A Dream Last Night

On this Christmas Eve, I am happy to be able to share a very profound dream with all of my blogger friends. This is what I dreamt last night:

There were packages falling from the sky. They were dropping very slowly, drifting down all over the place. There were more packages than anyone could count.

There were people all around, but no one was paying any attention to the packages falling from the sky. They were going through the motions of their lives, oblivious to the gifts that were being bestowed upon them.

I was with some friends (although I have no idea who they were). One of them commented on the packages, but none of them were really very interested in them.

Then, I opened one of the packages. It held all kinds of food and drinks and other "supplies". I pulled out a standing rib roast and a case of beer (of all things). I opened more packages, amazed at all the things I was finding. I was shouting it out to people "Look at these packages! There's more here than anyone could eat!"

Other people began to open packages, too. Everyone was thrilled with all the stuff. We all took what we could carry.

Then, as I was walking home with all my gifts, I started to wonder. Why were we the ones to receive these packages? Shouldn't they have been dropped in places where people had no food? There were a lot of people who needed more help than we did. Why would God think we needed this more than they did?

Then, I thought, maybe people who are the worst off already understood things we did not understand. Maybe they were actually the lucky ones because they didn't need to be given material things in order to know that they were loved by God.

So, when I woke up, I understood something that I have heard people say, that didn't make any sense to me before. It is about gratitude. This is what people mean when they talk about being grateful even for the things that have hurt them most.

Without those things,
I would not be the person I am,
I might never have sought out the connection with God that I am finding now, and
I could have gone through life like all the people in my dream - not even noticing the "packages" that were dropping from the sky.

So, today, notice it all! As you open the packages, be grateful for all of your life because it is YOUR life, YOUR journey, and it has brought you to the place you are at this moment. No other path would have led here....

Merry Christmas to All!

Feeling better

Hi, bloggers.
Sorry I've been absent for so long. I am pretty well back on track, now, after my medication issues.

For over a week I did none of the things I needed to do - including eat, sleep, write, draw, talk, go to CoDA meetings or Therapy sessions. I did nothing. It sucked!

I am back to taking care of myself. I went to meetings on Tuesday and Friday, went to my writer's group yesterday (even though I have not written anything), went for a therapy-massage session today (with someone who is amazing at what she does!) saw C on Wed last week and will see her again tomorrow. I'm eating again, (I lost seven pounds - not that that is a bad thing in itself, but in a week? That's not the way to do it,) and I'm sleeping well the last three nights. I am WAY behind in everything, however, because this is not a time of year when I can easily take a week off and do nothing! There are things people are counting on me to do, and I have not done them.

Consequently, it will be a while before I can catch up here in blogland. I don't have time to do anything beyond what I NEED to do and what I absolutely HAVE to do. It means I will not finish writing my book by the end of the year, as I had hoped, and I won't be able to blog for a while longer, but that's just how it is.

As soon as I can, I will catch up with all of my favorite blogs. Starting now, I am back enough to respond to every comment I recieve from here on, and I will eventually go back and respond to the ones I have recieved in the last two weeks.

Thank you all so much for your support. It helped more than you know. Sometimes all I need is to know that someone out there is thinking about me...

Hope all is well, and that everyone else is making it through this incredibly busy time of year.

writing is a little hard right now.

Sorry all, and thanks for the comments, hugs and encouragement. I am still here. Lots of racing thoughts and disconnects are making it hard to write coherently.

i was on name brand wellbutrin for seven years. two years ago they switched me to a generic which was different but still worked after a brief perieod of adjustment.

Then, ten days ago the pharmacy switched to a different generic which did not work at all. I took it for five days, and each one was worse than the last.

Now I am back on the name brand, but, as I said, it is different from what I was taking for the last two years.

So five days of the bad generic and now five days of the name brand again, and its too much switching around for my brain and body. I've been unable to make myself do anything - eat, write, buy or make food for anyone else around here, or laundry, or wrap these things i bought before, for Christmas, and it's just hard right now but I think after a little adjustment time i will be back to normal.

I'm justt really pissed off that my life is so easily thrown by a corporate decision by walgreens to switch to a cheaper generic - that i have no control over these changes and I wonder what will happen if they stop making the med, or something... it's scary and makes me feel very vulnerable.

And, I'm slipping in and out again, and that is very disconcerting. I guess I will never not do that anymore - dissociation is just part of my make-up and it is something that will always be there when things are a little off. It sucks, but there it is.

Stupid Generic Drugs

I've been feeling very anxious for a few days. I had been blaming this on the EMDR I did on monday, but now I'm not so sure.

I set up my medications for a week at a time, in a dispenser. When I was taking my handful of pills this morning, I remembered the pharmacy had changed the welbutrin - the antidepressent. It was switched from one generic to another.

I'm sure that the new manufacturer is cheaper for walgreens, and that's why they switched. Since they can charge me the same thing, regardless, they make more money on it if they can get it cheaper.

It seems like one generic should be the same as another, but I was worried when I first saw them because they look entirely different. They are half as big, for one thing. They are also a different color (which shouldn't matter) and of a chalkier consistancy.

This is a slow release medicine, so I am concerned that it might not "release" the same way if they've used different fillers. I had an issue with this medication once before when I was in the hospital for one of my surgeries, a few years ago. The hospital gave me a different version of welbutrin and I became extremely agitated and depressed. It was hard to pinpoint that exact cause for my distress with all the other meds they gave me, but once I switched back to the name brand - my husband brought me some from home - it got better.

A couple years ago, the pharmacy started giving me the generic, and I was worried about it. The pills looked exactly like the name brand, so I gave them a shot. After a few weeks I decided that they worked just as well.

The ones I picked up last weekend look very different and now I'm wondering if taking this different brand for three days (today is day four) is contributing to my anxiety level.

I keep a chart by my bathroom mirror. I fill in a number from 1 to 10 in these categories: How I've slept (recorded only in the morning); how I've eaten (recorded only at night); and my morning and evening levels of "connectedness", anxiety, sadness and irritability. At the end of the day I have 10 numbers filled in and I add them up. The total gives me an idea of how the day was on the whole (a number rom 1 -100).

I write a little note next to each day as a reminder of what went on that day (meeting with C, CoDA meeting, writer's group meeting, daughter home, etc.) I've been keeping this for only a couple weeks. The hope is that I will see trends in my moods and may see what kinds of things contribute to them.

On Sunday, the last time I took the old generic, my total for the day was 80. It dropped to 68 and 67 on mon and tue and to 57 wed (yesterday).

Looking back over the chart, I see that my numbers were lowest last week on Wed, as well, so maybe there is something else contributing that I am not aware of. Even so, I'm concerned about this med switch. If it is the medication that's affecting me, it may get worse as time goes on.

Right now, I feel very agitated (especially for this hour of the morning.)
Trying to switch that med to a non-generic (which I know is okay) will be an aggrevating and probably very expensive effort, but that may be what I have to do. I guess I will see how today goes.

I need to get myself involved in something or I will squander the whole day and that will definitely not help. I wish I could get out of the house, but it is zero (farenheit) out, with a windchill of 20 below. The wind is blowing the powdery snow everywhere, making it hard to see past my front lawn... and although it is pretty to look at, it is not very inviting. (You should have seen my poor little dog this morning. Her legs were freezing up so she could hardly move.)

I guess I will see how the day goes... wish me luck.

Separation Anxiety

What do you do when someone you depend on for support is not there?

Email to C, March 5th 2009 (the day before she left on vacation):

I've been trying not to feel this all day, probably all week, but I guess it's inevitable.
I'm just going to miss you.
I know what it's about and I know rationally that it's okay, but I hate feeling so dependent on someone and I hate—
I don't know.
Maybe I just hate feeling.
Anyway, I wasn't going to say that, but I feel like I have to.

I want you to have a great trip, but I'm not going to lie, it's hard for me. After trying to feel things for so long, it's hard not to feel things and this is what I feel and now I can see that it’s silly to be so upset that you're leaving, so how do I not judge that feeling?

I'm going to try left/right writing tomorrow, see if I can do anything with this, but this is something real in the present and so it feels like it won't work.

That can't be right.
I know I am "reacting"... so I must be reacting to something and it is more than your leaving.

Sorry,
Now I'm rambling.
I imagine you'll be hearing from me again soon,

S

C was gone for a little over a week. I tried very hard to feel like an adult, but was not all that successful. I was reading this old email this morning, trying to find the next direction to take this blog, and decided to put this up as a possible conversation starter.

Maybe you have the exact thing that someone else needs to know... so tell me:

What is it like when part of your support team is not available for a while?

How long can you feel okay on your own – five minutes... a day... three days... a week... indefinitely?

What do you do to cope?

What works? What doesn’t work?

Do you use dissociation to cope?
If so, does this happen naturally or do you feel like you resort to it – kind of do it on purpose?

If I look back a couple years, I can remember rage at my first therapist, and at C early on. Back then, I was furious that they would leave me when they knew I needed them, and then equally angry at myself because I knew that it was not their job to be at my beck and call. I knew it was unreasonable, but I was unable to do anything about it.

It was the kind of separation anxiety a two-year-old might have in the absence of her mother. I was aware that I was living reactively, but couldn’t stop it, and honestly, didn’t want to. It was almost as if I had to allow that little one to kick and scream, as if it was necessary for the ultimate outcome, but I still am not sure why.

When my first therapist left town, and when C did, early on, I would dissociate at some level - either completely losing myself and letting time pass because it was too painful to live through every moment, or a partial kind of dissocation that I think most people experience sometimes. This partial dissociation is like living through a fog, half aware of the world, with my emotions shut down and no connection to my past.

By last March, when I wrote that email, I was more able to behave rationally, felt less angry, but still walked around with a very precarious feeling, as if the world might fall apart around me at any moment. Anything longer than a couple days with no email connection with C was still an anxiety promoting event, but it was more fear than anger, more sadness than rage. There was less intensity, but my negative feelings were still turned inside instead of outward. I blamed myself for how I felt, reacted and perceived the world.

One of the changes I've noticed in the last six months or so is more acceptance of myself. I am certainly not all the way there, yet, but I am often able to take my feelings apart, study them, and then consciously remind myself that feelings are just feelings, they don’t make me wrong or a bad person

Sometimes I even believe it.

EMDR - Birth Memories

The first time I heard of this, I thought, you have to be kidding. How on earth can anyone remember their own birth?

The answer I found as I was researching the concept was, "You were there. Some part of you retained some impressions from that experience because it was so different from what you had experienced before. Although there is no long-term memory capacity in an infant brain, the experiences shape us and are retained at a physical level."

Okay. I'm not sure exactly what that all means, or how valid it is, or what exactly was happening when I did the EMDR birth experience exercise... but I can tell you it felt real and it was profoundly moving.

This is what we did.

We did not use traditional EMDR visual stimulation. It was going to be too distracting to try it in this way, mostly because the only way I'm able to really get involved in something like this is with my eyes closed. I just can't concentrate on what is happening internally with all the distracting visual stimulation.
I also have some issues with touch (okay, a lot of issues) so the idea of tapping didn't sit well either.
Insead, we used the headphones that I use in DNMS sessions. These headphones play a soothing sound that moves from left to right and back again. I have heard that this cannot give the same affect as eye movement, but I would like to point out that I have noticed that as the sounds move back and forth, I actually do move my eyes back and forth as well as my focus. I physically feel as if I am focusing first to the left and then to the right as I am listening.

Regardless of what you think about all of that, here is the part that was really new and different. The exercise we did was this:

I took time to relax, listening to the sounds of waves. I connected to my three "Resources" - my inner nurturer, my inner protector and my spiritual core self. I then imagined myself inside my mother's womb.

As I am often able to do in C's office, I pushed all of my embarassment-based anxiety aside and just "went for it." I lost myself in the idea of what it must have been like to be in that small, wet, cramped space. There would be no need to breathe - this would be something not yet experienced. Movement would be difficult. I would hear the sounds of my mother's hearbeat, her breathing, and sometimes her voice. When she moved, I would move, perhaps rocking with her steps.

I'm not sure how long I was lost in these thoughts before C asked, "What's happening?" I told her what I was experiencing. I no sooner finished telling her, when I imagined the walls closing in on me, hard.

I felt constricted pressure all around me and even felt panic that seemed to come from somewhere in my memory and not just from what I was imagining. I have no way to know if this is so, of course, I'm only telling you what I experienced at the time. (I'm glad I wrote down details in my journal so I can remember it all.) Then, the constriction was gone, but soon it returned, stronger than before.

I don't know how long I experienced this sense of being constricted before I began to feel pushed, as well.

The next time C asked me what was happening, I told her that I felt as if I was being squeezed very hard, especially around my head. Later, my head felt twisted - turned at an odd angle - and I wonder if I was actually moving my body in the physical world or only in my mind. Shortly after that, my head felt okay, but my shoulders ached and my chest felt tight.

The next sensation I noticed was cold. I felt wet and cold from the waste up, and I didn't like it at all. I experienced fear and anger at this sudden change.

The next part was what really changed how I felt about this exercise. It might have only been an interesting thing to try, with a great big question mark around it as to how much was remembered and how much was invented. In the end, I didn't care if it was a memory or not because I learned something - felt something - that I really needed to know and feel.

I had a sensation of coming completely free, of being cold all over, of being held in a way that triggered a fear-of-falling response, and then of being rubbed all over and finally swaddled.

I remembered (and I am using this word because I can't come up with anything better) trying to open my eyes, but everything was too bright.

Then, my mother held me.

When I thought about this, a plethora of images came into my head. I have seen my mother hold babies. I know how she looks at them, how she cuddles them, how she loves them.

In that moment, I saw her doing that with me. I remembered what it felt like to hold my own newborns and I knew that in that first moment, as she looked at me and held me, I was loved unconditionally.

That was the surprise ending that I could never have predicted. Unconditional love.
Of everything I've gotten in life, I think this is the one thing I've wanted most.

Re-entering the World

Email to C [the day before God spoke to me (read about it here).]

I keep thinking I've gotten to the worst of it, and then it seems like more and more opens up and I just hang here at the bottom. I need a good day tomorrow. I really do.

The next morning, I drove off with no expectation of ever coming home.

God spoke to me. It was an experience I have relived again and again. I have to keep it alive, remember how real it was, how intensely it affected me.

The message I received, that I had a purpose, that there was a reason for everything, that I had to get through it all, gave me hope and courage. Even so, I had a lot of work ahead of me. It was hard to imagine how I was going to get from where I was to a place where all of the memories, experiences and messages of the past didn’t affect me anymore.

Email to C (two days later):

I have a sense that things are going to be different now, but I'm afraid of this optimism. I've had optimism before so many times and then things begin to drop again and each time I felt even worse than the time before. It's gotten to the point where I expect to feel bad whenever I feel good... so good is never really good, it’s only the precursor to bad.

But… maybe even the drop has a purpose. Maybe it is in how I look at it when it comes. Maybe it’s about acceptance.

Whatever it is, I feel less alone.
That's got to count for something, right?

From my journal, the same day:

“The world would be better off without me.”

This is something I have said, felt, lived throughout my life.

I never thought about it as something I created or something that was put into my head from messages I received from my parents. I’ve only thought about the validity of the statement, and much too often, it has felt valid; not just thirty years ago or even two years ago, but even last week and the day before yesterday.

When I was pregnant I was at my happiest. I had a purpose. I knew that there was at least one reason that my existence was important. When I had a small baby who was still nursing and reliant on me, I felt like my life had meaning. Even when my children were little and not able to take care of themselves, my life seemed “valid”, but there were times, even in those days, where I questioned it. I have too often imagined what it would be like for my children if I wasn’t here. I have imagined others stepping up to take care of them, and when I’ve been at my lowest, this has sometimes felt like a better life for them that what I could give them.

I often feel like I’ve sort of stolen the life I live. I feel like I don’t deserve it and that sooner or later someone is going to notice that I have snuck in here where I don’t belong. Many times I have considered what [my husband’s] life might be like without me. The burden of the children would be hard on him. Then I think, if I was out of the picture it might force him to have a more of a relationship with his children.

So, if these are really messages put there by my caregivers in childhood, can they ever be erased? These are ideas that are accepted not just to the “little kids” but to my most adult self, my inner core.

Today I had a revelation that each time those thoughts come to me, it is related to my mother. That seems like an important clue to unraveling this devastating “message”.

I suppose it’s because my father left when I was a baby. He left for a year when I was three months old. I’ve always felt like I wasn’t really expected, or wanted, even though my mother loves babies and children. It seems like the timing was wrong and I have always felt as if I must have been a burden to her.

C has something in mind for tomorrow, something new. She said it is something that came from her EMDR training. It’s hard to imagine that anything could change this life-long sense that I am not worthy of this life, but I’m glad she has this next step to try. It gives me hope.

I’m going to leave off here. My next post will be about working with EMDR on “birth memories”.