Revelations

1. No, I’m not talking about the Bible book. That’s Revelation, singular, by the way.

2. If the oven smokes whenever it’s over 400 degrees, so much so that the house must be opened up to dissipate it, and the smoke alarms go off, chances are it might need to be cleaned. Duh. We just keep forgetting to do it. Especially since you have to wait until the oven is cool enough to get in there and work on it. And we don’t own oven cleaner. And you don’t really notice the smoke at first — it’s not like it’s billowing clouds of blackness or anything. It creeps up on you. Or suddenly announces itself via the alarm.

But in my greeniness I thought I’d look around the trusty old Internet for homemade oven cleaner recipes. Lo and behold, the floor of my oven is now coated with a thick paste of salt, baking soda, and water; it will sit overnight, and tomorrow we shall see what we shall see.

Meanwhile I scoured the burner pans with steel wool. Not fun. If I’d had more paste, I would have coated those, too, and let them wait.

3. I can’t remember if I blogged about it at the time, but when I was going to DBT group during my PPD experience (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and Post Partum Depression, FYI. Oh: For Your Information.), one evening in the shower it occurred to me that just because I feel X doesn’t mean I have to act it out.

In other words, I have had a tendency to think that people won’t know what I’m feeling, won’t get the message I need to tell them, won’t really listen to the words-only message, etc, unless I do a little drama for them. And yes, this tendency developed because people do tend to dismiss or ignore things if you can talk about them calmly and keep functioning. So annoying — scenes sometimes DO have to be made if it’s the only way to get what you need. Oh, and no, it’s not always a calculated, unfeeling drama — sometimes it feels driven, the only alternative left.

Anyway, there are times when I need to relinquish the need to send the message. Or the need to keep sending it for the thousandth time in the effort to make the person get the message and respond to it accordingly. Realize that the person the message is going to is NOT going to change or do the thing I want them to do. Realize, moreover, that my drama is unlikely to get the results I want, and I will have to either stick it out forever, which is a drain, or else crawl back from it with an even greater burden of mad shame and (especially) futility.

I have the choice to treat the person with respect and continue in relationship with them even though I feel their behavior or lack of behavior has hurt me in some deep way. Especially if I know that a) they didn’t intend me to feel that way and b) they’re just going to keep doing or not doing that behavior.

Futility in terms of not controlling someone else is not the same thing as capitulating, giving up on my needs and perspective, conforming myself to them since they won’t conform to me, etc.

If they won’t do what I need or want, I can see if I can do it myself, or, looking to God knowing that this world is not my home and this earthly life not designed merely for my entire self-fulfillment, do without.

This has a lot to do with willfulness, and learning to recognize what can’t be willed, and learning how to deal with such things. And with being right about everything almost all the time.

Analysis and pain

This post comes from some comment discussion with ama about therapy and analytical thinking; she says “I don’t care about understanding without change and relief.”

I think it was Freud who said the goal of therapy is to exchange morbid something or other for ordinary human misery.

Someone else said that it’s not so much that prayer changes things as that prayer changes oneself.

Understanding cannot stop, end, or control pain. Pain exists in this dark, fallen world, just as joy exists in this world that still bears the stamp of its loving creator.

Understanding does not change the past — what happened that hurt you or me did happen, and no amount of analysis can make it unhappen.

Understanding can change the way we experience pain.

DBT and other things has helped me in the process of learning to experience pain or any other feeling as something that is part of life, comes and goes, does not rule me, hurts but doesn’t destroy.

Understanding mainly helps me stop — again and again — fighting against reality. When I understand the sources of pain, the reasons I react the way I do to certain things, the desires that drive my will, and so on, I can remind myself that pain isn’t a flaw in my thinking — that I can’t change reality by will alone.

DBT and other things help me know when and how I can change some things, and when and how I must accept what cannot be changed. The only way radical acceptance is possible is when you realize the difference between accepting reality and condoning it.

In the past, every time I got depressed I would put just about my entire life on hold and concentrate all my energy on analyzing the depression — its roots, its reasons, its insights, its imperatives, etc.

Gradually I realized a few things. First of all, the same themes, ideas, and phrases would come up in my analyses, often in the same order. I don’t have to do the whole analysis all over again each time. Secondly, the depression always lifted eventually, and there was seldom any connection between the lift and analytical insight. Moods change, and are not directly tied to thinking alone (take that, CBT). Third, the depression would always come back; there was no sense in stopping life to deal with it, because dealing with it didn’t really have any effect on it, and because it seemed to be an integral part of my life.

I have nothing against analytical thinking. Hey — I’m a blogger and a journaler and I’ve been in therapy. Perhaps the problem is that I might still associate analyzing with willfulness, resisting reality, and trying to change things by understanding alone. Instead, most of the work of therapy must be about actually experiencing emotions and not only analyzing them. There is more to the person than mind alone.

Last DBT

Tonight was the last meeting of my DBT group. I’m sad that it’s over; I enjoyed it and thought it was useful, and I’ll miss the other attendees, especially the one I went out for ice cream with a while back.

I noticed that I haven’t cried at group for a while, and I’ve also headed home from group without intense anxiety about what might be happening when I get home.

There’s only one PPD intervention left; no more church volunteers, no more public health nurse, no more limited work hours for Mark, no more therapy, no more DBT. Just meds / psychiatry left. Lots-o-progress. A little sadness and loneliness, too.

Two dreams

These are dream stories — not real events.

Betrayal

I pull up to the mall and stop my car at the curb by the entrance, then realize of course I can’t just leave it there, I have to park. There’s a space nearby, and a truck sitting near it — I ask if he is going to use the space, and he says yes. For some reason, this throws me into a suicidal rage, even though there’s another space right next to that one and the inconvenience is paltry.

In the department store a woman follows me, concerned, trying to get me to talk about it, trying to keep me from acting on the suicidal part. I don’t think I had any intention of acting on it, but I was in no mood to be talked to by some stranger or really by anyone. I storm around and manage to get away from her.

Later I am at a meeting of some artsy people. It might be a commune. It might be a therapy group. It starts off being about food or recipes, then gets to where each person has their particular artistic self-expression, and they get together to share their works, make works for each other, and talk and listen to one another.

I get pretty involved in the group, which leads one member to comment with surprise — they’d expected me to be more skeptical or aloof. This comment annoys me even though it seems to express a positive; I don’t like to be talked about, guessed at, evaluated.

I think another member offers me an art piece that she did specifically for me in response to something I talked about.

At some point discussion turns to something I disagree with. I try to express and explain my disagreement, in a conversational, communicative way, not trying to force my views on anyone, just inviting the others to consider a different point of view and add it to the ongoing discussion. I am inarticulate, choosing words poorly, and the group attacks me for my views. I keep trying to explain why what I believe is not so horrible and remain inarticulate. I’m cast out, possibly in danger — even as I attempt to leave or escape, I think I still reach out to a member, still trying to explain, still looking for someone who might understand and accept me.

I wonder if the group represents my DBT group, which sort of also represents the world in general; fear of betrayal, of being so warmly accepted and included with hope and promise, then too quickly and completely rejected when I do nothing more harmful than share a different opinion.

Mark’s job

I didn’t record this dream in the morning, so the details and chronology are very fuzzy. Mostly the dream was about being in the place we are moving to for Mark’s new job. The main issues seemed to be physical / medical danger in the buildings he’d work in, and sleep and bathroom issues (privacy, appropriate bedding, interruptions)

It’s hard to feel the intensity of a dream so barely sketched. It makes perfect sense for me to have fears related to such a major transition. I’m not sure why the sleep and bathroom motifs were so prominent in this one.

Bedtime routine

1. This new bedtime routine is going very well. Mark was wondering when the last time was that she woke in the middle of the night.

2. Yesterday, I think it was all three earlier naps that Amy went down without a peep. This morning’s first nap happened that way, too.

3. Someone is coming to see the house today.

4. Amy and I are going to DeeDee’s for lunch during the showing.

5. Mark has a pot of chicken stock simmering on the stove and it smells so good.

6. I redesigned the DBT diary card in a format that I think will work for me. I have columns for significant events, emotions grouped in four broad categories (good, fear, anger, depression), and urges grouped in four (to cry, to be aggressive, to withdraw / minimize myself, and other). Each day has seven spaces for events. I’m using check, check-minus, and check-plus to rate the intensity of the emotions and urges, and starring urges that I act on. The boxes are big enough that I can write in any more specific emotion words I might need, like “guilt” or “grief.” Four days fit on a page, so two pages in a binder can show one week at once.

Time out

1. I took Amy to Julie’s house today for lunch and a visit — people were coming to look at our house at noon so I wanted something more interesting for us to do besides walking the aisles of the local Shur-Save. It was nice to have that time out — to be in a different place, with other people.

2. I’m taking a time out from DBT today. I could do a gratitude list and a prompting event worksheet, but I don’t feel like it and I think I can give myself permission to skip it today. I was still practicing some DBT skills — trying to be mindful and all that.

3. This doesn’t fit the time out theme, but I’m adding it anyway. Hey, it’s my blog, I can do what I want. Anyway, it occurred to me that there is a difference between tired but still social, and tired and wanting to go to sleep. I think sometimes maybe Amy just wants to be with us but not played with, talked to, etc — too tired to play, but not ready to be by herself yet. Even if that’s not really what goes on in her mind at this young age, it’s still an interesting and perhaps useful way of thinking.

I exist and that’s okay

I exist and that’s okay;
I am meant to be.
I needn’t fight the universe –
It’s not fighting me.

Last night at DBT, we spent a good portion of the meeting discussing a list of questions and comments I’d emailed to the leader, Denise (not the Denise who does my psychiatric evaluations). She thought it would be more useful to open it up to the group instead of answering me privately.

This gets to my thing about wanting attention and not knowing how to handle it.

During the meeting I had this feeling of protruding, like a bump in a sidewalk, and that I needed to flatten out and become invisible. (Concrete items: talking too much, shifting position too much, reacting too much, making too much noise like when digging in my purse for my glasses case.) I often feel this way in groups, and sometimes even with just one other person. It may be one reason I am more comfortable playing background music at the farmers market than playing a solo concert to a paying audience.

I think it wasn’t until near the end of the meeting that I realized this is just another example of my central inner conflict — part of me is desperately fighting to become a self, to feel allowed to exist, but another part of me thinks it’s not allowed to stick out.

To the one part, everything is a threat, including the other part. (The other part really is a threat… and perhaps that’s what makes everything else seem threatening.)

Not everybody wants me to disappear. Not everyone wants me to be smoother and unobtrusive. Some people might… but not everyone.

Even the people who love me most will be annoyed at me sometimes (my reaction is to feel hard and sharp-edged), and will sometimes not be in a good mood themselves (my reaction is to feel it has something to do with me). That doesn’t devalue or negate their love.

It seems the biggest threat to my Self, my Life, is from inside; from the equal and opposite reaction to my fight to be, from my black-and-white interpretations of and reactions to other people and circumstances.

Critical self,
You who want to do what you think will
Make people like me,
Protect other people’s feelings,
Soothe the universe’s affront at my existence –
You would make me palatable
By making me nothing;
By making me move only
In ways that affect no one.

You can’t escape the fact that I exist,
That I am indeed a self,
And that I therefore protrude
As much as all the other selves,
And that that’s okay.

Let me learn how to protrude
More gracefully,
More beautifully,
More truly;
To take down the fences and barbed wire and cut glass –
The deliberate sharp-edged awareness of sticking out –
Without taking down the rest of me.

I am especially grateful to the young woman who encouraged me to trust my instincts when I feel the need to fight or when I sense hostility or at least unlovingness from someone; that sometimes it is good and necessary to fight, and to recognize real threats. I don’t have to believe that everyone is dedicated to my wellbeing any more than I have to believe that everyone is out to get me. I don’t have to believe all fights are wasted energy any more than I have to believe that all fights must be continued.

DBT

My second DBT meeting was last night.

We spent most of the hour helping one another process how we’ve felt and coped this past week. I’ve never been in a support group before, and I really appreciate that aspect of DBT. It helps me cry when I need to (I cried almost the whole meeting; it always amazes me that I can hurt so much), and it also gives me an opportunity to relate to and be compassionate towards the others in the group; even though I’m the only one there with PPD, we all share so much of the same difficulties, especially depression and anxiety.

We talked a little about the prompting event sheets and diary cards, and read two pages in the book… so far I haven’t benefited a whole lot from these specific DBT skills things… I need to re-read and ask questions and make comments and try to understand better how to practice them.

Inner critic

Last night was my first DBT meeting. DBT is dialectical behavioral therapy. It’s supposed to be about learning skills for better affect management, including mindfulness, acceptance without judgment, and other such. I don’t really have a good idea about what it will be yet because last night’s meeting was mostly hearing about everyone’s last two weeks and reading and discussing just one page in the book, about interpersonal skills.

I had two emotional reactions, one to the meeting as a whole, and one to something someone said.

First of all, there’s the new audience phenomenon.

You know those people who have their one story or passion, and it’s all they talk about, and all their friends and family get bored hearing about it all the time, but when they find a new sympathetic audience, it makes their story feel fresh and significant again.

I like finding a new audience to hear my story, but it also makes me sad, because I wonder whether this thing will be really helpful or just another temporary, nice, but ineffective moment of attention and compassion and being taken seriously.

One of the things we talked about last night is a worksheet for reflecting on an event that prompts an emotional response, figuring out what beliefs underlie the emotion, and issuing a challenge to any false beliefs.

The new audience thing involves emotions of gratitude, humbleness, anxiety, and condemnation. Gratitude because I crave that attention and compassion and being taken seriously. Humbleness and sheepishness because I don’t know how to handle attention once I get it, and because I feel that my story isn’t such a big deal after all and isn’t worth bothering all these nice people about. Anxiety because it won’t last once they find out who I really am, and because nothing is ever really helpful. Condemnation because I talked too much and think my story is more important than it is, and if nothing is helpful, I should quit looking for help. Oh, and I can also condemn myself for thinking nothing is ever helpful.

Pretty obvious what underlies these emotions, right? I don’t feel worthy of attention and compassion, and I don’t feel that my story is worth being taken seriously. And I don’t believe that the change I want will ever happen, or at least not as quickly and completely and ideally as I wish it would. And that if change was possible, it must be my fault it hasn’t happened yet, or else God isn’t who he says he is.

The challenge should be to state that I am worthy of attention and compassion, and that my story may not be the most important thing in the world but it’s not insignificant, and that some change, slow and nonlinear and nonideal, is possible. Easy to write the words, but…

My second emotional response was to a woman who talked about writing a letter to her adolescent self, an inner persona that has mostly had the role of critic. Listening to the dialogue between the different aspects of her self, she was surprised to find that this inner critic was sympathetic to her — the inner critic was trying to help her.

That made me cry.

The idea that my own inner critic could be sympathetic, that that aspect of my being is trying to protect or help me, is surprising. After all, the voice is critical — it hurts!

Remember how I wrote about people who really love me but whose efforts miss the mark and hurt instead? And here I’m realizing that I do that to myself, too. It’s not just external.

Also, considering that my hurtfulness to myself is motivated by a sort of caring means I can be more compassionate towards that inner critic and take what it says more kindly. This could open up that inner dialogue instead of there just being action and reaction.

If you think all this talk of inner voices and such is ridiculous, I admit that the language sometimes bothers me, too. Remember that this is figurative language*. If it helps, remember too that all of us can hold conflicting ideas at the same time. Imagining each idea as a distinct inner voice can help us figure out where the conflicting ideas come from, what they mean, and how to resolve the conflict.

*I’m not sure if it’s figurative for everybody. Maybe for Austin, for example, it’s not figurative — but I don’t understand what exactly Dissociative Identity Disorder is like.

Last night and today

1. Last night I kept my door cracked so the kitty could be with me. She woke me up once or twice, but it was still worth it. Nothing like a warm, purring kitty.

2. Last night I took my first 0.25mg Risperdal, the anti-psychotic for schizophrenia, which, like most of these mental health drugs, has many other uses, including, apparently, a bit of anti-anxiety, a bit of tranquilizer, and a bit of clarity of thought. We’ll see. It could take several days or a few weeks to build up enough to take effect.

3. Last night I went to bed early. I’m not sure why I was so exhausted, but I was. I think I took the Risperdal at 8:30, in case it would be sedating enough to help me sleep (the notes say it makes some people drowsy, and has the opposite effect on others… again, a common thing, that these medicines can all have opposite effects than intended. Like the anti-allergy meds that can make you get a cold, runny nose, or upper respiratory infection, which is what you get from your allergies anyway, so what’s the point?) At about 9:40 I took an Ativan too for a little extra push towards sleep.

4. Last night was better than the earlier part of the day. We were both a bit hyperreactive to one another. Then we had trouble getting prescriptions filled — Mark went first to the closer place, which had no Risperdal and wouldn’t refill the Zoloft because my dosage has changed. So when he came home I called Denise, who called in a new Zoloft prescription to the grocery store, and the three of us went there. The “twenty minutes” stretched a LOT longer, so we didn’t get home until close to 6.

5. Today we went to church. I sat out of the service again, and Mark was in and out with Amy. Then the DBT group leader called our cell after the service, when the lobby was filled with loud kids, and I couldn’t hear her and had to arrange to call her back. This made me irrationally angry.

6. Today after church and after I called her back (yes, I’ll join the group, even though I’ll miss the first meeting because of another job interview trip) I tried the dart board. Pretty satisfying physical release — hurling the darts, the thunk as they pierce the board. And it feels safer than the punching bag, less like a real fight, perhaps because there’s distance. There’s physical distance, and there’s also psychological distance — there are a lot of fights between people that involve punching and kicking and beating with sticks, but not many that involve throwing darts.

7. Today we will go to Jon’s to watch the Superbowl. Will the Colts win? We plan to bring a tortellini soup we learned from Jen. Basically chicken broth with tortellini, spinach, and basil.