I was a Slice today.
This week and today was very strange for me. Specifically today was weird. I slept in a bit on my class, but still made it in time to get credit for everything. Caught up a bunch on class, but have also been letting myself play video games in-between assignments to keep myself motivated, which has strangely been more effective than it had been in the past, and I think that's due to a conversation I had with my therapist last week. I'll start more at the beginning.
Last week I seemed to have a natural depressive period. Nothing crazy, but I went into a kind of hibernation mode. I slept a lot, I completely skipped class on Thursday (I calculated it so that I could recover from any lost points), and I played video games a ton on Friday too when I needed to to homework. All in the plan, nothing I can't recover from and have in the past. But Wednesday I had a crisis meeting with my therapist where I effectively had a panic attack and went to him for some support. If I'm honest I felt a little suicidal? But, nothing with ideation or planning, just an intense feeling. And, normally I wouldn't do anything about that, just cause it's pretty normal to feel despondent or hopeless. That being said, I know I'm not special. I know of plenty of people in scenarios similar to mine that were as smart and as loved and as capable that ultimately made that decision. I'm not better than them, I'm not immune to those feelings, and I need to take those feelings seriously. So I met with my therapist who helped me get through the crisis and we also talked about something more long-term important that we talked about the following Friday... We talked about cancelling just because I had already met with him, but there was more I needed to work out.
Then, after my hibernation day I met with my therapist and we talked about a really interesting topic. Effectively it boiled down to this: What is the difference between dissociation and grounding? The conclusion we came to was that often when I grounded to try to be more mindful I would ground through simple observations. Rather than, "Because I have this feeling, therefore etc etc etc" I cut the observation off early and just continue to observe. "The wall is red.", "I feel warm", "There are 6 etc. on the wall." This thought pattern allows me to stop panic and keep grounded, especially in high stress survival situations. But, it's really only good for survival. It disconnects me from my feelings and makes me feel listless. Dissociation isn't an evil thing, it's a survival behavior. I just don't want to survive anymore, I want to thrive, and that involves a different mental behavior than the tactics I was using to ground and cope with intense feelings as I had been before. This also sparked a conversation about dealing with problems versus setting goals, as I feel like I've been setting too many goals, where really I just need to cope/come up with solutions to temporary emotional problems.
That's a little to talk about a lot, and I'm still striving to understand it, hopefully after this week I'll understand the current issue more clearly.
That brings me to today, where I had to dress up as a pizza slice for work and had a bump in with a man who was trying to set up a pick-up artist training business. So life is strange and entertaining in it's silliness. Close to graduating and close to focusing on more exciting things.
Last week I seemed to have a natural depressive period. Nothing crazy, but I went into a kind of hibernation mode. I slept a lot, I completely skipped class on Thursday (I calculated it so that I could recover from any lost points), and I played video games a ton on Friday too when I needed to to homework. All in the plan, nothing I can't recover from and have in the past. But Wednesday I had a crisis meeting with my therapist where I effectively had a panic attack and went to him for some support. If I'm honest I felt a little suicidal? But, nothing with ideation or planning, just an intense feeling. And, normally I wouldn't do anything about that, just cause it's pretty normal to feel despondent or hopeless. That being said, I know I'm not special. I know of plenty of people in scenarios similar to mine that were as smart and as loved and as capable that ultimately made that decision. I'm not better than them, I'm not immune to those feelings, and I need to take those feelings seriously. So I met with my therapist who helped me get through the crisis and we also talked about something more long-term important that we talked about the following Friday... We talked about cancelling just because I had already met with him, but there was more I needed to work out.
Then, after my hibernation day I met with my therapist and we talked about a really interesting topic. Effectively it boiled down to this: What is the difference between dissociation and grounding? The conclusion we came to was that often when I grounded to try to be more mindful I would ground through simple observations. Rather than, "Because I have this feeling, therefore etc etc etc" I cut the observation off early and just continue to observe. "The wall is red.", "I feel warm", "There are 6 etc. on the wall." This thought pattern allows me to stop panic and keep grounded, especially in high stress survival situations. But, it's really only good for survival. It disconnects me from my feelings and makes me feel listless. Dissociation isn't an evil thing, it's a survival behavior. I just don't want to survive anymore, I want to thrive, and that involves a different mental behavior than the tactics I was using to ground and cope with intense feelings as I had been before. This also sparked a conversation about dealing with problems versus setting goals, as I feel like I've been setting too many goals, where really I just need to cope/come up with solutions to temporary emotional problems.
That's a little to talk about a lot, and I'm still striving to understand it, hopefully after this week I'll understand the current issue more clearly.
That brings me to today, where I had to dress up as a pizza slice for work and had a bump in with a man who was trying to set up a pick-up artist training business. So life is strange and entertaining in it's silliness. Close to graduating and close to focusing on more exciting things.
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