Category: Therapy

Standing Up To Life

Since October when it became clear I would have to give up some of my hopes and dreams I feel I haven’t been myself. I seem to lack focus and I have felt lost, defeated and frankly sad. There has been no shortage of tears. I have never considered myself a victim and I don’t want to start now. So after months and months of being in this dark place, I feel like I need to stand up for myself and look life in the face. I need to try and reconnect with my optimism, I need to channel a little Pollyanna.

This past year has been tough, I have felt isolated and very alone. But the one thing I had to hold onto was my hopes and dreams. They were my source of inspiration and motivation, especially with my agoraphobia. I would use them to motivate me to try harder, push further and most importantly, not to backslide. And sometimes they were just a bright spot in my day. It wasn’t about whether or not they would come true, although that would have been great, it was about believing that life can be better. That’s where I can tap into my Pollyanna. She has gotten me through some hard times in my life. But in the last few months she seems to be as lost as I feel.

I feel like if I don’t try to stand up and face life it is going to just run me over. It sounds so easy, but lacking focus and motivation is making it hard. Plus if you factor in the loss at the center of those hopes and dreams, it feels like a step hill to climb. So, I’m going to start to push myself and it maybe only tiny steps in the beginning, like in the beginning of therapy with my agoraphobia. If I’m lucky along the way I will find some other hopes and dreams, but they will never replace the ones I have lost.

New Realizations…..

The topic on most people’s mind is the new reality, and it’s an appropriate subject. I think most of us are trying to figure out how to navigate the new reality, it’s certainly is not like life as we have known it.

For me it seems to also be a time to look at my life and see what changes may be necessary. Normally I wouldn’t take as much time to reflect on this, but these are not normal times. I have realized there are some things that need work.

The first new realization is I have a longtime relationship that I need to let go of, not an easy process. I haven’t talked to this person for a while, so I thought maybe I would just let it go that way. But then that didn’t feel right, besides I had some things I really wanted to say. I decided to write a letter, I learned that in therapy. I thought it would let me feel like I had said what I wanted to. I started writing and rewriting and rewriting until I felt like it reflected what I wanted to say. While I was working on the letter I wasn’t sure if I would mail, maybe writing would be enough. Once it was finished I decided to go ahead and mail it, which I did. It’s been about three weeks and I have been second guessing myself whether or not I should have sent it and whether or not it says what I think it does. I am the worst for overthinking things. But it’s done and there’s nothing I can do about, so I just have to let it go. If only it was that easy.

There are more realizations that I need to address, but I am going to take a break and do something else before I address any of them. This was a difficult process and not as freeing as I had thought it would be.

Being Invisible

In the process of trying to get outside the house I found ‘security’ in the form of a broom.  I held onto it (like a crutch) and  it made me feel a little more grounded.  So when it came to getting out of the car I was stuck, but a friend had an idea….a wheelchair.  Well one thing I had learned in therapy is it isn’t about the process (or what it takes) it is about acheiving the goal.  So the wheelchair bridged the gap.  Dr Eppler called the wheelchair the rolling broom…well yeah!!!  Soon I was going more and more places.

My son has been in a wheelchair for 25 years and I thought I had seen all the reaction there were from people….but no.  When I am out in public in my wheelchair I have become invisible.  I have had people walk into my chair, hit me with thier shopping cart, cut me off so that I have to stop fast to keep from hitting them and then if they finally ‘see’ me I usual receive a nasty glare.

Now with my anxiety I don’t do well with an audience, but surely there could be a happy medium!!!  I don’t want special treatment, just equal access to society….it took a lot of work and a long time to get back out there…I intend to stay out!!!!

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Same story…….different day

I find myself once again in a familiar place.  Almost two weeks ago my son Robby went into the hospital.  Now that isn’t an unusual event for him, except this time it was a planned in advance.  I can’t remember the last time that happened, but he needed a procedure so we scheduled it, making possible to pack and prepare in more that ten minutes.  He ended up staying longer, something always seems to happen. Now he is back in the hospital, as so many times before.  You see Robby always seems to get discharged just a little too soon and then before you know it we are back in the er and many times readmitted to the hospital.  That’s what happened this time.  His planned procedure was to get a g tube placed, of course he had additional problems, while in the hospital his seizures got out of control one day and he had six grand mal seizures on one day.  He also was developing a cough and I tried to get the issue addressed as I hate to go back to the er. Dehydration brought us back, we tried to deal with everything at home but we couldn’t get enough fluid in him.

I found this unfinished post while once again sitting in a hospital room with my son.   And again he was in the hospital earlier in the week, admitted through the emergency room with yet another uti and sepsis.   In on Monday, discharged late Thursday morning and back to the er at 2 am Saturday morning and, of course, readmitted with a secondary infection and seizures, four Grand Mal and two Tonic seizures this time.

While the reasons for admission is different, the main difference between these two events is the dates.   Every time he is inpatient at the hospital I hope that he will stay long enough so we won’t have to come back, but no.  My hospital mantra has become ‘I want to go home, but I don’t want to have to come back.”  So far it hasn’t worked, but you know me, I stay optimistic-why I don’t know.

Fear, Trust and Leaps of Faith

Way back when my anxiety started so did my fear and as my anxiety got worse so did the fear.   These fears were mostly irrational and some even bordered on the edge of paranoia.  It was a combination of the fear and the anxiety that  lead to my agoraphobia.  And it was my first big leap of faith to seek out therapy and a lot of trust to let someone in.  In therapy I even had to learn to have trust in myself.  Actually this made me feel like I was flying without a net.

Over the years I worked hard to decrease my fears and increase my trust-this was not an easy task.  But then something happened that has made it hard for me to trust.  I had a doctor that misdiagnosed me for two years, this was obviously someone I had come to trust.  After I made many trips to the ER on my own, I finally was diagnosed with cancer-stage 4 cancer.  This has left me in a very difficult place, having lost trust in doctors at the very time I need doctors the most.  It is not easy to face my fear and make a leap of faith to trust a new doctor.  Unfortunately having many health issues leaves me in need of many different types of doctors.  I have had great success with some and still find myself struggling with others.  I believe that this is a long term project, but hopefully it will get better…..sometime. 

I wish I had the answers on how to take a successful leap of faith, but I don’t.  The one thing I think could help is to set a smaller goal, perhaps a step of faith-not so large, but still moving forward.

Changes

As everyone knows, but might not like, the fact is that life seems to constantly be changing.  People come and go, they die, babies are born, jobs change, there are promotions, then there are marriages, divorces, even change of mind and so much more.  I know when my panic/anxiety and agoraphobia where at their worst change was something I did not deal well with.  To try to deal with changes I would just visit my old friend denial again and make believe that things were just the same-that worked for me….or maybe not.  I fooled myself for as long as possible, I found that creating my own little world inside my house made it a little easier to cope.  That doesn’t mean I wasn’t confronted with changes, I was, but I put them into my own context.  When that didn’t work I just buried whatever changes there were, hoping never to see them again.  But then therapy came along and suddenly my previously denied and buried changes were on public display.  

I find that I have become better about handling change, at least most of the time.  But there are some times when it seems like there are more changes than I can deal with.  I feel like I have been knee deep in way too many changes lately and I am overwhelmed.   I have someone I am very close with that lives a distance away and is now moving further away.  I have had some deaths, changes in my life style, health changes, changes in the way I access medical care, changes with my son, and I am sure there are more that I am forgetting.  I think it would help if I had some sort of chart to keep it all straight.  I have decisions to make that could lead to more changes in our life.   I am trying hard to use the tools I have learned in therapy to keep it all in perspective, you’ll notice I said trying.