I am almost done with IOP and I’m not sure how to cope without it.
#BipolarDisorder #Bipolar2Disorder #Bipolar1Disorder #MajorDepressiveDisorder #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #SchizoaffectiveDisorder #Schizophrenia #hashtag #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder #MentalHealthHero #MentalHealth #MentalHealthAwareness #IntensiveOutpatientProgram #IOP #Inpatient
I’m embarrassed.
Recently I spent time in a mental health hospital due to a serious breakdown. Thankfully I was able to get the help I needed. Due to the low key hostility I’ve been dealing with at my job due to all of this. My brain now is trying to over compensation by thinking that to continue healing I need to spend money. Or maybe it’s a distraction. Not sure. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me and unlike last time I’m 100% aware of what I’m doing and it makes me feel like crap. Not sure how to stop, since I’m aware of the destructive behavior and it’s negative side effects.
Any suggestions? I’m all ears.
#CheckInWithMe #lost #MentalHealth #IntensiveOutpatientProgram
#PTSD #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #Anxiety
What do you do to make the disruptive and cycle stop? I’m feeling a constant hollow feeling in my stomach and irritation that I can’t focus on anything to save my life today. I’m feeling stuck because I put myself down anytime people compliment me or cheer me on for “doing better”. It’s been about a month since I’ve self-harmed, and Yeah I think I can go a month or maybe 2 without cutting...but that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. Don’t get me wrong, I do want to go months without doing it, it is a giant step from where I was before. I’m just in a place where I just began an #IntensiveOutpatientProgram and I’m scared to commit myself because I see myself getting better or getting worse and then everyone will abandon me. It’s weird to explain it that way...but yeah it’s terrifying and I usually cave back into my “comfort”. Has anybody else felt like this and have struggled with self-sabotage?
Somehow, after successfully completely two different treatment programs, attending years of consistent therapy, finding a helpful combination of meds, and being incredibly open about my story and diagnoses, I somehow began to operate under this unspoken pressure to be “better.”
With the holiday season and now the arrival of the long awaited “2020” year, I noticed something. By advocating for therapy and the freedom to feel and express emotions, I started to place this barrier between . I often talk about how finishing treatment and taking my meds doesn’t mean I never struggle - it just means I now have more tools to handle bad days. Yet, for some reason, when bad days come, I feel this weight of condemnation. I catch myself saying “This should not be happening.” When I am symptomatic, I hate myself for having an illness. With the new release of my debut single as an artist, of my hopeful anthem “This Is It” and the almost completion of my EP Brave Enough, I have become aware of an intensifying need to be “better.” Better in this use of the word doesn’t mean “improvement” - it means “cured” and “perfect” and “beyond that whole ‘mental illness thing’.
One of my favorite things I learned in treatment was the existence of dialectics, a world in which two distinct things need not be mutually exclusive. Sometimes I don’t treat myself like I can live in that world, while simultaneously giving everyone else the grace to live there. Lately, I’ve been treating myself like I can’t be encouraging and inspirational and also struggle, like I can’t be better and still in the process of healing, and like I can’t sing life into hopeless places and sometimes have doubt myself. So, to combat this, I decided to connect with others who know this plight. I decided to not isolate myself from people with minds and heart ssimilar to mine. It’s somewhat intimidating... AND I can be hesitant and still be brave. I’d love to build connections with others who might feel like this too. I know I’m not the only one. Today, I join the community. #BipolarDisorder #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Bipolar2Disorder #CyclothymicDisorder #PersistentDepressiveDisorder #MoodDisorders #MoodStabilizers #AnorexiaNervosa #AtypicalAnorexia #BulimiaNervosa #EDNOS #OSFED #progressnotperfection #ResidentialTreatment #Inpatient #IntensiveOutpatientProgram #PartialHospitalizationProgram #Selfharm #stability #Isolation #Music #MightyPoets #MightyMusic
Can anyone tell me about their experience in an Intensive Outpatient Program? Things have gone really downhill with my mental health lately and my psychiatrist is recommending that I consider one. #Depression #IntensiveOutpatientProgram
#52SmallThings #patience #MentalHealth #IntensiveOutpatientProgram #BipolarDisorder #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder
You know that song, Bad Guy? Of course you do. It’s a bop. And it probably makes you feel like a badass when you blast it through your stereo, windows down and driving on the open road.
When you look at me, you’d be singing “she’s the goooooood guyyyyy...duh.”
But that’s not how I feel inside. Inside I AM the bad guy. I beat myself up, in more ways than one, and feel way past being fixed. But I’m supposed to be the good guy. It’s a massive conflict.
Lately these feelings and actions have caused me to enter an intensive outpatient program. The bad guy is winning right now, and sometimes I don’t want that to go away. But I do want to live a life where I don’t think about the dark and the bad every minute.
My first day of treatment was Thursday. I was the new kid. I thought my problems would begin to get solved the second I arrived..I mean this place is supposed to help, right? But I learned nothing of use to me that would quiet the bad guy.
I made a list when I got home of the things I wanted to address privately with one of the counselors before the day’s groups and such. I was mostly scared that I was too sick for this program, and there really isn’t much more that is out there to treat people like me.
I was nervous but I found our main counselor, B, and asked to speak with him. It was here where he made me realize that the first day isn’t necessarily about me. It’s more of observing, getting comfortable, meeting everyone etc.
So then I asked him specific questions, like would I get to talk in group and would people help me since there aren’t really individual therapists? Would I learn coping skills? Would I get the help I really needed?
Could I ever send the bad guy away?
And he looked me in the eyes and said yes.
He told me I’d only had one day under my belt and that he would direct the group’s focus more to the things I’d said.
He told me to see how I felt on days 3, 4, 5...
He told me to have patience.
So, today, I am being patient.
- the patient (hopeful?) bad guy xx
My psychiatrist and therapist want me to go to the ER because they think it will be bureaucratically easier to find an available program that takes my insurance quickly, but I’m terrified to go to the ER to talk to a bunch of strangers alone and I don’t have anyone to go with me. Thanks for your help.
I finished my first week of intensive outpatient therapy #IntensiveOutpatientProgram .... it was good I guess but SO emotionally and mentally exhausting. I think today I’m feeling the side effects. High #Anxiety , #Depression , wanting to lay in bed all day, and just not. be. here.....I hate myself for feeling so lazy and even feeling like a burden to my family. My husband left me alone for a few hours, knowing I’m actively struggling with #Selfharm .... trusting me when I cannot trust myself.
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