So I would normally spend my morning in group therapy right off the bat, but my psych called me out to the garden area first. We talked about loneliness, specifically where it comes from and why I’m so deeply affected by it when it hits. This is a huge tangle of a mess, but bear with me…
Basically, I have three things working against me. Bipolar and the awareness that I am unpredictable (the first thing, which is not entirely accurate, will explain), in combination with a history of being responsible for everything (the second thing: complex trauma), make an arena in which I am more than willing to take blame for something that isn’t my fault, and I will mentally devise reasons for it to be.
Being sensitive to the needs of others, and being trained to sense the slightest changes in folks, I would normally go out of my way to repair or reconcile, but due to my own boundary setting (the third thing), I’m not willing to reach that far anymore. Which is why I stopped reaching out to begin with,. and why I noticed that people aren’t reaching out to me, either.
I’m grieving through these changes. I’m maintaining personal boundaries. I’m making myself guilty for things that have nothing to do with me. And when I put myself in the seat of responsibility, it makes me feel very small.
The reason I had friends who treated me like a convenience was because they were convenient for me, once. Big oof. I am no longer on that level. Some of them might be moving on and up as well. This isn’t loss, this is growth on my part and potentially theirs. It’s grief because the convenience is gone, not because anybody did anything wrong or because anyone was unpredictable. <–this is the fallacy of bipolar. Who feels the effects of bipolar more than the person who has it. We often don’t know that we’re not actually green with brown polka dots all over ourselves. We think everyone can tell when we’re having our swings, as if we were running around with a giant sandwich board with FOR THE NEXT THREE HOURS I WILL BE MANIC boldly scrawled on it or something. When the truth is most of the time we might come across as slightly irritable or mildly excitable and giggly.
The social interactions I worried about are fine. This is textbook what I talked about yesterday. Dogpiling on myself in order to make sense of things that I did not understand. It has to be my fault, and here is the only way I can frame it as such. I somehow found a way to use completely unrelated events (passive social interactions) to reinforce my perceived failures with losing what I call convenient friends.
She asked me today if I could call anyone right this minute, and I was like “no she’s at work.” But she’s a friend. And a close one. And she said “see you have someone.” She got onto me for giving myself more grief than I am already working through. She told me I don’t deserve it, and I need to make a point to remind myself of that — every chance I get, every day. And she gave me an ultimatum. Follow SRT to the tee or she’ll make me stay inpatient for a week.
She said she could have put me in today but chose not to since she didn’t think it would be helpful at all. Plus I was honest about it and used what I’m learning to get my head out of it as best as I could. I apologized to her, but she was like “apologize to yourself, you didn’t do anything to me, you did it to yourself. And you showed very precisely that the prep work and early sleep rhythm adjustments were actually helping, then you started letting up a little, and then you had a bipolar relapse.” Paraphrased. She actually believed that if I was sticking with my schedule, yesterday and the day before may not have happened. Maybe I just haven’t developed a lot of faith in it, yet. Or maybe I got complacent. I predicted it, though.
I just gotta remember that if I don’t take this seriously, it will burn. I think I’ll write something for myself, like a note to read every day to remind myself to not let up.
She did say that this isn’t loneliness, this is grief combined with hyper fixation on the losses that are bound to happen as you start to heal yourself. It came out as loneliness since that was a core element of what I’ve been through. If it looks like abandonment, I’ll react accordingly and blame myself for it. And that’s not fair to anyone, especially myself.
So…10-3-2-1. Except I kinda dodged socials all day. I did take the hint from my psych and call my friend, and we ended up looking at office supplies and talking about a job she’s going for. She found a position in town that’s basically what she already does but pays $5 more an hour. We also talked about my stuff and last night, and she was like “why the hell didn’t you call me, idiot? I don’t go to bed until 7, and you know I’m here any time you need anything.”
Even though I feel like I failed yesterday, on the grounds that I let it overwhelm me, I also feel like I learned something about myself. It’s that I need my boundaries. Because I was willing to stop everything I was doing just to get some people back that aren’t even invested in trying to keep any kind of connection. But because of my boundaries, I can’t play one-sided like that anymore. I know intuitively who is there and who isn’t. My energy is best kept for me and folks who actually mean something to me, and vice versa. I also need my boundaries for myself — like not letting up even when I feel like it’ll be okay just this once. It’s a lot like alcohol. Just this once will end up with all sorts of actually unhealthy social interactions and a ton of embarrassment later — you know, something to actually feel guilty and shameful about.
So this wasn’t a failure, it was a heads up. At least I am aware of it, now.
