Just a strange update. My day started off terrible but is improving. My brain was completely awol. Decided this morning that putting on my shoes first would be a good idea :face_with_rolling_eyes:, only problem was getting undies and pants on over them was not a good plan😏. Really struggled driving to group, think I broke every road rule as I couldn’t concentrate at all🤨. By now I was pretty angry at myself, I was an hour late and missed half the walking part.......but something strange happened. Anger for me is always a flattening of energy and turning inwards to self hate. Today I managed to use it as energy to drive me to get my walking quota in. I managed my walking goal in half the time and it changed my day around.
These are the moments for me that are helping. I don’t think I can strictly adhere to following a therapy but need to experience things as they happen and then try to replicate it again in similar situations.
Yesterday something similar happened in that I came out of my very stressful situation armed with a plan for two scenarios. One if it went well and one if it didn’t. I actually left feeling more confident because I knew I could enact a plan either way and it worked. It really helped to have two plans as I’m not coping with positive or negative emotions (they can both lead to SH, the positive one more impulsively so now). It was one of the first times that I’ve been able to do that and I think I felt better about following my plan than the positive emotions from my experience. Also at this point just wanting to acknowledge that the sane help centre has played such a big role in much of the positive stuff that is beginning to happen. My double plan was created with support from the help centre on Friday.
Sometimes with mi it feels like life is supposed to just be a series of plans. I have struggled so much with that and hated myself every time I should have followed a plan and I didn’t. I think for me personally I need to treat each situation as it arises for now and deal with it as it comes up. DBT hasn’t worked for me as such but applying some of the concepts/ principles to situations when I’m in a place to cope with them is waaaay more helpful. I’m still feeling totally overwhelmed with what is in front of me to get me functioning in society again but I am feeling way less stuck than I have since it all began 6 and a half years ago.
I write this post on my bed totally exhausted from my few trips out this week. I had started getting mad at myself that I am only managing a few things a day and that this is still not good enough but I remembered that this is a work in progress and it’s ok. Proof that you can teach an old dog new tricks 😜. It’s only taken loads of support and lots of broken records to even acknowledge that 😳
love and hugs to all 💜🤗