I’ve had quite a tough time in a few recent days. It started on Thursday and it was even more tough because it was my birthday, so, you know, people would expect you to be happy, smiling and beaming, while I felt everything but that. Since I got up, I felt just so overwhelmingly depressed, plus extremely irritable and emotional, like anything you’d say could make me cry or scream, just like a minefield. Very unstable. So, although as I wrote some time before, I am still a master at stifling emotions and no one really could really see anything that’s going on inside me, even my Mum didn’t realise until I told her, it was really hard to keep things under control.
I had a very poor sleep the night before and maybe that contributed to it. I fell asleep sometime between 4 and 5, I had so many thoughts and feelings on my mind that they kept me up and anxious for the most part of the night. Luckily when I finally fell asleep, it wasn’t disrupted and I had some time to catch up on sleep before the noon. So as I said, I felt just massive floods of emotions going through me when I woke up. I felt like I was shaking inside and had a lump of rage and tears constantly in my throat, as if I was close to a meltdown, which felt a bit scary.
I tried to be smiling and I think I succeeded, after all I am sure that if not my emotional disregulation, I would surely enjoy that day much more.
My sis Zofijka was very sweet to me. She bought me a Toffifee, she knows I love Toffifee and she loves it too, so we were eating it together. Also she got me a pillow which looks like a cat and she called it Misha. My Mum got me a salt lamp, which is really lovely. And I got a cat figurine made of onyx from my Dad, so my gem stone figurines collection is now a bit bigger. It is very lovely too. I felt very grateful for how they knew what would make me happy.
The first more difficult moment for me during that day happened when my aunt, who is also my God mother called me to wish me happy birthday. She is kind of know-all person, quite judgmental and that’s why she often, consciously or not, hurts people with her straight-away, judgmental opinions, which surely aren’t facts, or with her “good advices”. I think almost everyone knows someone like this, who wishes you only well, but in fact every time you talk to them, you feel drained or hurt.
So this time wasn’t an exception and she kind of worsened my mood even more. So I decided that before any guests will come, I need some Mishtime, just Misha and me, otherwise I will explode and people will be surely very astonished and confused. So we had some time together with Misha and with some good, Norwegian electronic music on. I think Mishka realised in some way that I need him, because he stayed beside me for an entire hour, although it’s so not his style. We lied together and I was stroking him and listening to his sounds – his heartbeat, breath, his tummy and any other Mishsounds. They are all sooo cute! 😀 Really. And they are so soothing. That’s why I sometimes wish I could go inside Misha and hide there, although my sis says it’s weird, because she thinks Misha can’t be even a bit as beautiful inside as he is outside and she’d prefer to be small enough to fit his basket and curl up in there with him. Anyway, Mishtime made me a bit more relaxed for a while, but just for a while.
Finally the guests came and it turned out we’ll be having quite a lot of extended family here. Our family is rather big and they like gatherings and their food, especially my Dad’s family, so it was really quite a bunch of people. Although I know them all more or less obviously since they are my family, I didn’t feel very confident in such a big group of people so the anxiety turned on at some point as well. And then we also had a little family drama, not regarding me directly, but indirectly and it made me even more emotional, so after a few hours I just needed urgently to go away from all this. So did it. Misha was following me so we both went to the bathroom and I had a long, hot shower and cried my guts out, as I felt I needed it, where as Misha enjoyed his favourite activity – drank the water from the tap in the tube. He always drinks from everywhere but his own bowl. 😀 I couldn’t really get exactly why I had all these emotions and why they were so intense and mixed. So I cried a lot and for a while I felt I let it out, but it couldn’t be all, because I still was feeling very depressed and hopeless and lonely, although paradoxically the living room was full of people who came to me, at least theoretically. But I knew that if I came to them, the feeling of loneliness wouldn’t decrease. And I was just as crappy as I didn’t feel in weeks already. And then before I even fully realised what I’m doing, I cut myself. Again. Ughhh… Then, of course, endorphines started to work. But again, just for a while.
So I decided that I need to call my therapist. Well I’ve told you already that she isn’t my therapist any longer formally, but since I don’t have any other regular therapy instead, she checks in with me from time to time, like once a month or so. She’s very busy and has a few jobs, so it’s often hard for her to carve out some time. That’s why I was almost sure she won’t be able to talk.
But she was. And it already felt like a huge relief. I told her how unstable and chaotic I feel and like I can burst out with any minute and how unsafe I feel because of that and that I have no clue what could cause it, only that it may be some unprocessed stuff from the past or something like this. Then while talking to her about all that, I realised that it might be also due to PMS, as I have it. There was a little discussion about PMS on one of the lists I’m on exactly the same day, but I didn’t realise it may be due to PMS, or partly because of it, before I started to talk about it to my therapist.I talked to her about what’s going on in my life. That recently I am having sleep paralysis and all the scary dreams regularly again so often wake up pretty exhausted before I even start doing something more constructive. I also talked to her about my anxiety levels which are shifting quite a lot now, sometimes I can feel almost no anxiety and then suddenly it just hits me so strong that it’s sometimes really hard to stand it. Sometimes I even don’t see the reason of such reaction very clearly. And it’s often hard to hide from people that I am anxious, which I hate, because it still makes me quite unsafe when I know or even suppose that other people may realise what I’m feeling at the moment. I told her that I often feel like I don’t get myself AT ALL and how it damn frustrates me. And that I cut myself and now am frustrated about that too. We also talked briefly about my social anxiety in connection to my birthday. She already knows that this school year is extremely hard for me because of the final exams coming in May and stuff related to that as well as because I feel very unsecure about my future and it just looks so shitty and hopeless to me. So she asked me also about these things and how I am doing school wise. I told her that besides that previous exam session being much tougher for me emotionally than I’d expect and how drained I was afterwards, it’s fairly well with this now, I decided to slow down before the next term starts ’cause I feel I really need it and now I’m trying to think about school and my future as little as possible, but I think I’ll have a gap year before I’ll start with any further education. Just to have more time to consider what would be the best for me and also to recharge after this year. And maybe gain some new skills like a new language, find another job, so I’ll have more money either to save for the future or spare just for things I enjoy since I can do this now as I live with my family. That’s what my Mum told me would be wise to do, to take a gap year, and I think so too. My therapist said it’s reasonable indeed. We also talked about my relationship with my Dad, which was always difficult, complicated I mean, but rather good and recently started to break down a bit which worries me and makes me a bit confused. And we talked a lot about many different emotions and feelings and the content of my dreams and other things that are a bit too private to put it here, plus some of them are still fairly difficult for me to talk about.
Anyway, she was able to put some of the weight off me and I felt a little bit more uplifted, even just the fact that she was accessible for me and I had someone supportive to talk to did a lot for me. I felt much more encouraged and not so much hopeless, although it still wasn’t ideally.
She told me that she’s of course not a doctor, but she thinks I am in a lot of distress because of all that what’s going on and if she’d be me, she’d ask my doc to put me on Afobam again.
I was taking Afobam some time ago for a while and it really worked for me so I think it’s not a bad thought and I think I’ll do it next week. Also she told me she would really like to be able to schedule some regular sessions for me, ’cause that’s definitely what I need in her opinion, so she said it would be good if I could find someone who would provide me support on a regular basis. THat may not be as easy though, but I was also thinking about it a lot recently, so looks like it’s time for it.
Misha was still with me as talked to my therapist and purred loudly. I think there really might be something more to that theory that animals are very good at feeling our emotions, he was just so sweet that day. Or maybe he realised it was my birthday haha.
So when we finished, I went downstairs to see what’s up and helped my Mum a bit to tidy up and then went straight to bed with Misha, as I still felt quite depressed and exhausted. The next day I talked to my Mum about my call with the therapist and what we talked about and generally about everything related. She isn’t always very understanding, but was very supportive when I talked to her and we talked honestly and openly for about an hour which I really appreciated. And my Mum also told me she feels like she might have PMS right now, ’cause that day was also hard for her. I didn’t have that overwhelming feeling of too many mixed emotions inside me any longer, although was still feeling depressive throughout the day. But it wasn’t as scary as on Thursday, it really made a huge difference for me.
Today, besides poor sleep again and still feeling a bit depressive, I feel much more stable. My therapist checked in with me today in the morning via email and seemed very pleased to hear about my conversation with Mum. So that’s it, I really hope it’ll get only better from now on. Hope you all are having great weekend. 🙂
My Inner MishMash 