As usual my life has been a chaotic nightmare lately. As I was finishing up an emergency visit with my doctor the other day to discuss the follow up to an injury from work and the ensuing loss of that job and my concerns about my latest mental instability my doctor made a specific point to say “you need to be really proud of yourself for how WELL you have been dealing with all of this lately”.
WaitWhut?!
I stared at him and said “perhaps we have a different definition of ‘well’???”
He looked at me and took the time explain his point. The general gist of this follows here:
“You have some seriously extreme ranges and experiences of emotion, this makes things difficult for you to function ‘normally’ and many people that have these same experiences do not deal with them ‘well’…
BUT!
- you do not have a drug addiction
- you are not an alcoholic
- you do not self harm
- you do not get arrested
- you do not binge eat
- you do not attempt suicide
- you are not a frequent flyer at the hospital
- you do not get into fights
- you keep trying
AND!
You have been doing all this without daily medication since APRIL!
SO!
Yeah… you need to be proud of the fact that you are dealing with this pretty well!”
So I thought about it and after he put it that way I had to agree with him that, while I may have trouble with some ‘normal’ things like holding down a job… I’d say that he is right… I’m dealing with this pretty well considering!
I guess now I have to decide what to do with this new perspective. The first thing I did was decide to write it down, because as we all know the most awful trick a disturbed mind pulls on you is conveniently “forgetting” any of the good things about yourself. The next thing I did was remember that I am actually “good” at finding a way to work out whatever problems I’m having, it may not be “pretty” how I do it, but I’ve made it this far so I have to be doing something right!
Look out world! I’m BAAAAAAACK!
~Elena <3
