crisis

One minute ago, I used the last of my drug of choice that I had in my possession. I am trying to make good choices – or rather, healthy choices – in my life. This past weekend has been a [string] of unhealthiness, one choice after another, starting with and stemming from, acquiring said drug of choice. From Friday, until this morning, Monday, I was sober for less than an hour. Even while sleeping, I was intoxicated. Surprisingly, that is the worst of it. Laziness and poor communication take over the rest of the weekend. Yelling at and with the parental figure with whom I reside and doing next to nothing productive.

To say I enjoyed being intoxicated the whole time I was intoxicated, well, would be a lie. It was not fun or comfortable the whole time, not even for most of it. I didn’t like how I was feeling but didn’t like what I got when I changed it either. I tried to change it with chemicals, food (or lack of), and shopping. Anything that would change the torture my brain was putting me through. As much as I wanted to cut my arm or leg and let the black evil flow straight out… as much as I craved it, I managed to not. Not do that. But that craving did not dissipate even when I was sober for a part of the day today. I need release but I am trying to make healthy choices in my life. Healthy does not include self-harm or drugs, that’s for sure. But then, replacing those with food and shopping is not a decent choice, either, and straight up taking away these things I rely on and throw them out the window with no replacement in sight is not smart, either. So the real, healthy question is… what is it going to take to replace self-harm and drugs, to a point where they go away for good? A final goodbye to them and hello to… what though?

Coping skills are some of the most annoying things in the world to try to learn, when you were never taught them and only gathered the maladaptive ones into your arsenal.

For years, twenty to be exact, I’ve been in and out of therapy and psychiatric offices, with frequent detours to the psych hospital mixed in. And over those 20 years, I have gathered at least the knowledge of many other coping skills. Using cold temperatures to snap my brain back online, using video games or books or artwork to pull my attention off the unhealthy urge and redirect that attention to doing something else, using my five senses to connect my brain back to my body, and to the world around me, using the care and concern of those around me to build or even maintain my motivation to only make healthy choices, while checking the facts of the situation. I could keep this list going for quite a while, but only because I am not in crisis mode right now.

If I enter crisis mode, I love all connection to the healthy skills I know, deep down. That knowledge disappears. Not completely, not anymore. Every so often, an insane idea will plant itself in the dirt on the ground of my mind and grow and sprout into an inkling of an urge, and spring up, budding motivation to try something different. Something healthy. Something that may actually work. Something that could genuinely help. And help longer than the short term, immediate gratification of the maladaptive coping skills to which I usually resort.

The biggest thing I can say, after twenty years, is do not give up, do not give in, and the fight will be worth it, in the end. I would love to be able to say that it will never hurt and you will never struggle. I can say, making the healthy choice each time you are able, makes the healthy choice less difficult each subsequent time.

So to practice, what I preach, I am sitting in my room, writing pen to paper, in the glow of a video game streamer, as they run for their life in an asymmetrical horror survival game. The sound of their Aussie accent tantalizing the little hairs in my ears, attempting to draw my attention away. And they make it out alive, so I think, tonight at least, I will make it out unscathed this time, as well.

#cope #copingskills #Crisis #crisismode #BPD #Depression #habits #Healthy #Selfharm #se lfinjury

There are times when what has been becomes suddenly much more real then usual.
Not as a flashback - they're definitely different - but more like a realization that what's in my memories, in my patterns, in my body and mind has really happened, some time ago in my life.

What surprises me the most is:
I'm not fine, even though I'm better than in previous months and years, but, the hell, compared to before it's like I'm in Heaven.

It doesn't bring me the positivity and mood switch I might expect, it weights the same, most of the times, but it surely helps me redimensioning the whole picture.
I'm grateful, overall, for one thing: now, when I have my crisis, they're still bad and, sometimes, worse than other times years ago, BUT they're crisis: they happen from time to time. (I'm not talking about being on low mood; to me, before, it was much more than that: tentacles slipping out of my head trying to choke me and smash anything inside and around me).
I can feel my mind clean, and, yup, I'm now crying, all of a sudden.

I'd never wanna go back to before.

A week ago I was writing a post I've never shared and, when recalling the bad effects the thing I was talking about had on me, I realized the list was very very long and very very painful and messy.
What makes it often difficult for me to comprehend my patterns and problems is that I tend to hide them, and then forget about them, over the years.

Thing is, there has been terror.
I don't wanna include the details, because I'm aware that for someone they could be not nice.

I shared this picture (search for Riftress on Pinterest, if you're interest - I really like these works) because it is one of the pics I saved back then.
Something have sucked up my own self from my life and I think it was the exhaustion from that period.

Crying helps me too.
If now I'm crying, it means it really has been hard.
Since I tend to hide and minimize, since people shared their issues with me and rarely listened to me, always ignored the signals I was pointing out and since things for me often changed - environmentally speaking - I tend to forget.
To me, now, it feels like I'm based on a void past.
It doesn't mean I'd wanna linger on it: just that in order to understand why I am the way I am today I need to recall.

Times like this one, though, makes me wanna go back that before and erase everything. Why it had to be so damageful.
Again, though, I tend to hide: none really witnessed in person any free expression of my mental state, so, then, it feel more righteous to minimize it. This confuses me.

Though I think it's not fair to compair: the same trauma can have different outcomes on different people; that's why I think crying is helpful -> it spots out the fact that what I'm feeling and thinking about - recalling - has really been a hardship for me.

But it seems impossible that all the dark lump has really left. Did it?
Instead of feeling and expressing itself in dark and full of --- ways*, my mind's just flat. That's the new pattern, I guess.
I've been backfired.
* I don't really feel at ease sharing details, again, but I don't know how to express it.

I still have issues to work on, sometimes - often - I just can take my mind anymore, I often have no energy to live my life, but sure it changed. Time heals.
And I've understood myself and other people better, in the meanwhile, which has been another fundamental turning point.
And I can't express how grateful I am whenever I get to become more aware then before. I love understanding.
So - I still can change and for the better.
There's and I have hope in it.

#Reflection #throwback #Trauma #Crisis #time #Understanding #past #Memory #Pain #cry #Life #mind #pattern #backfired #Healing #Awareness #HealingProcess #exhaustion #Monster #illness #MentalHealth #growing #growth #Present #Hope #change #Grief #Energy