update

I just ate my whole post up by pressing the wrong button at the right time, or however you are supposed to put that. Two wrongs? One right and one wrong? One wrong and one right? Either way, bye-bye nice, thoughtful, disconnected, entertaining to me, etc., post. Now, can I write it in fewer words, and cut out the I'm-hungry-and-need-to-eat-soon comments? (I mean, cut them down, not out, since I just put one there.)

From both my counselor and my psychiatrist (whom I both saw yesterday), I was reminded that my anxious thoughts actually are emotionally taxing. I forget that sometimes. They are just my normal thoughts. Also, I know some of the thoughts are quite disconnected from reality, so since they aren't valid (as in, aren't realistic), I assume they don't cost me emotionally what they would if they were factual. And maybe they don't, but they still might scare me/ weigh on me more than I think they do.

The other big thing I came away with was that when my counselor talked about being happy with my current improvements, she didn't mean that I couldn't keep hoping for more improvement or for a better life. She didn't mean this was as good as it gets. And neither did Mr. Psychiatrist. We can all keep hoping and expecting the improvement to continue. I don't have to settle for this. And I'm not. This is great for now, and I'm so happy I'm not where I was a year ago, but I don't want this to be the end of the improvements. That would be discouraging. Anyway, I think I've made my point, maybe more than once.

The other thing I learned on the side was that it can be worthwhile to keep trying to explain myself when I don't think the other person is understanding me. I tend to just give up instead of continuing to try.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My merry-go-round

I've been keeping a mood log since sometime last May, or maybe June. I've done it on the OpenOffice software similar to Excel. This means I can do cool stuff like make charts and graphs to see how my mood has swooped around over the last year. This last week, I found that you can also put in a trend line over your chart. This was neat, but disturbing. I used it over charts made from week averages for the last 10 or 11 months. I learned that: My depression at its best (each day, then averaged per week) is getting better. My depression at its worst (each day, then averaged per week) is getting worse. My anxiety is getting worse. My sleep time is increasing. My exercise time is decreasing. Or, in short, my worst is getting worse. So then I wonder if I'm using the same standards to judge my mood as I was using in May last year. After all, the mood ratings are subjective, done each day, or occasionally every few days. But what if anxiety that I called a 5 in May would ...
Read more

OCD meddling in my education (again)

Image
What do you know, the insert picture function thingy is working today! Hence my photo not taking over more of the blog than it should. Today, if OCD were little g gods, I would have offended the gods. Actually, I did it last night. Thank you so much, professor, for giving OCD the opportunity to knock me to my knees. I'll have you know, however, that I am making some small show of resistance. Which I will explain. This is what I did. I did the communication screen with a little kid as per the instructions. Then, looking over it at home, I thought I missed something, so proceeded to correct something to say how the child actually pronounced it, not how I forgot and left it. And then the monster pounced. Because, being an hour or so removed from the situation, I no longer knew for absolute certain how the child said that word anymore. But I had just struck through the assumed mispronounced sound. So do I go all the way a...
Read more

Sunday

Well, played guitar in church today. I only dreamt about it two nights since Wednesday when I agreed to play. And neither dream was a total disaster... Anxiety, how much you do for me. Glad that's over until I start working up to playing next Sunday, too. Two Sundays in a row. Probably good for dealing with the anxiety monster. The pastor preached on Psalm 4 today, the second half of the (very short) chapter. It included dealing with upsetting emotions. He was good about saying that having the emotions themselves wasn't the problem, but then we have to deal with it. By stopping. A good old "be still" type verse is stuck in there, along with that vague "meditate" word (but not in my version; mine used other words for about the same meaning). The pastor's paraphrase of the meditating part was to address yourself, telling yourself to "be still" etc. Anyhow, by the end of the sermon and the chapter, he was hoping that people around us would see t...
Read more