It had been a good week, followed by a good weekend. I was not oppressively exhausted. I was enjoying my time knitting. A few parts of me collaboratively engage in knitting and it’s a most excellent activity to pass the time and allow us to be doing something that feels good while being restful. I love the feel of the yarn, love to look at the colors. Rae loves to process the previous day, week, whatever while we knit. Amanda loves to create and feel productive. Prowler finds it relaxing, and Ray joins in with Rae in the processing. Of course, being such an addict, I knit at the expense of grooming and eating. But as Luke says, it’s better than sitting around perseverating on cutting my arm off or jumping off the bridge. So it had been a good week.
Monday came and school was tiresome and I had my weekly appointment with Craig. I’m afraid that the whole session could be boiled down into a few words: let’s work on co-consciousness, integration is the next step, and by the way – we should think of having a therapy vacation sometime. Trigger, trigger, TRIGGER. I translated that into: let’s work on the most terrifying issues you have, and then I’m going to leave you. My head was full of static Monday night, and by Tuesday morning I was able only to think of cutting my arm off. I was so pissed. “Therapy vacation” to me means “I’m leaving you and therefore you will have to deal with all those feelings of abandonment and loss and grief and you’ll be alone and too bad for you.” The backlash made my stomach sick. I questioned myself on why I turned to arm amputation immediately, and why that thought provided a shred of comfort to me. I don’t really understand… just know that it did. I wondered if somehow I thought that cutting off my arm would get me the attention I feel I need, would delay “therapy vacation.” Such a dumb answer to excessive emotional reactions to normal therapeutic processes gave me a reason to beat myself up. And the pit in my stomach grew with the anxiety and fear over the therapy session and the disgust over my reactions to the anxiety and fear grew and suicide seemed like the only way to make it stop.
Tuesday was all about chaos. I hated Craig and I hated myself. I hated the process. I hated the feelings. But then I heard a little voice, Craig’s voice, say “I won’t make you do anything. We’ll only take a vacation if you’re okay with it. It won’t be forever, it will be for weeks, or however long seems okay. If you need to talk to me, we can arrange that.” I didn’t want to believe the voice, I didn’t want to even hear it, because it represented a kind of anchor that I could hold onto while I “felt” the abandonment and fear and anger. But I heard it anyway. And I felt those feelings, all bloated and ominous and out of proportion and stupid. But only in little bits and punctuated with arm amputation fantasies and lost time.
Wednesday morning I forgot to take my medicine, abilify. All day I was a little tired, but amazingly connected to the present. That night I slept better than I have for years. I woke Thursday morning rested and happy. I never wake up feeling rested. I took the abilify that morning, and I haven’t had a day so bright since I first went on the abilify. I repeated the experiment Friday morning, not taking the med, and I found myself HUMMING at the end of the day. Tired but connected and peaceful and fucking HUMMING.
It scares me to be so emotionally all over the place. Did I have a good end to the week because I successfully dealt with something? Did I have a good end of the week because I gave my brain and body a break from over-medication? Did I actually DEAL with the therapy session and my feelings or did I dissociate from them?
Sarah's Take - Dissociative Identity Disorder Unplugged: A true and raw telling of the thoughts, musings, meanderings of a woman with a Dissociative Disorder, Sarah's Take takes readers on a little ride through what most people can't really imagine.
Sarah....before I even got to your reaction about the therapy vacation; I was reacting exactly as you did. It is a terrifying thought which brings on our extreme responses but then again, we have been through some extreme shit and the feeling of "being left" whether based in reality or not is excruciating.
ReplyDeleteI was on abilify for a short time and had to go off because it was making me climb the walls. I too have eased up on some of the meds or the amounts and find myself more grounded. that is f'd up thinking that the very thing that is supposed tohelp mitigate our reactions makes them more bizarre. Did you speak to your psych about that?
I plan to talk to the psych about the med issues. Unfortunately, he is brand new as my old psych left the clinic. I hate to discuss med changes with a new psych who doesn't know me and has developed no trust. I mean, how crazy is it to say "hello, I'm Sarah, and I am going off my meds now because I'll be mentally healthier..." But I will talk to him. I have met him once and he seems like a real good egg. Also, thanks for saying those issues are big. My logic says I'm overreacting terribly so, and it's nice to hear that maybe the issue is big.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, (my knowledge comes from the handling of my sleep disorder), perhaps its not being off the meds as much as it is the change in the way your neurology is regulated by the one day off, one day on approach.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, you may wish to consider a sleep study. The human body can get locked into a vicious cycle (no sleep, stressed out...being stressed out reduces sleep, cascade of effects from there) and its possible what you experienced is helping with that.
I've been thinking of the whole arm amputation thing. I provide the fantasies, Rae watches them with a lusty gusto. Rae would do it, too, I think. And it's not some ploy to get the attention of the therapist. I think Rae has these emotions that Sarah throws in her face and she can't deal with them, and neither can Sarah, so we want to cut them out of our lives. The shame and fear and sadness and lonliness and tiredness and rage and alienation and abandonment - let's make that ABANDONMENT all reside in my arm. Rae can't deal with the feelings, and neither can Sarah, so the plan is to get rid of them. Physically dissociate them from the body. Cut the fucking arm off so that none of us has to feel these emotions. When I'm tired like this, and very confused, and vulnerable, it really actually makes a lot of sense. Phantom pain can't be all that bad, can it?
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