Today I am feeling better. Thank you very much. I didn’t like this week at all. I know I am feeling better because it is well before noon and I already have the dishes going and I am very happy it is not raining so that I can walk over to my shrink session today I bloody hate taking the bus and I double bloody hate taking it when it is raining. I have a huge zit on my left cheek that is buried under the skin and because of where it is EXACTLY and how big it is and how much it hurts it looks and feels like a spider bite so I am treating it like one and whining accordingly. I am sad the Canucks are out of the playoffs but mostly because we can’t wear our helmets anymore. I have a wicked bad headache today though I have for weeks and my stomach is being eaten by pills and my nose is being destroyed from Flonase because allergies SUCK. Especially adult ones I think this is only heading into my third year dealing with this adult allergy bullshit. It just sends my headaches through the roof some days. I feel like I could stick a needle up my nose and pop a balloon.
I’ll tell you this about this week. I have been feeling slightly overwhelmed for a while. Dr. B and I discuss it of course. Getting better is scary. There is expectation and I try not to put expectations [I just want them really bad] on things and there are fears, many fears and there is also a resistance. It is a lot easier in some respects to simply be depressed to use it as a crutch to let depression be all of me. And that is not productive. It isn’t fair to me, it isn’t fair to Adam. But when I’m there, when it is noon and I have already run out of things to do to entertain myself that don’t involve actually doing anything, passing out with my kitty on the couch is easier than doing anything that requires motivation. When getting better it is easy to get stuck and/or take on too much. And the lessons aren’t learned over night. The things I work on in therapy don’t take affect the second I walk out the door. And no one can force me out of my apartment if I really don’t want to leave. Forcing fun on a depressed person it like washing a cat with claws in your bathtub be prepared to get scratched and if your cat doesn’t have claws be prepared to get your face bitten off or at least a finger.
When the ‘you are not depression, depression is just a part of you’ came into play it was the start of trying to change how I think. But this is where you have to deal with all the shit people have said about you, the friendships lost, the basic stereotypes and how many jobs you have been ‘laid off’ from because you let your ‘paranoia’ take you over in the office and you’ve been labeled by everyone and EVERYONE thinks you are crazy so of course that is ALL THERE IS TO ME. Nope apparently I’m charismatic and funny, determined, defiant and lots of other things that make me not just a depressed blob. This may be obvious to some, not so much to my medicated mind.
Then entered the, it isn’t ‘paranoia’ it is having a negative attentional bias. I get the whole think positive, don’t waste my time on other peoples bullshit, work on me, deal with my own demons, be selfish, say awesome things about myself out loud in groups of people until I actually believe it, I get it. Worrying about things I can’t do anything about is futile. Like if people are talking bad about me, or thinking I should get off my ass and get a job, what have you. Who cares this is my life, my choices it is about what works for Adam and I. But say I’m ‘paranoid’ about someone stealing my identity because I don’t have a shredder and I recycle everything and someone can piece shit together and steal all the money I don’t have. However unlikely I do worry about this. And I feel paranoid. I don’t see how this is negative attentional bias and not paranoia because N.A.B is a made up term to make help me think more positively and get my mind in general thinking in a different way but even after discussing it with him I am still not buying it on all fronts. It is however a term that does help if I’m having negative or worrisome thoughts surrounding relationships and staying out of situations that could become dramatic.
Working on those two things I was finding I was still being ‘mean’ to myself still feeling jealousy anger towards all things good and still making snide remarks mostly at women to the point Adam said ‘you know you are going to get clocked one day and there is going to be nothing I can do about it’. This generally happens when I’m tired and just plan sick of always having to ‘work’ on being a normal person. Days when I just don’t give a shit, days when I’m basically feeling sorry for myself and feeling like depression is all of me and I’m worthless so I take it out on the innocent civilians of Vancouver. So, Dr. B asked if I was ready to take on another task. I said I wasn’t sure really but to at least tell me what it was. And it was a very obvious task and something you’d say to a five year old- ‘if you haven’t got anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all’. Even with all the improvements I have made with being ‘nicer’ in public I had no idea how bad I still was until I was concentrating on it. And even though at first I couldn’t stop myself I was at least aware. In thinking and analyzing just how bloody negative I can be I started to feel pretty disgusted with myself. I need to work on an attitude of non judgment; I need to learn how to make observations, not judgments and this you see all ties in to depression not being all of me and NOT having a negative attentional bias.
Honestly it is becoming like a twelve step program.
