Free Up Your Mind. Then Let Me Know How You Did It.

It's (not very much) like having the jaw of a steel toothed trap clamped on my bare foot.

It's nightfall in the jungle and I'm faced with the decision to either stay still in the hope that help will come; or to wrench my foot out of the trap (thereby risk bleeding to death) and try to find my own way to help.

Either way I'll probably lose my foot.

Is it more painful to suffer the slings and arrows of my wretched attempts to express some of the incomprehensible stuff I am feeling right now, or is it better to just carry it in silence.

Either way it feels like hell.

I've been lost since the session on Monday.

Faced with her, somewhat glib sounding, recommendation that I "change", I eventually found that I couldn't even be bothered to speak.

What I had been TRYING to do in response to the 'change' suggestion, was to establish HOW exactly, i should go about doing such a thing when, I feel little more than total despair.

"It's not despair", she states. "People in despair don't have the energy to argue"

"Right", I say, simultaneously wondering if I am 'all people' and also thinking (wryly)that she clearly doesn't know that she is talking to someone who can do two and a half hour long cardio workout at the end of a working day, on 4 small tomatoes and some lettuce.

Don't tell me about energy and despair.

So. What do I do, I ask.

How can I change.

"It's not something that you DO"

(and I roll my inner eyes because this is beginning to sound like I'm asking a rather pretentious self styled mytic to tell me what I should do to find a pot of gold)

"It's about freeing up your mind"

Oh GREAT. I AM talking to one of the above. Excuse me? Did you see where my therapist went..?

So.

Freeing up my mind.

That's what I need to do.

Free it from the rigid reign of control.

Who would have thought it were that easy?

Being a teacher, you fast learn the need to be a little creative with your questioning in order to appeal to the understanding of such a range of pupils.

In the hope of getting a more practical, directive type of response I ask,

"If I were you and you were me, what's the first thing you'd do after the session?"

(Please note, in order to "change")

Her helpful response?

"Scream".

Throughout the latter part of the session, that's just what I thought I might do (albeit involuntarily)if I could manage to crawl to my car, but when I did, everything felt a bit unreal and big.

I drove most of the way home, pulled up in a layby, and played a word scramble game on my phone. That's what I do if things get too much.

Chilled to the bone and blank in the pending darkness, I played game after game, absorbed in the obsessive need to beat my point score each time.

I didn't move untiil two hours later.

I'm dreading Friday.

I don't want to go back but I don't want her to think I'm being childish.

Pride probably isn't a great reason to go to therapy.

I've been desperate again today.

Alone in the house again tonight, I ate a small amount and then expelled as much as my gag reflex would allow.

In the last few hours though, I've gone and stuffed it up by eating sweets.

I can't change until I manage to change the desire to be thinner.

HOW do you change a desire THAT strong?

Answers on a postcard...

Left

I can only feel the cold wind of despair as it howls through me. I am left gasping, winded by the force of the blasts.
It's not depression. It's despair.
It's the claws of hopelessness tearing at hidden flesh.
It's the mouth of disgust sucking marrow from my bones.
And I am left with nothing.
Nothing then
nothing now
nothing in the when.

Ahead, a black hole
Behind, a sheer drop.

Despair affords me no rope
with which to hang
on to hope, or choke
this demon.

It's been a steep weekend and I haven't got it in me to explain why.

I've eaten badly, drunk hungrily and driven frantically.

If you feel disgusted by my negativity, I can bet you a thousand wishes that you can't even begin to reach the levels that I have.
I have tried positive self talk, prayer, gratitude, acceptance, reprimand, reframing, reinterpretation, re everything.
I've counted my blessings, immersed myself in thoughts of those less fortunate.
I know I don't count on the scale.

I hate myself all the more for that fact that I have no excuse for my despair.

And can I tell the woman?
I don't want to see her tomorrow.
She expects me to have had a good weekend (as did I). The fact that I feel this hollow is shameful. I feel like a disobedient child.
I have let her down.
Somehow I must be choosing misery.
I am a disgrace.

Summoning up the Energy

Although I would ideally like to be a little more disciplined, very often, writing this blog seems to demand a far greater degree of energy than I am capable of finding in me.

It feels hard to summon the courage to write some of the things I am afraid of commiting to anything more than the very floaty space somewhere in the haziest recesses of my mind.

Often, the depression I live with day to day, lies in me, appearing dormant to all but the part of me that is a desire for self expression.

The black dog lies heavy on my chest. Always with one eye open.



"Should" isn't a great word.

I know that.

It's one of those words that most counselling types love to pounce on before suggesting 'healthier words like "would like to" or "could".

Nonetheless, as a blog about therapy, I feel that I should be making more of an effort to muster the energy, reach into the haze, muzzle the black dog and write more about it.


And so I tred lightly over the trepidation and pledge to try, even when the words are hard.

Black Holes

Why do we travel?
Why do we go on journeys?

To get somewhere, right?

Yeah.

Most journeys we go on, we have a pretty good idea where we're headed and what it might look like when we get there. At least, we have some idea inasmuch as we have impressions of the world which allow us preconceived ideas, pre empt, imagine.

But the inner journey isn't like that.

For starters, speaking for myself, I have no idea where I'm heading, or if a destination even exists.
I can't even tell at the moment, whether I am suspended or falling, such is the density of the darkness and the numbness of my skin.
I have no assurance that gravity is still operating in this space. I don't know if there is any ground.
I need ground.
Ever been in a lift when you don't know if it is moving or not?
I just don't know.

It's all too much of nothing at all.

Those blueprints we have of how things might look when we reach the place we are journeying too..?
They're not there and I've lost the only image I had that I was sure of.

Another thing is that everything is in shadow. It's black or grey and every shade in between, but things are more indistinct than ever.

It's so dark and so disorientating that I don't understand how I will ever know where I am, let alone where to go.

I am even doubting the existence of myself at points.