Posted by Dinah on October 28, 2007, at 11:20:07
In reply to Re: it happened, posted by Dory on October 27, 2007, at 18:16:42
Well, I certainly know the overeating and overspending method of mood regulation. :(
Do you have anything on hand from your pdoc? I find Risperdal quite helpful at times like this. It's hard to plan when your brain is racing.
And planning is a good place to put all the excess energy right now. Your therapist can help you with that, I'm sure. And there are likely other resources around you, where you are, who can help you with the practicalities. It's scary to have so much uncertainty about the future. I think that's where a lot of my panic and despair come from sometimes.
When I have positive changes in my life circumstances, it's easy enough to spend time thinking of the practicalities. And isn't that what we immediately do? We get engaged and plan the wedding and where to live and whether we'll combine checking accounts or keep our names. We get a new job and plan what we'll wear to work and how we'll handle the new responsibilities. We find out we're expecting the child we've been hoping for and start looking at the future nursery with an appraising eye.
It's a lot harder to focus on that in the wave of self doubt and second guessing and panic that come with the scarier changes, however good they may be for me in the larger sense. Which feeds itself as the fear about practicalities adds to my inability to think about them.
My therapist often has me imagine the worst case scenario, and reigns me in with the more fanciful ones by sensibly pointing out which ones are highly improbable if not entirely impossible and what would stop them from happening. Do you have a therapy appointment scheduled soon? How about other counseling resources available to you? Can you schedule an appointment with them? How about family? Is there anyone in your family you can talk to? You don't have to do it all at once. Is there one person you can think of whose job it is to advise on the financial aspects of the important things in your life?
I'm not saying you shouldn't think about the emotional component of this. I just think it would be easier to do that when the panic is separated from the reset and controlled.
(And it might be wise to make your credit cards and checkbook as unavailable as possible in the meantime. Write whatever checks you can to pay bills you know are coming up, and put your checks and credit cards in your safe deposit box, or someplace safe.)
Please take care of yourself, and have confidence in yourself. You made your decision with sufficient thought to all effects, and you made what was the best decision for you. God knows how often I'm frozen with indecision for fear of the consequences that come with any decision, because every choice does have consequences, so I do understand. But I think your making a decision is better in the long run. Frozen with indecision is not a good place to be.
I have confidence that you'll be ok in the long run. Just take care to stay safe in the short run, ok?
(I'm being pragmatic again, I know. And I'm sorry. But my experience in my own life is that turning my eyes to the mundane does help with the rest. After Katrina, everyone was panicking and imagining the worst, and I, neurotic Dinah, was actually the one who was able to gently focus the people around me to help them not make crazy panicked decisions. My family didn't make any irreversible decisions. I was able to counter the most exaggerated fears of my bosses, and encourage them not to do anything rash and to mitigate as best as possible the more likely consequences.)
poster:Dinah
thread:791323
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20071022/msgs/791939.html