time I should also note that my father was an alcoholic and I never really enjoyed drinking, I stayed away from it, everything about it turned me off.  Then one day I just stopped caring.  I found a bottle in the house and just started drinking.  My days became a routine of waiting for the liquor store to open so I could get home and drink … Until it dawned on me to buy BIGGER bottles (oh geez…).  I spent a lot of time alone, with my short hair, drinking on the deck listening to the oldies.  I do believe that is one of my most sad times in my life.  I was very sad and I felt very alone.  I felt like I was dying inside.

And then something happened.

One day this lovely and incredibly handsome Facebook friend I had insisted we meet at the beach.  We had been fb chatting and texting each other for months but being so preoccupied in my grief I didn’t want to think too much of it only to become more sad if he wasn’t interested in me.  Luckily he had caught me before I made my first drink of the day and I could still drive.  I blogged about it here!

I did not know then but I know now that he was my Angel.  I did not drink that day.  Nor did I drink the day after.  He became my other half and inevitably saved me from going down a very dark road.  He built me up when I was weak and enabled me to continue therapy, he inspires me to get better and to do better just by being there and caring.

My therapy sessions improved immediately.  Finally feeling like I was loved and supported made it so much easier to go to therapy, to actually want to do the therapy.  See, I did not realize then and I am just coming to realize NOW how little love and support I was feeling and getting before he came along.  I was made to feel like my feelings didn’t matter, my anger was unreasonable, that I was being dramatic, when really I was crying out for help.   He could see it and he did not run away from it.

My therapy session this week involved this topic of feeling very dismissed by certain people and learning that it’s not really their fault.  They simply do not have the capacity or willingness to understand my feelings.  This saddens and angers me but at the same time has brought me the decision that those people shall not need to be informed.  They cannot understand so why waste my breath?  It is a new and interesting decision for me but I want to be happy.  I am sick of being weighed down by other people and their ignorance towards mental health.  Especially when those people are family members.

I now need to focus. Focus on finishing therapy and building my life with my Angel.  I am terrified because I do not know what is on the other side.  At the same time I am grateful because without therapy and his love and support through all of this I cannot fathom where I would be or what I would be doing.

That’s all I have for this, my first instalment of “Therapy Thursday”.  Today I just let my thoughts come out regarding this week’s therapy session.  I am not sure where this series is going but I plan to keep writing and find out!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read what I write, I appreciate it more than you know.

 

Quotable Quotes | Led Zeppelin

Categories QuotesLeave a Comment on Quotable Quotes | Led Zeppelin

quotable quotes 2

“Standing on a hill in my mountain of

dreams telling myself it’s not as hard,

hard, hard as it seems”.

~ Led Zeppelin | Going to California

Ain’t that the truth.  For me anyways.

Even now I feel as thought I am standing on a hill, a very small one, in my mountain of dreams.  I keep telling myself it is not as hard as it seems.  Life is not as hard as it seems.  I keep thinking and hoping that if I work hard and keep going that I will reach the mountain.  I will reach my dreams.

I do not know how I will get there but at this point in time I am trying not to concern myself with the how.  The how will come.  At this point I need to worry about me, my metal health, and getting through therapy so I can live my life to its fullest.  There are many little hills to stand on before reaching my mountain.  I must reach them all so to ensure that I will be ready, willing, and capable when I reach my dreams.

My dreams are not huge.  Really.  I just want to be happy.  I want to love and be loved.  I want to work and make enough money to live off.  I don’t want to be constantly worried that something bad is going to happen.  I want to move out of my mothers basement into a place that is ours (by boyfriends &mine).  I can’t wait to feel what it is like to wake up and not feel as thought I am mentally and creatively suffocated.  To wake up and begin my day without running into triggers before I have even had my morning tea.  These triggers range from anxiety, depression, and panic – sometimes all 3 at the same time which makes for quite the EXPLOSIVE morning let me tell you.  It’s also exhausting and embarrassing but I can’t help it sometimes.

My bud can only bloom so far under these conditions.  It will only reach a certain point before it will stop and stall.  I feel like I am already beginning to stall.  At this point (July 2016) I wanted to be further along in not only therapy but in life as well.  I have been off [from work] for 3 years now, I had hoped these years would have been more productive, on my part, creatively.

I want(ed) to do more about mental health and the issues and stigma that surrounds it.  I wanted to create an example, a documentation, a smiling face that says “hey! it’s ok! You are not your Mental Illness! You can do this!”.  I want(ed) to create a community of care where we can share our plights and talk them over.  Help each other out and lift each others spirits in a positive and non-judgemental environment.  If you are in therapy we can encourage each other to keep at it – sometimes therapy is great and sometimes it sucks.  If your not in therapy for whatever reason that is cool too, maybe you have your own way of coping and that is awesome.  I am not here to preach therapy but I would like to promote positivity, talk about mental health, and ultimately learn to love and accept myself.

My mom has often said “go with what you know”.  After battling PTSD over half my life I feel that it is something I know very well.  I know what it’s like to be misdiagnosed and medicated (ahem … overmedicated).  I know what it’s like to not be able to go to work or school because you are so anxious or depressed you simply cannot get out of bed NEVER MIND leave the house.  I know what it’s like to feel like you are crazy because the “norms” just can’t understand what is wrong.  Therapy. Oh my lanta do I know therapy.  I’m on my 3rd therapist now, so far she has stuck but we have had some fraying moments.

I know a lot about dealing with anxiety and depression and I don’t know what else to do with all of my information except share it.  Share my story, share my journey, for not only you, the reader, but for myself to look back on when I [presumably] reach that damn mountain.

Quotable Quotes | Anais Nin

Categories QuotesLeave a Comment on Quotable Quotes | Anais Nin

Rainbow of Petals_Fotor

“And the day came when the

risk to remain tight in a bud

was more painful than the risk

it took to bloom.”

~ Anais Nin

My therapist turned me onto this quote a few years ago.  I remember vividly hearing these words and feeling such a connection to what they said.

Somewhere along the line I started to turn down the volume my personality and dreams and began to raise the volume in the afraid-to-be-the-real-me department.  Looking back I can see that it got so bad I almost lost myself completely.  Toxic people, toxic relationships, and toxic thinking can affect so much of you if you let it.  I had gotten to a point where years of the 3 T’s (the toxic people, toxic relationships & toxic thinking) had forced me into a bud.  A tight, closed off, suffocating bud.

Even though I was trapped in this bud I knew I wanted more. I want[ed] to be that beautiful flower that I was born to be.  I was so afraid to go forth and enjoy my life [and myself] that I felt I literally could not stand it anymore.  It was becoming entirely too painful to remain living tightly in a bud.  I started by making small changes that ultimately turned into bigger changes.  The first few changes were terrifying.  I spent a lot of time alone.  MONTHS.  I cried a lot.  I cried myself to sleep, I cried on the cat, I cried if I spilled tea, I cried while driving – which I do not recommend by the way.  The anxiety of hating where I was in life literally made me sick to my stomach at times.  Whatever it took, I had to get out of that bud.

The risk I was taking staying in that bud was becoming far greater then the risk it was to let myself bloom.  I knew I could not do it myself so I put myself in therapy.  I quit therapy a few times before I finally realized I needed to stay.  I owed it to myself to stay and try my hardest because I did not want to find out what would happen to me if I didn’t.  I am still in therapy and still working on blooming fully.  I still have bad days and I still get the urge to quit therapy from time to time but when I remember being a bud it inspires me to keep going.

It is not an easy road but I feel that it would be even harder to look back and have never even tried.

The Morning Storm

Categories ANXIETY & ME6 Comments on The Morning Storm

I hate mornings.  I always have, and quite frankly I think mornings hate me too.

Every night I go to bed knowing that the Storm in my head is brewing.  I don’t even know what happens to my brain while I am sleeping but there is SOMETHING going on there.  If I wake up too early – regardless of whether I have had enough sleep or not – I feel anxious, nauseous, angry, confused, and agitated.  It is a lovely combination that makes for one hell of a Storm in my head every. Single. Morning.

It is frustrating and depressing.  I hate feeling so nasty in the morning.  I wish I could feel as good at 7am as I do at 10pm.  This problem has plagued me for as long as I can remember, even as far back as pre-school.  It’s like as soon as my eyes open I am precipitately anxious.  I am worried and anxious about my day before it even starts.  It got so bad [when I was still working] I literally threw up before every 7am shift I was scheduled for.  It makes no difference if I go to bed early, try to catch a nap the day before, eat breakfast, don’t eat breakfast, snack before bed, no snack before bed, bed location, gravol before bed – nada.  NADA.

I have learned that I need space in the morning and I need to give myself time to relax and process the upcoming day – wether I am busy [that day] or not.  The morning Storm usually only lasts about an hour but has been known to knock out power until well after lunch.  Either way, it makes it very difficult for me to get motivated and moving.  It takes so much energy to battle to storm and not let it get out of control (HeLLoooo morning PANIC ATTACK !), that by the time it clears I am mentally drained.

By mid-afternoon the skies are always clear and the morning Storm is but a memory.  A memory I know I will repeat again tomorrow.  I also find I need to be wary of evenings and certain lighting (i.e. The Keg’s dim dinner lights) because for some reason both can be intensely triggering.  The storm can re-appear and riek havoc on whatever it is I may be doing.  I have a few places I avoid – such as The Keg – as a safety measure against the Storm.

I find it best to not ignore the warning signs, my mind gets foggy, the winds of too many thoughts pick up, the spiddle spaddle of anxiety drops fall throughout my body and the tremble of nausea begins like thunder rolling in the distance.  At this time it is a good idea to get myself to a sheltered, safe place quickly.  Once in my safe place I can ride out the waves of the Storm, however long and exhausting that may be.

I am lucky.  I [now] have a few life preservers that come floating to me when the Storm begins to flood, and good grief, does it flood.  My main preserver is my boyfriend, my best friend, my soul mate – he loves me unconditionally and is not at all intimidated by the Storm.  He helps to remind me that I am not my illness and I can [and am] capable of being loved.  He accepts me for who I am and never judges me because of the Storms.  He has taught me how important it is to feel loved and supported.  What an incredible gift that has been.  My second preserver is therapy.  With [going on 3 years of] therapy I am learning to cope with the devastating effects of childhood trauma, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse.  I am also learning to cope with my Fathers death which was sudden, unexpected, and absolutely crippling to me.  Though distant, he too was a preserver and I lost him.  Without my boyfriend and without therapy I would never stay afloat.

It is a battle. Sometimes it’s daily.  But I refuse to give up.  The eye of the Storm is fast approaching and I will fight it.  I will fight to see the rainbow at the end.

DAILY PROMPT : Storm 

i, Carla

Categories ANXIETY & MELeave a Comment on i, Carla

i, Carla live with mental illness.

At this current date and time I am working through Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I get nervous easily, am prone to panic attacks at any given moment in time, I don’t like to go out a lot, sometimes I don’t get dressed for days… the list goes on and on.

i, Carla am not my metal illness.

Sometimes I struggle to realize this but it is true.  Mental illness is a part of me but it is not who I am.  I have goals and dreams and though it is a struggle I am trying to work towards them.

i, Carla will succeed.

I want to be successful and happy in my own mind, body and life.  I don’t want to worry what other people think because those are other people.  I am me, not them.

i, Carla understand.

I understand the struggles and limitations mental illness can present in one’s life.  The frustration that daily tasks can present.  The outright loathing of one’s self for not being able to do what “everyone else” does.  I understand because I know what it’s like.

i, Carla will try.

I will genuinely TRY to keep up with blog posts, therapy days and whatever happens in between. I will try to post “Therapy Vlogs” on my Youtube Channel on a regular basis.  I will not let myself be my own worst enemy.

i, Carla am in transition.

Currently in therapy and working on myself I am in the “transition” phase.  As I am transitioning and transforming so are things around me.  I am currently working on splitting my Youtube channel in 2 aka having 2 channels.  This is so (theoretically) one can be for vlogs and daily life posts (iCarla) and the other for fashion and beauty (iDREAMinVINTAGE).  I am currently working on changing and tweaking things online and offline.  I don’t know what I am doing or where I will end up but I will try.

I want to help and I want to heal.  I want to help other people realize they are not alone in their struggle.  I also want to heal myself.  I feel that in sharing some of my struggle I am not only healing myself but hopefully also helping someone out there to find healing in themselves.

What am I doing? … I have NO IDEA

Categories ANXIETY & ME1 Comment on What am I doing? … I have NO IDEA

Here’s the thing… I do LOVE fashion, makeup, and hair related anything but I am also suffering from Complex PTSD.  This is something I have been trying to sort out how to write about, how to approach writing about it and I came to the conclusion that I’d just dive right into it.

I have Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I am prone to sleepless nights, panic attacks, and worrying about everything. All. The. Time.  My PSTD is complex because there is not just ONE trauma that affects me but many traumas all on top of each other.

For YEARS I was misdiagnosed as Mild Bi-Polar which never really made a lot of sense to me but at the time, being desperate for an answer,  I just went with it.  I have tried so many antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications – at one point I was taking something in the morning, something in the evening, and I had Ativan “just in case”.  I hated them all, none of them (EXCEPT the Ativan which I  do still use on occasion), helped me at at all.  I was a zombie.  I had no personality.  Nothing mattered.  For me it just wasn’t working and wasn’t worth sacrificing what little part of me I enjoy.  Over the course of 3 years I was on and off more meds then I can remember and one day I just decided enough was enough.  I wanted to regain SOME control over myself.

I ended up just completely stopping taking my medication which I KNOW is not a good idea. I am fully aware that one is supposed to “ween off” of antidepressants and such but in my defence I was to a point where I was forgetting to take my AM pill or my PM pill on a regular basis, I’d miss a day or two routinely so just stopping just kind of happened.  Luckily I didn’t have any issues with going off of medication and I am happy to be off- NOT that medication is bad, it does work for some people just not for me (and I do not recommend my method of just stopping meds).

After going off meds and alerting my doc to my decision, I decided to pursue therapy (again). I had tried therapy before but I never really found anybody I felt comfortable talking to nor did I find it ever helped.  I’d leave my appointments feeling worse then when I went in.  That didn’t seem right.

I began doing some research and I came across a treatment called eye movement and desensitization and reprocessing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing) or EMDR for short.  I did not know much about this treatment but I knew I wanted it.  My search for this treatment led me to the therapist I see now and have been seeing for a few years now.  She is amazing.  I feel comfortable, safe, and not judged when I talk to her (which is how you SHOULD feel in a therapeutic environment).

At the time I first started this round of therapy I still thought I was Bi-Polar.  Not only did I question this diagnosis but eventually so did my therapist.  Over time and through a lot of discussions and activities such as mood charting and other things I won’t get into at the moment (because this blog is long enough ALREADY…), I was re diagnosed as PTSD.  That made a lot more sense.  I didn’t have many of the symptoms of Bi-Polar when it came down to it but I did have EVERY SYMPTOM of someone suffering from PTSD.  Not only was this a huge answer to the big blank I’ve been drawing for years but it also explained why medication did not benefit me.  In taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication I was only treating the symptoms of my illness, not the root of the problem.  As irony would have it, the EMDR therapy I so desperately want(ed) is exactly what (I feel) I need.

Currently I am in therapy and I am pursueing/getting EMDR treatment.  I have officially just started reprocessing and feel the need to share/vent about therapy or life in general…. What is my point? What am I doing? I have no idea really but I felt the need to write about it.  I can’t sleep and this is some what productive.  Also, I have been trying to vlog my therapy days and I thought a blog would be a nice piece to add to the puzzle.  I recently had someone comment and thank me because it helps them feel better and it was such an amazing feeling I have been inspired to start trying to write about this.  If I can not only help myself but potentially help other people then its worth more then I thought it could be.

Also please note this is my personal opinion/experience, I am not a professional.

**********************************************************************

At this current time (MARCH 2016) I have deleted most of my “Therapy Vlogs” from YouTube as I have decided that for now I would prefer to keep some things off camera (this post was written a few months ago).  I have, however, started this blog in hopes that I can potentially talk about therapy and mental health related topics.  It is something I want to talk about.  I still vlog on occasion but I am trying to focus on making happy vlogs I will want to watch years from now and am not embarrassed to share with friends.  It is all a work in progress.  Let’s see what happens and where I go.