"Autobiography in Five Short Chapters"

Found this great poem while reading at work today. I could ramble on about what it means to me in my own journey of discovery, or what it could mean to you, but I think it speaks for itself...

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Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson

Chapter I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit ... but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

The Failures and the Victories

I had a bad episode this past weekend. I won't go into all the details, because its so complicated. But suffice it to say a lot of little triggers came together to set me off and I was also treated badly by my family, so I briefly lost control.

When this happens now - when my emotions take control and I lose conscious control of myself - my mind automatically seeks a way to "distract, relax, cope." The method I chose to use this time was to listen to meditations on my ipod (some I've downloaded and others I recorded myself out of my DBT book). However, my ipod was dead and I had no way to do this, and this exacerbated the problem. When I did finally get my ipod going, I listened to this one and it calmed me down.

Then I focused on coping - I used several coping thoughts from my book. I practiced radical acceptance - I accepted the fact that people were treating me bad without hurting or judging them, just accepted it so I could move on. I went to work that same day, feeling terrible, but went. I avoided situations that would make the problem worse, even though it meant leaving home for the rest of the weekend. And though I have been sad in spirit for days now, I got up Monday morning and went back to my own life.

In life we have failures, and I may always have the problem of losing physiological control and having my emotions hurt me all over. But we have victories too. And the choices I made were the victories.

I still hurt. But I'm not frantic and angry anymore - I've relaxed enough to begin the coping process. And I'm carrying on. So fitting that the other night on a rerun of "Sex and the City" this quote from Carrie - after she tried being a model and fell on the catwalk during a fashion show - caught my attention:

"When people fall down in real life, they get right back up and keep walking"

Where in the hell am I? And where did my normal self go???

So I have been in a weird mood for the past week.

It started last week when the last computer in the house that worked stopped working. Now I have two that will not get online, so I have to go to my work or the library to get all my work done. And I have a lot of work and it is stressing me out. On top of my day job, I am looking for a new job and applying for at least a dozen a week and getting nowhere - its a lot of work getting together nice resumes and cover letters - or spend 5 hours filling out an online application - and pisses me off when I don't even get a simple confirmation from them.

I am thinking about taking a job 8 hours away and that is scary! I have tried that before and failed at it. My therapist and I have discussed both the failures and my possible future moving away at great ends. I have lots of coping stragagies worked out that I can use to get me through it, and I think its possible. But right now I'm in a tizzy and can't even see how anything would work out ok.

On top of that, I'm having one of the worse episodes of PMDD I've ever had. I have been in a state of derealization for the past three days, and have started to have such overwheming anger. I literally almost threw my cell phone and the ground and smashed it to pieces the other day, because I was so frustrated with the crappy service I get. I'm having pain and bloating and am so irritable I cannot stand it. I feel like hurting myself for the first time in months. Going off prozac is not helping this either...I have been I was down to 1.6 mg of prozac a day, and was doing fine with every step down from the 20 mg,but once I went off it completely I got headaches and kind of freaked out. So I went back on the small dose for now, at least to get through this period.

This entry is pretty disjointed and random, but that's how I feel right now. I'm using all my stragegies to get through this - distracting myself, trying to relax, doing things to take the place of self-injury (is it odd that summer is coming and I've found that waxing is a great substitute for SI?) But those things are just getting me through, I still feel like my brain is in a fog and not functioning normally.

The only thing that really is helping is knowing this is just temporary, and that in a few days, once my period starts, I will be back to normal. I will probably check in with you all then.

Chosing Happiness = Choosing the Journey

I love it when my favorite TV shows deal with mental health, and one of my favorite shows right now is Mercy. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it focuses on Veronica, a nurse who served in Iraq and is now home dealing with PTSD. In last week’s episode, they talked a lot about choosing to be happy. Her ex, who served with her, said he chooses every day to move on and to be happy. Her response?

“You just choose? Must be nice!”

I had always heard of the concept of “choosing” to be happy, and for a long time I believed it was purely that simple: that making the choice resulted in instant happiness. And my response was the same as Veronica’s. I envied those who could just choose, and knew I’d never be one of those people.

But I was misguided. Choosing happiness is not a choice that instantly makes you happy. I know now that choosing to by happy is a long and winding road, a series of developments and a whole hell of a lot of practice.

Choosing happiness should more accurately be called “choosing the process” or “choosing the journey.” Because when you make the choice, happiness does not just instantly “turn on” in your mind or body. Usually, when you make the choice, it is the beginning of your path to recovery. You’ve decided to be happy, but happiness does not occur just because you choose it. One you choose it, you have to learn the skills and processes to create happiness in your life. This can take weeks, months, even years.

Once you choose recovery (which is, let’s face it,almost analogous to happiness) you have to reprogram yourself and change the habits and behaviors that make you sad. We’ve adapted to our condition and a lifecycle that perpetuates unhappiness. People with BPD and depression and other mental illnesses are addicts – we’re addicted to our self-destructive behaviors and the unhealthy ways we cope like alcohol or self-injury or binging, etc. (and understandably so – they’re the only things that bring small temporary comfort in our world with no other comfort, so why wouldn’t we be addicted to them?) But with a lot of hard work, we can abandon those addictions and find new ones to take their place. We can become “addicted” to using positive coping strategies such as “Distract, Relax, And Cope” (see entry “Emergency Coping Plan”) or Self-Affirmation (See entry “Thoughts from my Little Notebook"). These don’t come naturally to us: we have to learn them.

But once you learn them and practice them, you find they bring small amounts of comfort. They sooth you the way a glass of liquor or a cut arm once soothed you. So little by little, these behaviors take over. Recovery happens and eventfully – though it may take a long time – happiness creeps in. It creeps in because by choosing recovery, you’ve chosen happiness.

For me, the day I chose to finally seek a diagnosis and get treated was the day I chose happiness. There was no happiness in my life that day; I was as far down as a person could be. The happiness came later. But without that first choice, it never would have happened.

And I sit here now, typing on my computer and looking out the window into a world full of beauty, beauty and life that I missed for so long, when I thought choosing happiness was next to impossible.