Brain Detours

I’ve been pretty disoriented for the last week or two. Looking back, I probably should have started taking my medication sooner than I did, but here we are. I’m not completely back to baseline yet, but the Klonopin has settled whatever was happening inside of me. For the first time in a while, I feel stable again, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. One of the biggest realizations from all of this is that what I thought was attachment distress was, at least in large part, m

Sometimes I don’t really understand why I’m always in so much mental anguish. When I look at my life, I know I have it good in comparison to people who are going through a really tough time. I wish I could be the kind of person who isn’t consumed by the seemingly small things in life. For instance, when I opened up last session about my fear of termination, my therapist scheduled me out for the remainder of the year and well into the next year. Now, I don’t know if she did th

Yesterday I found out about an overlap between my personal life and my therapy, and I am terrified that I will lose my therapist. All I seem able to do is cry and try to figure out whether talking about the fear would help or whether keeping my mouth shut is the better choice. Carrying the fear alone is hard. But I'm scared that if I talk about it, that will be the thing that causes everything to fall apart. I'm not naive. I know there are other therapists out there. I know s

I finally got around to creating a new domain. Over the next week or so, I’ll be transitioning away from this one. If you happen to land on an error page, it likely means the switch is complete. You can find me at www.aclientperspective.com. I know my writing will continue to revolve around therapy, my own personal journey, and maybe some of the larger lessons I’ve learned along the way. I don’t have a finished picture of what this website is supposed to be, and I don’t reall

One thing I’ve learned after being home alone for a week is that I can function when I’m alone in ways I can’t when someone else is in the house. That feeling of being frozen, like I can’t move or do anything, isn’t nearly as prevalent when I’m by myself. Today my ex is here packing, which she obviously needs to do. I’m not blaming her. But I’m frozen on the sofa. I have important things that need to be done tonight, and no matter how much I mentally try to force myself into

I always have trouble remembering to pick up my medication. Two days ago I randomly remembered late at night, so I decided to have them shipped to my house so I wouldn’t keep forgetting to pick them up. Well, because of the shipping time, I’ll be out of meds for 2–3 days, and I’m hoping the withdrawal won’t be horrible. It’s Effexor, and I’ve heard it can be pretty brutal, so I am kind of nervous about it. Especially because it’s falling on days I work. I’m also hoping I can

I’m still in a lot of physical pain. What started as the usual upper body pain has now decided to also extend to my head. The kind that makes it feel like the room is spinning and my stomach is trying to turn itself inside out. It’s exhausting. And honestly, I think I’m just overwhelmed. There are a lot of major life changes happening right now, and they’re all stacked close together. I’m having a hard time feeling confident that I’m going to be able to navigate all of them a

I’m feeling a lot better mentally today, which is nice because the pain in my body seems determined to make up for it. The flare-up I’ve been dealing with is getting worse. Yesterday it was probably around a four. Today it woke up closer to an eight. I’ve been taking BC Powder the past few days to try and keep it manageable. Sometimes it helps quite a bit. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to touch it at all. I’m hoping it knocks it back down some today because it’s getting hard to i

You ever wonder why your attachment system gets activated with certain people and not others? It’s a question I’ve been sitting with. I’ve been paying closer attention to the different parts of me and how they react to different dynamics. The part that is hardest for me to cope with is the anxious part of myself. It’s the painful part. The part that feels unworthy, less than, not good enough. I still haven’t exactly figured out what the underlying factor is. What causes me to

I’ve been waking up a lot in the middle of the night lately. Luckily I didn’t have to work today, so I was able to sleep on and off until I finally caught up on some rest. That was nice. One unexpected benefit of donating plasma is that it forces me to hydrate and eat enough to meet the requirements. Part of me doesn’t mind that my appetite hasn’t fully been there because I’m losing weight. Another part of me knows that not eating the way I should probably isn’t doing my ment

I am having some really intense relational anxiety the past few days. I’m trying to sit with it and not immediately take medication just to make it stop, because I know relying on medicine every time I feel overwhelmed isn’t going to help me build any tolerance for discomfort or emotional pain. I know the goal isn’t to never need help, but to slowly learn that emotions can move through me without completely destroying me. It’s hard though. The feeling of wanting to break down

My writing lately hasn’t felt like me. I don’t really have the cognitive ability to sit with too much at once right now. I’m fluctuating between needing Klonopin to calm me down enough to function and alcohol to numb me enough to fall asleep. And somewhere in between those states are periods where I feel completely disconnected from myself, like I don’t even know who I am anymore. My life crumbled quickly over the past year. Too many changes at once. So much loss. Too much gr

There are moments where shame stops feeling like an emotion and starts feeling like an identity. Today feels like that. Everything keeps replaying in my head... every mistake, every loss, every moment where I was too much, too emotional, too dysregulated, too needy, too intense. I keep trying to understand why I react the way I do, why I struggle so much to regulate myself when emotions become overwhelming. Part of me thinks if I could just find the answer, maybe I could fina

I had therapy today and the session was a mixture of crying, laughing, and everything in between. I am starting to feel some attachment form, and that scares the absolute shit out of me. I’m nervous to let myself be open enough to feel attachment again. I’m scared my own attachment feelings become too overwhelming for me to handle. I’m going to have to have a really vulnerable conversation next session, and I’m not sure that I’m ready for that. (I don’t have to, as in I’m not

I’m not sure what’s going on with my inability to sleep or eat. I took medicine last night and I couldn’t stay asleep for more than two hours and this has been going on for a week. I’m trying to track the things that may be the cause, like I took my testosterone shot, but I take that every ten days and this seems to happen every few months… at least it feels that way. I haven’t exactly kept track of how often it happens. I’m running on fumes. The eating… that’s not something

I have therapy tomorrow, and I’m anxious about it. Opening up about the things I don’t have figured out yet is hard. It’s been sobering watching how many strides my ex has taken since we separated. In a way, continuing to live together and remaining friends has allowed me to see the cost I had on her. It’s imprinted in my mind—the ways I was affecting her quality of life. I wouldn’t have been able to see that if we had done things in a more traditional way. It stings. To real

I’ve been feeling disconnected from myself lately. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t know if I should be driving. I took a few days off work to try to ground myself and get back to feeling connected enough to function. I’m not really sure what’s going on. I can’t trace it back to anything that could have triggered it. But I also can’t really think clearly or remember much from the last couple of weeks, so it’s probably something, just something I can’t remember.

My brain feels like jello today. Maybe I’ve been pushing myself too hard or trying to tackle too much at once. I’m trying not to be frustrated about it and to just take it as a sign that I need to give myself some space to breathe before trying to continue processing things. On a different note, the fog is really dense at work today, and it makes the grounds even more beautiful, in my opinion. It makes me wish I could lay out on a hammock and listen to music. I’ll settle for

Yesterday ended with me having dinner with my family and then playing video games with my godson. He "cooked" me, which is apparently the new term for "he whooped my ass". We played Super Smash Bros and he likes to be the same characters when we fight. He also likes to add 6 computer players, all the same characters, so you can imagine that trying to figure yourself out on the screen is complicated lol. I think my brother is over his shenanigans because he told him he would o

My birthdays are always really hard for me. I don’t feel deserving of all the best wishes and with everything being really heavy lately, it is messing with me more than usual. I’m so appreciative of the people who take the time to let me know they are thinking of me, and I wish that my heart could fully accept it. I’m also appreciative of the pressure release yesterday offered me, and the afternoon of feeling a little less weighed down… and at the same time I also wish I coul