Posted by Dinah on September 9, 2002, at 12:53:20
In reply to Re: All those emotions...., posted by Roo on September 9, 2002, at 11:54:30
LOL. Sorry Roo. I forgot my email address was no longer at the top of the page. :) It's bullyforyou77 at yahoo.
> Dinah--
>
> If you don't mind...describe your the sorts of emotions
> that make you unstable and how you're handling them now...what
> sorts of things tend to get you in a funk? How are those things
> different now than they were when you were on an SSRI?
>
I guess it's all kinds of emotions, mainly anxiety and anger, occasionally sadness, or self hatred. I have a tendency to react badly to anger from others, so if my husband is angry, I'll have the urge to cut or to commit suicide. I get too much sensory input of any sort (including anger) and it makes me... hmmm... The best way to explain it is those screen savers where the picture dissolves into pixels? I just lose the ability to think clearly, get really agitated, etc. There's occasional oh, what did noa call it? flaming amyglada attacks? based on something that sets me off from childhood. My main problem has never been depression... A lot of rejection sensitivity too, from the few people I care about.> Do you feel that your getting stronger, more able to handle your
> feelings? Do you find that the episodes where you're in a funk aren't
> lasting as long?Well, in the first few months off of Luvox I was way more unstable than I am now. Everything seemed more intense than normal. I'm now back to normal for me. Except that ever since my first hypomanic episode on Wellbutrin, I don't think normal for me is as good as it used to be. (Or maybe it was the postpartum depression that permanently destabilized me).
I think I am in general getting stronger, but it's darn hard to tell because as I'm getting stronger I'm also getting in touch with the feelings I've isolated and ignored for many many years. So I'm experiencing my feelings more than I used to, but that's on purpose. So I guess I am getting stronger because otherwise I wouldn't be willing to get in touch with my feeling self. I'm using my newfound strength to rely less on dysfunctional coping mechanisms, and it may not look on the surface as if I'm getting stronger.
On the other hand, a lot of my strength comes from therapy. Having the opportunity to process the overwhelming sensations. Being able to release some of the energy of the urges to hurt myself, etc. by talking about them (because I can't talk about those things to just anyone). In general having a safe place to explore my feelings and a safe person to emotionally lean on, and sometimes just realizing that I'm not on my own to deal with these things. All that is invaluable to me, and I consider my therapy maintenance therapy, as necessary as insulin to a diabetic to keeping my overall stability in the face of what I consider to be biological deficits in my emotional regulation system. And of course, I also learn skills and new ways of thinking in therapy that help me gain strength, but I'm hard to get through to, so they have to be reinforced over and over again before they finally sink in.
But... Have I ever gotten to what I think is probably "normal" in terms of emotional stability? No. I haven't.
poster:Dinah
thread:30041
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020908/msgs/30050.html