Kay's mental health thread: for data, great justice, and remembering what happened yesterday

Someday, my moirail's travel plans will not be fucked over by the universe's ideas about when inclement weather is acceptable.

 

Been thinking a lot the past couple days about walking the middle road between investing too much of my worth in helping others and over-isolating myself. It's still really, really easy for me to step off and walk straight into the former, and so it's still really easy to whip the pendulum back and not care about anyone. I don't want to do either of those things. Walking in the middle is hard.

 

Just finished the last assignment for the year - apart from my recital in a week and a half. Thank goodness. Now have to go hand them all in.

Trying to keep myself focused on one task at a time today. I keep getting sidetracked onto "you have all these things to do, and they're all important because your job this summer is to get your shit together, and you're not doing enough!" But I know that focusing on the amount of things I need to do, and panicking that I'm not getting them all done, is going to be way less effective than focusing on one thing at a time. So far today I have done dishes (put dishes in the dishwasher away, loaded dirty dishes in, washed pots and pans), and cleaned half the kitchen table off (got rid of recyclable papers and put away the books; all that's left is the stuff that actually needs dealing with), in terms of chores. Left to do today: go drop off these assignments, work out for half an hour, and make dinner before choir practice. There are a few other things that I could also do, but those are the important ones.

 

i have a lesson on campus tomorrow. i can drop off the assignments then. i have a brain, i swear...

 

hm. moirail asked me a question - whether i'd been trying to take care of her again. i said i didn't think so, i hadn't been intending to. we've been a bit at odds over the past few days and trying to work out why. after we got off the phone i thought about it some more. she's been going through some tough stuff lately. i guess that isn't really new, but i dunno, it's felt more immediate i guess? and i did think i just wanted to help. but now i look back on it more and i think i was going too far. bending over backwards to be helpful when it's not really needed and just ends up being patronizing. whoops.

man. i knew i'd fallen back into some old habits earlier this month but i didn't realize that was one of them. keep moving forward. just keep moving forward.

 

sigh. it sucks when your friend's plans are abruptly disappointed.

 

Summer's officially started now, I guess? This term has been weird.

Recital's done. I have one more small school commitment that will be done by Wednesday. After that school consists of planning for next year.

I want to feel like I have a handle on self-employment by the end of the summer. I want to tune my piano or have it tuned, and I want to find a few voice students. How do you find voice students? Who wants to learn to sing? Oi. (I'm also still really nervous about teaching. I just spent two years undoing bad habits that I learned in university for voice and rebuilding my vocal technique from the ground up. I don't want to doom some poor kid. I should ask my moirail if I can borrow the vocal technique books she got this year...)

Hm - there are kids in my apartment building, and the buildings around us. I wonder if any of them need childcare on occasion. Or if any of them want to learn to sing!

I think I am just feeling a little overwhelmed. I made a list of projects for the summer, and I think it is not too long of a list. I know there will be a couple that won't get done, that aren't high priority. I also know I'm still not great at motivating myself. I want to update this far more regularly as an accountability spot ... I'm also getting a new phone today or tomorrow that will actually have access to apps like Habitica, so it'll be easier to have outside accountability there, too.

I think I'm also still pretty scared of coming to the end of the summer and not having accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. I'm really tired of feeling like a failure. *headdesk*

 

It pisses me off so much that my moirail can't do a bunch of things without getting hurt physically or emotionally through none of her own fault. It is so completely unfair and I can't do anyhing about most of them and it just makes me so angry. Stupid fucking universe.

 

goddammit i cannot communicate worth shit

went for lunch with my friend, who lives with my moirail. moirail went through a seriously shitty situation over the weekend. friend-roommate asked about what had happened. i wasn't sure how much detail i should go into, so i decided i wouldn't give a whole lot. after, moirail said she didn't want me to downplay the situation and that she felt like she couldn't really talk to her roommate now about what had happened without sounding like it hadn't been a big deal. i decided i'd text the roommate and say "hey, just so you know, moirail said i shouldn't downplay this, i feel bad that i glossed over it and made it sound like something small. moirail would like to talk to you about it at some point, she wants to be friendlier with you, maybe let her know i was vague and if she wants to talk about it she's welcome, sorry i made things more awkward" (not precise wording - there were more words, that was probably my downfall, i am the worst at paring down). told moirail i'd texted this, she was hopeful that would be good.

get a text this morning from friend-roommate, saying she'd sent moirail a text, she had figured i'd been trying to give general details without telling a story that wasn't mine, she was sorry she'd pried and she hadn't meant to make anyone feel worse. i responded that i didn't think moirail thought she'd been prying, and had just been concerned that i'd overly downplayed the situation. i was hopeful that this meant roommate had just sent something like what i'd suggested yesterday, an invitation to talk or something like that.

no. apparently she sent a novel and defended me to my moirail? who now feels like even more shit? i don't get it. i didn't ask roommate to defend me. i didn't think my messages made it sound like moirail was mad at me in the first place. she was annoyed, sure, but i think rightfully so, when i got in the way and made things worse.

moirail was sick last night. she was going to take a day off to rest as much as she could. now she feels like shit on several more levels because i can't communicate worth a damn even when i'm trying to think about how people will hear what i'm saying.

i want to hide in a hole. everything i've said so far in this situation has just made it worse. i don't want my moirail to feel like she has to stop being angry or doing whatever she needs to do just because i feel shitty for fucking things up. it's not her job to take care of me.

edit: i also don't want her to feel like i whined to roommate that she was being mean or something like that, nor do i want her to think she has to hide what's happening with her, nor do i want her to feel unsafe in her home - or to feel like her cat is unwelcome there. i don't understand why roommate texted anything that would even approach that. i didn't think what i'd said would warrant that at all. i didn't think roommate was going to send anything like that, because she'd said that she didn't want to make anyone feel worse.

sometimes i think i ought to just stop talking to people altogether. i feel like i'm not making any progress on being a better communicator. i don't want to hurt my friends but i'm doing it anyway, i'm making their lives way harder for no reason, and right now it's really hard not to believe that that makes me a terrible person.

 

Lay down to meditate. Sleep 2.5 hours instead. Freak moirail out. Dammit this was not the desired outcome at ALL.

 

ugh. got a sore throat over the weekend. thought it might just be fatigue/irritation. turns out it's not and i totally exposed a bunch of people to whatever virus this is. dammit.

soup and tea and Netflix...

 

lots to think about tonight. and people to call in the morning. i'm tired of being scared all the time.

 

do other people feel like robots? or is that not really a standard thing to feel like? because i feel a lot like a robot lately. and not a very well-built robot, at that, because i'm missing instructions for a bunch of situations and i'm not very good at just doing things automatically.

suddenly it's been a month since i started trying to talk more to people, started talking to an online therapist, started working out again. i feel like i was at least moderately successful up until about a week ago, but that 'moderately' i think should be taken with a large grain of salt, because i'm pretty clearly not doing much better. high on the list: learn how to have a conversation and learn how to respect and listen to other people.

it's really frustrating to learn (again) that you're (still) behaving like a shitty person. especially when you have been actively trying not to be. and you keep doing it. you keep missing the point, again and again. doesn't seem to matter what you were trying to do differently, you still bark up the wrong tree.

you can't reduce social interaction to a set of steps. it doesn't work to think "if person A says X, then person B ought to say Y and do Z". i asked a friend last night about conversational skills. he said that usually to improve conversational skills, you first have to improve listening skills. which falls into the basket of "why the hell didn't i realize this, why don't i notice the obvious connections right in front of my damn face, the ones that are causing most of your problems, yeah those". also wasn't the first time i'd heard that: it came up in the conversation with my moirail about how i needed to develop conversational skills in the first place. he also said that he thought a key to it was, rather than trying to add to the conversation, to involve yourself in the conversation and let it take you where it goes. i see his point. it's awfully hard to have a conversation with someone if you're listening to respond rather than listening to understand, for one, and that's something i've heard for a long time. i don't understand how i can have so much information and still make stupid decisions/not clue in to how to do things.

if i'm so smart, why am i so dumb? why don't i realize before i do the stupid thing that hurts someone else? i suspect part of the reason i stay quiet in a lot of situations is because i don't trust what is going to come out of my mouth to be anywhere near smart. and by smart i don't mean, like, "oh wow what a genius thing to say, that's incredible", but rather "that sure is a reasonable and logical continuation of the conversation". because it feels like way more often than not i open my mouth and immediately shove my foot in it, and i don't even realize i've done so until someone either takes pity on me and informs me that the reason everything is so awkward is because i'm eating my foot, or someone gets really pissed off at me for being a complete idiot.

it also really hurts to know that my poor behaviour and my as-yet-inability to clue into stupid decisions until way too late is really harming the people i care about. even when i'm explicitly reminding myself to assume less and ask more, i assume other things in the process, and you know what they say about assuming.

i feel like there are a lot of habits i want to build into my life - listening to and respecting my friends being a really high priority. it feels like i'm the only one who isn't able to make these changes really quickly, or at least able to give proof that i'm working on it. because making reminders and taking time to think about how the other person will interpret what i say/how the other person is feeling hasn't worked - or at least not consistently.

i have a list of counselling resources here in the city open in Chrome. when J wakes up - and after he's eaten and properly woken up - i'm going to open a conversation about it, and ask what he thinks. the online therapist wasn't a bad idea, but as my moirail reminded me i'm good at text (except text chats, i feel like i'm pretty bad at those) and bad at talking to people in person, so i'd probably get a lot more out of in-person counselling because the issues will be a lot more obvious. i'm going to look up the student insurance i'll get in the fall, and also if i might be able to get any use out of my dad's plan for the last couple months before i turn 25 since i'm a student again. and i'm going to look at prices for insurance plans as a whole since J's current position doesn't have any.

i feel like i have a zillion top-priority things right now. need to work out because i do feel better when i do it, and i let myself get scared off by the harder week and didn't just go back to a previous week and keep going. now i've spent a week not working out and it's not helped any. i need to food plan/get easy-to-prep vegetables because i haven't been eating enough again, and that's not helping either. those are probably the reasons i'm feeling so tired. i feel like i could sleep for a day. i don't need to, i've been sleeping enough.

i don't remember now if i wanted to do things more during the weeks i was working out every day. i feel like i probably did, like i felt less like a robot on low battery. i was also probably hungrier and therefore ate more.

man, i even feel stupid writing and posting this, like there are going to be a thousand obvious things that i should have seen or thought of that anyone else who reads this will see immediately.

i need to figure out how to short-circuit the cycle that starts when i get tired and down on myself. i think it needs to be active self-care, not passive self-care - not taking a nap, but going for a walk maybe. that's going to be hard. it's way easier to take a nap and wait for it to go away. but if this is any indication, it doesn't. i slow down and everything grinds to a halt. but then how do i rest? do i have to time it?

 

my quadrant skills are shite. i am so bad at diamonds that 99% of the time i make things WORSE for my moirail instead of anywhere close to better. i'm pretty sure she's out of my league by, well, leagues, when it comes to the ability to actually be a moirail. hearts? well. i feel like my matesprit just puts up with me a lot of the time. i'm focusing on being grateful - and openly appreciative - of what he does for me, working on kicking the habit of complaining.

and if i'm a shitty moirail, there's no way i can be an auspistice. moderating between people? hell no, that just increases my area of effect when i do stupid shit and hurt everyone involved. and i suspect that right now a kismesis would either tear me to bits because i'd be too afraid/too slow to fight back, or i'd overcompensate and just be an utter jackass instead of a proper rival.

also i burned my thumb making scones and it hurts. XP

 

i always feel like i have so much to write when i decide to write one of these and then i sit down and it all goes poof. probably that means i ought to keep notes regularly and just transfer them over or something like that.

i need to stop letting myself sleep as long as i do on days i don't have to get up for anything external. usually if i sleep in i get up feeling nervous already, which is not a nice way to start a day, and then i lose at least an hour to mucking around trying to get moving. not acceptable. not what i want. so i need to go to bed earlier, obviously. last night was weird - i was supposed to stay up/wake up and get J from an overnight job; he texted around twelve-thirty to say the guy he was working with would be driving our direction so he could get dropped off. that's cool. i'd set myself up to stay awake, so i didn't fall asleep until one-thirty, and i woke up when he came home around 3.30 but fell asleep again. woke up around 9, didn't get up for another half hour. that's roughly 7.5 hours of sleep which is usually about right. now that i'm writing this out it doesn't seem so horribly awful of me.

i'm focusing again on what i think should be happening rather than what is happening and what i need to do with it.

so. i need 7.5 hours of sleep, in theory. once i'm down for bed it usually takes about half an hour for me to fall asleep; in the morning i like to be able to hit snooze once but i'm skeptical it's a good idea - too easy to hit it again if i don't have something external to get up for, but telling myself i'm not allowed to hit snooze, if it works at all, will work for a while and then i'll start hitting snooze and feeling guilty about it and the whole habit will come crashing down. what works when i have to get up super early is a ten-minute snooze so let's try that. if i want to wake up at 7.30, that means alarm set for 7.20, i need to be asleep just before midnight, which means ready for bed by 23.15 to give myself some margin.


different topic. i looked into insurance and counselling. turns out i can add J to my student plan next year for $440, total cost for both of us $730 for the year or $60 a month (i also thought the plan was only in effect Sep-Jun for some reason; actually it goes to August). the basic private plans i was looking at are all at least $110 a month, which might be doable, but $60 a month is rad. so i asked J what he thought and whether he wanted to do counselling (the student plan provides $600 a year for psychologist services; i need to call/go talk to someone about whether anything else is covered in that or if it's very specifically only psychologists) and he said yes let's put him on the plan in August, but didn't know whether he wanted to do counselling yet. i am going to check in and ask if he's thought about it at all in the past couple days once he's up and about. i am also going to go to the university first thing Monday morning (i.e. 8.30 - giving myself an external time commitment to reinforce the next couple days of sleep scheduling) and go talk to the student counselling centre - because moirail reminded me that they're still there over the summer, and are less busy at that - and also to the student insurance office to see about the details of the psychologist stuff. there is also an online therapy service that may be available through this plan? the website is very unclear about that so i will ask them about that too. there is also a psychological service centre through the department of psychology - i printed out their adult intake form and i figure i may as well put myself on the wait list. ... actually i just looked again and they offer couples services as well. i will ask J if he wants to be on that list/also on the adult list. i dunno. it's supervised grad student clinicians. presumably they know what they're doing since they're about to head out into the field, but there's a lot to be said for someone established. (except when you find someone who can't do shit, like my parents' counselor.)

i feel like i don't quite know how to go about finding a psychologist/counsellor/mental health professional. not that i don't know where to look. i've found numbers and places to go. but they're expensive (for good reason) and i guess i'm worried about finding a good fit with the least amount of financial stress on J. i wonder how much of this is from watching my parents stay with the same counsellor for years and years and never change even though she hasn't been helping them ... and how much is still feeling like my problems aren't worth spending money on - especially when i'm not contributing much at all to the family income. i don't want to bother people and i don't want to take up space. i know these are silly things to think. i know J loves me and wants me to succeed/be a better person/be content/etc. i know moirail wants that too. i know that in order for me to do those things i need to take up some space and knock on doors and make phonecalls and sit in offices and talk and work on myself.


why do i not seem to be able to just do the things i want to do? beyond making habits and stuff like that, i know that's repetition until you build the pathway, blah blah. but, like, empathy. i used to think i was really good at putting myself in other people's shoes. and intuition - knowing what to do and what to say. and remembering things! and multitasking! i don't know anymore if i used to be good at any of those things at all, and have lost them, or if i was just a hundred percent deluded the whole time and was always shit at all of them. it probably wasn't all one or the other, i suppose. the end result is the same though. i suck at empathy, i suck at knowing what to do/say, i suck at remembering, and most of the time i'm barely able to do one thing at a time - talking to people included. what the hell? everything seems so damn obvious whenever someone points it out. usually that's moirail. and too often she's pointing out something that really i ought to have figured out for myself in order to be a good moirail to her and so she's moirailing me while needing me to moirail her and, just, geez Kay, that is not what you're supposed to do to your moirail. that doesn't look like a word anymore at all. honestly i feel like i no longer have any claim to being her moirail, and i feel like i've abused the privilege of having her as a moirail.


do i just scroll through the list of counsellors near me and pick someone who seems good for any nondescript reason? and just schedule an appointment? i have student benefits i didn't know existed (my own damn fault for not reading and assuming it wouldn't be covered) so it doesn't do any harm as long as i don't go over the limit for the year. and then maybe i find someone good and keep on into September. and maybe then i actually succeed in making progress towards being a considerate human being who doesn't completely fail at relationships left right and centre. and stop offloading my issues, intentionally or otherwise, onto people whose responsibility it most definitely is not to fix them.


i say these things. i intend to follow through on these things. but i don't trust myself anymore.

and i've been writing for over an hour and a half now. oi. go do something else, Kay. go clean the cat litter or something.

 

did things this morning that i said i was going to do. yay

• called doctor and scheduled appointment. amazingly, there was a cancellation next Monday afternoon.
• went to student counselling centre and had an intake appointment. talked for about ninety minutes - there were some tears, oops - focused on wanting to not be afraid anymore (or at least figure out what i'm afraid of and learn how to live with it), wanting to work on making my intended behaviour/communication match what's actually coming across, wanting to remember/clue into what I think ought to be obvious, wanting to not hurt people anymore. counsellor suggested working on the anxiety/fear first, building the skills so I don't freeze and forget everything when i'm trying to do things. there are weekly sessions about specific subsets of anxiety skills at the university over the summer; i think i can make it to all of them.
• started making contact with people to track down missing scores from the church library. still need to make a handful of phonecalls and do some more hunting. if i have this job again, i'm going to write down who has what when i give scores out, especially extra copies. just marking what came back in was dumb.

working on right now (well, after writing this):

• making detailed budget to determine counselling options over the summer/into the fall etc, how/if we'll have two cars, possibility of adding J to student insurance
• continuing making list of potential counsellors
• learning opera music (rehearsals start Saturday - i'm planning to resurrect my vlogging as was suggested to me, try to demystify how this process works)
  • should download recordings of the bits i'm singing to get a proper sense of the orchestration...

update past list of specific things. went and asked questions of moirail (actually, i'm not sure that's accurate anymore ... i should maybe go with an initial instead) about practical aspects of looking for mental health care (she did have to bop me over the head first with how obvious that should have been - much like you said, @neitherherenorthere ... ). she helped a lot, gave me lots of info and pointed me in several new directions. we also talked about the whole situation a bit, how neither of us was sure what the best route to take was - my self-deprecating behaviours (and frequent inaction) are actively harming her ... do we split entirely, only talk about some things, does she keep pointing things out for me or not? like i said i'm not sure what the best option is - on the one hand, i don't want to hurt her and i don't trust myself yet not to, so maybe less contact is a good idea, but on the flip side of that you can't learn to trust yourself without practicing actually trusting yourself, acting on it, and learning from your mistakes. (but if i'm harming her currently, maybe it's better for me to learn to trust myself with others, rather than continuing to put her through my learning process? i don't know. i can't tell how much my thoughts in that direction are influenced by the self-deprecation and therefore how much of it is self-fulfilling prophecy.)

we also talked about apologies and making up for things and what my behaviour there has been doing. i realized that i tend to back off from a situation that i've fucked up in, with the intent of not fucking it up more by involving myself - i.e., i've already fucked it up, i'm going to make it worse, so i'm going to get out of the way and not cause any more trouble. she hypothesized that in a lot of cases, i instead ought to be working twice as hard to fix/ameliorate the effects of what i fucked up, and that the fact that I don't do that really drives her up the wall. it's not enough that i don't do x again, i need to work to do damage control/fix things after i've done x. this makes sense to me and i'm going to practice that.

 

making a quick note so i don't forget to. talking to the intake counsellor on Monday, she asked about whether i was isolating myself and i said yeah, probably. i've been paying closer attention to that in the past couple days and i absolutely am. i've been justifying it to myself for a long time by thinking that i don't have anything to say, i don't have anything to add, i don't have anything to tell people - why start a conversation with someone if i don't have anything to say? there's still a very big part of me that really doesn't want to talk to anyone if i can help it, but i think that part's just scared. and i'm trying not to be scared anymore. so i've started small/at home and i'm going to practice specifically spending time talking/hanging out with J at least once or twice a day, because if there's anyone i want to be comfortable talking to, it's my husband. i'm also thinking about turning my facebook chat to completely public and not shying away from conversing with people i haven't talked to in ages (mostly because i've been, y'know, isolating myself). i'm also going to try checking it at least once an hour, and replying - i want to find a happy medium between avoiding socialization like the plague and being glued to my screen lest i miss someone... more keeping up to date/keeping in touch. this feels like a big energy commitment to me and i'm nervous about it, but it's probably healthier than the current state of things.

i'm also noticing that it doesn't seem to matter much when i go to sleep or how long i sleep, i'm still tired. i'm past due for a physical, i think ... never been short on iron or b12 before, but there's always a first time. might have to wait a while for that if i stay with current doctor. N sent me a pic yesterday of a clinic that's accepting new patients for a new female family doctor; i also saw another clinic yesterday saying the same thing. should get in with one of them.

first anxiety workshop at the school is next week, on procrastination. i hope i learn things.

 

<reminder>

Kay. You know how to be polite. Next time, be polite. And check to make sure you're up to date before trying to fix things. Yes, you're practicing trusting yourself and doing things, but that doesn't mean you stop paying attention. Practice that too.

</reminder>

 

I am tired today. It was really hard to get out of bed. >_<

doctor's appointment Monday. went alright. cried more. like, barely said hello and started crying. dr is starting the referral-to-psychiatrist process. he is giving my name & info to a sleep-care company in the city so i can do a sleep study (wants to see if there's anything weird there since i'm not feeling rested and wake up relatively often w/high heart rate). also gave me the name of a food/activity nurse-counsellor at the clinic. i'm nervous about that one. N asked why, when I was talking to her about the appt yesterday morning. i didn't articulate it very well then and i'm not sure i can do much better now. :/ food and activity feel like the things i ought to be able to influence the most, but they're also the things i have some of the worst habits around. there's a lot of shame/frustration/self-deprecation wrapped up in there and i get pretty overwhelmed. definitely something to talk to a counsellor about. back to dr appt. also got some blood work done to check iron/b12 etc etc. and finally he gave me a scrip for venlafaxine, which i wasn't thrilled about then and i'm still not super thrilled about. he suggested starting at 1 pill (37.5mg) for several days, then moving to 2 (75mg), and he said to follow up in 3-4 weeks ... except he's away part of that time, so it's definitely 4 weeks. i don't like the idea of starting a med (especially a med that can have scary side effects) without regular easy access to my dr, and even when he's not away he's not really regularly or easily available. he's not away away, he's working the Canada Summer Games, and he said very seriously that if anything happened i should call, but ... i don't like it. and N didn't like it either when we were talking - quite vehemently didn't like it, in fact. and i trust her judgment. so i haven't filled it yet, and i'm leaning towards not filling it at all.

N and I talked about why meds in that conversation, too. she pointed out that if i were to start meds now, and then got in with a psych sometime in the nebulous future ... well, the psych wouldn't really be getting an accurate picture. which is super true. she also said if i just want to deal with the symptoms, and don't mind the potential side effects of numbing out, then for sure go with meds. my view of meds is that they usually should be only part of the picture: you gotta work on other things too and actually fix the problem, if it can be 'fixed' per se. obviously there are folks who absolutely need meds to function. given how my last round with meds went, i'm concerned that it'll be too easy for me to go "oh great the symptoms are gone, i can just get on with my life" and then promptly not actually get on with my life, in that i won't address the bad habits/coping mechanisms, and if/when the meds stop working, or i come off them thinking things are better, then ... i'm screwed. i don't want that. honestly, some days i wouldn't mind just making the miserable-ness go away and being numb. but i don't want that forever. it ... hasn't really worked out so far.

what i'd like to have happen: get assessed by a psychiatrist, get solidly informed medical opinion on what would work best for my issues. get in with a doctor i can see more than once a month. (i have leads on 3? clinics accepting new patients. at least two of them are new female family doctors, which would be cool. i don't necessarily mind working with a guy, but there's something to be said for female doctors.) hopefully by this point i'll have seen a counselor at least a few times, and also done at least a few of the anxiety workshops at the university. (first one is tomorrow.) if at that point, psych and doctor and counsellor agree that meds might be worth a shot, then i try meds, with frequent check-ins.

speaking of check-ins. N gave me a list she has used in the past for regular (like, hourly or more than) check-ins - emotional, physical, nutritional, and activity level. I've started keeping track. i get interrupted during rehearsals, but still check in mid-way through. realizing just how little i eat. oops.

i also need to call and set up an appt with a counsellor. one of the people N suggested sounds really good to me. i think i'm holding off because it feels expensive - but it's absolutely worth the investment and i know that. and i know we can afford it, and i know J is on board with it, but i still feel guilty about not contributing enough to the bottom line to 'justify' spending money on myself. this is a twisted line of thought. it's also proven to be a resilient one so far.

oh that was the other thing i wanted to write down. N also suggested i look into St John's wort. i'd never actually read up on it. it seems about as reasonable and useful as any other antidepressant, and without quite so many scary things attached. she said she has a friend who makes tea out of it, and if she feels like the day isn't going to go well, she makes a cup in the morning ... otherwise, she just as a cup before bed. apparently it also helps with insomnia. honestly i feel like it's worth a shot. i need to go get a couple groceries today, and pick up an order of tea. maybe i will see if i can find some St John's wort while i'm out. i also really need to do some catching up on chores today - need to wash some pots and pans, need to wipe down the counters and stove. need to wash the kitchen floor, too, but i don't think that will happen today. also planning a small date for Friday afternoon for J and I as a sort of belated birthday date (his birthday was Monday and we couldn't decide what to do, lol).

also, small victory yesterday. N invited me over to help distract her and i ended up being an indecisive mess about it and made things worse, but we patched it up quickly and i tried again, and i was an actual distraction for a while instead of truly torpedoing things like i have before. (this was then when we talked about all the stuff above.) so i'm glad of that.

 

i should update...

• going to get sleep study equipment today to do the study overnight. very curious as to what it will yield. will find out on Monday morning.
• counselling appointment booked for next Tuesday. did manage to get in with the counsellor N highly recommended. hoping she's a good fit.
• still doing semi-regular written checks, though i feel i should get them back up to once an hour at least instead of once every couple hours.
• started drinking a cup of St John's wort tea a day on Saturday. was super nauseous Saturday afternoon, but I also had really strong coffee that day (which often turns my stomach), and I've barely been/haven't been nauseous at all since. I think it's helping? I'm less hyper-focused on the negative, I think, and it's easier to relax. Also seems to be a little easier to do things: I made three phonecalls yesterday, two in rapid succession. On the flip side, I've been fidgety, more fidgety than I usually am. It seems a little harder to focus for long periods of time. That could be because I've been tired, though - and I got some extra sleep today, so if my focus is better today then that's a point in the tired column.
• also attempting to successfully do a social: putting together a small gaming group made up of university folks, bc i need to isolate less and hang out with more people in general.
• more or less caught up on chores. need to vacuum, and mop the kitchen floor, but i'm caught up on laundry and the house is relatively tidy.
• on the other hand, haven't yet successfully re-added working out to my daily routine.
• but i am eating more! still not enough veggies and fruit, and protein's only slowly creeping up to how much i should be eating, but it's better than the amount i was consuming before.

on the whole i think i am doing pretty well, and i think i feel optimistic about moving forward? maybe? hopefully? is that what this feeling is? >_>