Why is this still happening?
Yesterday I had my first actual therapy session with my new counselor and I saw my psychiatrist to follow up on switching from Effexor to Prozac. Much like the first time I went into therapy, this time I've been tasked with sitting down to write every day. To try to find that groove and settle back into what I know is within me, being a writer. More targeted this time, however, I was tasked with journaling. So why didn't I do it yesterday when I was tasked?
Well, I saw two different specialists in one day and had to tell the same story about losing a dog, taking a week off from work, and then finding myself unemployed that first Monday back. I figured, or excused, or rationalized my way away from sitting down to write this exact post because, well, I'd unloaded already. Maybe that's a valid enough excuse. But the point of trying to write in a journal, or in my case my blog (and I'll get to that), is to let go of all the little stressors in a day, rather than letting them pile up to a tipping point.
Also yesterday I took my first audio file to transcribe on Rev, a short little thing, a practice run. That's a supplemental source of income at best...especially when my browser acts like it's 1996 and can't keep up with what I'm typing. Today, I had hoped to take more tasks from Rev, to try and create a cash flow. But, here at 20 'til ten AM, I've already shat twice and feel like I'm vibrating inside of my own skin.
I have no boss now, I am my own boss. Rev is all about taking what you want, when you want, in your own time. There's deadlines, but they only apply once you commit to a job...but, here I am a nervous wreck just as if I was back at my regular desk at my normal job that I lost last week.
Too much coffee? I don't feel like this on the weekends.
So what is it about work that has me so upset? Why does any sort of expectation I put on myself end up causing me distress? Have I been too hard on myself for too long? Am I still breaking down and grieving so much loss these last six months? But this has been going on for years! Being hyper-aware and critical of myself is only causing a negative feedback loop that feeds on its own tail like an ouroboros, but it's fed so much of itself to itself that it has become engorged and shitting and eating are one and the same. Yeah, that's how I feel.
But why? How do I break out of this? I tell myself to be present, only here, in the now, don't fret about the future, quit replaying the past...yet here I am, stomach churning even as I write this. As soon as I hit "Publish" I'll probably have to go sit on the pot until my legs go numb again. So what to do? Fret and fear seems to be all I have, and the more I tell myself that, the more it solidifies. The more I read my "Litany Against Fear" tattooed on my left forearm, the more I realize, or rather, make real, the fact that I am in that constant state of fear.
Nothing and no one is causing me harm in this moment. I've already lost my job, it's over. The future is as uncertain today as it was yesterday, as it was last week, as it was on any given Wednesday over the entire scope of existence. I've tried convincing myself of all of this. I've tried counseling. I've tried drugs (legal, prescribed, I promise). I've tried massage. I've tried a hot compress. A cold compress. I've tried tea before bed. I've tried journaling, I've tried distraction, I've tried fucking the pain away...yet it persists. And before you ask, that last bit is from ages ago, long before marriage, and I learned that one really doesn't work, and probably only exacerbated the problem, whatever it is.
So, here I am, pointing to all the things I've tried, while there is still something messing me up. Why blog about it? Isn't this embarrassing, airing my dirty laundry for the world to see? Well, yes and no. Maybe someone else is in the same boat (I know other people are in the same boat). Maybe crying out into the void will give someone else solace knowing they're not alone. Maybe writing it and putting it out for all the world to see (yeah, I see you Russians reading my blog), will trigger some revelatory insight, that moment of clarity that makes everything click into place and make sense. Maybe someone will offer me ketamine, I don't know. But the truth of the matter? It's all in my head, that's a fact, and it's a fact I have to come to terms with.
I am not depressed and anxious, I have depression and anxiety. These things are not me, they are parts of me, no different than the astigmatism in my eyes that makes me need glasses or the screwed up left big toenail that I have to diligently manage to ensure it doesn't go ingrown again. And there's the rub, those physical impediments I have tools and practices for. Yes, I'm taking medication for depression and anxiety, but they're getting me to where I am, this ability to function, albeit highly self-aware of just how screwed up I am. The practice and exercise of getting out of this hellhole (digression: hellhole is a recognized word, but "jounraling" and "revelatory" get red squiggly lines, wtf?!) are the hard work that I'm faced with right now.
So, trying to blog every day for the next week as my therapist asked, that'll be the practice of basically looking at the problem. Recognizing its place within me and addressing it much as you might address hunger, feeding it by acknowledging it. The feed however is just the recognition. I'll write about it, whatever "it" is, and even if it's just the same post over and over, day after day, maybe that'll bring me closer to at least being comfortable with it. And if I'm comfortable around my own problems, the baggage and accessories that I was both born with and have picked up along the way, then maybe the weight won't be so burdensome. Like working out, building that muscle to shoulder it a little more easily, until the dealing with and acknowledging and accepting my depression and anxiety is no different than dealing with the ability to see, or that my fingers move without a concerted effort; it just is, it just does.
"Where the fear has gone...
Only I will remain."
Well, I saw two different specialists in one day and had to tell the same story about losing a dog, taking a week off from work, and then finding myself unemployed that first Monday back. I figured, or excused, or rationalized my way away from sitting down to write this exact post because, well, I'd unloaded already. Maybe that's a valid enough excuse. But the point of trying to write in a journal, or in my case my blog (and I'll get to that), is to let go of all the little stressors in a day, rather than letting them pile up to a tipping point.
Also yesterday I took my first audio file to transcribe on Rev, a short little thing, a practice run. That's a supplemental source of income at best...especially when my browser acts like it's 1996 and can't keep up with what I'm typing. Today, I had hoped to take more tasks from Rev, to try and create a cash flow. But, here at 20 'til ten AM, I've already shat twice and feel like I'm vibrating inside of my own skin.
I have no boss now, I am my own boss. Rev is all about taking what you want, when you want, in your own time. There's deadlines, but they only apply once you commit to a job...but, here I am a nervous wreck just as if I was back at my regular desk at my normal job that I lost last week.
Too much coffee? I don't feel like this on the weekends.
So what is it about work that has me so upset? Why does any sort of expectation I put on myself end up causing me distress? Have I been too hard on myself for too long? Am I still breaking down and grieving so much loss these last six months? But this has been going on for years! Being hyper-aware and critical of myself is only causing a negative feedback loop that feeds on its own tail like an ouroboros, but it's fed so much of itself to itself that it has become engorged and shitting and eating are one and the same. Yeah, that's how I feel.
But why? How do I break out of this? I tell myself to be present, only here, in the now, don't fret about the future, quit replaying the past...yet here I am, stomach churning even as I write this. As soon as I hit "Publish" I'll probably have to go sit on the pot until my legs go numb again. So what to do? Fret and fear seems to be all I have, and the more I tell myself that, the more it solidifies. The more I read my "Litany Against Fear" tattooed on my left forearm, the more I realize, or rather, make real, the fact that I am in that constant state of fear.
Nothing and no one is causing me harm in this moment. I've already lost my job, it's over. The future is as uncertain today as it was yesterday, as it was last week, as it was on any given Wednesday over the entire scope of existence. I've tried convincing myself of all of this. I've tried counseling. I've tried drugs (legal, prescribed, I promise). I've tried massage. I've tried a hot compress. A cold compress. I've tried tea before bed. I've tried journaling, I've tried distraction, I've tried fucking the pain away...yet it persists. And before you ask, that last bit is from ages ago, long before marriage, and I learned that one really doesn't work, and probably only exacerbated the problem, whatever it is.
So, here I am, pointing to all the things I've tried, while there is still something messing me up. Why blog about it? Isn't this embarrassing, airing my dirty laundry for the world to see? Well, yes and no. Maybe someone else is in the same boat (I know other people are in the same boat). Maybe crying out into the void will give someone else solace knowing they're not alone. Maybe writing it and putting it out for all the world to see (yeah, I see you Russians reading my blog), will trigger some revelatory insight, that moment of clarity that makes everything click into place and make sense. Maybe someone will offer me ketamine, I don't know. But the truth of the matter? It's all in my head, that's a fact, and it's a fact I have to come to terms with.
I am not depressed and anxious, I have depression and anxiety. These things are not me, they are parts of me, no different than the astigmatism in my eyes that makes me need glasses or the screwed up left big toenail that I have to diligently manage to ensure it doesn't go ingrown again. And there's the rub, those physical impediments I have tools and practices for. Yes, I'm taking medication for depression and anxiety, but they're getting me to where I am, this ability to function, albeit highly self-aware of just how screwed up I am. The practice and exercise of getting out of this hellhole (digression: hellhole is a recognized word, but "jounraling" and "revelatory" get red squiggly lines, wtf?!) are the hard work that I'm faced with right now.
So, trying to blog every day for the next week as my therapist asked, that'll be the practice of basically looking at the problem. Recognizing its place within me and addressing it much as you might address hunger, feeding it by acknowledging it. The feed however is just the recognition. I'll write about it, whatever "it" is, and even if it's just the same post over and over, day after day, maybe that'll bring me closer to at least being comfortable with it. And if I'm comfortable around my own problems, the baggage and accessories that I was both born with and have picked up along the way, then maybe the weight won't be so burdensome. Like working out, building that muscle to shoulder it a little more easily, until the dealing with and acknowledging and accepting my depression and anxiety is no different than dealing with the ability to see, or that my fingers move without a concerted effort; it just is, it just does.
"Where the fear has gone...
Only I will remain."
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