Mother's Day

A friend of mine wrote this on Saturday:

"Celebrate mothers tomorrow. This includes not only your mom or those with children in the world but also those whose children (embryos) have died, how does not matter, and those trying desperately to conceive. It includes those raising others children as their own and those who have had to raise themselves. It includes all those who act as moms voice when she can't be there and those whose only children have fur, feathers, fins, or scales rather than hair. That woman over there. Yes... her.. celebrate her..in all her/your forms."

It made the day much easier to get through to meditate on these thoughts. My relationship with my mother has rarely made me happy. It has made me often stressed and sick. I haven't spoken to my mother in several months; and although it is difficult and emotionally taxing, it has not been as difficult and emotionally taxing as having her right in my life. Not talking to my mom has been a revolutionary act in wellness. Cultivating "detached compassion" toward her and other people in my life who have demanded that I mother them has been a breakthrough for me. Ultimately, this shift is allowing me to see more clearly where my professional boundaries should be so that I can function as a clinician and be sufficiently nourished to have healthy relationships in which I choose to participate.

I don't know if my mom and I will ever be able to renegotiate our relationship in adult terms. But I will tolerate that for now. Being on this side of relationship recovery stuff is deepening my ability to understand the difficulties of my own patients.

This was the same weekend that I terminated therapy with a 5-year-old patient. Yes, "patient," not "client." This is not because of any strict adherence to a medical model of psychopathology. Not at all. Rather I have chosen this term because I am aware of the awesome responsibility I have due to the massive imbalance of power in the therapy relationship. It mimics the parent-child relationship in many ways.

So living through Mother's Day... tolerating the lack of mothering, and parting with my own therapy "child." I'm glad to report she is doing well -- phobia cured, GAD reduced, sleeping through the night and tolerating imperfection like a pro! But still it was so bittersweet to say goodbye to her.

So yeah, Mother's Day.

The Black Dog Revisited

It would have been my Dad's 75th birthday last Sunday. I didn't think that I would get that emotional, but it really hit me hard. I found an old letter (one of two he ever wrote me) from him when I was in my first year of university. As a man with a grade 4 education, he didn't write the most eloquent prose, but it was certainly heartfelt. The letter oscillated between telling me that I was his whole world and describing what the pets were doing at that moment. It was intensely personal for him to put his thoughts and feelings down on paper. As I read his tight cursive, I just started bawling.  I had completely forgotten that such a letter even existed and I felt cheated. I felt cheated out of the time we never had to let each other in. I felt cheated because of the many locks my Dad put on his heart so that I couldn't get in. I felt anger at my Mom for poisoning me against him for so many years. At the end of the letter, he was careful to point out that he wanted it to be 'just between the two of us.' He seemed nervous that my Mom would find out he had written it and... well... something bad, something bullied, something bewildering would happen. He was gone a long time before he ever died, and remote a long time before that. But when I sat down and read that letter on Sunday, I felt like the promise of a relationship had been taken from me. I felt the loss of a father that had never actually bloomed.

So yeah, I spent most of the weekend crying. I haven't felt a ton better this week. It occurs to me that the journey out of PTSD might be via a major depressive episode. Today was rough. I am supposed to be at Dr. Supervisor's lab dinner for the end of the year celebration thing. I simply cannot make it. I had to take public transportation to therapy today (travel time = 1.5 hours each way) and I cried the whole way there. Yup, just out there, unable to stop crying despite being trapped on transit in public. Just quietly crying the whole way -- like I was in New York or something. I've never been so glad that I don't have to go to classes or cope with homework and assignments in my whole life.

I know that this is my blog and very few people read it -- and even less of my personal connections (by design) even know about it. So I can feel free to write what I want about surviving this whole dumb process. Grad school has turned into this horrible marathon of personal loss and trauma, and I just don't know how the fuck I'm ever going to get through it. I don't even know if I WANT to finish it at this point. I'm just trying to remember that moods are like the weather. And even though Canada is enveloped in its perennial sucky spring winter revisited -- both mood and weather will pass. Just like the weather, there is always a new mood coming. I have to stick it out. But I am in the Suck right now.

Like the name implies: The Suck totally sucks.

SPSS for Sleeping

The last few weeks have been weeks of firsts and slidebacks. My first visit back to the gym followed by extreme fatigue and an inability to walk up the stairs. My first night of uninterrupted sleep, followed by nights of mind-bending insomnia. My first day back on campus (for student/TA meetings) followed by brutal, crushing depression. A step foreward, a few back, a few more forward -- like negotiating our hilly sidewalk after an ice-storm, I just want to sit down on my butt and slide in the direction I'm supposed to be going. Difficult when you don't actually know what direction that is.

It occurs to me as I make all this "revolutionary change" in my life -- as I say to convention and expectations, "No, I'm going to live my life for me, not you. And I'm going to live by my own measures of what is good and right," that I am humble enough to admit that I really have no idea what I'm doing. I have snippets, glimmers of worldviews and ethics and morality and responsibility to self and others. I have the voices of great artists and great scientific thinkers in my mind. But I really don't have a guidebook here. There is no "Recovery for Dummies," no "SPSS for Sleeping." It's scary because the only words offered to me by the sages I respect or feel drawn to are something like, "You get to figure it out for yourself. Find what works for you." For someone who has anxious-perfectionist tendencies this is tantamount to emotional torture. As soon as I come up with something that fits my own model and feels right, feels like GOODNESS, then a person comes along (often someone I sage or someone I respect) and says (rather screams) at me, "How DARE you do that to me?!!" And I think, "They are right. How dare I?" And I become penitent, retract, backpeddle, flee, and it takes me minutes or hours or days or weeks to realize: "Hang on. I didn't do anything to them. I did something to me. I changed. And actually in a really positive way. Or so I think. Wait a sec, let me check this nascent ruler I'm developing. Yep, it's good. So what the hell was that about? And furthermore, what do I do now?"

Realize, I suppose, that living with myself is more important than living for you. Still, I'm wobbly as new-born colt. Complex trauma endured at a young age and for a prolonged time means an interruption in attachment. This is the disability. What you can't see is the missing piece inside of me where you have a solid, or at least consistent attachment strategy/style.  I can cope. I can walk around and interact with professionals at work and school and you'd never guess that inside I'm the infant that freezes and stares. So I want to take the judgemental tone out of what I perceive others to sometimes day and truly ask, "How dare I?" I will absolutely need daring-do if I am going to stand on my own.

Hee. Daring-do. Awesome.

Reduced Load

It's been almost two months of "reduced load" at school to recover my health and I'm just starting to relax a bit. I've started sleeping a bit more predictably, which I think has been the biggest factor in my starting to feel the slightest bit more well. I'm still not used to not doing something, not WORKING in all of my spare time. I really don't know what to do with myself. Mr Husband pointed out that all of my "hobbies" are actually work-related. So I'm on a kind of quest to figure out what I enjoy doing that isn't work or learning based. Suggestions are welcome.

I also went no-contact with my Mom again... Brutal. A few weeks ago, it came to our attention that she had been gambling again. [For those of you just tuning in: my Mom gambled away all of the equity in her home while my Dad was sick.] When I found out, my brain just kind of short-circuited. I can't save her. She is in deep and desperate need of something that I just can't give her and I hope that she will accept help from one of the many people who are offering it. The hording stuff has also back-slided [think large pile of nail clippings on the carpet underneath the coffee table]. I can't do it anymore. C-PTSD focuses on healing relationships for recovery, so I'm trying to leave myself open to them and not freak out too much about it. I've been very good at giving them to others but have been quite deprived myself. Thank Dog for Mr. Husband and Lil Miss Best Friend.

I'm off to the gym shortly. I started personal training appointments again and am once more struck with how the psychological gets stored in our physical bodies. Lots of muscle imbalances to work out. And wow, I forgot I had muscles! Last year at this point, I could do 40 military-style pushups. Now I can do three. I'm hoping that my body can remember what was good and start to let go of what was bad. Also got myself another copy of the anatomy colouring book (which Mr. Husband says is "learning" but I say is "colouring"). Slowly... I'll get there.

Biology

After having almost all of my blood removed from my body, we now know only a tiny bit more than we knew previously:

1. I have too much vitamin D in my blood. Near toxic levels. STOP taking the vitiamin D supplement.

2. I have not enough zinc in my blood. Take a zinc supplement.

3. I either did, do, will, or will never have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. But I am VERY tired.

4. My adrenals are fatigued.

5. I have "considerable, global bone-loss" in my mouth.

6. Despite #5, there is no reason to believe that I have a bone density problem. Despite that, I'm being sent for bone density tests.

7. I have anxiety. Really, really, like seriously FUCKING BAD anxiety. A permanent life-style change is in order or I am just not going to get better.

Great.

And so I am reminded that doctors are just people too.

Yogish

At the advice of a health-care practitioner, I am trying yoga. I hated the first time. But today was actually pretty good. I think the key is let go of wanting to to excel or even do well. This eliminates the whole idea of competition from the brain. Then I was open to allowing another person, a woman and a stranger, to nurture and encourage me. Nothing to prove.

It was kind of fucking awesome.

Wax-Off

I decided to take a break from classes this semester to recover from the exhaustion. It was absolutely the right choice. Before the break I was  unable to sleep more than 5 hours a night (when I was lucky) and walking through thick brain fog every day. I realized I could no longer fool myself into thinking I was recovered from the month's rest in August when I got laryngitis and was using the fact that I couldn't speak audibly to cover up that I was blanking out in class, in social situations, and worst of all, in therapy. I also knew I was in trouble when I stared at a stats assignment for 50 minutes completely unable to grasp what was being asked of me. That might be normal for many people, but it ain't for me! So yeah, meetings were set up, doctor's were revisited, and decisions were made.
It was time to take a semster OFF.

This decision was backed up by the fact that I was recently diagnosed with chronic fatique by a specialist at a renowned Environmental Health Clinic in a hoity-toity hospital. December was the month of specialists -- Dr. Dentist informed me that my immune system had crashed so badly that I had "dramatic and considerable bone loss" in my mouth and that I "should expect my teeth to start falling out soon. Dr. Psychologist (my new/better therapist) diagnosed me with C-PTSD. Any of these diagnoses would have been sufficient to scare me out of the classroom. When I step back and look at them, it is easy to see how they are all related and contribute to one another.

Dr. Supervisor was extremely supportive. Our Director of Clinical Training practically insisted I take the semester off when I told her about my 2012. Then she blew so much sunshine up my butt that all fears of doing so creating weird academic problems for me disappeared. I finished up my one take-home exam (24 single-spaced pages on complex-systems approaches) and dropped next semester's courses, including multivariate statistics -- a full-year course of which I have finished half. Sigh... I cannot keep the marks or even guarantee I'll get the same section next year. I have to take the whole thing over again. I dropped a math course! THAT is how serious I am about recovery.

I wanted to completely put aside all of my academic responsibilities, but it just wasn't possible, or wise. I have a lab up and running at The Org. and two undergraduate students who count on me for their own research practica. I like my research and it's one of the few things that makes me happy and excited. Besides, now that I no longer work there, The Org. has become this friendly, enjoyable place to be. So I'm going to be there 12 hours a week instead of the usual 20. Therapy with the few clients I had the Children's Mental Health Centre ended naturally before the break -- except in one case. So I'm continuing to see one 5-year-old girl with anxiety for the forseeable future. Other than those two things, I have no official school-type responsibilities. At least not for MY education.

Continuing to do research work allows me to remain enrolled in a research practicum and therefore continue my scholarship (very important if the mortgage is going to get paid every month). I also have to keep my TAship... Mr. Husband doesn't have health insurance through his work, so my unionized TA is the only way for us to have any health coverage. Given that I have just been diagnosed with three fairly serious health conditions, I thought I might be needing that drug and professional medical services coverage. I can't imagine what we'd do if there was an emergency with either of us and we didn't have health insurance (and I live in Canada... I have no idea how people do this in the states). The point is, I still have to TA. So I've gone from working an insane 50-60 hours a week down about 24. I wish I could just totally stop, but we'd lose the house if I didnt' have some income and not having health insurance is just not smart right now, so here I am.

That's the updatey part. All nice and facty-wacty for you. But in subjective news, I'm struggling. Interrupting school has been hard on my sense of self. So has slowing down into recovery mode. Now that I can actually stop doing all the time, I feel worse than when I was go-go-go. Although, someone pointed out to me that I may feel about the same but just actually have the time to notice it now. My instructions are to rest and listen to my body. I'm taking some meds/supplements and have to meditate and do a stretching program every day. I have an appointment to see about my teeth in a few months ("unless one falls out first... then come see me...") Lots and lots of follow-up shite to come. Oh, and yoga... they said once I start to get some energy back that I should start to do yoga. Will do.

Update complete. I hope that future posts will focus on how I'm actually doing, and maybe even wax theoretical about the whole situation. Until then, rest well.