Tag: psychological pain

a good but tiring day

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, suicide, suicide attempt, suicide attempt survivor

I didn’t sleep very well last night. I was up till around five and finally took a bunch of pills to get to sleep, nothing that would hurt me. I slept for about three hours and then slept for six. I am still tired and feel like I could go back to sleep with no problems.

The stress of not being able to use my laptop and worrying that it might catch fire is not sitting well with me. I shut down the laptop after I was able to retrieve my files that I wanted from them. I then uploaded it to Dropbox for safe keeping. When I woke up this morning, or maybe it was before I finally passed out, I made a copy on my portable hard drive. Now I have three copies of all my files. I just have to keep updating it.

I am glad I didn’t give away my old laptop or I would be screwed. And because this thing weighs like 10 lbs I won’t be lugging it. It’s too heavy to carry. It is still portable but I don’t want to run the risk of hurting myself while transporting it. It is going to get used to typing on this laptop because the keys are not as spread out as my new laptop is. I am just grateful that the laptop was under warranty and I can get it fixed, though I know it is going to take several weeks to do.

When I did wake up this afternoon, I found that the Yankees were losing big time to the Red Sox. Yea baby!! We are on the verge of sweeping them!! I then tuned into the OSU game (college football) and they are still beating San Diego State 42-7. I am very happy my teams are on a roll. This will be the second OSU win of the season.

I am feeling very tired. My brain just doesn’t want to wake up despite drinking some tea. I really want to get back to sleep but I fear that I will wake up at an early hour. I don’t feel like working on my book today. I doubt I can write anything useful in it. I don’t want to get myself revved up with emotion.

On another happy note, I was able to find an article using Google that I have been searching for the past few days. It was the last article in which Edwin Shneidman was alive. I was looking for his exact words that he used in the article. I copied it and placed it in my quotes page. I think it is important to note because he was one of the best. I am lucky to have talked to him before he died.

The quote was “How many suicides do you want, and I say I don’t want any, but I want there to be the freedom to do it. I study suicide but I am not pro-suicide. I’m for suicide prevention.” I study suicide so I can possibly prevent my own. That is why I became a member of the AAS and read a lot of articles on suicide and suicide attempts. I figure the only way to conquer the demons is by knowing the demons. Not everything works and sometimes all that does is time.

loss of self

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression

Today I broached the subject of grief with my therapist. She hasn’t received her packet of letters that describes my grief and how I think I should address it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I think the reason for my craziness the last few months has to do with my grief and not dealing with it. Course, I didn’t think much of it until I asked if grief can cause psychosis. Then I just shut down. And thank god, it was the end of session. She wanted to see me tomorrow but I told her Tuesday was fine. It will give me more time to think about how to approach this.

She encouraged me to write about this stuff and how I am thinking about it but I don’t know how. Just thinking about my losses just makes me extremely sad. It’s like knocking the wind out of me. I mean, I used to be able to work two friggen jobs and now I can’t even work one. I was stable enough to work in one job for fourteen years and then I messed it up because my foot got messed up. I don’t know if I could work again at the same job. I would like to. But I can’t be all running around like I used to. Thing is, being a lab assistant, you sometimes have to do phlebotomy (draw blood) and I was never keen on drawing blood. Even the easiest of veins I blew and I don’t want to go back to it ever again. I was lucky my department didn’t have to do that. There was a separate department for blood draws.

It still hurts that after fourteen years of service I was just not accommodated by my job to do my job. It really hurts. I never told anyone how bad it is losing my job. Even though it has been almost a year and a half now. It also sucks I can’t do my other job of driving around Boston picking up samples because my driving record got messed up. I got a speeding ticket one morning because I was too sleepy to notice I was over the speed limit. But a State trooper noticed and I got fined. Then because I couldn’t pay the fine, my license got suspended. It took me almost a year to get it all cleared up. But it is going to take a while for me to have a “good” driving record again. And that kills me. I know it doesn’t matter now because by the time I have a car of my own again, I will be “good” again. But the fact that I can’t get a Zipcar to have some independence just kills me. I can borrow my sister’s car to go places but mostly her husband takes it and I hate driving the truck. I know I should conquer my fears and learn to get used to it but I have a peripheral defect and I am just afraid I am going to sideswipe someone or something. And I HATE backing up in the drive way because my sense is not great. Even with the car I hate it, especially when there is a car parked across my driveway.

I really have other deep losses such as the loss of myself and the loss of my abilities. Walking used to be my joy. I was able to walk long distances and think nothing of it. It never bothered me. Sometimes it did when I used to get Charlie horses if I walked too far and didn’t drink enough. But other than that, I really enjoyed walking to the train station which is about a mile away. I used to do the Walk for Hunger, which is a 20 mile walk around Boston. Haven’t done that in years but I am determined to do it one year, long as I go slow. I will have to do mega training to work up to it as right now my limit is four blocks .

Then I have the loss of my bodily functions. I never thought that at the age of 36/37 I would have to wear diapers to events that last longer than a few hours. This is because I no longer get the signals to my brain that my bladder is full. Once I am full, I start leaking excess until I do go. It isn’t until I feel wet do I ask myself the last time I went potty. The number 2’s are a different story. I can’t feel myself went I go unless my stools are hard. If you are the squeamish type, I would stop reading right now. This could be disgusting to you. If my stools are soft I don’t feel them as they move out. If I have the runs, I can quickly have an accident as I can’t hold them long, though I have been lucky the last few times in holding them in by not letting loose my farts. If I lose control of my farts, I lose control of my stool and well, you got it. A nice number 2 in the pants. It has only happened to me a few times, the worse was when I took too much fiber pills and thought I was farting but really I was shitting myself. That was a lesson learned. I usually take senna because I find that it is the only thing that makes me go without too much trouble. Too much however can cause very bad cramps and possible accidents. Every time I have an accident or have skid marks because I didn’t wipe myself well enough, I lose it. I really go into a darker place and usually want to kill myself. Same with when I have a urine accident but I am getting used to them. Having stool in my pants is a real downer. And I don’t think anyone can get used to that. It makes you feel so small. And people take it for granted that their bodies will tell them these things. My body, because of the nerve damage, no longer does. And it is a HUGE loss. Again, not something I have dealt with nor wanted to.

Then, of course, there is the loss of where I should be now had my mental illness not shut me down and forced me to stop school once again. I call this the “if onlys”, such as if only I didn’t have a psychotic breakdown in 2008, how different my life would have been. If only I went to a four year school instead of getting just my Associate’s degree I would be better off now than I was back then. If only I had decided to work part time and go to school full time would I have been better mentally than I am now. Or would the financial strain of not working been too much? Or would the strain of going to college full time really be my downfall? Either way, I can’t change any of it, but it is a HUGE loss to me not being able to go back because I fucked up. I should have just made a simple phone call to put my loans into deferment and I would have been able to go back now that I am just sitting on my ass doing nothing most days. I think me not going to back to college is the most hurtful to me because I loved my studies, didn’t matter what they were. I just loved being in academia. Psychology is really my thing. And I know I could have been a good therapist. But I don’t think those dreams are ever going to come true. Maybe if I win the lottery.

Then you take into account all the times I have been suicidal. It is a loss because I am still having to piece back my life and I don’t like it. I rather be pushing up daisies for eternity. But as past blogs have talked about, I can’t kill myself anymore than I can make a gourmet dinner. AND it hurts to go on living like this.

I am a survivor of suicide attempts

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, CES, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, depression

I wrote a quick blog yesterday about the stigma of suicide. I asked wouldn’t it be nice to say to people you survived suicide like you survived cancer? I listened to the WEEI radio to hear my Sox game and it amazes me how quick people are to say they survived cancer but hide in the dark when talking about taking their own life. Both people are fighting for their lives. Granted one is bodily and the other is mostly mental but it still begs to question why there is a different in the illness. Suicide is the result usually of untreated depression or other mental illness. Most people think that it is depression that causes people to think about suicide but it is not. You can be psychotic and think about killing yourself. I know. I have been through it with my psychosis. I have had voices tell me to kill myself, in fact in one of the delusion it was considered a command order. Psychotic disorders often get tossed by the way side when considering suicide but a recent article in JAMA showed that it can pave the way to catching suicide attempts if asked about. The study showed that teens with psychotic symptoms are more apt to attempt suicide than non-psychotic teens.

But you don’t need to be in a mental state to be in the suicidal mind. That is what is so devastating about suicide is that people before they commit suicide look and act “normal”. I know that people who are suffering from cancer can look anything but normal. They can be bald or look skeletons. They are really fighting to be alive while those that are thinking about suicide just want to die. People with cancer are the lucky ones. Their suffering will end. People know this. But those of us with mental illness we continue to suffer and when we decide to give up and end the fight, we are looked down upon and treated often inhumanely. We then feel ashamed of ourselves for trying to end the pain and failing at it. We end up in the hospital to “save ourselves from more destruction”. All we want is peace, same as the cancer patient that is terminally ill. We want the suffering to end.

To some people, they believe that suicide is preventable. To some people it is but you are not going to catch the majority of people most at risk. You cannot stop every suicide. People have the right to kill themselves if they so choose to do so. It is the ones that survive that have the right to speak about it. Because those that survive depending on their reaction to their own attempt might be clues to whether they survive or not. I have survived the past several years despite making elaborate plans on killing myself. I really want to die but my reasons for living keep me going. I don’t like it but I can’t picture my sister telling my eight year old niece that I have passed on. She is my baby and I don’t want to hurt her or my other nieces or my nephew. My nephew is what kept me going during a very difficult time in my life. I wish that I had succeeded but because I didn’t, I got to see him grow into a man and graduate from high school. I didn’t think that he would or that I would live to see the day he did.

It saddens me that I am still alive when all I want to be is dead. I don’t know why I preserve. Right now I am in a lot of pain and I don’t like it. I don’t know if I am going to get any sleep tonight because of it. Where is the training of medical doctors to handle chronic pain? There isn’t any. I don’t get asked what my mental status is during medical visits anymore. It is just assumed that I am ok because I have a smile on my face. Didn’t matter that the day before I was in so much pain that I was in bed all day, taking pain pills every four-six hours. Maybe I was happy because I could finally get out of the house and go to my doctor’s appointment and I wasn’t in pain. The siege was over with. But now it has returned and the meds have not kicked in yet to knock my big ass out. I am tired of living with chronic physical pain all the time. It sucks the life out of you, what ever life is. And if it doesn’t, your mental illness will surely do it for you. There is no reprieve. No relief in sight. And that is why suicide is what it is. For people that survive it, they should be able to say that they have. But no one does. There are a few people that have been coming out slowly through the AAS blog but I fear that the ones that don’t come out, are the ones that will try again and maybe succeed.

I am a failure of suicide attempts. And because it has been so long since my last one I am not going to try again any time soon. Least for now. So I am in pain and I have one option left to me…to suffer.

My therapist

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, Chronic pain, depression, suicide attempt

My therapist

I know a couple of my blogs have dealt with my therapist. Today she came back from her vacation and I could tell she is glad to be back.

We talked about a couple of issues while she was gone that I had texted her about. I had to keep her in the loop while she was away. I don’t know who else’s therapist does that but mine does.

Friday I was telling my psychiatrist that I was lucky to have her and not to have her drop me when she was going through all the moves that she was making. And also I didn’t connect with anyone while trying to find another therapist that was closer to me. My psychiatrist did bring up a point, that I didn’t drop either one (my therapist or my psychiatrist), though I did try to drop my therapist, many times. It just never worked out. And today I am seeing why. She really cares about me. And I think her hounding and nagging isn’t helping me. We talked about that today after she tried to assess my suicidality. I told her I was fine but she didn’t believe me. She never does. And it pisses me off because sometimes I really am fine.

I have known this bozo for the past 12.5 years (technically 13 if you count the initial session we had). I had an initial session with her in Aug 2000 but because she didn’t take my insurance, I had to wait till January to see her. It was a trying time. I was in severe back pain because I had a herniated disc. I was severely depressed because a therapist (one before her) had just left me after a year of working together and I was hurting really bad because I had just broken up with my girl friend. I was seriously thinking of killing myself because feelings of abandonment were rampant and I didn’t know if I wanted to go back to therapy again. I had so many therapists over the course of 10 yrs already and I wasn’t going to go again just to get hurt again. But something in her demeanor made me think that she was the one. And now after all this time, I realize that we have a lifetime commitment to one another (well, maybe not but it feels like it!)

I’ve had love and love’s had me
I’ve been held and been set free
And I have lived enough to know
That you might stay or you might go
So here I am one more time
Call me brave call me blind

I’m gonna count to 3
I’m gonna hold my breath
Try not to be afraid
Tho it scares me half to death
I’m out here on a limb
Altho I know that it might break
My heart is gonna want you anyway
And if this love has any chance at all
Someone’s gotta be the first to fall

The best is just a touch away
We’ll make forever day by day
It’d be a shame to let this go
How sad to think we’d never know
How the morning light would fall on us
After we make all night in love

I’m gonna count to 3
I’m gonna hold my breath
Try not to be afraid
Tho it scares me half to death
I’m out here on a limb
Altho I know that it might break
My heart is gonna want you anyway
And if this love has any chance at all
Someone’s gotta be the first to fall

So here I am one more time
Call me brave call me blind

I’m gonna count to 3
I’m gonna hold my breath
Try not to be afraid
Tho it scares me half to death
I’m out here on a limb
Altho I know that it might break
My heart is gonna want you anyway
And if this love has any chance at all
Someone’s gotta be the first to fall

When I first heard this song by Terri Clark, it was the perfect song for my therapist and I. I was just getting over my relationship with a previous therapist and I didn’t know if I would go on. I was going out on a limb, trying my luck with Bozo.

I didn’t always call Bozo bozo. I used to call her by her formal title Dr. E. But as the years went by she wanted me to call her by her first name, A. Her middle name starts with a B and I didn’t know it for the longest time. And it is an unusual name. So I just started calling her Bozo hoping that she would get mad at me and stop seeing me. Turned out that no matter what I called her (including some explicit language), it never changed her mind. And wasn’t I in trouble!! She and I always had a connection from day one. I like to think that it was the song by Kenny Chesney, you had me from hello that explains it all.

One word, that’s all you said
Something in your voice called me, turned my head
Your smile, just captured me
You were in my future as far as I could see
And I dont know how it happens, but it happens still
You asked me if I love you, if I always will

Well you had me from hello
I felt love start to grow
The moment I looked into your eyes you won me
It was over from the start you completely stole my heart
And now you won’t let go
I never even had a chance you know
You had me from hello

Inside I built a wall
So high around my heart, I thought I’d never fall
One touch, you brought it down
The bricks of my defenses scattered on the ground
And I swore to me I wasn’t going to love again
The last time was the last time I’d let someone in

But you had me from hello
I felt love start to grow
The moment I looked into your eyes you won me
It was over from the start you completely stole my heart
And now you wont let go
I never even had a chance you know
You had me from hello

Thats all you said
Something in your voice calls me, turns my head
You had me from hello
You had me from hello
Girl, I’ve loved you from hello

I don’t know how I got to be lucky to have this woman in my life and have such a good relationship with her. It took a long time to trust her especially after dealing with a diagnosis of Cauda Equina Syndrome. That diagnosis brings such a loss of dignity that you cannot imagine what it is like until it reaches you. But through all of my illnesses she has been there.

She doesn’t have a traditional track, like CBT or psychodynamic. She has what is called relational therapy. I am guessing she picked it up back in New Mexico because I can’t seem to find out about it anywhere else. More than that she takes the Aeschi model to a whole new level. She really wants to know me as a person and not as a diagnosis. I think if she were a strict therapist, I might not be with her after all this time. Even though I might not have frequent in session sessions, we still are able to read each other on the phone by the sound of our voices. I can see the faces she makes when we talk, though for a long time, I rarely had any type of facial contact. I think by having phone sessions has increased our eye to eye contact more than it has in the past. It really helped break the barrier of what I felt I couldn’t talk about and really talk about it. She also allows me to having input in the kind of treatment I want. If I didn’t bring in the works or Dr. Shneidman or Dr. Jobes, I doubt that I would be here today. She altered her practice style for me and I never take that for granted. Her style might be considered eccentric but it works for me. I am grateful that she allowed the use of the SSF and Holden’s scale for psychache into our work. I think even if I brought in the most ridiculous form of therapy, she might just be game. Though she has brought some ridiculous forms of therapy to me. The works of Janina Fisher seem a little bogus to me. But she believes in them so I have no chance of changing her mind. I met the lady and boy was it an eye opener to complete bullshit!!