(Written in January 2009)
\nKaren was helpful.\u00a0 I read her some passages out of this journal and the last one.\u00a0 I said I felt like the bipolar 2 diagnosis had hit me like a tidal wave.\u00a0 Karen kept saying nothing had changed, and that the diagnosis was just my psychiatrist speaking out of her worldview.\u00a0 I can understand intellectually, but nothing shifts emotionally.\u00a0 I asked if I could curl up next to her, and then I was finally able to relax and come into the present. and acknowledge that I was overwhelmed without going into the story of it.\u00a0 I\u2019m overwhelmed, and I don\u2019t know what to do, and it\u2019s OK that I don\u2019t know what to do.\u00a0 Karen said \u201cYou are doing it, you are asking for help, you are changing the way you are in the world.\u00a0 You are doing something really different and scary.\u201d I was OK for a while and then some part of me popped up with anxiety because I \u201cwasn\u2019t doing anything\u201d and if I didn\u2019t do something, how would I get better?\u00a0 Karen said I\u2019m not doing nothing, I\u2019m breathing, I\u2019m relaxing, I\u2019m aware of what\u2019s around me.\u00a0 O yes, I\u2019m PRESENT, present to my own experience with compassion, not making myself wrong.
\nEarlier, perhaps right at the beginning there was another voice that said I should just be able to get up & get out of the misery.\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 I should just be able to get up and walk away from low thyroid, PTSD, and bipolar 2.\u00a0 Karen said this voice isn\u2019t me, to \u201cwrap it up and send it back to them.\u201d But it certainly feels like me.\u00a0 Well, of course it\u2019s partly the \u201ctough little drip that just wouldn\u2019t quit.\u201d She has got me through bad times by encouraging me: OK, come on now, let\u2019s get up; you don\u2019t want to die, you want a life that works, etc.\u00a0 There\u2019s also the various introjected voices, not so much coaxing and reminding, as bullying, critical, harshly judgemental.\u00a0 Voices I learned from my father \u201cyou just want to be miserable\u201d and my mother \u201cIt seems you don\u2019t care,\u201d but because these judgements don\u2019t manifest verbally, they\u2019re very hard for me to fight.\u00a0 They don\u2019t show up as thoughts I can counter, they show up as body sensations of stuckness, coldness, heaviness, nausea.\u00a0 I feel judged, hated, wrong and bad etc. And I don\u2019t see that I am the one doing the judging and hating.\u00a0 If I try to bring compassion to the one that feels judged, it often (usually?) doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 I\u2019m feeling right now, as I write, that what I need is to bring compassion to the one that\u2019s judging me, and I immediately feel myself soften, the gush of love in the heart, toward that little kid who\u2019s doing the best she can to be good, to help others, to contribute to life, and to not feel miserable all the time, and the only coping skills she had she learned from a pair of harsh, judgemental, negative and irresponsible alcoholics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Written in January 2009) Karen was helpful.\u00a0 I read her some passages out of this journal and the last one.\u00a0 I said I felt like the bipolar 2 diagnosis had hit me like a tidal wave.\u00a0 Karen kept saying nothing … Continue reading