Symptoms and helplessness...
Sometimes the worst thing about mental illness is how others treat me, or how it's frustrating to try and do things that are hard for me, or how much it hurts to explain to people I love that I just can't do something for them or with them.
Most of the time the worst thing about my mental illness is my mental illness.
Like, I've done a large amount of work over the last decade to learn about how science says that humans work and identify my personal deviations and then develop skills to offset those deviations in terms of the behavior I need to survive and be as healthy as possible. When I've been introduced to a new mode of therapy, I've gotten the books written by the people who created it for other professionals to learn how it works. I've learned about the biological parts of my mind and the chemicals and medicines I'm working with to keep my life from going back off the rails completely.
CBT, DBT, IFS, CPT, ACT, almost any three letters you can put together, I've worked with them and have treated my medical professionals as though they are an elite team of researchers supporting me as I figure out how to run Earthship Skellington around the world without harming anybody.
All these skills and tools are great. I think that DBT should be part of everyone's basic primary education. My life right now is better than I ever dreamed it could be ten years ago. Most of the time I have this illusion of control because I have so many skills and tools at hand that when something breaks down I'm comfortable pausing and figuring out what to do for myself. This is awesome. 10/10. Highly recommend intense education about mental health for anybody who is dealing with illness personally, in the family, or dealing with other humans in general.
Much of the stuff written for popular consumption is either bullshit for money or is so watered down that it doesn't really explain why anything works for some people. Academic books are more expensive, harder to read, and often out dated even when they are published. Papers are often available on line and if paywalled will sometimes have contact information for the writer who is generally more than happy to shoot you a copy of their work.
And yet. With all of this work. With all of these skills. With all of the effort I put into dancing across the thin ice of functionality... Sometimes by brain, mind, and emotions refuse to work in any way that is useful or comfortable for me.
It feels like I'm driving down the road in a perfectly functional truck that has just come back from the garage and suddenly the steering drops out, the transmission kicks into 4WD low, and the accelerator is pinned to the floorboard. I feel like I can do nothing but scream while my truck and I lumber down the highway very slowly pushing every other car off into the ditch with inexorable malicious precision.
It kinda feels like suddenly realizing that I'm a character in a Stephen King novel. One of the really expendable ones who is offered up to show the brutality of the horrormacguffin.
This experience is bad. Not because it feels bad (it feels so bad) but because it is the kind of experience that leads to feelings that inspire me to give up on trying, give up on working, give up on developing my skills and talking with other people like me about our experiences. Makes me want to give up trying to be skillfull and spiral down into uncomfortable misery regardless of how it contradicts my values or harms those around me.
I crave the bourbon and the blackout and the desire to climb up on a bar and sing Fuck It All to the tune of Let It Go while convincing people to give me their undergarments so that I can knit them together into a proper diva boa to wear while I sing.
And that is why it is important that I essay when I feel like this and when I feel okay and when I feel great. While my illness is always with me, any state in which I find myself is always temporary.
This feeling will not last forever.
But it is likely to come back again in the future.
And when I am skillfull I can plan out how to work with myself in these times. But it's gotta be super simple or I won't remember and will not have the energy to execute complicated instructions.
So I turn on myself and I treat myself the way I would treat a confused and sickly child. The way I would like to be treated if I were a confused and sickly child. I eat what I want as long as I eat something. I take my meds and build the structure of my days around myself with that foundation. I check in with Spouse and my professionals. I make time to see what color things are and touch textures and listen to sounds around me. I find good smells and I sniff them.
And when it is all too much I curl up in a comfy blanket and feel sad and remind myself that this is temporary. This sucks, but it is not forever.
And for right now things are rough, but there is a blanket, and there is me, and that is enough to get through this breath. This breath. This breath. This breath.
I am not defined by my symptoms, but sometimes those symptoms define the boundaries of my world. If I try to run from them or hide them down they'll fester and burst forth with puss, violence, and harm. If I sit with them calmly, we'll sit there for a while, and then they will subside.
This feeling will not last forever.