Shelter’s Cost

Routine interactions

Intolerant tones

Scalding glances from everyday drones

Misunderstanding or direct condemnation?

Perceptive insight or gross fabrication?

Since asking is awkward

Truth isn’t allowed

Cycling thoughts

Wear anxiety’s shroud

Familiar

Wretched

And safe.

Stapled over my face is survival’s blank mask

Soul swept in a corner and taken to task

The point? The reason? The motive? The gain?

Why are we here? Can we ever explain?

Waning persistence

A waxing shockwave

Solace served cold in a fear-fashioned grave

Hopeless

Lonesome

And safe.

Stupid Generic Drugs

I've been feeling very anxious for a few days. 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 my Welbutrin - the antidepressent - 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.

And, 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 chalkier consistency.

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 then, later, very 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 Welbutrin - 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 - a number from one to one hundred - gives me an idea of how the day was on the whole.

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.)

On Sunday, the last time I took the old generic, my total for the day was 80. It dropped to 68 and 60 on Monday and Tuesday and to 47 yesterday.

Trying to get the name brand is going to be difficult and expensive, but I don't know what else to do. Wish me luck.

What Integration Means to Me

Once again, I'm deleting the text that I will be using in my memoir. I've left the image and the comments
~Shen 2-21-12

Update

I had a remarkable session with my therapist this afternoon. I needed it. Yesterday was a lost day. I was in and out of myself all day, and it felt like the world was closing in.

A lot of my anxiety was being triggered by my therapist leaving town. It isn't the first time she's left town since I've been seeing her. It isn't the first time I've totally freaked out about it, either, but I think she and I both thought that I was in good enough shape that I wouldn't havesuch a tremendous melt-down this time.

So along with the anxiety, I felt like a complete failure all day because I wasn't able to pull myself out of the downward spiral. Everyone I talked to was telling me I needed to be more self-sufficient, that I couldn't always be dependent on someone else. Every time I heard that I felt more anxious, more like a failure and steadily grew more angry.

Can't they see that I am more self sufficient?
Does anyone realize that it is really hard all the time and that ninety percent of the time I am doing it on my own??

I don't know what I wanted as I wandered from one source to another looking for comfort, yesterday. What can anyone else do to pull me out of that hole? I can say that the one thing that I found the most reassuring was when I talked to a friend on a support site and told her how I was feeling. I said I was doing it a lot, but I just couldn't do it all the time.

She said, "I understand that. Nobody can do it all the time."

I think my anxiety level dropped about fifty percent just to hear someone tell me that I really was not expected to do it on my own all the time.

Thanks to everyone who was around for me yesterday. It meant a lot.

Images and Tools

A Brief Reprieve

For more than a week after Father’s Day, 2008, I had the longest string of good days I had experienced in years. We got two puppies, that week, I spent a lot of time with my children, and I felt generally happy and full of energy. My journal entries were all positive and incredulous, with an underlying fear that the fall would come.

Back to Work

The big drop in mood did indeed come, and a rush of reactive, memory-induced anxiety came along with it. I say memory-induced not because I remembered something specific, but because I was aware that the feelings I was experiencing were not about anything that was currently happening in my life. I knew that they were driven by things from my past.

This understanding was, in itself, a big step in the right direction. In the past I had always viewed my moodswings as something beyond my control - something that happened to me sometimes, often out-of-the-blue, for no apparent reason. Understanding that these mood swings were caused by something felt like hope because it meant I might be able to find the cause and be in control of my life in a whole new way.

One tool I've used a number of times to help me figure out what part of my past is triggering my present anxiety is “Alternate Hand Writing”. Briefly, the idea is to talk to the part-of-self that is being triggered, whether it is a dissociated part or just a set of memories from the past.

With the dominant hand (for me this is my right hand), I ask questions. The questions are directed at the triggered part-of-self as if this was a separate person. With the non-dominant hand (my left hand) I answer the questions.

Every time I've tried this, I would have a nagging doubt in the back of my mind as to whether any answer to my questions would come. I needn't have worried. Almost always, the answer popped into my head soon after I switched the pen to my left hand. It felt almost mystical or magical, the answers almost seeming to write themselves.

This is a tool anyone can use, any time. It can help you identify what you're feeling and why. I've included examples in my memoir, "Through the Tiger's Door".

More Images

I constantly question whether or not I'm right about my past.

Maybe I'm the one who doesn't remember?  

Maybe I'm wrong?

These are reasons sent to me by my therapist as to why I should trust my own feelings about my parents:

Your children have trouble being around them.

Your husband sees their dysfunction.

Your siblings are not running to spend lots of time with them.......

And that is only as your parents are older and less capable of creating harm.

This drawing is meant to represent the boundary between me and my father. The little child is the wounded part of me that doesn't feel safe around him. In the center are my DNMS Resources - the adult parts of me. There is also a "me" watching from the side, to make sure everything is going okay. She is the one that will determine if something is not the way it should be and take action. The child can trust her to set a boundary when she begins to feel overwhelmed and reactive.