I saw my counselor today. I let her know about how I was doing this week. I told her about not getting dressed for two days, and trying to isolate myself. I did let her know that I did not have any suicidal thoughts, or any negative dialogue running around my brain, but I knew that I had been feeling down.
She told me that in her opinion, she felt like the two days I chose to not dress and hide away in my room, was me attempting to “check out” again. She did say that it was an improvement that I did not have the suicidal thoughts, or any negative dialogue in my head.
She confirmed that it would definitely be considered depressive behavior. That kind of disappointed me. The reason it did, is supposedly there is something called depression remission. If you can go a solid year with no depression symptoms you are considered in remission. Of course, me of the unrealistic expectations, was convinced that I had this depression thing licked and I would be considered in remission by next summer. Not going to happen now.
Then it was time to figure out why I was feeling this way. We came up with a few reasons. Basically, what it boils down to, is I have this habit of taking on other people’s emotions as my own. Even people I see on TV. That is why I have not watched anything about Haiti. Someone being angry with me also affects how I feel. It usually makes me very sad, and leads me to a very negative dialogue about myself.
Someone I dearly love has been feeling a bit stressed lately, and down. Plus with my wheezing, I was not feeling good. So those two things got combined in my head, and all of the sudden I was taken on someone else’s emotions and feelings, and I was allowing it to bring me down. Those two days of not dressing, were my way of trying to hide from how I was feeling.
My counselor said she believed that unlearning this particular behavior is going to be one of my biggest struggles, since I do it without even thinking about it and have done it most of my life.
I now have another home work assignment. She is so darn good at giving out home work. What I am to do is when I encounter a person/situation that I know is going to drastically affect my frame of mind, I am to tell myself that this is not my issue to take on. I feel empathy for them, but this is not mine to take on. Just like the home work of finding something positive in every situation, the idea is once I practice this enough, it will replace the not healthy behavior. She reminded me that this was going to be much more difficult than the positive thinking home work, and I absolutely needed to be extremely patient with myself. No unrealistic expectations and checking out as a way to not deal with something is not allowed.
She also discussed about me making some friends that I could count on. She did not care if they were over the internet or in real life. She feels that having more friends would be a good way to have other people besides myself to concentrate on. Also, having friends with people who are fully aware of my mental difficulties, would be more understanding than some people, who I thought were friends, have been in the past. This sounds like another home work assignment to me, even if she did not use those words.
I never was one for a ton of friends. On and off for all of my life I have dealt with depression, this last time was much worse with the suicide attempt that almost worked. So my need for friends has been minimal. The few friends I had before I developed this round of severe/major depression sort of dropped away, because I never returned phone calls or emails. I think they were also at a loss of how to be around me and what to say to me after the suicide attempt.
I know that to have friends, I need to be a friend. Honestly though, when I am depressed, it is just too much work.
A friend of mine that I have not seen in several years wrote me a note the other day, she mentioned something about me and her getting together for lunch sometime. That is something I really want to do. I would like to cultivate that friendship so I have at least one real life friend in my life. She is a good person and I think it would be good for me to step outside of myself and do what friends do for each other.
Lately, there have been a few people I have met around the blogs that I want to get to know better. One in particular I think would be someone who I think would turn out to be a good support for me and I could be a good support for her.
I already know that this is going to provide me with some extra anxiety. I will do what I need to do, to deal with the extra anxiety.