finallyalone

[finallyalone]

Interesting Symptoms (Part 2)

Since my last post (over 2 months ago now), overall, I’d say I’ve been in a much better place. My baseline mood and stability have continued to improve and I’m feeling confident in my trajectory; however, the anxiety/OCD symptoms are still going strong and presenting themselves in increasingly difficult ways...which leads right into the second main symptom I mentioned in my last post.

This symptom revolves around an intense need to be completely/perfectly “good”....which manifests as an intense need to be honest and transparent, often to the point of confessing even very minor “white lies” or transgressions (or even just potential transgressions), almost as a “cleansing” of sorts. 

Here are some simple examples of how this might look: 

I’m in a conversation and someone references something (maybe a movie quote, a term/phrase, a character, something like that) intending to be funny and even though I don’t get the reference (OR, I’m simply not certain I get the reference), I chuckle and nod -- moments later I freak out when I realize I’ve effectively lied to this person.

I show up 5 minutes late to a zoom meeting and instinctively say, “hey sorry, got caught up on the phone” -- I freak out since I lied; I was actually just sitting at my desk reading some article or something.

I’ll have a memory of something minor I did a long time ago -- I freak out when I realize I can’t be certain Jess would not be upset if she knew about it. 

When I say “freak out” I mean that A) I likely start to feel anxiety throughout my body, likely in my chest, and usually in my stomach/digestive system as well, B) I get mentally preoccupied to the point it’s hard to focus on anything else (and certainly not enjoy anything else) C) my “internal mood” becomes clouded by this “feeling” (it feels more accurate to describe it that way than as a thought) that I’m somehow this bad person who has done something terrible and I’ll never be able to fix it.

But then there does feel like there might be a way to fix it -- the confession. 

A large part of me certainly logically realizes the confession is not necessary and also not ultimately helpful for me, even if it helps my anxiety in the short term (and of course, many times a confession is not even feasible anyways... although you’d be surprised how creative I can get about confessing). But the state in which I find myself is so uncomfortable that the urge to confess is extremely hard to resist. I usually wind up with this “battle” in my head of whether or not to confess, which of course usually just further adds to the anxiety. 

Frustratingly, OCD “cycles” like this just further perpetuate fear, with the fear becoming more insidious over time; as the fear grows and evolves, so does the OCD alongside it. 

You might imagine how one “solution” my anxious mind might come up with to this “I think I did something wrong and I need to tell someone about it” issue -- aside from confessing -- would be to just never do anything wrong in the first place. Said differently (and more broadly), I just need to remain in perfect control at all times.

Of course this backfires, the fears are further amplified, the pattern continues, with the unfortunate result being that the anxiety has evolved beyond latching onto actual real events or memories -- all it needs now is something hypothetical, and the uncertainty/doubt can take it from there. My mind then really starts to question itself: Are you sure you didn’t do anything else? Are you sure you are remembering everything? Are you sure you fully confessed about that? Are you sure you wouldn’t do something like that in the future? 

This is where intrusive thoughts can become problematic too, with the fear, doubt, and uncertainty looking to assign meaning to anything questionable my mind might create. Even just reading about something traumatic happening to someone...my anxious mind attempts to draw connections: are you sure you aren’t a part of this? Are you sure you wouldn’t do something like this? Just imagine if you did something like this -- your life would be fucked forever, no confession would ever solve that.  

It’s all a mess.

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Just like the “memory hoarding” symptoms I described in my last post, all of this could loosely be put in the OCD family. There is a manifestation of OCD termed “moral scrupulosity” which you can read about HERE -- that article does a pretty good job of describing my experience.

Also, as my last post said, it’s not too hard to see where this is coming from inside me and why this has “flared up” as much as it has now; journeying towards a deeper acceptance of myself as a flawed human requires moving through painful realities and a loss of control, so naturally my mind is resisting that no matter how difficult that resistance ends up being.

Fortunately, even as this has gotten “worse,” I did so much intrusive thought/OCD work earlier in this journey, so I can at least cognitively remind myself what this is and why this is happening, which offsets some of the irrational fears that drive the anxiety.

Still, it’s going to take a lot of work from here to start dealing with some of this stuff better than I am currently.

[finallyalone]

Interesting Symptoms (Part 1)

I’d say the last week or so has been better for me...”better” as in, my experience of life has been calmer and less intense and I’ve been able to have more peaceful moments. But, the deeper work I’m facing right now is still pretty intense. 

I mentioned in my last post that as I’ve been faced with accepting reality, my anxiety and panic as really ramped up in resistance to this. This has showed up in many ways, but I want to share about two of the main ones:

First, is my now obsessional attempt at trying to remember everything in my life, particularly my thoughts. This started a couple months ago when about 30 minutes before a therapy session, I saw something in the room that triggered a thought that felt somewhat important in the moment, but it was so fast/fleeting that I actually couldn’t quite remember it moments later. I spent the next few minutes trying to retrace my steps to retrigger the thought, but it just wasn’t there.

Even in the moment, I did not actually think the thought was particularly important, and I certainly did not want to keep trying to remember it, and I certainly did not want my attempt to keep remembering it to distract from my therapy session. Of course that’s what happened though; the anxiety that came over me was strong enough that the only thing my mind could do was keep thinking about this, thus I was completely distracted (and thus extremely frustrated) in my therapy session, trying to talk about other shit even though my mind was “gone” (which I talked with my therapist about at length, part of which led to my breakthrough). 

This has grown more intense over the last couple months, and frankly, it’s gotten pretty out of control:

At first, if anything important popped into my mind, I’d make a point to write it down immediately so as to not forget it (usually just making a note in my phone). But, as expected, so many problems extend out from there:

First off, all it took was one time where I didn’t write down a thought (that presumably didn’t feel important enough at the time) and then forgetting that thought, to lead to me just basically start writing down almost any main thought I had. But of course, I’d also obviously be in plenty of situations where I couldn’t easily write things down (say a conversation with someone, or a meeting, or while driving), so when I’d inevitably forget something from one of those times, the anxiety grew further. 

As is the case with obsessions and anxiety, the need to control grew further. I’d record audio clips of myself talking my thoughts out loud in the car when I couldn’t write something down. In the middle of conversations, I’d get out my phone to make a note. I’d wake up in the middle of the night with a thought and make another note in my phone. I’d write down my thoughts about my thoughts about a conversation (e.g.: say I’m talking with someone and I catch myself having the thought I may have said something embarrassing a minute ago...and then moments later, I have a deeper thought about why that might have been embarrassing to me...I’d need to write that down too).

Most recently though, this has finally crossed over into my dreams.

A few days back I’d had a really weird/strange dream, but when I woke up -- as is the case with most of us -- I couldn’t really recall much of it it. In the past, I rarely if ever spent anytime actively trying to remember my dreams, but this time, for some reason, I started to really try to think about the dream. A minute or so later, I remembered the main aspect of the dream and I felt a big sense of relief. I moved on with my day.

Then, two nights ago, I woke up at like 5 am and of course again had some fleeting memories of what I was dreaming about. I started to really think about it, and even though I remembered a couple things, I still couldn’t recall some main stuff, and I grew more frustrated. I’d drift in and out of sleep but my brain was still desperately trying to recall the dreams, but they were only further fading, being replaced by new dreams. I woke up in an anxious state, and my anxiety grew in the morning as I just couldn’t recall the dream and I knew it was fading further away.

I had a feeling this would happen, but last night, I woke up at like 12:30am after a dream and immediately got out my phone to try to write it down. I was still dosing in and out of sleep and thus my written thoughts are barely coherent. And then once again, in the early morning hours as I was really starting to wake up, I had more dreams...but I was able to recall the main stuff, and jot it down. PEACE!

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Clearly, this is a ridiculous strategy and a never ending trap, with the only way out being to accept that part of life is forgetting things sometimes and having imperfect memories. But knowing that doesn’t get rid of the anxiety easily enough, and so I unintentionally keep doubling down, and the more I do, the worse it gets, because there is never an end and there is always a catch: sometimes I won’t remember what I was thinking when I wrote something down and I’ll get more confused and more anxious; sometimes I’ll knowingly choose not to write something down because I decide it’s not important, but then hours later I’ll forget what that was and thus not be CERTAIN it wasn’t important so then I will get more anxious; sometimes I’ll write so much that the important stuff feels lost in the shuffle which makes me more anxious. There is no winning this way.

The best way I could explain this is, everyone knows that feeling when you had something in your mind you were going to talk about in conversation, but then you forget, and then you usually spend a period of time (for most “normal” people, a short amount of time) trying to remember before moving on. Sometimes though, if not oftentimes, we remember what we had forgotten, and there is that sweet sense of relief.

Imagine if remembering that thing felt like it had the stakes of your life being on the line, with that feeling of relief being the only thing to calm you down -- that’s about what this can feel like sometimes. It’s clearly in the OCD family, and it seems very similar to what is referred as “memory hoarding.” You can read about it here or here.

In my case, I seem to have taken this “memory hoarding” concept and extrapolated it to include even my own internal dialogue. To feel comfortable, it’s like I need to know that anything I ever think, I could access again if ever necessary. But if I can’t, well then my whole being is somehow at risk.

It doesn’t take much to see where this has come from inside me. Again, facing my humanness and the associated realities has sent me into a state of deeper resistance -- “oh, I’m supposed to accept that I’m a flawed human and life is uncertain and messy and I have such little control over all of it? Fuck that, let me exert every bit of control I’ve got.” 

Again, it's a trap, but in a way, it’s still more tolerable than the deeper pain of acceptance. 

Hoping I find my way out of the trap sooner rather than later. 

(Part 2 still to come)

[finallyalone]

Reaching Deeper Layers

After easily the calmest and most satisfying month or so of the last 2.5 years back in August and early September, the last 6 weeks have been extremely intense for me. 

In some ways, I’d say I’ve been “fine” -- my functioning has been great at work and at home, and I’ve had some nice moments with friends and family that have helped buttress my overall state. But my recent therapeutic realization has passed the satisfying “oh, this all makes so much sense” stage, and has reached the, “oh shit, I’ve seen reality now, and I can’t go back, but I don’t know how I’m actually going to deal with this reality” stage. 

I actually described this concept quite well in a post from earlier this year -- I liked this part specifically:

This new cognitive understanding of my reality was empowering now that I could handle it. My problems were so clear, and the solutions – while not all actions per se, but still, cognitive approaches I could take – were so obvious. I was feeling more confident than ever. I was back in control.

Then, I crash.

How could this be??? I know what’s happening here, I know why this triggers me, I know where this comes from….so why am I still feeling like this?!?

I desperately wanted to believe my cognitive understanding of things could directly translate to immediate emotional resilience. But it just doesn’t work that way. Cognitive understanding certainly goes a long way towards putting us on the path of emotional healing and resilience, but that’s still it’s own journey, and one that takes time. Those coping mechanisms I was holding onto were to protect against more primal fears I had been running from my entire life. So when I strip those away, and then say have a small conflict with Jess, even if on a cognitive level I understand the dynamics involved and know it’s no big deal, my psyche is still having an emotional response – an extension of deep, primal fear getting triggered – that really is largely out of my conscious control.

So here I was again, with a reality I didn’t want to see.

Hah, this has pretty much been my life over the last 6 weeks, wanting to believe my “cognitive understanding of my reality” -- my realization about my core fear of humanness being protected against by a desperate need to control -- was “the step” when it was really just the start of this part of the journey. As that realization has set in, so has the anxiety and panic.

But as another post of mine from earlier this year shared, anxiety and panic often feels very much like resistance to me; it’s this tension between the reality I know I have to accept, and the part of my identity -- well, almost the core of my identity -- built around not accepting that reality:

Other times though, the grief bomb hits hard enough that we can’t talk ourselves into it being a speed bump that once cleared will allow us to resume on our previous path – we know we must find a new path. This is why the most important – and hardest – part of significant grief is is the letting go of the narrative we had written and were planning to write. This is the hard part of what is referred to as acceptance.

But to accept is to deal with a pain so great – both the letting go of and massive shift required of our identities – so we often do everything we can to resist it.

And there’s that resistance I was feeling.

It’s funny reading this from myself 7 months ago -- it’s just further proof that I have had the “cognitive understanding” piece down, and it’s the acceptance piece that is always the hardest. I even say this:

Layers of grief have continued to be uncovered. So while I might have initially understood something broadly (ie: I am going to have to grieve my external self I created to make myself feel safe and secure in the world), as this journey has continued to pull back more layers of the onion, I’ve had to see more specifically what needs to be grieved, and that’s when the resistance flares up, and the tension feels almost overwhelming. The train of this journey has too much momentum to stop now, but there are things of which I so badly don’t want to let go that I’ll dig my heels in and throw stakes in the ground, if only to let myself believe for a moment that I can keep the old story alive.

But I can’t, and it tears me apart.

I couldn’t say it any better now than I did back then. 

But I guess the one thing I’d add is, not only are the layers getting more clear, but they are getting deeper, and so naturally the tension becomes even more intense. 

I’d say I’m doing the best I can with all of this right now. As hard as it is for me to really believe, that has to be enough.   

[finallyalone]

Quick Check-In

Not much has changed from my last post -- I’m still in the midst of processing my recent “breakthroughs,” with a fair share of both stable and anxious moments along the way. I can feel myself getting closer to the root of things, but as that happens, the defenses get a bit stronger as well, so there is this tug of war between where I know I’m going (and where part of me wants to go) and where my psyche wants to keep me. 

It’s not an easy process at all, but it’s one I know is right for me, and one I’m prepared to take on.  

[finallyalone]

Big Progress

This post is a little tricky. 

I’m having my first particularly hard day in about a month today. It’s no surprise I’m posting, as I’ve noticed my need to share is stronger, and the words come out easier, when I’m struggling more...I suppose that’s natural. 

However, the last month or so since my last post has been almost certainly the best month I’ve had in this journey. Even compared to April-May when I was doing quite well before, there has been a new layer of “solidity” I’d say, a deeper level of healing I can feel. It’s been extremely impactful and encouraging, and at times I’ve had my fair share of calm, peace, pleasure, and joy. I can feel a spark alive in me again, and it’s felt so, so good.

Overwhelmingly, I attribute this progress to A) moving through all the grief I’d been speaking to in my recent posts, as I finally did feel like I was able to reach a deeper level of healing inside me, and B) some pretty big therapeutic breakthroughs. 

In some ways, the breakthroughs aren’t anything new I suppose, but what’s certainly new is the way my brain was able to “see” these dynamics in a way I just couldn’t process before. 

The cliff’s notes version is this: I realized one of my deepest fears is to have to see and accept myself as human: as a flawed, mistake-making, not-extraordinary, not-so-good-as-to-guarantee-others’-love-of-me, entirely-separate-from-all-others...human. This blog’s title speaks to a key component of this fear: someone unable to accept their own humanness will be scared shitless of being alone, and will necessarily need to be with and around others (literally and more metaphorically) to in some way feel validated and worthy. So yeah, for me to heal, I needed to find a way to be ok alone. But to handle being alone, I needed to find a way to be ok being human, and I think that’s part of what I was missing.

This is not some simple, cognitive step. I’ve touched on my diagnosis in this blog, and it certainly plays in heavily here: my brain is wired to “feel good” to the extent I can feel “above” just being a simple human. I need to believe I don’t make the mistakes others make, and I don’t have the character flaws others do, and I “do good” and care about people in a way others don’t, and I take care of my shit the way others don’t, etc etc etc. And because of all that, of course I get to feel happy and good about myself. 

There’s a very subtle underlying belief in there too: to believe all of those things about myself, I also need to believe in a level of control I have in life, not just over external things, but of myself. The “trap” is that I subtly wind up living by the belief that if I can perfectly control myself -- sure, my actions, but also my thoughts and emotions -- then I can achieve “superiority” in a way that protects me. So what do you think happens when life starts showing someone like me how little control I have, even over myself? 

Suddenly, that superiority feels extremely threatened. Suddenly I am not feeling safe anymore and I look for more ways to control things. But soon enough, the reality starts to set in: I’m human like everyone else, and I can’t “control” my way out of that.

So I suppose, the breakthrough is in realizing it’s this holding onto control that is perpetuating this fear of being human, and vice versa of course, and this feedback loop is what is so often causing me such great anxiety.

In brief moments, I’ve been able to let go of control and the need to be more than human, and it’s amazing the freedom I can feel. Of course, at this point, most of the time my psyche still feels too scared by this reality, and so it tries to protect me by freaking out about it. But I’ve got lots of proof at this point that if I’m patient, I’ll continue to break down this wall, slowly but surely. 

[finallyalone]

Patience

I haven’t felt the desire to share much here recently.

For the most part, I’ve remained in the same place -- sitting with and trying to process deeper feelings of grief, sadness, and fear. I’ve certainly had some lighter moments mixed in which have allowed for some more “traditionally enjoyable” moments, but it really has been pretty consistently heavy for me over the last 10 weeks or so.  

There has been some level of stability in the struggle though that feels comforting -- even in my lowest and most intense moments, I have remained stable enough enough to ride with it in a way that feels productive, as opposed to fighting it or feeling it entirely overwhelmed by it as I experienced in the past. So as I’ve continued to repeat recently, this just feels like where I need to be right now, and I’m ok with that.  

[finallyalone]

More Grief

Things have continued to be pretty tough for me since my last update, with only very fleeting positive and lighter moments, and a pretty consistent combo of anxiety and heavier/darker moods. I've definitely been struggling.

But as I said in my last post, this feels like where I’ve needed to be right now. I can feel the ways I am sitting with newer and deeper layers of grief, and though part of me wants to return to those lighter states of being, I feel confident my work right now is to not rush through this, and allow myself the space to feel everything associated with this.

The trickiest part is I can’t just put my life on hold during this time -- I still have to show up at work, and in my home life with Jess and the kids, and it’s not always easy to balance the heaviness of feelings of grief with the lightness of (for example) moments on the beach with the kids. But I’m doing my best, and that’s all I can ask of myself right now. 

[finallyalone]

Sitting In It

June has turned out to be the hardest month I’ve had since February. It’s been well over a month since I’ve had a “good day” (after having them consistently in April and early May), and many (if not most) days have been full of pretty intense struggle. I forgot what it was like to cry this much. 

But I’m not just trying to be positive when I say that I’m at the point where it (mostly) feels ok for things to be like this right now. That doesn’t mean it’s been easy, it just means I’m willing to sit with how hard it’s been, as opposed to trying to change it.

I knew there was deeper grief I hadn’t yet hit, and I finally hit it. Right now at least, I don’t have much to say about it, but so I’m just sitting in it. 

[finallyalone]

A Bit on Narcissism - Part 2

I’ve been better overall since last week, with the disconnected feeling mostly fading by the end of the week, replaced by my more “normal” baseline, albeit with a ton of anxious moments taking over at times. The last month or so has been like this pretty much -- a generally stable, optimistic baseline state, but then a somewhat relentless barrage of anxiety and panic hitting every so often. For the most part I feel like I’ve handled all of this pretty well, which is another small sign of progress, but it certainly hasn’t been easy.

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I wanted to touch on another aspect of narcissism that’s been on my mind more recently, regarding the difference between self-esteem and self-compassion (see THIS LINK if you want to read more). 

Generally speaking, people assume that high self-esteem is a good thing, and people with high self-esteem are happier and function much better than those with low self-esteem. Of course this is true. But there’s a catch to the concept of self-esteem, and that’s where we can start to see why self-compassion is a more stable indicator of happiness and functioning than self-esteem.

(disclaimer: this is all “conceptual” in that we are adding interpretations to the definition of self-esteem to explain a broader point about the roots of “a subjective evaluation of one’s worth”)

The “catch” to self-esteem is that we typically view it (at least subconsciously) as defining our worth as somehow contingent upon others’ valuations of us, or even just our view of ourselves relative to others. So sure, someone who “successfully competes against their peers” whether in school, sports, jobs, hobbies, etc, is going to generally have higher self-esteem than a person who less successfully competes. This is obvious to everyone.

But that is inherently a problem, of course, since if we start attaching our worth to our position relative to others (or their evaluations of us), well, what happens if life leads us down a path where our position no longer feels particularly "successful”? What if we don’t get into the college we wanted while all our friends did? What if our perfect partner breaks up with us and chooses someone else? What if we are no longer the best on our team? What if our friends are moving up in their careers faster than us? What if we lose our job? What makes us feel “worthy” then? 

This is where the concept of self-compassion comes in.

For our feelings of worth to be sustainable long term, we must learn to find them inherently, from within. Rather than “competitiveness” against others (which self-esteem breeds), self-compassion breeds “connection” with others through a shared sense of “common humanity” where we are all human, subject to the human experience. 

Ideally, our parents would cultivate this in us, teaching us how to accept ourselves just the way we are, without needing to achieve anything or “fix anything” about ourselves to be worthy, while promoting the same perspective of others, with minimal judgment.

But we all know it rarely works out that way.

In fact, our parents often (unintentionally) use us as validation for their own self-esteem. As their children, the more successful we are, the more well-behaved we are, etc., the better they feel about themselves, as they see our success (or lack thereof) as also a reflection of their worth. Obviously this can be dangerous as children since we naturally then try to please them to feel worthy. 

But this dynamic is human as well, and as long as this is not too extreme, life will usually work all this out as kids grow up and inevitably fail and come up short of all the expectations and projections, parents learn to accept this, and kids are forced to find themselves amidst it all.

At it’s extremes though, a relentless pursuit of self-esteem devolves into needing to constantly feel superior to feel ok about one’s self -- it’s like a drug in that sense. And this, is where we start drifting towards the less adaptive end of the narcissism spectrum.

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Self-compassion is still a new concept to me. The only measure of self-worth I’ve known is of the self-esteem variety and that worked well for me...until it didn’t.

When our worth -- and even more broadly, our identity -- is so wrapped up in the concept of self-esteem, it takes a long time to re-wire our brains to “soften” into a more self-compassion based approach. I’m well over 2 years into it at this point, and I’m still just taking baby steps. 

[finallyalone]

Disconnected

After recovering on late Friday and into Saturday morning, I started struggling again later on Saturday afternoon. I was feeling ok most of the day, albeit still a bit fragile, but when some old memory triggers popped into my head, I quickly slipped back into the anxiety.

By that point my resilience was low from the previous stretch of struggle, and I felt myself slip a bit further into a place that was both extremely familiar (from my struggles in 2019-2020) and one I knew I hadn’t been to in awhile. 

Over the last 6 months or so -- and especially over the last two months -- as I’ve shared in various ways, my default state has been much better; most days are fairly optimistic, with some days where I start to “feel good,” and other days where I might be dealing with an acute struggle based on something that has come up in my life, but can feel “productive.” For the first 18 months or so of all this though, my default state felt far more fragile, where I was just really trying to keep things together. 

The main feeling that came to my mind this time around was disconnected. As I felt the anxiety increase, I also felt myself slowly start to “check out” of things too. It’s like it had all just been too much on my brain recently, and I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I almost just started to shut down. Mood drops heavily, and it’s like all I want to do is go to sleep and forget about everything. 

Which I did...but then I woke up and the feeling was still there.

I remember this so much from that first year in 2019, where I was just so consistently living in a state of disconnection, trying to figure out my way back to my life somehow. 

Fortunately, it’s not 2019 anymore, and I have a much better perspective than I did back then. Here on Tuesday, I’m still struggling pretty bad -- which yeah, certainly solidifies my first hard stretch in months -- but I’ve been able to sit with things a little bit better this time around and “trust the process.” By yesterday, I was able to gain clarity on some of the reasons I wound up in this state, and realized at least part of what I was needing to process and move through. I had gotten so used to these lighter and more satisfying baseline states, where any struggles felt far more temporary and fleeting, but sometimes it’s necessary to “struggle” for more than a few hours or days to really let something run it’s course.  

I’m ok with that. 

[finallyalone]

Hitting a low

It’s weird...I’m almost not wanting to type this out. I don’t want to admit I’m having a hard stretch here after going almost 3 months without hitting a really low spot. 

But I’m here today.

I woke up in the middle of the night after having a crazy/weird dream that for some reason gave me a TON of anxiety. I could feel myself panicking in my half awake, half asleep state, just hoping it would fade. But it didn’t.

It’s been a long time (since late last summer I think) since I’ve felt this distinctly intense experience of “not being real” and I just can’t ground myself really. When I’ve been close to this state over the last 9 months or so, it always came right after a clearly difficult experience, whether it was an interaction with Jess, an old memory trigger, or something like that, which actually was always a path towards grounding. But this is how things often felt in that first year, where out of nowhere I’d just wake up and feel completely overwhelmed for no real external reason it seems. 

I’m sure there is something there, but that’s mostly beside the point for now. Regardless, I’m deep in struggle and I’d really gotten used to not feeling like this.

Similar to my last post, I can feel there is a part of me that feels some solidity even in this moment. I know it will pass and I’ll feel ok soon enough, but this state always seems to shake the foundation all over again. It’s so scary.

(edit 5/29/21 9:00am - I started feeling better late yesterday afternoon, and feel MUCH better this morning. So yeah, feels good to once again bounce back -- even from a really low moment like this -- pretty quickly) 

[finallyalone]

Astros Game Nuance

I took CJ to his first Astros game since 2017 last night. He thoroughly enjoyed himself, and it was a really special moment for me as well, getting to experience his first baseball game as a “kid.” He asked a million questions, and I was happy to answer all of them. 

It was also a struggle a bit the whole time as well. 

Right at two years ago was the last Astros game I had been to. I was a couple months into this journey at that point and and I very distinctly remember how I was feeling during that game -- I had been doing a little bit better for a couple days and so wasn’t feeling nearly as bad as I had been, but I also felt extremely lost at the same time. 

Two years later...just a bit too much felt the same. 

I was having an ok-ish day yesterday, mood was dragging a little bit, but I was looking forward to taking CJ to the game. As the game approached, I could feel myself getting more anxious, not liking my mood not being great for something I was really looking forward to. As we got to the stadium and the environment there is just inherently “up” -- everyone excited, cheering, chugging beers, laughing, etc -- I felt myself getting frustrated at where I was at, feeling a disconnection from it all, as I have so often over the last couple years. We settled in to our seats, and I had to fake my enthusiasm with CJ much more than I wanted. 

I eventually settled in with it, grounded myself a bit more and gave myself some compassion, trying not to focus too much on not feeling how I wanted to feel and just be present with the experience with CJ. I had a good enough time and I feel grateful to get to spend these kinds of moments with CJ.

But I can’t lie...similar to what I alluded to in my “landmarks” post from awhile back, it was hard to go back to an Astros game 2 years after dealing with so much, and still not feel peaceful, calm, and relaxed. I wanted that experience of such a stark contrast to between where I was then and where I am now.

AND I could feel there was certainly a difference, a bit deeper beneath the surface. Even in the painful moments, there was a stronger sense of stability, an intuitive sense that everything was ok. It was easier to ground and not feel as overwhelmed or scared by my experience. More simply, I could just feel some acceptance. So that felt good.

Either way, CJ knew no difference, and so I’m also proud of showing up for him the best I possibly can. It was a night I will remember. 

[finallyalone]

It’s Different Now

Last week was a bit better than the previous week in terms of anxiety, but it was also a chaotic in its own way, with us suddenly losing our new dog we had only had for a week and everything that came with that. Overall, the last couple weeks haven’t felt quite as good/”up” as the previous weeks had felt -- I can’t recall many “good days” in there, which I’d been having more of recently.  

At the same time, despite having a ton of anxiety and some really low moments sprinkled throughout the last couple weeks, at no point have things devolved to where I’m at a really low place for days at a time. It’s still been since very early March since I’ve been in a place like that, which is about 2.5 months ago now.

In many ways, it does feel like a huge increase in overall stability. The main thing I’m noticing is the combination of A) for the most part, low moments do not carry the same intensity they used to (mostly in that I can feel myself being slowly less scared of them), and B) the durations of the low moments are just much shorter. From there, very simply, I’m able to spend more time in my normal functioning levels at home and at work, which helps further reinforce internal stability. I’m sure I will be back there at some point, but it has been nice to avoid the darkest of depths for awhile now. 

When I first started therapy when I got out of the Menninger, my therapist asked me what my goal was. I said, “I want to get to a point where I’m stable enough to do the work on myself, and not just basically be in ‘survival mode’ all the time.” A little over a year later, I think I’m most of the way there.

[finallyalone]

More on Anxiety

While this week has been fine overall, each day I’ve gotten hit with at least a 2-3 hour stretch of intense anxiety, and I can’t really focus on anything else. I’m getting hit with one right now.

The fact that these experiences haven’t led to a terrible week otherwise probably says more about my progress than anything else; I’ve noticed the intensity of the experience recedes much more quickly now as I’m better able to identify what I am feeling and make more room for it inside me. I am confident I will feel better at some point this evening.

Still, the experiences are always difficult and a bit scary, even with my improved perspectives. 

This morning, I was looking forward to a nice dinner out tonight; now, I can’t bare the thought of going out in this state.

This morning, I was engaged in some conversations with friends and at work; now, I have my door shut and talking to anyone feels like way too much.

This morning, I was feeling optimistic about the future; now, I feel scared shitless.

This morning, I was feeling present and enjoying my (decaf) coffee; now, the present moment feels too overwhelming and old difficult memories keep popping up in my head.

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Even amidst progress and better stretches, this journey is still very difficult. A large part of the journey is accepting and sitting with the reality of a life that is often (or at least, inevitably) difficult and painful. With enough careful effort (and likely, a bunch of luck and/or privilege too), we can shield ourselves from experiencing deeper pain for a long time. But for the most part, the pain remains there whether we realize it or not. 

My case is extreme precisely because of how intensely and deeply -- to the level of personality structure -- I masked and avoided all this pain. One thing I’ve realized recently is how a lot of my anxiety is from feeling genuinely overwhelmed by emotions I am just not used to really feeling: guilt, shame, hurt, loneliness, sadness, etc. Sure, I’d feel all these things before in some way, but I dealt with them almost entirely at the cognitive level, which essentially led to “getting rid” of them somehow (often through rationalization, justification, etc). But to be forced to sit with these emotions on a deeper level -- since my cognitive defenses broke down so fundamentally -- well, it’s almost entirely new for me, and this is why it can be easy for me to feel crazy, out of control, “unreal,” etc.

But I am learning, slowly, how to sit with it all. Right now, that feels really shitty. AND, I also know it’s where I need to be.

[finallyalone]

Fine

Though I’ve had a couple rough moments and a hard day sprinkled in since my last update, I’m still riding the very positive wave that started in early-mid March; overall, this is unquestionably the best 2-month stretch I’ve had in well over 2 years now. 

It’s been rewarding to look back and see how much progress I’ve really made, but also scary at the same time, as I realize how slow and non-linear of a process it all is. The longer this goes on, the more I’ve had to accept there really is a natural and organic pace to things, and for the most part, it all happens on it’s own time; sure I do the best I can to focus on the right things and put myself in the right positions, but it’s still going to have to run it’s course. And probably the main thing I’ve learned over the last 6-7 months is to let that process unfold however it needs to the best I can, without trying to squash it or even just wish it away.

This means sometimes I just have to accept feeling “fine.” I mentioned this in a previous post, where just feeling “fine” is still a new concept to me -- before all of this, my approach to life was to remain as “up” as possible and always feeling good, and anything outside of that was scary. Increasingly though, I find myself in this “fine” zone of existence, and though part of me still wants to do something (or think about something, or anticipate something) to get to the “feeling good” zone, I’m slowly learning to accept “fine” for what it is and not try to change it. Having spent so much more relative time in the “feeling good” zone recently, I’ve had a bit more trouble with “fine” as it can feel like a regression in a way, but if/when I can get past that, it’s actually comforting to just feel “fine.”

So for now, I’m fine. 

[finallyalone]

A Bit on Narcissism

For myriad reasons, I don’t talk too much specifically about my diagnosis (which includes traits of narcissistic personality disorder). It’s hard to talk about it, since the word “narcissistic” implies so much, and most people don’t realize how narcissism exists on a spectrum with healthy and unhealthy levels of narcissism; the majority of people, as they move through life and face varying challenges and difficulties, learn to naturally regulate their narcissism in a healthy enough way to allow for “adaptive” functioning and behaviors. Others, and to varying degrees, when faced with life’s challenges, effectively “double down” on these narcissistic tendencies (which are considered defenses) in order to try get through life, leading to more “maladaptive” functioning and behaviors.

I would imagine anyone would reading this (who presumably knows me fairly well) would not consider me anything like a classic “malignant” narcissist (where someone is just zero empathetic, completely manipulative, has unstable relationships, and extremely entitled) AND could understand the ways I would be considered narcissistic more than most. In other words, I was/am somewhere on that spectrum but definitely not on the more healthy end. 

The “trait” I want to discuss though is what might be called egocentrism. My description of this is just simply the way someone tends to view others as extensions of their own mind, in a more “self-referential” way. The perfect example everyone can relate to on some level is when we read someone else’s quiet or disengaged behavior/mood to mean they are mad at us. In this case, our minds are very subtly seeing the other as an extension of our own world, assuming (often subconsciously) someone else’s behavior/mood is somehow about us. 

Realistically, we all might know that there could be other factors involved, but it’s when our instinct is to quickly and often assume that the other’s behavior/mood is about us that we drift towards excessive egocentrism, one root component of broader narcissism. 

I like using this as an example because the typical person might not see this worry about other people being mad at us as narcissistic at all -- in fact, potentially the opposite -- but this concept of potentially extreme concern about others’ views of us hits at a core tenet of narcissism, in how other people are often a means for making us feel a certain way about ourselves (which almost almost leads to some form of manipulation and control). I think this is so critical because it explains how relationships are often less about a mutual bond between individuals and more about people trying (often narcissistically, I’d argue) to get certain ego/identity needs met. 

I’m oversimplifying things here, but this concept of egocentrism is where my problems ran the deepest, often unknowingly of course. Our fragile egos drive the need for us to be viewed certain ways by others to feel ok about ourselves. In my case, deep down I was so fragile that I couldn’t even really handle the, “is this person mad at me” game (which is really just the surface question to the deeper “does this person like/respect/admire me”...which is really just the surface question to the deeper question, “how do I know I have worth?”) so I took it to the next level effectively by “homogenizing” people’s individual experiences with my own (ie: seeing their world through my eyes, ensuring I was always “seen” in a positive light). Primarily this was applied to Jess, as she had become such a core part of my identity, and so to remain stable, I needed to merge her mind with my own in a sense, rather than sit with more complicated and messy feelings about what is really there. 

This is much of what I mean when I mention an “illusion” -- I created a world for myself where I could be the wise, secure, successful, noble, attractive person I needed to believe I was. Without that illusion though, I finally had to see reality, which meant -- among many other things -- both A) Jess is completely separate from me with her own life, mind, values, etc., and B) I was not the perfect person in her eyes I wanted to believe I was.

This sounds obvious of course, but for people further on the unhealthy end of the narcissism spectrum...well, it’s not so obvious.  

The “answer,” of course, is to shift focus from external to internal; to find worth from within and independent of others’ evaluations of us. But as conditioned as people like me are to define our worth externally, this is far easier said than done. 

And it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

[finallyalone]

1 Year

Good news: we are nearing the end of April, and I can say with certainty this is my best month since this all started in February 2019. I don’t love drawing too much attention to progress as it can be almost anxiety-inducing since I know there are always tougher times ahead in my healing. But regardless, it feels really good to have such a stable stretch under my belt. 

Thinking back though...it’s been just over a year since I got out of the Menninger. 

The 14 months leading up to that were the hardest and scariest of my life in ways I could have never imagined. The year since then has been far from easy, with tons of scary moments still mixed in, but it’s unquestionably been a step forward in so many ways. 

I continue to be blown away how consistently I learn new things about myself in therapy. Sure I was extremely delusional, but even still I continue to be blown away how naïve I really was to think I had a deep and honest understanding of myself (and even others). To really start to understand one’s self, it takes a remarkable amount of time, patience, persistence, humility, acceptance, and willingness to sit with pain, and looks very little like the first 34 years of my life. It has not been easy, nor fun, but it has been extremely meaningful, and I trust -- in addition to myself ultimately -- those closest to me will be the beneficiaries of it all.