psychotherapy – Page 40 – midnightdemons7

Brick Walls

Fri,15 May,2015, 15:00Fri,15 May,2015, 15:01 by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, psychache, suicidality

7-Aug-14 Brick Walls

I am currently on a psychiatric unit in a hospital. I’ve been here for a week now, with no hope of getting out anytime soon. I am here because I am profoundly suicidal. All I see are brick walls surrounding me and they keep on closing in on me. It’s like a prison that only I can see. I am surrounded by these bricks and no one cares how high they get. And they certainly don’t care how they got there.

I want to take my life because I am stuck, just like these brick walls. The cement has hardened each brick into place so you cannot move it. My thoughts of suicide have also hardened to the point where they don’t budge. I feel very hopeless that this hospitalization will not help detach one of these bricks so that I make break free of the confinement I feel. If enough bricks fall, I may see the light at the end of the tunnel. But I doubt that will happen. I never see the light for long. I am always in a dark place. I am always feeling hopeless. And hopelessness and suicidal thoughts are not a good combination. They seal the cement and lock me in to this confinement that I am in.

The doctor and staff are trying their best to keep hope alive for me, but I just don’t see it. All I see is the brick wall that is impenetrable. Nothing or nobody can get through it or to me. It will take more than a jack hammer or two to get through to me right now. And it seems that no one owns one. The staff is too busy to care about the bricks. They just want the cement to fall to force me to see the light as the bricks become loose. Just so they can discharge me. They don’t care how the bricks were formed. And this hurts because no one takes the time to see how much I am hurting like they used to.

I have been trying to stay in the moment but my moments are just filled with suicidal thoughts and feelings. They are also filled with plans on how to end my life. Each thought makes the brick wall stronger so no one can breakthrough. Each brick has been mounted with feelings of inadequacy, shame, indignity, depression, hopelessness, worthlessness, and unbearable pain. Pain is the biggest brick. It lies in the center surrounded by the other bricks that I just mentioned. It exceeds all others in thickness and size. It is killing me, literally and physically, to be in unbearable pain all the time. The pain stems from just left of the sternum of the chest wall and captivates the entire left side of the chest cavity. It is a pressure felt day in and day out. In essence, it is like a ton of bricks weighing on my heart.

As the cement hardens around the brick, making it so difficult to breathe, the pressure on the chest increases. No medical tests exists to identify this weight. It’s not visibly present. That makes it difficult to explain without the feeling of sounding crazy. Who is going to believe a suicidal person that there is a weight on the chest when no one can see or feel it? It is not measured by tests or electrocardiograms. It is just a heaviness that fills your soul. And the soul cannot be seen or felt. Nor can it be measured. No one’s pain is the same. Each is unique to that individual. And my pain is what is strangling me in this moment of time.

The pain is always present in times of despair. It ruins any hope one might have and increases the weight of the bricks bearing down on you. Nothing alleviates this pain. There are no pills that can ease the pressure or painful despair. It’s ever present and deepens the despair because no one understands it. All the symptoms of depression and suicidal thinking makes it very difficult to treat. And the longer it lasts, the higher the brick wall is built. Will the doctors and social workers have what it takes to help bring down the brick and mortar? Very unlikely. They don’t have the time to really get to know me, much less help me. I have resigned myself to stay within these brick walls until they envelope me so I can no longer breathe. Each day they move closer, causing me to feel more isolated and the feeling of suffocation grows stronger. Love doesn’t have any effect on these walls that have surrounded my heart. My heart has become stone a long time ago. Only negative feelings are allowed to pass through. I have given up on positive feelings ever passing through my little barricade. It took years for the brick wall to be built. It might take years to be torn down. But the suicide demons won’t allow that. This time the brick walls will win. I no longer have the energy to chisel my way out of my own prison. But then, I am in a psych ward where chisels are not allowed. You just expected to go to groups to cope with the demons rather than allow them to fall.

And because no one knows the depth of my prison, I am here for a long time, in solitary confinement. The walls are dark and gray, just the way that I feel inside. I doubt I would ever get parole from this darkness that fills my soul. If I do, it is only for a short time before I am back in solitary. The light barely has a chance to touch me before everything becomes dark again. That is why I don’t trust happiness or feeling good. I much rather be content about things than feel happiness. Happiness, to me, is a fleeting emotion that is hard to hold onto. It is slippery like silk, never lasting more than a few minutes and devastating when it leaves you.

So I sit here in my room, surrounded by darkness so the sunlight won’t come in, staring at the brick wall and it staring back, trapped in my own prison.

Twenty-Three Years

Sat,7 Mar,2015, 15:23 by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, depression, mental illness, suicidality

Twenty-three years

Today marks twenty-three years that I have sought help for my depression and self-destructiveness. I actually didn’t seek help straight out. My English teacher noticed I was upset and pulled me aside and saw the marks on my wrist that I had made the night before. She then told me to stay after class, something no teacher has ever told me to do before. She took me to the nurse’s office. We chatted. I told her about what happened at my house the last two nights and how much I just wanted to die. She called my mother, who then took me to the local counseling center. By then, I told them “nothing was wrong” and that I was “okay”. I declined treatment and went on with my day. Daily visits to the nurse’s office became more frequent. I just stopped in to check in and told her what was going on. She wanted me to see someone so the following week I agreed to see the school counselor. Thus started my official journey into psychotherapy.

It hasn’t been an easy road. For the first ten years, I had a different therapist nearly every year. I think the only time I had two years was with the psych resident that wanted to see me or I would still be in the hospital. I went through a lot with this psychiatrist in training. While in her care, I attempt suicide and ended up being in the hospital for two and half months. When she ended her residency, I went to another psych in training. He wasn’t as good as she was. In fact, he was terrible. I felt like he was more my brother than a therapist but when I told him I was procuring more medication to end my life, he asked me if I was suicidal. That is when I knew he was an idiot. I pretty much ended our relationship within a few weeks and saw someone else. She was good, had years experience. But after I had an argument with my sister and she wanted to know more about my sister’s social life than my anger, I ended things with her. I went about a month without seeing someone. I then decided to go back to my town’s local mental health center. I saw someone there for a year and again, she decided to move on after that year mark. We were finally connected and I felt so betrayed. I didn’t think I was going to see another person again. I don’t know what changed my mind. I knew I didn’t want to see someone else at the local mental health center. I wanted to see someone private. I figured they were less likely to leave their practice. And I luckily found my current therapist and we have been together for fourteen years. It is the longest relationship I have had, outside of my psychiatrist. I am lucky that I have had just one psychiatrist for my medication all these years. She does more than just prescribe my medication. She also does some therapy and is my sounding board for the various medical issues that I have. And I can’t wait to see her again in a week after not seeing her for four long months. It is going to be weird seeing her again.

I don’t know why I have stuck it out in therapy all these years, especially when things were at their worst. I have been beyond hopeless and yet my psych team (therapist and psychiatrist) always made me see another day, sometimes against my wishes.