A Tangled Mess

I'm a mess. Much of my life is a mess. I'm spending so much energy distracting myself from my messes that I barely have enough energy left to breathe. I feel like I'm caught  in a mass of tangled yarn.

I'm reading obsessively, including books that I'm not normally interested in, as long as the books are light entertainment. And when I read, I skip over more and more of the text to just get to the main plot points. I'm not taking much enjoyment from the books. Books with greater emotional or mental content get set aside. I just purchased a new Tawna Fenske book and haven't been able to enjoy it. I love Tawna's work, but I'm anticipating the emotional and romantic complications and getting anxious about them. Anxious about fictional characters, people!

I'm not watching any TV series with my housemates anymore. Everything they watch has character arcs: I become invested in the characters and get stressed out when their lives are difficult. In general I've always had difficulty detaching from movies and TV, but it's a lot worse now.

There are people in my life I haven't contacted in months, some of them in over a year, and not because I don't like them. I don't read blogs much at all. I don't know why I've dropped contact with most people: I have no idea how doing so connects with how I'm feeling.

Right now, I'm in the middle of a two-week experiment proposed by my psych. For two weeks, I'm not going to try to go to bed earlier. I've been staying up until 3 am, but wanting to go to bed around 10 pm. I spend mental and emotional energy chastising myself for staying up so late. So for these two weeks, I'm just going to let myself stay up as late as I want to and sleep as late as I want to. No judgements.

As a corollary of this experiment, I'm setting aside all shoulds and should-nots. No judgement. No restrictions. Want to eat ice cream? Sure. As much as I want. Be a slug on the couch? Sure, as usual, but this time no judgements. Do it because I want to.

When I manage to quiet the shoulds and should-nots, I feel less stressed, more peaceful. It does take effort to quiet them. In addition, my housemates do NOT like this experiment. They think it's a bad idea. They disapprove. They disagree with my psych. Even though it's only for two weeks and I wasn't making any progress doing things the other way!

Squish

I gained more insight into my attitudes toward strength, bravery, and resilience this week. It comes down to stress balls and Silly Putty.

I still have difficulties seeing myself as strong, brave, or resilient. For example, throughout my life I have been victimized, bullied, and abused in some way or another. Bullies, predators, and people who need to diminish someone else in order to feel bigger have found me and made it their purpose to squash me. Other children, adults, coworkers, bosses, even friends: people of all sorts have seen me as weaker than them and gone on to prove it.

My fight or flight reflex? Permanently set to flight. When the group of friends I hung out with in my 20s would get too overbearing and downright mean, instead of standing up for myself, I would take a break from them until I felt recovered. One of them even went so far as to tell me I was like a soft, furry bunny — and he didn't mean it as a cute thing but as a nonthreatening prey object. (BTW: I stopped hanging out with those folks regularly in my late 20s.)

Even some of my well-meaning friends have diminished me. Because I ask other people's opinion, many of my friends and even my mother sometimes treated me as if I were unable to make my own decisions, as if I were not quite a responsible adult. Really, because I have been single and lived alone most of my adult life, I like to get second opinions and bounce my own off of other people from time to time. Some of my male friends think of me as delicate or fragile.

Layers of Defense

My inner self, my core self, sits inside a stone tower within a stone castle behind a moat behind a low stone wall behind a white picket fence behind a low fence of iron pickets with roses growing up the fence.

I used to have a problem with boundaries, in that I had virtually none. This is typical of someone who has been sexually abused as a child. Over the years, I worked hard at developing boundaries. Then, as I continued to be hurt by relationships, rejections, disappointments, and letting too many people in too soon, I began developing protections.

I have a vivid and strong imagination and am good at visualization. Every time I felt hurt, I imagined myself protected by a thick wall. This wall extended out to become a fortified castle, a wide land filled with dangerous creatures, and a series of walls and fences, all with manned gates. The outer fence was too tall to see over and the roses grew huge, sharp thorns and obscured an onlooker's view inside. Eventually, no one could see inside and I couldn't see out. I had become almost completely protected against emotional pain, yet I still hurt because I didn't have close intimate friendships (I had even protected myself from my oldest, closest friends). I still felt alone. But no one could hurt me.

Several years ago, my protective barriers crumbled and broke down completely, leaving me naked and vulnerable. My therapist at the time was stunned by the self that was revealed because she had taken what she'd seen of me as truth: that I was fairly superficial and had solid boundaries. Finally we were able to do deep work. I learned that vulnerability was a strength and that being as protected as I'd made myself actually made it impossible for me to form and maintain the emotionally intimate connections I craved. I agreed to not create such an impenetrable barrier again, but I would still create the layered barriers to remind me to not let everyone in and to let people further in only when I knew I could trust them.

Over the past several years, I've experienced some heartbreaking pain. I've wanted so much to build up those barriers again, wanting to be safe from pain, but I have learned that they won't keep me safe from pain. Nothing can. And I want to be able to experience life fully, which does require being vulnerable to pain.

The Wrong Life

Sometimes in therapy I learn something about myself that seems so new, or I get a brilliant new perspective or I see something I hadn't seen clearly before. I guess that's why going to therapy remains worth it. (Besides that whole life ring while I'm drowning in depression thing, of course.) Moments like that bring into sharp focus how for quite a few years I learned nothing new in therapy.

In my mind, I sometimes try to "re-do" my past, think that I can somehow "fix" things. I know it isn't rational: I'm not going to be able to make my family be alive again or change any of a number of other past traumas. But emotionally I feel as if I can do so if only I do it right.

People define themselves differently. In many places in the world, people define themselves by their place within their community. The Navaho people define themselves by their family connections. LIke the Navaho, so did I. Without my family, I feel cut off, I feel like there are huge gaping holes inside me that nothing can fill.

This is not how my life should be. I wanted to marry and have children: I would have made a terrific wife and mother. I am nurturing and loving and giving. The fact that no one ever wanted to marry me has long made me feel there is something wrong with me. I see so many people who have lifelong relationships, people who don't seem to have the qualities I have, people who are takers or who are high-maintenance, and I have to wonder what is wrong with me that no one wanted what I have to give.

My brother was supposed to be my friend when we grew up. He was supposed to be here with me after our parents died. Our children would have been friends and we would have spent a lot of time together.

Better Living Through (Brain) Chemistry

It took me a long time to accept that I will have to be on medication for my mental health for the rest of my life. At first, I was sure that I only needed it for a little while, until I got control over my moods, until I stopped being depressed or anxious. Then, when my psychs started talking to me more specifically about brain chemistry, I thought maybe I'd just need to be on the right medicine for long enough to "fix" my brain chemistry, then the depression and anxiety would go away.

I now understand and accept that my brain chemistry is messed up, that it has been messed up for most of my life, and that the only thing that can help me develop and maintain some semblance of healthy brain chemistry is medication. Doesn't mean I like it, though. And I'm willing to bet money that the medications I'm on today are not the medications I'll be on five years from now, because for my brain chemistry problems it seems that the scientists haven't even stuck with the same diagnosis for five years, much less the same medications.

Of course, what that means is that I'm probably going to continue to struggle with my brain, that I won't be able to develop a stable balance. I could be wrong. I'd like to be wrong.

I felt virtually perfect that June, before Mom was diagnosed with cancer.

So my psych and I were talking last week and got on the topic of brain chemistry. I was explaining how frustrated I am that I still need weekly therapy after 30 years of therapy, with only about three years total of not being in therapy. And I am frustrated.I just want to be healthy and happy and be able to take care of myself without virtually constant medical oversight or care. Fine, I'll take the meds. But I want to stop being plunged into deep depressions or stabbed by spikes of anxiety. I want to function and function well, all on my own. But I feel a victim of my own brain chemicals.

Damn, Damn, Damn Depression!

I'm sunk in the stupid pit again. Why? Hell if I know. And it's not just depression, although that is an overriding emotion. I'm crabby and antisocial. I'm terrifically stressed and anxious, to the tune of taking an extra 1 mg of Xanax each of the last two days. (So far today I haven't taken any extra.) I took a four-hour nap yesterday and still slept for 9.5 hours last night … and still didn't want to get up this morning.

I'm really tired of being "the sick one", the one people have to ask "how are you doing today?" I have no idea what I'm doing wrong or what I'm not doing right that keeps dumping me back into this debilitating space. "Functional" might as well be at the top of the highest glacier on Mt. Rainier, it seems to impossible to reach.

You can't get there from here.

I'm trying. But I've been sleeping so late (thanks to this great melatonin-based supplement my psych recommended) that I feel if I don't get up NOW then the day is fucking OVER, so I haven't been journaling or trying to meditate or visualize. And when I do try to meditate or visualize, I haven't been able to achieve the levels I was at back before I tried the Abilify (which I've been off of all this month).

In therapy yesterday, Michele asked why I feel I have to get up and start my day as soon as I wake up. What will happen if I put it off for another half an hour while I journal or meditate or something? If I stay in bed even later, I feel as if the entire day is over, wasted. I feel like a complete failure for the day. I feel judged and judging.

We also talked about writing. And drawing. About how I used to do them all the time virtually every day, from the time I was quite young. How somewhere in my 20s, I stopped doing them much and they became fraught with difficulties and issues. And yet, I need to do them. Writing and drawing are parts of me that need attention. When I do them I feel better. I feel like myself.

How Do You Do?

Doing: it's what I'm not and haven't been for a long while. I used to, a lot, and I need to again. I've just got to get over this speed bump that looms like a twenty-foot granite wall. I just need a way over. Or around.

I have a sign saying "Action" on my bathroom mirror, per the instructions of my good friend Bob. Most mornings I am now getting at least pretend-dressed (yoga pants and a sweater) before I come downstairs. And some days I even put on regular shoes to help put me in the mindset of activity, per another good friend.

I'm still mostly inert.

I did go for a walk around the neighborhood with the housemates today. It took Griffin to push us into it. I used to be able to push myself. Hell, oftentimes a walk would simply sing its siren song and I'd feel compelled to follow, to walk along the verge or the walking path to a park or a school or simply around the neighborhood. When did I become so solidly still? How did I turn to stone?

I think it mostly started with a devastating depression in my mid-30s that just about cut me off at the knees. With help, I clambered out of that hole and began working my way up to full functioning. Then, in 2000, I was hit with a bad case of vertigo of unknown origin (also known as "idiopathic") that allowed me to work only 20 hours a week or so. (Insurance did not accept anything my rack of doctors said and declared me "not disabled" — stupid things.) While I did that work, I also attended a program in scientific illustration. That's all I was able to do (including my homework); the rest of the time I was stuck on the couch, exhausted from feeling like I was always in motion.

Again, I eventually got over the vertigo (after about 18 months). I had moved to the beach by the time it passed and I started walking on the beach most days. I found work and walked around the estuary at our work campus most days. I still walked on the beach. When I moved to Houston, I walked in the park. When I was on the road, I walked whenever I could.

Validation

Follow me!

Sometimes I forget what this blog is. Sure, it started out as a way to share info with friends and family as I made my way to where I ended up. But I ended up somewhere, then this was a blog about my new home. And, when my life fell completely apart, it became a journal, a place to process what I worked on and discovered within therapy and without, and a place to vent my raw feelings and thoughts, without need to censor or be tactful.

It remains a journal, and I am very grateful to those of you who visit and comment because I enjoy what you have to say and I feel uplifted by your support. However, I began to crave comments. As someone who has long sought for validation externally, it took me long enough to figure that out. I realized this week, maybe Wednesday, that I feel bad if only one person comments. In fact, I feel inadequate if fewer than four people comment. (Weird, to have a number, but I do.)

At such times, I worry that my posts are too long, too boring, too negative, too sad, too much about myself. I wonder if I should change my posts to please my "audience". I forget, in other words, what this blog is.

**Allowing the laughter to subside**

I guess this is a good Learning Moment. It's pretty sorry that I need external validation so badly I consider changing what I write in my personal journal to try to get more comments.

**Quiet moment for obligatory shame**

I hope to remember this moment and this realization. I forgot it about five times over the past couple of days, luckily remembering it again each time. I'm staying up late to write this before I forget again. It's worth remembering.

Will writing this post help me learn to find my validation from within rather than without? On first consideration, it wouldn't seem so. It's just a blog post, right? But given what I, and all of you, have seen on this blog in the past almost three years (I know!), writing these posts has become part of my processing new information and making it possible to internalize changes. So, yeah, I think that's what writing this post will lead to: greater movement toward my finding my validation within myself. (That's a lot of "my's".)

It's hardly fair of me to put all of that on all of you.

Powers of the Mind

Lately in therapy, my therapist has been guiding me through imagery scenarios to address specific emotional situations. They've been enormously helpful. She also helped me address the difficulty I've been having with using affirmations and creative visualization on my own.

The guided imagery we've been doing in sessions has taken me to where in my life it seems the feelings originated. Once there, she has led me through asking myself questions, connecting to feelings, connecting to myself at those ages, and providing myself with what I seem to need at that point. These sessions are very powerful emotionally and mentally — I usually need a long nap afterward! It's so different from the therapy that I did with Karen, and equally powerful.

The difficulties I've been having with affirmations and creative visualizations stem from the standard instructions for doing them: to say things like "I have a great job" when I know I am unemployed, for example. My rational mind cannot buy into the part where you feel like you have this thing NOW.

Michele offered me an excellent way to do this. "Imagine your life on a timeline," she told me. "Put yourself on the timeline in a past time when you felt confident and happy in your job and really be there, not just seeing yourself there. Add in as much sensory detail as you can. Then put yourself on the timeline in the near future, where you want to be, and imagine having the job, the living situation that you want. Be there completely. Feel everything." This sounded like something I could definitely work with.

Three times this past week I've done this visualization, with varying levels of success. I know that the varying levels are due to how distracted I am and that I need more practice, so I'm not letting them bother me. I feel each time has been successful. The scenarios I've started with are having a great job that I love and that pays me lots of money, and having a place to live that I like very much and making it be the home I want (including the living room furniture I found that I WANT!). It amazes me how real I can make these visualizations. I know I need to do the work, too (keep job hunting and networking, for example), but I feel that the visualizations add a great deal of power and energy toward getting me what I want and need, sooner rather than later.

I know the mind is very powerful. There are been many studies about the benefits of visualizing success in sports; professional athletes use this technique to increase their abilities along with doing physical practice. I think I remember reading about how many successful business people also use these techniques. So there is some strong science behind them. And doing them in a way that doesn't cause my literal mind to pop up and say "no" allows me to benefit from the techniques.

Obviously, you need to really, really want the thing you are visualizing yourself having. The strong emotional content is essential. I really, really, really want a good job that I love and a home that I enjoy living in. Really.

How about you? Do you use mental techniques to help you achieve things? What do you use?

Feeling, Detaching, Continuing

I haven't written in wow — 10 days! I know I usually write about my therapy, but last week, I just couldn't.

Last week's therapy ended up being very emotional and very raw. We started talking about what I wrote about in my last post and pursued it far into my mind and my feelings to see what is behind this desire to reconnect with my past. At the very base of the vortex, we found abandonment and being completely alone. Intellectually, I know that my family did not abandon me and I am not completely alone (besides that fact that we are all basically one on one level). I have people who love me, both locally and scattered across the country. But, at the heart of the matter, those are what I feel.

I cried some. Not as bad as most of the times I cried in Karen's office, but the first time I've cried in Michele's, and the first time I've cried in a while. I really don't like to cry, for numerous reasons. Even more, I don't like to cry in front of someone else. It exhausts me. And when I experience a strong emotion, afterward I detach from emotion for some amount of time.

We ended the hour with a long imaging session. Imaging, visualization, creative imaging: whatever you want to call it. Michele led me and helped me find my way through it and discover things. I'm not going to describe it because it's intensely personal and there are very few people I would be comfortable sharing it with. Hell, I'm barely comfortable sharing it with myself!

Thus, whenever I thought about writing for the blog, I kept thinking about writing about the session, then about how I didn't want to write about the session. So I didn't write, and I didn't write.

I had therapy again today, and after I finished chattering, I told Michele about how I didn't write about last week's session and why. Which in turn led to my emotion/detachment pattern.

I don't want to have this pattern. Last week, on the way home, I left the radio off so I could stay with the feelings from the session and the imaging work. I wanted to ride that emotional wave to the end, the way Michele encouraged me to do. And I did ride it, all the way home. Then, exhausted, I took a long nap. Afterward, I didn't return to thinking about the therapy session or my feelings or the work we'd done and ended with. I didn't do so again until today's therapy.

Rebound Effect

Wednesday's post was like flying, like rocketing up through the clouds into bright sunlight. Thursday was like faltering at the peak of my flight, Friday was stalling and then falling back through the dark clouds towards the earth, and today was like crashing in a fiery explosion on the ground. I am experiencing such a strong anxiety reaction that I had to spend over 45 minutes in bed this morning talking to myself and breathing just so I could get out of bed to take a Xanax to calm myself. And instead of the .5-mg that I've been taking for morning and afternoon doses, I returned to 1-mg doses for both of those. I'm still quaking inside, but I'm functional. Mostly.

How did I go from Wednesday to today, from being filled with light and life to being filled with shards of glass and fear?

One highly likely possibility is via the Rebound Effect, where my peak that came from reaching great depths in therapy rebounded to depths in response to the vulnerability and the anxieties and insecurities that remained in place even after the wonderful therapy-initiated learning. Vulnerability and fear operated like rubber bands to pull me back an amount equal to what therapy helped me soar to.

Why? Well, Wednesday did not cure me — it just provided me with new insights and perspectives and even handholds to keep pulling me toward progress. But I have been more vulnerable, to varying degrees, in the years since my fortifications were breached, and when I touch things deep inside myself during therapy or self-exploration, I am extremely vulnerable and all my history has taught me that vulnerability makes me unsafe, so touching that vulnerability can spark an equally powerful fear response. I think that is part of my response, my anxiety.

The other thing is that I have been feeling anxious and disappointed in myself for not having other paid work and for not searching hard for other work for many weeks. Add to that the fact that I didn't follow through with a commitment I made to the housemate who is supporting me (I agreed I would water some potted plants for her while she was at work, plants that were showing dryness and that she doesn't want to lose, and I had not done so by the time she got home), and she went into one of her temper fits, which triggered many of my worst anxiety and fear responses.

I apologized, after she finished watering the plants herself and came indoors. She eventually cooled off and apologized for her temper. But my anxiety is still resonating inside of me, and today I have been online a lot and I took a long nap, instead of baking as I wanted.

Power, Protection, and Progress

So. Therapy today was powerful. We talked about a major theme in my life: power and powerlessness, authenticity and invisibility. I came away with my mind spinning, feeling full to the brim, and feeling good. I even turned off my radio so my mind could keep resonating with what we talked about and when I got home I wrote the important bits down so I'd remember them.

It started off with me talking about the TED Talk by Amy Cuddy about body language and using it to change your own perceptions and feelings and behaviors. About the "Wonder Woman pose" that the media has played up and how to use it. (And I have used it, and Amy's other suggestions, and they seem to actually work.)

From there we went into how I diminish my own strengths and talents and accomplishments, and why I do so. I tend to have "don't look at me, I'm no threat" submissive and powerless postures: head or eyes down, shoulders hunched, arms and legs drawn in. I have often thought that I don't deserve as much space as other people, as much air as other people.

Then we went to why. Mostly self-protection, plus a lot of being squashed so much I've just given in and stayed squashed most of the time. Because of being molested, and from such a young age. Because my parents were always telling me "don't show off" (my intelligence and vocabulary), "don't brag," even while encouraging my little brother to show what an exceptional athlete he was and revolving our lives (mine included) around his sports. Because at a job I stayed at for six years (four years longer than I should have), my boss and co-workers treated me worse and worse the more authentically I lived my life and the more I threatened their world view: I both worked AND wrote (and published a story); I took a month off and went to Britain; I took six weeks off and attended a full-time writers' workshop (that you have to apply and compete for). Some people can be downright hostile if you do what they have told themselves they cannot do because that is How Things Are.

I have often in my life felt that The Universe hates me. It has seemed as if, just when my life was going particularly well, the Universe has reached out and slammed me, with moving when I was 16, with the deaths of my father and my brother and my mother, and with other things. And that has happened a lot, but there are times when I've been slammed while things were going very badly, and I'm sure there have been times when things have been going well and I haven't been slammed (I just have to remember them!).

Therapy Hangover

Sometimes, when going through therapy, a person can experience what some call a "therapy hangover." This feeling can occur from extreme emotions experienced during therapy, from reaching a deep place during therapy, and from intense realizations or epiphanies reached during therapy. Usually this feeling doesn't come during or right after the therapy session, but a little while later.

I think that today I experienced a therapy hangover.

Today's therapy was good. I was feeling disappointed with myself for not achieving the goals I set at last week's session. I've been feeling disappointed in myself for not putting more time toward my freelance job and being behind in reaching my deadline. Those were the feelings we started off the session discussing. Fairly simple and normal stuff.

I tend to approach my sessions in a freestyle, stream-of-conscious style. I lose track of original points as some new thought or memory comes to mind and I chase after that. I've told my previous therapist and my current therapist about this tendency and given them permission to control the session more, but both of them have basically let me follow my paths and tangents.

Today, in particular, I think this tactic was useful. I went from being disappointed in my not reaching my goal for the week to disappointment in myself regarding work to having developed the feeling over years that I'm going to disappoint my employer eventually, so I might as well get it over with right away. (I tend to feel this with friends, too, but forgot to bring this up during therapy.) So I tend to do something that will disappoint: I take a sick day early in my employment, I change plans suddenly (such as not coming in on a day I was scheduled to be in the office, saying I'll work at home instead), and I don't always work as hard as I feel I should and can. I'm not just in the process of disappointing others — I'm disappointing myself.

Ideas and memories and feelings kept coming to mind as I spoke, such as my parents' insistence on straight A's, even though they couldn't do the work I was doing in school and they had no understanding for how hard math was for me, for example. I told my therapist that I'd tried not to internalize that mindset, but that I had anyway. Perfection is hard to live up to.

Bedtime

When I was a child, bedtime was a pleasure I looked forward to. When it was time to go to bed, I went happily, looking forward to resting and dreaming. Even though I was prone to nightmares and night terrors that my parents didn't even know about, I still had more good dreams than bad and I looked forward to each new day.

Fast forward a few decades. The summer of 2007, I wasn't working and it was one of the most glorious summers ever on the Oregon Coast. Temperatures ranged from 75 to 85 most days, with sun and a bit of a breeze and I spent almost every day walking down the hill to the beach, walking up and down the beach, including into the breakers, and then walking back up the beach. I was in good condition, I was losing weight, and I was actually enjoying myself, but I wasn't going to bed until between 2 and 3 am every night. This was highly unusual for me: I hadn't pulled all-nighters or even super-late-nighters in college!

That summer, I was staying awake late because I had created an enormously detailed imaginary life and I stayed up every night into the wee hours living and creating that life. The people sharing that life with me were so real, with complete life histories and backstories. It was beautiful. Every night I would turn off all the lights in the house, turn on some music, light some candles all over my bedroom, and watch the moon wash across my bed and the floor in the room outside my door. And I would dream.

This imaginary life bothered my therapist. She was afraid I was hiding from reality within it. It wasn't until a conversation in mid-summer that she suddenly said "I get it now! Your mind needs to be occupied and it's so unused right now that you need to do something with it." And that was, in great part, why I stayed up late every night dreaming. Once I went back to doing some work and thinking about what I wanted to do next, the imaginary life just melted away.

Fast forward another few years. I've returned to Houston after getting things moving with my mom's estate. I'm miserable: lost, rudderless, and more alone than I've ever been in my life. My closest friend in Houston was rearranging things in his life, in particular his marriage, and he no longer made time to do things with me other than a few days in the Spring to go photograph birds and the occasional lunch. I spent my time — all day, every day — surfing the web. I stayed up far into the night more often than not, not because I had an imaginary life I loved but because I had a real life I despaired of and I stayed up late to put off having to begin another new day.

Confidence Falls

Y'know, when I first set out to move back to Seattle, I was full of confidence about finding work back in high tech. I had a long history of high tech and I'd done a lot of extreme editing of scientific materials and I'd broadened the types of writing I've done with my various projects in Houston. Fantastic, right?

So now I am in Seattle and I've settled in and begun networking and looking for work. I've joined meetup groups in Content Strategy, Information Architecture/User Experience (IA/UX), general technology, and so on. I've gone to their meetup events. And my confidence has been pouring out of me like blood from an open arterial.

For example, last night I went to a Content Strategy meetup with my friend. The first presentation was fairly basic and I didn't really find it that informative or interesting, but the presenter was pretty excited about it so that made it okay. The second presentation was exciting, entertaining, and … confusing. I may have taken in about 10% of what the guy was talking about. The fellow to my right, an engineer and writer, had the opinion that the presentation was fairly content-free. I felt like I was too stupid to understand it, because everyone else seemed to really like the presentation. On the way home, I expressed my feeling and the other guy's opinion to my friend and he asked me what points I was confused about or what questions I had because maybe he could answer them. I only had one basic question because the rest of the presentation didn't make enough sense to me for me to even have questions I could articulate. I know I've been out of the high-tech biz for a while, and that things that used to be just what tech writers did are now their own professional niches with their own jargon, but I expected to be able to understand a hell of a lot more than what I did last night!

Secondly, I am not getting responses to job applications, other than the one where a friend submitted me via his company's employment referral system, probably because I've been out of high-tech for so long. There's a lot of jobs I'm not even applying for because of not having a few of their Required qualifications: specific programming languages, specific tools. I'm very happy to be here, but maybe I'm too out-of-date, too old. But if I'm not writing and editing, I don't know what else I can do. And honestly, I need to be working a professional job in high tech to be able to afford a decent apartment now and a decent house someday in this area. Besides all the other typical living expenses.

Yes, I have found a part-time freelance job, or rather, it found me. But it's taken me three weeks (okay, three part-time weeks, but still) to truly get up to speed on the information and how they want it presented for this first project and I've just been revising the existing stories written by someone else. I haven't even begun to write original text yet and I'm as nervous as my housemates' cat about doing so. What if I can't do this anymore? What if my work sucks?

A Body at Rest Tends to Stay at Rest

Inertia. Newton's First Law: a body at rest tends to stay at rest, unless a force is acted upon it. And I haven't been enacting any force upon myself since I arrived in Seattle. Well, not much.

As a result, I've lost the muscle tone I'd gained by doing exercises in the apartment. I have barely blogged at all. I haven't even been doing my therapy work, and I did my therapy work in Houston even when I was at my least functional! I have disappointed myself. My confidence has ebbed even lower than when I was in Houston.

However, I've had one phone interview for a full-time job and have another scheduled for next week. (According to my friend who works there, they screen very thoroughly so they get people who will work well with the team.) I think I have a shot, as long as I can convince them I am technical enough.

I've also acquired a part-time freelance job! They contacted me out of the blue: they'd found my profile on LinkedIn, then through that found my web site, which was unfortunately unchanged since Houston and they could only access one link to my work, but they still contacted me and by the time we talked in a two-hour meeting, they had decided upon me. It pays lower than a for-profit company would pay, naturally, but the work is very meaningful, challenging, and varied. Not only can I feel good about my contribution to this organization and the work they do, but I will not be bored and I will be stretching myself. Just for your info, this organization facilitates collaborations between researchers at small to large companies and institutions with other institutions and large pharmaceutical companies to address neglected diseases in the developing worlds and poor populations the world over. These diseases are not high-ticket items in terms of money-making, so the big companies don't pursue them. But the big pharmaceutical companies who have joined this consortium are committed to providing information — even about their compounds — and expertise to other researchers in this sphere. It's amazing!

So, this week my new therapist and I addressed my inertia. She asks good questions, such as when did I live my life more like I wanted it, when was I happier, when was I more active. We went all the way back to childhood for the answers. Among the answers we found was that I need to create for my mental health. I used to write and draw and paint all the time as a child, and even in my 20s. It began to taper off in my 30s, especially as my depression worsened. I developed the thought that I needed to write toward publication, rather than simply write the stories I want to tell. After taking my Scientific Illustration courses and doing beautiful work, I seemed to feel that I could no longer just mess around with my drawing and painting like I did before, but that I had to create at that same high level, so I stopped drawing and painting at all. And I really haven't crocheted a lot since creating a very intricate and difficult doily for my Grandma (which I now have framed).

Of Therapy and Medicines, of Carpenters and Kings

So I owe you folks a post about the cool idea my amazing Texas therapist came up with (that I have not yet implemented), and I want to tell you about my new Seattle psychotherapist, who is doing both my meds and my therapy and who I like a great deal.

First, Therapist Karen's Wonderful Idea

We were talking about how I wasn't accomplishing anything. I have felt slothful (taking a term from Zen Buddhism), which tends to be a frequent mind-state for me and I just choose to give in to that. See? Choice is again the topic here.

So the Amazing Karen came up with the Therapeutic Competition, wherein Productive Skye and Slothful Skye compete to see who racks up the most points for a day and a week. I'm to create a list of tasks and activities to carry out every day, nothing too onerous or crazy. Then, which ever side I choose to follow for that task gets the point. I'm to add them up daily and weekly. The purpose here is to show me very graphically and tangibly how I'm making choices and to encourage me to make more active, productive choices. I think the Competition will help with that … once I actually implement it. So far, Slothful Skye has won hands-down by my not implementing the Competition at all. Sigh.

Second, the new Therapist Michele

I've had two appointments with her this week, yesterday and today, getting the info dump out of the way and getting a start on the medication changes. And deciding that yes, we both think we will work well together.

I like her. I like what she has had to say about her therapeutic practice, and I like her voice. I find her aesthetically pleasing, if that makes any sense.

So yesterday I gave her the forms I'd filled out (LOTS of questions) and answered more questions and told her things I thought were important to know (I've been in therapy off and on, mostly on, since 1984, so there's a lot to say). Today, we got sidetracked onto a few other childhood things, then went back to talking about my medical history, current health, and medications. She put me back on Lamictal (I don't know why my previous psych took me off it, but maybe because I had a feeling-suicidal episode he decided that it wasn't working anymore, even though it had worked well for several years). We will probably up the dose of my Pristiq one pill.

And once things even out on those two meds (although it can take several months for the Lamictal to fully settle in), we will begin decreasing the Xanax. That could take six to nine months because I'm on three milligrams a day and have been for about a year and a half. Xanax is highly habituating, so the body doesn't give it up easily.

So I'm going to see Michele once a week from now on. And I'm going to have at least one more phone appointment with The Amazing Karen. Plus, I'm giving them both permission to communicate about me because Karen can better articulate what we've gone through and the therapeutic concepts much better than I can. I will hate to give up Karen because not only has she done more for me in two years than anyone else has done in more than twice that, she's become a friend and she was the one hug I knew I could get every week, which to an affection-needy person like me meant the world. But Michele is going to be good for me, too. Again, I lucked out in the find-a-therapist lottery.

The Powers of Choice

Had a therapy-by-phone session with my therapist this week and the main topic was "choice". I acknowledged that I have been choosing avoidance, distraction, and motionlessness rather than living fully, actively, and with purpose. I have been choosing naps over doing the things I need — and want! — to do.

Choice has many powers. Making a choice is powerful because it is an action and action is powerful. But when you make choice to be passive and powerless, that too is powerful because it increases the passivity and powerlessness, as well as any mental health issues associated with them, such as depression and anxiety such as I have. So I am in effect choosing to give my power over to oppression.

I truly do want to be more active and doing the things on my list and that I need and want to do: I can feel it! I feel urges toward movement and activity; I feel desires to walk and do exercises. But I squash them with the choices I make away from them. It's like choosing to kill the better part of yourself. I feel as if I've been killing the better part of myself for decades, now that I acknowledge that I have had choices. But for a long time, I didn't realize I could choose or that I had options. I felt powerless against my feelings. Now I know differently.

But changing the choices I make is not as easy as snapping my fingers and saying "Hey! I can make different choices!" It's going to require effort on my part due to the inertia involved and the habit involved and the weight of many years of making the other choices. I keep making the mistake of thinking that making changes will be easy, causing me to fall prey to falling back into what is easy. I haven't yet embraced the feeling of power that comes with doing what is difficult yet right.

I think I need to return to using contingent activities and rewards. I have better rewards now! I have a whole library of books to choose from here at the house (inhabited by two book-lovers, one of whom is a librarian). I have a niece and nephew who want to spend time with me and do the things I want to do as I re-explore Seattle and surroundings and re-experience my favorite things. I also need to again enlist select friends to nudge me along my way to making the habit of choosing the better options.

And I need to work some more on my thinking. I have my rubber band to remind me to think of the cognitive-behavioral tools I have (my housemate left me one in the bathroom we share the morning after he read my blog!). My therapist and I decided that the next major step in my therapy would probably be working on "growing up": i.e., self-actualization, letting go of the need for parental approval and validation (especially given that my last remaining one is now gone), strengthening my sense of self, however you want to define it. It's a process I haven't finished and I need to in order to be a fully functioning adult human. So time to dig in and find my next therapist. I now have a few names offered to me by my former practitioner in this area; next week will involve calling them and seeing if any are taking new patients. (I've heard that finding a mental health practitioner in this area is very difficult these days; must be a whole lot of over-stressed and "crazy" people around here; I blame the coffee!)

So making choices seems to be my next step, and one that I very strongly want to take. I can't wait for the blog post where I tell you all about how well it is going!

Victim Thinking

One of my more persistent issues is that of victim thinking. When  that is the way I am thinking, I feel powerless and hopeless. For example, when I feel tired, I generally don't do anything, feeling "too tired to do anything" and like my only option is to give up and do nothing. Or when I am approaching a problem or a project in a certain way and it's not working for me, I feel like I have no other options. Victim thinking makes me feel like I have no choices.

My therapist can basically tell when I'm caught in victim thinking just by my body posture and my voice. (Yeah, not going to take up professional poker any time soon.) Then we talk about how there are other ways to approach a situation differently, that I do have choices and options other than what I feel stuck with. That's powerful, active thinking. It's definitely the kind of thinking that uses the cognitive therapy techniques I've been working on.

The problem is that I've engaged in victim thinking for such a long time that it tends to be my default way of thinking and I still too-easily forget my cognitive techniques. One reason why I still need a therapist: to help me remember to use these techniques and to detect when I am engaged in victim thinking.

I've been caught up in victim thinking for a while since I've been in Seattle. I've grown more and more tired and sleepy since arriving here, so I sleep and don't accomplish the things on my to-do list. I haven't started looking for work and I've been here for a month and a half! I've been feeling unwell off and on and my fibromyalgia has flared up. So I've been thinking things like "I'm too tired to start an online job search right now; I'll take a nap first" and "I don't feel well enough to take a walk" and "My body hurts; I'll unpack later." So I haven't unpacked or started job searches or taken many walks. Then I feel stuck and tired and overwhelmed and ashamed, which thoughts just tend to spiral in on themselves.

I do have moments of powerful thinking. I wrote about them in my last post. I know what to do, what I need to do, what I want to do. But I let my old pattern of victim thinking and non-activity rule me, thus I don't do these things. This is not how to create the life I want. This is not how to be happy and contented.

I need to continually remind myself to check in on my thinking and self-talk. To do this, I need to have an easy way to remind myself. Wearing a rubber band on my wrist has worked in the past; I don't even need to snap it to encourage behavior/thinking modification. Just wearing it works. But I'm not sure where the ones I had back in Houston are right now. Of course, if I unpacked a few things, I might find them. Or I could ask my housemates if they have any large, wide rubber bands (I like them to be a little bit loose). *grin*

Catching Up

Movement and power

It's been a while since I blogged, I know. I just haven't felt like blogging and haven't had much in mind other than moving. I even run out of things to say in therapy that aren't about moving. But my therapist, brilliant as she is, can tease knowledge and learning out of any aspect of my life.

For example, for several weeks, I went in to therapy feeling overwhelmed and stuck, not getting much done and not feeling as if I could get anything done. My therapist pointed out I was feeling like a victim of my feelings and my circumstance and feeling powerless. That I needed to remember I had other options for how to feel and what to do, that I indeed had power over my situation and myself. Then I started to accomplish a few things, and that started me feeling more powerful and like I could get even more done.

My friend Deb has taken on the task of "nudging" me daily to see what I plan to do and what I've done. I seldom do everything on my list, and I continue to take naps that disrupt my day and my flow of activity, but I am accomplishing things and Deb's nudging helps a great deal.

I had my organizer back to help me organize things for the move: pack a few things, sort a lot of things, and get rid of a lot of things to charity. That helped me so much that I can now see how my friend Sierra and I will be able to pack the whole place when she gets here this week to help me (yay!). And I still have things to take to donate; I don't want to take the time to try to sell them. At this point, I'll just wait until Sierra can help me.