Acceptance?

11.2.11

Nicole talked a lot about acceptance today. I remember Cathy kept trying to get me to accept my circumstances. It is hard to accept circumstances when they are hard. I feel like I have been living in this state of stillness in my life. I’m too afraid to move forward or backward for fear that I might fall apart. And look, here I did, without even knowing it I fell apart and ended up back at Valley. And I have to accept that. I have to accept that I am back here. It is not a bad thing. It is not a failure. It is simply the situation I am in. Whether I needed it or not, I made the decision based on a couple of rather very hard weeks at work. I am not sure how much of it was hormonal. I am sure it had something to do with the hormones that I was on. But I have to accept that this is where I am.

I am depressed. I am anxious. I am sick. This is apart of who I am and it always will be. I need to stop fighting and wishing it away and learn to make it less of apart of who I am. It is not going away anytime soon. That is just the situation. I need to prepare for it to be hard. Like Nicole said, life is hard. Even without my problems life is hard. That is hard for me to accept. I just want things to be easy for just a minute.

Maybe it won’t always be this hard. I am still dealing with a good bit of depression and anxiety. My medicine may not still be right. I can come up with better coping strategies. And it will get easier.

It is easier than it was this time last year. I am not that anxious about going back to work. The only thing I am anxious about is what are people going to say. What do I tell people? I don’t have to tell them I went back to Valley. That is my business. But other than that I am sort of ok. The phones aren’t too bad and I don’t have to deal with as much stuff as I did on the front desk. I was handling things before.

I just need to start living my life differently. It wasn’t working very well before. And maybe getting a new therapist and a new psychiatrist will help. I am very scared of this class that we are doing, but maybe it will help.

I just have to accept that right now is hard. It is always hard to change. But change isn’t always bad…especially when things weren’t working that well to begin with. So I just need to concentrate on day by day. What do I have to do today? What do I need to get through today or even this morning? That is one of my big problems at work right now. I am looking at the schedule and looking for potential problems that I might have trouble dealing with. That is so damaging to me. I look at when there is only going to be 2 on the phones. I know that when there are just two on the phones I tend to get overwhelmed easier. So I worry about that. I worry about those days when I have to close or work at Saturday. I worry about working early and how many days I am going to have to do Dr. Dant’s dictation. I live my life worrying about the future according to that stupid schedule. I plan when work is going to be hard for me and then I dread it until it happens. I like to be prepared for the worst because I am scared that I can’t handle it.

That is the way I am “managing” my depression and anxiety. I think that if I get 6 hours of sleep instead of 7 hours of sleep, or if I forget something in my lunch, or if I have the wrong pen then I will fall apart. And it is not just falling apart once. It is having days like I have been having where I am in a state of anxiety and depression all day. It consumes me. I am so afraid that it will happen and I won’t be able to recover.

And my need to be perfect on top of all of this just escalates the problem. I feel and am told by my boss that I have to be perfect. I have a major problem in that area. And I feel like my perfect routine that I can control will help me cope with this anxiety and depression that I have absolutely no control over. It controls me. That is what this whole thing is about. It is about my need to have as much control as I can over the parts of my life that I can control. Because who knows when my depression or anxiety is going to flare up. And who knows if it will ever get better. So I just anally control every part of my life so that I can feel I have control over something. It goes back to what foods I eat and not eat, what this whole dieting thing was about, when I pack my lunch, what pen I use, the order I put things in my car.

So it is all about control…so how do I give up some of that control. Because it is controlling me.   

What signs do you see in your life that you have tried (and maybe succeeded) to deaden your longing for deep, satisfying involvement with others?  

 

I have definitely driven out everyone in my life. And I am so tired and so focused on this anxiety and depression that I don’t feel like I want anyone in my life. I have lost even Erica. She got sick of me talking about my problems all the time and I haven’t gotten close enough with anyone else to really let them in. Sandra listens to me, but I am not sure how sick of me she is getting. I just feel like I am to fragile to let anyone in. Look at what happened with Joshua. True, he dug his own grave, but I was very oversensitive about things with him. It’s not that I am just afraid of getting hurt, I am afraid I will be a downer on people, that I won’t be able to handle hanging out with them. Because even when I hang out with people and they are talking to me, I tend to drift off. I know that is bad, but I can’t keep my attention on them. I know that is so very selfish of me. And that is why I don’t have people in my life.