So three days later, after too much thinking about it, I am putting it down in with the hope that it will help to get it off my chest and out.
I've been struggling a bit with some things that I faced at an appointment with my psychologist. They're an experienced clinical psych, who knows me well and who I trust, and I value the work we have done over the years I've been their client. We can butt heads sometimes, but that also kind of works because it challenges me and either helps me see a different opinion, or makes mine stronger (mostly the latter 😉 ). While my appointments with them can be challenging, I rarely feel this bad afterwards.
I had my 'shoulds' challenged (again), and have been asked to try to turn them into 'coulds' but I just don't know how to. I don't know how to see 'people should be free to live without fear and violence', and 'I should be holding my degree' and 'I shouldn't have had to leave', and 'housing organisations should be able to house people in safe, affordable, secure housing' and 'mh and fv services should be trauma aware and sensitive' etc can be seen any other way. My 'shoulds' are apparently made worse with my 'black and white thinking' and no matter how much I try to understand cognitive distortions, or fill in and work through thought challenge worksheets, or reframe things or focus on my cans not my can'ts, I am really struggling with this. Psych thinks I am stuck because I can't move past these things. I think I'm stuck because it all happened in the first place. To me that's a really important distinction to make. I get that it is a whole lot easier to work with changing one person's brain at a time than it is to address the bigger social and cultural issues that were, and continue to be, at play in my muddle (and so many of our muddles in general). But to me the issues that are behind so many of our problems lie beyond an individual, and rest in the social world. When I think like this I question what I am doing seeing a psychologist, but I also know I have to address the mash that's happened in my head and part of doing that is getting some help from someone who knows heads well. It's a big mess.
I also mentioned the brain bang that happened the other week and how I had lots of trouble stopping. The words 'hypomanic epsiode' and 'bipolar' were given in return. They were said in a 'this looks like that and you need to be careful because of it' way, rather than 'this is what it is for sure' way, but I feel scared that they were said. I don't know exactly why I feel so funny about it, especially as I had mentioned it to my mh worker when it was happening, but I do. It's been a question before, though not for a long time and not from this psych, but hearing it the other day, did feel scary. I'm questioning all kinds of things about myself at the moment.
I'm scared that I'm missing something and I am scared that if I went looking for it I could find it. I am so frustrated that my stuck brain can't shift in a way that could be helpful for me. I hate the DSM with all of its overlapping of symptoms. I hate that the way I am could be labelled as so many things, and that what name is given to it is mostly dependent on who is looking at it rather than what I think. I don't know why I value an 'expert' opinion of me, especially when I am so anti most 'experts' way anyway. I don't know how to fix any of this any more than I am already trying to.
It all gets even harder I think, when part of this mess is that all my big dreams and hopes and goals were in working in some way or another in the industries that have been part of this mess. I can relate so well to this part of your muddle phoenix_rising. If I can climb my way out of the mud (and it's a big IF), and overcome the now enormous barriers to finishing study that I face, how am I going to be part of things that have caused me and so many people I have met along the way, so much pain and made the harder that much harder than it 'should' have been? There's another should but aside from 'this could have been easier if things were different', how else can I see it? I've lost my ability (at the moment) to reach where I wanted to go and where I'd worked so hard to be, but I also feel like I'm not even sure what those dreams are anymore.
It sucks to feel so stuck and it sucks to feel any worse than just being stuck makes me feel. I want out of stuck so badly but I don't know what beyond stuck looks like.