It is so weird when your brain breaks

This afternoon from 4 to 6 was 'Friends and Family' day at Joe's workplace. I went over and said hi to a bunch of people, some I'd met before and others I met for the first time. They had cheese and crackers and crudite, beer and wine for the drinkers and a lot of games and entertainment for the kids. It was nice. I still feel so weird. Will I ever be myself again? It is so weird when your brain break...

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The dude abides. Joe as Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski. Happy Halloween, everyone....

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#Throwback Thursday: the 1970s

Waterbury, CT Some of the cousins at grandma's house....

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Birthday Bowling

My dude abiding. We went to a bowling birthday party. Happy birthday, Chris. Joe and George ...

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On the Mend

I finally feel more like myself again. I've managed to stop ruminating over the hospital and focus on doing things around the house. I've been using the "act as if" method, faking going through the motions no matter what my mind is telling me it would rather be doing (ruminating, mostly). To my amazement it has been working. I got the kitchen cleaned up and the bathroom and after being stalled for three weeks I finished updating my resume. I even...

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Introspection and an Aching Shoulder

I'm in a mode where I'm very much in my own head. I can't help it, I keep thinking about the hospital. It's as if I'm reliving the days and nights spent locked down in the pysch ward, and I can't seem to un-hitch my brain from thinking of those nurses, mental health workers and other patients. I see the hallway, the rooms, the nurses' station. I smell i...

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Act As If...

Last week my therapist suggested I try something new to get me motivated to get up and do things. She suggested role playing. Change my clothes, change what I do, change where I sit and "play the role" of the person I want to be. She said try it for a few hours a day. I've been thinking about it all week and I think the problem is that I don't know who I want to be. I don't feel like I'm the same person I was before, and I don't know where I...

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RIP Robin

Today I told my therapist that I couldn't stop thinking about Robin Williams. As one blogger put it, when "one of us" succumbs to the depression, it affects all of us. I'm paraphrasing. The point is that this news, that someone with money and success, would be living so far down inside the hole that he opted out, brought me back to months ago when I was on suicide watch. I thought about the darkest days and how it didn't seem like they would ever...

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I Applied For a Job

I applied for a part time job at a local consignment shop. I don't even know if they'll contact me (my resume doesn't exactly match the job) but I hope they do; I would love to work in a cool, small place. My mom says I was never cut out for the corporate world and it was killing me, Joe says I gave up everything and put my job first always. I guess I did. Fat lot of good that did me. Wish me luck for a callback from the local consignment shop...

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The Support of Friends

I've been making an extra effort to get together with people, and it makes me feel better. I get so much out of just sitting in a cafe and chatting about something other than my condition. Depression sucks, and it sucks the joy out of life, but the support of my friends is a panacea like no other. Some I wish lived closer so I could see them, but we have phone conversations and Facebook chats. I never thought I would say this, but thank God for...

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Sorry Haven't Written Again

I know I've been quiet. I guess I have good days and bad days. On the bad days, I feel seized by a kind of paralysis that gets me so fully in its grip that I can't seem to function, I mean I can't get myself motivated to get on the exercise bike, to even do the dishes. Those days are a trial because without the motivation, I slip deeper into depression and it's a downward spiral. It's so har...

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Sorry Haven't Written

I haven't had much to say over the past week. I'm maintaining -- no terrifying bouts of anxiety, no dangerous dips into deep depression -- the routine of my day is keeping me on the same level. I see friends sometimes, I use Facebook to keep in touch with new friends and old ones alike. I go for my walks and I do the exercise bike for a half hour. I'm maintaining. I don't feel "right" yet, but I can see how I can get ther...

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Feeling So Low

I don't think this Zoloft is working, doc. I feel so low. It started to set in earlier in the week and now comes Friday and I feel like I'm made out of lead. I had high hopes for the Zoloft. Maybe I was putting too much stock in the label "anti-depressant." I've been doing the exercise bike, I've been going on my walks, I've been trying to write for my freelance assignment -- it's going okay, not great, but okay -- but I'm doing it all from such...

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Having a Hard Time

I'm having a hard day. I'm pacing and upset. I went for a long walk but it didn't seem to help. Joe has noticed a pattern that I can't argue with -- that whenever I break from the routine I have set up, which includes riding the recumbent exercise bike for thirty minutes and writing in my diary, then the next day or day after is a hard day.  Well I did break from my routine, thinking, oh it's a holiday weekend, let me enjoy it like a normal...

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Panic

It's an Ativan day. The panic set in early as a kind of paralysis over cleaning the apartment. The place is a mess and my mother is coming to visit me on Sunday. How can I help myself become the person who can keep a place clean and presentable? How did I used to do it? What demons in me right now are making it impossible to get certain things done, what's the blockage I'm experiencing? If I figure it out, I'll let you know. But it was an Ativan...

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Emotion Regulation: Fear

I'm learning so much about this thing called DBT. It's weird because the woman I was locked up with -- self-admitted with a heroine problem -- told me about DBT.  She was a psych student, and the more we talked she said she could tell that I would respond well to DBT. She happened to have come to the ward with her school books, and I learned that DBT is a modular work exercise-driven approach to un-crimping all of the wonky circuits in your...

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Being Here Now

Mindfulness is, in my opinion, the most important element of the four core parts of DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy). If you think about it, depression is looking backwards and ruminating about all of the past angers, failures, mistakes and regrets. Anxiety is looking ahead towards the what-if's and all of the things that can go wrong. There are days when the combination produces a crippling effec...

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Good News

The worst thing about depression and anxiety is how isolating it is, even if you are doing the work required to reach out and be with people. I am so lucky that I have an army of friends both online and in person who are always sending me support emails and "me too's" about depression and anxiety, a veritable "you are not alone" group that has been keeping my spirits from dropping too far into the chasm. I can't say enough how great it is to have...

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The Latest On Pharma

They've got me on Zoloft now. I haven't really been on a true anti-depressant. Well I did try Prozac back in the beginning but it didn't seem to be doing anything for me. I have hope for the Zoloft. I'm still taking the Haldol and Depakote, too. The thing is, the team of doctors doesn't seem to agree on what I am actually going through, here. What exactly is wrong with my brain. One doc, the one on staff inside the psych ward, had the thought...

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Some Conversations

Some conversations come too early, some conversations come too late, and others never happen at all. I came dangerously close to remaining ignorant of what one conversation with my mom would reap, until I called her last night. I cried the whole time, but I believe this is what you call a breakthroug...

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Just don't get in bed.

Just don't get in bed. Just don't get in bed. Just don't get in bed. Just don't get in be...

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Baseball Therapy

I miss my mom. Every time I try to write about her and the problems we have, I get blocked up and can't do it. I don't know what to say about it except to say that I don't know how to repair our relationship and it's just making me so sad. My attention span is shot. I can't follow any television anymore, except the news, and movies are right out. I think it's all wrapped up in my inability to pick up the phone and talk to my mother. I don't know...

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They Can't All Be Winners

The number of times I say "why isn't this easier" should by now have learned me. It just isn't easy, okay? And I have got to quit whining about it. Other people are undergoing their own trials and tribulations and we have all got our crosses to bear. Today's wake-up this morning wasn't good, and by that I mean the anxiety set in immediately; my feel-good mantra's weren't working. So despite the beautiful weather and the calmness of the day all...

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No Joke

Today all I can think about is a friend who is going through a similar hard time, taking care of a relative with Alzheimer's. She wrote something today that resonates with me, about all the times in the past, before it happens to you, when you can breezily joke about a thing. The times when she's forgotten something and said, "oh, Alzheimer's." Now it's no joke and this is probably the hardest thing she and her husband have ever, and hopefully...

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This Morning

For some reason I wake up extremely anxious on the days when I see my therapist. I don't know why Maybe it's because this is a trip to the same facility, it's the one where I stay when I need to be hospitalized. Maybe it's because today it means I have to deal with shit. I don't do well when I get in there, I tend to clam up and say "fine" a lot, when she asks me gentle probing questions that I have no answers for, then I feel stupid for wasting...

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Today and Later Today

This morning I woke up and put the "half smile" on my face per the group therapy instructions, I said "Birds. Breeze. Be Here Now." In my bed in the morning, "birds, breeze, be here now" have been a kind of mantra to calm myself down when I wake up with anxiety. I hear the birds, feel the breeze and I don't have to worry about anything, is what I mean. It calms me down when I'm anxiou...

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Behind Three Doors (part 2)

(continued from part 1) Seven Days With the winter Olympics on the small overhead TV every night, my first stay on the psych ward was imbued with an eerie sense of monumental circumstance. The Olympics, this universal worldwide event that interrupts all normal broadcasting and takes over everything, was happening at the same time as this catastrophic storm in my head. My normal broadcasting was interrupted too. I was in this strange place with...

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Behind Three Doors

I went into the psych ward three times, under three different circumstances. The first time I have little recollection of, but the bits I do remember are supercharged. Being handcuffed to a gurney in an ambulance, running naked down my front stairs. A collage of images all mixed together in some slick roundabout in my memory was actually a prolonged psychotic episode that took place over a week, but in my mind it was one night. I don't know how...

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Me and the Loony Bin

Self-Portrait The first time I went into the mental hospital was in early 2014. I'd been fired from my job at the end of November, which sent me spiraling into depression with bouts of anxiety. By the new year, I'd been unable to sleep at all, and that's when I began to experience the beginnings of what later would be called a psychotic break. The night of February 14th, when Joey called the ambulance, I had begun hallucinating. I was...

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Where Is Lexi Kahn?

No matter how much I try to stop ruminating, there come the thoughts again. Why didn't I do this, why did I pick that, why have I made these choices. I'm 44 years old and I feel like I'm starting over again. I haven't got a job and I haven't got the mindset to get nor keep one, I have no income and the bills are piling up. I feel like a total failure. These are the thoughts that won't stop today, despite the sunny day and the music playing and...

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Pass/Fail

I flunked Thursday. It was raining, I was PMSy, then the power went out at around three. Nstar said it was the whole neighborhood (a damaged wire, no doubt waterlogged) and wouldn't be back on until 5:30. All I'd been doing was watching The Ghost Whisperer, and only halfway paying attention anyway. So I gave up. Forget it, I said. There's no point. I got into bed and didn't get up again until 8:15. My bedtime -- or at least the time when I take...

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Outside and Inside Rain

It's raining outside, and it's raining in my head, and I'm afraid that no amount of deep breathing is going to help me today. I'm using all of the positive affirmation emails and blog comments from so many people, absorbing the words and taking them deep into my soul all to keep me bolstered with hope that anyone can get through depression. As long as one keeps busy. Despite the urge to go back to bed foreve...

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Point Me Towards Tomorrow

Over-the-fence spontaneous chat with kindly neighbor who empathizes makes for a good distraction on a day when I'm feeling the jitters. This is a guy who drove me to the psych ward the second time I went, when I was in a state of tearful despair and couldn't even cope. I thanked him again. "What are friends for?" he said. If you can give a ride to the loony bin on five minutes' notice, you are a friend for lif...

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Baby Steps

Yesterday I needed a Klonopin to get through it. The day, I mean. The problem is that life doesn't stop for depression and anxiety issues. You still have to deal with shit. For example, I have this student loan that's due, $122 every month, and I'm out of money in my bank account. It's just down to pennies. The well is dry. The $122 is the bucket that's going to reach mud in the bottom of the well. For that, I just have to make a phone call to...

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Thank You

I got this book from the library called "The Mindful Way Through Depression," and it's been very helpful. It's even got a CD for mindful meditation exercise...

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The ANTs Ruin the Picnic

ANTs are "Automatic Negative Thoughts" and the phenomenon works something like this according to the founder of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Dr. Beck. Beck wrote that basically you can't help this army of negative thoughts from entering your brain, they just do. You find yourself saying "I'm a failure" and "I can't do this" and "I suck." These thoughts influence what you then actually do, which is to beat yourself up over the thoughts and...

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Racing Myself Down A Hole

I spent part of yesterday in the ER, because my heart was racing and I felt jittery all over like a rubber band that someone was constantly thwanging. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. They gave me an EKG. I was amazed to find that I was fine and all my vitals checked out. So my physical symptoms, it was all just the anxiety. Amazing what anxiety can cause, physically. They gave me an Atavan to calm me and watched me for two hours...

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Lizard Lounge, Cambridge MAJoe played bass with Gato Malo tonite....

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