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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 9 of 9. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on February 4, 2011, at 16:23:10
I just screwed up an interview. I got in there, and what happens all the time around people, happened again. I was asked a question and went completely blank-- words began coming from my mouth, very quickly, that I couldn't control. I felt mortified. This happened again and again. I left feelig so fake-- that is how I feel all the time.
I can't handle it. I feel angry towards my therapist for no reason-- I think just because he is absent right now. Also, because his schedule is so full, and I have been added on top of this, I still don't have a regular time to meet. We shift around. I can hardly make it for one week...but sometimes, like this week, I have to go one week and two days. We met last Monday and aren't meeting again until next.
I think the weekend would be easier for me if I just knew that I could see him on Monday-- but it is Monday plus more days. I just can't handle this. I feel angry toward him because I have these extra days to wait-- I wonder if he knows.
Suicidal thoughts were so strong today. Sometimes I plan out a date 4 weeks away. I don't know if I would do it. I need to know. I feel like I need to prove it to myself and to my therapist too.
I can't keep doing this. As I get closer and closer to May, I am heading for a spiral and a void. I will have to leave my therapist and have no plans. I feel like I don't exist-- I am a fake.
Dear God, I don't how I will make it through the weekend. I want out.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on February 4, 2011, at 16:24:58
In reply to hopeless, posted by Annabelle Smith on February 4, 2011, at 16:23:10
Sorry-- I had a typo.
We met last Monday and aren't meeting again until next Wednesday. That is 9 days. It is so long. With these feeings, I can't handle it.
It makes me feel so angry towards my therapist-- even a hatred-- for no reason.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on February 4, 2011, at 18:04:26
In reply to Re: hopeless, posted by Annabelle Smith on February 4, 2011, at 16:24:58
I feel a nausea for time that has passed and for what has been lost that I can't get back-- often it is just a sense of hope and expectancy that is gone.
I think back to when I reintiated therapy with my now-current therapist (after being gone for 6 months). I vividly recall the expectancy and hope that I experienced within myself that first day we met again. I knew that I had time ahead of me. Now, I am running out of time and hope. Now, I want to go back to that time, that day.
I want to go back to Christmas break. To the beginning of this year. Time was full then, and hope was possible. Now it is gone.
I literally feel nauseous. I don't know what to do. NOTHING will help this. Time is gone. FACT.
My hope and exceptancy are gone. FACT.
I am running out of time. FACT.
My therapist can't fix this. FACT.I have always wondered what it would feel like to be on death row, to know that you are going to die. How it would feel to walk up to the guillotine or the gallows or the electric chair. I still wonder. And with it comes a sick feeling. I think it is the feeling of being condemned, stuck, and there is nothing that you or anyone else can do about it.
My bad feelings have spiked today to a super-bad place. When it gets this bad, I entertain the idea that I might need to walk to the hospital-- or I at least know that I can walk to the hospital-- if it gets too bad. But I don't know at what point is too bad.
Either you are one side of the line: you haven't done it yet; or you on the other: you have. There might be an in-between too. I don't know what warrants a crisis anymore-- the is how everyday feels.
Posted by annierose on February 5, 2011, at 8:20:35
In reply to nausea, posted by Annabelle Smith on February 4, 2011, at 18:04:26
But you seem unwilling to try anything different to help yourself. You have already decided nothing else will help. or work, be good, be right. You tell yourself over and over only your current therapist will help and yet he doesn't even know how much you are suffering between appointments because you are overwhelmed with anxiety and fear in his office.
You must remind yourself that he can not read your mind (as much as that would be nice ... some of the time). Yes, it is hard to share this stuff but that is the only way to start the path for healing.
You mention often how you can not go on living like this, but refuse to consider the relief you might feel with medication. When several other posters suggested seeing a p-doc, you were quick to tell the community that you are not feeling that badly, that medication wouldn't work.
The first step will be willing to do something different than you are currently doing ... because obviously what you are currently doing isn't providing day to day relief. Nothing will change until you make decisions to change. Day by day.
Posted by sigismund on February 5, 2011, at 10:57:56
In reply to nausea, posted by Annabelle Smith on February 4, 2011, at 18:04:26
If you are feeling allergic to the passage of time, you are right in saying that there is nothing that will help with that.
I am probably shoehorning you into the Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens space.
Posted by Willful on February 5, 2011, at 14:33:05
In reply to Re: nausea, posted by annierose on February 5, 2011, at 8:20:35
I strongly agree with annierose.
You seem to be saying that you prefer to live with almost unbearable suffering on a daily basis-- and even to consider suicide-- rather than try medication.
I don't know what your fears of medication are, because you don't seem to feel comfortable sharing them here. But I do know from my own experience, that I was afraid of medication for many many years. But I have used medication now and I realize that those years were lost years that could have been so different-- so much better. I could have lived a much fuller life.
I feel a lot of gratitude that I have the time now-- whatever it is-- .
I'm sure you have reasons that you fear or feel that medication would threaten your autonomy or self-respect-- but many people believe myths about medication-- that you will not be yourself anymore, that they will make you dull and flat emotionally, etc. The right medication doesn't do that-- and from what you say, even being out of pain for a while would sound like a relief.
I personally have done DBT. Our therapist in the DBT group encouraged people to seek medication if it would help-- and I never heard anything whatever about DBT and medication not being compatible.
IMO, the right medication would allow you to feel more able to communicate, more yourself, and more hopeful about your future-- as well as more capable of functioning in your life in the present.
Of course, finding the right psychopharmacologist, and the right medication can take a while, although sometimes the first medication works well. I would strongly suggest you rethink your resistance to something that could help-- given that you have written so many posts over such a time about the degree of your pain and sense of falling apart.
Willful
Posted by Annabelle Smith on February 6, 2011, at 23:24:15
In reply to Re: nausea, posted by Willful on February 5, 2011, at 14:33:05
Posted by Annabelle Smith on February 6, 2011, at 23:24:52
In reply to Re: nausea, posted by Willful on February 5, 2011, at 14:33:05
Willful and Annierose,
Thank you for your responses. I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with me.
One thing I can say about my sessions-- there certainly is anxiety and fear in my sessions, but there is also something else. The sessions are in fact part of the cycle. I can *feel it within the deepest part of my being-- an ebb and flow throughout the week around my session. Automatically-- the day of the session, I feel a little ray of safety and relief that grows until I am in the presence of my therapist. As the session draws towards a close, especially the last five minutes, I feel despair. When I leave, often the rest of the day is ruined. The deepest despair is after the session ends and when I have 5 days or nearly a week until the next session. But as that next session gets closer, the terrible deep, suicidal despair goes a little bit. That is the despair that I need to share with him in a session-- but the very nature of the session makes it go away for a little while. But I am not sure how long this is going to last-- I am beginning to feel the despair and weariness of the whole cycle-- session or not.
About medicine-- thanks for sharing your thoughts. I must say that I become very upset thinking about it still. I can't quite share all of the reasons why here. Willful, it sounds like you know a lot more about this than I do, but I really still find myself believing-- even if it is a myth-- that medication flattens out everything. I am afraid it will leave me feeling more alone and confused than ever. I might talk to my therapist about it, though. At least I could do that.
But as Sig says, some of the things that I feel are causing me so much pain, medicine can't fix-- time. Not knowing how to be. which way to go. what to do. who to be. death. time. memories that are so vivid but gone. and feeling haunted.
But I will talk to my therapist about it.
Posted by pegasus on February 7, 2011, at 10:49:01
In reply to Re: nausea Willful and Annierose » Willful, posted by Annabelle Smith on February 6, 2011, at 23:24:52
Hi AB,
I had a lot of resistance to trying meds, too. When my T finally talked me into it, I realized that I'd been missing a hugely helpful tool.
For example, I was also worried about losing emotions. But then I found out that turning down the volume on my emotions feels really good to me. I know there are people who complain about feeling more apathy, but I haven't noticed that at all. Instead, the lows (and sometimes even highs) have become more manageable and reasonable, and therefore feel even more real than they did before.
Also, I worried a lot that if meds helped, then that would mean that there was something intrinsically wrong with me, on my own. That I was fundamentally not OK. And also, that if I then took meds, it would mean that I wasn't being truly myself. Who wants to be a fake person?
But, oh, I wouldn't go back for the world! Meds truly changed my whole life for the better. I am sooo much more able to be the parts of myself that I love. I am more loving to the people I care about, and also to myself. Before, I was so paralyzed by anxiety, and sometimes depression, that I wasn't really living freely at all. Everything was about trying to cope with the overwhelm. Now, the overwhelm is a rare thing, which leaves me more alive *every single day* than I ever was before I tried the meds. And my therapy really took off, once I got on the right meds.
Also, if you try it and hate it, you can stop. This is easier with some meds than others, but it is possible with all of them. I had to try a couple of different ones before I got one that really helped. But, I highly recommend trying. It sounds like you're pretty debilitated right now (no judgement - I've been there myself). It's hard for me to imaging meds making things much worse for you.
For what it's worth
- P
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