(I’m not an expert as a person treating, but am very much so an expert on having, and just in case I need to mention it — I’m not here to treat anyone, I’m just documenting my thoughts while in PHP for said treatment.)
Group meeting as usual, I decided I was in a green mood, but realized as I woke up with everyone that I was not in a great mood at all. Hello downswing. Which I find a lot easier to be depressed since I’m slower to react to stuff and all I want is comfort in that mode, not a desire to lash out at myself. But I’m okay. I actually feel better on downswings because I’m a lot easier to manage within my own mind.
And then I met with my psych for a third day in a row! We talked about the mechanics of the relapse and what I missed and could possibly look for next time. If we remove the triggering event, what I chose to beat myself up over, and that kind of thing, it looks like this: I was feeling happy because things were manageable. The upswing began when my mind started clouding up like ADHD does. (Which is on my dx list technically, but due to the fact that ADHD symptoms overlap with what I already have, we’re not treating it separately.) My mental to-do list became a mental pile of things to do. I was getting keyed up on that alone. I do keep a simple life, but my brain can make it complicated as hell. So where I had an easy “three hours on gig work, make dinner, find a spiritual quote to think on, do my daily drawing, start winding down with daily reads, then go to bed,” I was seeing all of that at the same time, and was becoming distraught. Except I didn’t see that because I assumed (bad thing) that I would have everything together since I’d been doing the same thing for the past I think 10 days at the time, save for the quotes and drawings.
The lack of concrete routine is what made it easier for my mind to be just off kilter enough to spiral into self-destructive words and actions. Which at first I wanted to argue about this, because how can I be so sensitive to sleep or lack of it? Then I remembered how, before I started IPSRT, I was always so keyed up about everything. Like every little thing I did felt like it opened the door for twenty more things to do, or three more things to do that felt like twenty. I was constantly on watch, constantly being negative, worried I was going to get in trouble — for what, and with whom? It was very catastrophic thinking.
But then after getting into the habit of setting the tone for the evening and letting myself wind down naturally, even with the consistant nightly 3am wake up patterns, I was still getting very restful sleep and waking up feeling refreshed and ready for the short list of things to do…and I was doing them, and I was experiencing not a manic high, but a sense of relief that everything was going so well.
It’s such a simple solution, why is it so hard to follow? But it really isn’t.
It was the moment where the to-d0 list became a pile rather than an ordered set of things that I should have stopped and said “hey I’m starting to fall out of sequence, I don’t know if I can manage it.” (is this CBT??? *gasp*) Because from the piling of things is where the lenience of my routine came into play, and from there the tone was set for what happened. I’m actively in a PHP program, I had the ability to say I needed help. I just didn’t realize that this is what we’re looking out for…but I know now, and will make sure to do that next time. Like I said, it burns when you don’t follow through. And every time there’s a line to that tug, I have to snip it. This is definitely a line to that tug.
What else…we did do an exercise in the rest and relax hour that I’m going to practice during the day. You take in a breath, and with it you think of a word that describes how you feel. You exhale with that word. If it is a negative word, you pick a cognitive label (like safe, strong, relaxed, calm, at ease) to sort of rebut that negative thought or even reframe it. If it’s a positive word, you pick a cognitive label to support or reinforce it.
Inner Grimhilde here: I don’t like how simple this stuff is while still being effective. It drives me bat whacky. I’ve known about this kind of thing for ages and never bothered with it because it seemed too easy. I also wonder if this kind of thinking is why I become so passé about it…
Anyway, I’m home now, obviously. I did treat myself to that pimento and spinach sandwich, today (FINALLY). Except I schellacked a ton of pimento spread on it, and when I cut the sammich, it all spilled out LOL. It was still fantastic, and I think I’ll do it again…with less pimento spread. And though the pic shows otherwise, I did not actually use that much mayo. I had a bit left on the knife and just smacked it on the edge there.
It’s the little things, you know?
