Archive for the 'Depression & Therapy' Category

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Ready to Run Away.

Published on May 9, 2011 by Corinna Carlson | 4 Comments

It has been almost two months now and I’m still going to the gym and seeing an athletic therapist. I’m still dedicated to what I’ve been calling investing in myself. It was well past time, I had no choice but to face that I needed help with my Iliotibial band syndrome and help that wasn’t going to be cheap or easy if I want to run again.

When I think about the fact that Adam and I have been together [including the dating years] for almost eight years and that he has never seen me run a race it triggers more than just not having been able to run, it also triggers the loss of a person I miss. It is one thing that I have always struggled with depression, it’s another that since developing anxiety back in 2002 I became a person I despise sometimes when I really let myself go there. And given that my brain feels like it is in an emotional firing range right now I suddenly feel like I have absolutely no idea who I am. I find that I am thankfully able to draw from the eight years of psychotherapy that has brought me to this place where I can attempt this reemergence to a life outside of my apartment. But I use draw from lightly, I couldn’t have imagined if I’d tried just how emotionally challenging taking on a few new life goals was going to be – ready or not.

I was prepared to deal with a bit of an emotional roller-coaster, I have major daddy issues wrapped up in running. Pushing my fathers voice trying to remind me that I can’t do it and that I’m not good enough out of my head during my sessions at the gym, during yoga or sitting on my ass thinking about this process isn’t nearly as easy as pretending I don’t have to get over it.

When I’m allowed to run again, I will be running through all of those issues and I know it’s going to be painful but I also know it’s coming. What I wasn’t prepared for was to be plummeted into relentless anxiety, some days it feels like too much is being triggered by this. I’m acting irrationally but at the same time not, a lot of shit has been happening in the last while that I have no control over. I have control over how I react to it, and I have let my emotions get away from me a few times, but I’m also realizing I’m dealing with so much more than I originally thought I was. I did not realize just how true it is that muscles don’t just hold many memories but that they hold them in the most hermetic of places.

I’m going to stay on this journey even though it is currently kicking my ass because I believe I made the right decision in starting it, I believe that all the tears and painful memories that are surfacing will only make me wiser, stronger and faster when I do hit the pavement and race again. I’m simply struggling with how big of a tempest it has brewing with my emotions, the fact that working out and working with an athletic therapist isn’t currently transferring over in a positive way in regards to my depression or my anxiety is also causing me a great deal of stress. I’m trying to remember that right now I’m in therapy and that therapy on any injury is painful but I feel unmotivated and depressed and getting to the gym is a workout in itself and some days other than proving my father wrong, I don’t know what the fuck is keeping me doing this.

Remembering Derek.

Published on May 4, 2011 by Corinna Carlson | 7 Comments

I have a feeling there will be a few of these posts popping up, not everything fits into 140 characters. Not this grief.

Last night my friend Airdrie lost her best friend and her husband while the Vancouver blogging / social media community also lost the same great man, Derek Miller passed away after a valiant fight with Cancer.

Today is one of those days where I grapple with the magnitude of blogging and just how much someone can touch you via words on a screen. Nothing tangible, no pages to turn.

Before 2008, I knew of Derek, I read his blog I followed him on Twitter, I admired him greatly; it was hard not to given how open he was about his battles with Cancer. #fuckcancer

At the beginning of March ‘08 I took a lot of pills and went across the street for an off-sales bottle of wine and downed it which sealed my lackluster attempt at a suicide and I found myself in the hospital. I’ve never denied how selfish of a disorder depression is. And although I received a great deal of support, more than I could have hoped for given some of the circumstances, when I came upon this post written for me by this man that I respected for his strength, courage and his fighting spirit – trying to put into words what it meant to me is almost impossible. Someone who knew they were going to die, someone facing eminent death took the time to reach out and publicly support me. I found it to be and still do consider it one of the most selfless things anyone has ever done for me.

I met Derek that following December, I b-lined for him when I saw him so I could finally thank him in person. I’m glad I have this photo below, my social anxiety kept me from most events where I would have had an opportunity to have gotten to know him better.

Airdrie & Derekphoto courtesy of Raul on Flickr

I end this with great sadness he is gone, with sincerest condolences to Airdrie and to the rest of his family and friends but also from a place of peace knowing that he touched so many people.

You can read Derek’s last words here, if you experience technical difficulties due to traffic there is a cached version of it located here instead.

And last but not least #FUCKCANCER.

No time to go round and round.

Published on April 3, 2011 by Corinna Carlson | 13 Comments

The latest session that I had with my psychiatrist was one of the most needed ones I’ve had in a while. I’ve moved into this new scary place, and I’m finding the fear induced anxiety, eight full days of it now, incredibly painful.

I was straight up honest with him that last Sunday I’d upped my Clonazepam by a milligram because in order to be in the gym I have no choice but to find ways to get food down my throat and this is the fantastic it feels like I have a dryer than fuck metal bar across my esophagus anxiety the kind that if I do get food by it’ll just laugh at me whilst I double over from the waves of nausea. Given that I have been learning to sit in my feelings this new thing where I actually learn to experience feelings in the real word again and do things for me is turning out to be a wee bit challenging.

I’ve had more than one situation trigger me into this anxiety but unfortunately to get out I can only deal with one thing at a time. It may seem strange, but I don’t often find myself crying in my sessions, lately though I’ve noticed that I have been crying more in general. I used to be a crier and then I wasn’t and then I learned how to accept being a joy crier and I left it at that and kept suppressing real tears and firing them off in destructive bullets of anger instead.

When I found out in February about a week before what would have been her 89th birthday that my grandmother had died in January and that no one had told me I was quite devastated. After the vitriol spewed by my Aunt in my comments you’d really not think that things could’ve gotten much worse from there. I didn’t call my mother right away to offer any condolences, I had no idea how to deal with a betrayal of that magnitude, had no idea how to put my anger aside, myself aside to make it about her loss and I questioned whether I would call at all. I did end up calling, I called her on what would have been her mother’s birthday, it was still the day before here. I don’t remember a lot of the conversation but I know that at no time was any mention made of anything except my grandmother and current events. I don’t think I need to go into detail as to how fucking hard that was I wanted to explode on the inside.

Shortly after this phone call we received an email saying she wanted to come stay with us. We were both pretty floored she had the balls to ask considering no explanation, no apology has been issued for the offside attack launched on me, not to mention she doesn’t think that not telling me that my grandmother died was wrong she feels she did the right thing. And in this case I don’t really give a fuck about opinion entitlements, I don’t know how to forgive that, but somehow I found myself telling her she could come for five days.

Enter discussions with close friends who ask me very very good questions and challenge my decision, to the point that I even tell the Dr. I ain’t letting her come. But he talked me out of it. He suggested some great ideas and we discussed for about the millionth time laying down boundaries with her. The boundaries I try to set with my parents generally dissipate into the depths of I give the fuck up pretty quickly. But at that moment, I felt good, for real, I figured that I’d handled the phone call and left my dad and everything else out of it, so fuck it, I could do it, I could have her come visit, plan it all out before she got here, not even discuss my father, I even emailed her and offered an olive branch of another day saying she could leave on the morning of the sixth day, I told her the schedule with my psychiatrist so she could book the week around it, getting the full five days with me and was confident with the right boundaries we had a shot at a new beginning, for just the two of us. Or at least a start.

As I’m writing this I realize how ridiculous it sounds.

I’m 33, when the fuck will I ever learn.

To save a few bucks she decided to ask me if she could come for eight days; let us not forget, I used to be a travel agent so I know damn well that all international scheduled fares go down after a seven night stay, but she decided to show complete and absolute disrespect for this entire fucking try-a-thon, one I felt forced into anyway. But you know what? I didn’t freak out. But I did hold my ground and it was hard because she of course said she was sorry and that she was crying but piss off with your guilt trip seriously. The exchanges we had made it clear that if I didn’t do this now If I didn’t say no, NO this is our year, and I’M doing things for me right now and it isn’t a good time and it isn’t about you and NO I’m NOT saying that I’m never going to talk to you again but I can not do this right now.

I feel really fucking guilty and it was the initial anxiety trigger but it is fear, fear of finally putting my foot down, the pain of knowing that she hurts but that she has to live with the decisions she has made in her life and that I can’t do anything about them. My parents keep accusing me of not moving on when in reality I don’t think they realize how far I have moved. It hurts, but it isn’t forever. If I hadn’t set this boundary with her then there wouldn’t be any chance for change because I’d have only been enabling the same behavior I have for years.

I’ve been advised to cry more and feel the sadness, It is supposed to help me push through the anxiety and fear. I think that I had been concentrating on the same goals and personal improvements for so long that I forgot how scary it is to start new ones. But if i don’t move on, neither will the anxiety that keeps me down.

Sabotage

Published on March 30, 2011 by Corinna Carlson | 5 Comments

The last way I thought that I would be feeling right now is like this. Anxiety to the max. Kicking myself in the emotional ass.

Deciding to work with a personal trainer is already working on my body but it is sending me into an emotional tailspin I did not see coming or I’m not sure I’d have done this. It’s making me cry, I don’t like to cry unless I have PMS or I’m joy crying over sports.

I’m realizing that I’m still terrified of any form of human connection. Any. I cant stop doing and saying ridiculously inappropriate things to keep people away. Have them want to keep me at arms length and not get to know me. I thought that I was past this and finding that I’m not is really pissing me off. It is one thing to have a problem with over-sharing in general, that I’ve been working on. This is different, this is fear of letting anyone new near me in any sense. I’ve finally gotten my ass out of the house and I’m finally doing something for me and then I come home and over analyze myself to death, and berate myself until I feel nauseous.

I wasn’t surprised when making the decision to return to running made me feel angry for injuring myself so badly and waiting so long to get serious about it. I figured that the competitive relationship I had with my dad might rear its ugly head but I’m more than prepared to push through that. I don’t know what it is, but I have to do something about this fear of people, if I don’t I’ll end up going through who knows how many personal trainers and gyms.

I know I deserve this and I wish I knew why the fuck I just can’t let myself have it, and be myself not some fabrication of myself made from fear. I wish I could just leave myself the fuck alone long enough to even give it an honest shot.