Rewiring My Brain

I lost my mind recently, quite literally, and have been trying to claw my way back to some form of sanity. Have I ever in my entire life been mentally stable? Is this even something achievable for me? You would be hard pressed to find a self-help book I haven't tried, over 30 years of therapy, and so much medication (prescribed and self-administered). I'm weary from all the effort and wary of the latest miracle cure. Yet I'm always resilient, even when I'd rather give up, and I've given up many times.

I've had a lot of critique in my lifetime about my bad attitude. It's true that I'm fatalist and pessimistic. My trauma says you aren't going to survive if you hope too hard. Hope gets you hurt and disappointed. I'm rolling through my head of all the times I thought maybe, just this once, things would work out, and they were demolished before my eyes. When I was in Christianity I'd be shamed, "Well did you really believe? You have to really believe." I believed to the level my mind would allow based on past experience. 41 years of a silent God left me abandoned and hurt. It was familiar. 

I've tried positive affirmations each morning. Gratitude lists. Crystals in my bra. Setting intentions under the moon. And I feel like the universe, some deity, energy, just hates me. I work hard. I try. I try again. And not to say that I've never had anything good, but those deep neural pathways in my brain always say...get ready because you're about to lose it all. 

Instead of living off hopes and wishes, I'm looking to science to override my entire belief system of who I am and what is possible. Basically, I'm climbing Mount Everest barefoot and alone. I went to hypnotherapy to try and get past my negativity towards myself and access a deeper level in my mind. I listen to an audio tape for me every night as I go to sleep. I will say the crying fits have mostly stopped, but the old beliefs of lack, scarcity and sorrow loom large overhead. 

I've recently been hearing about quantum manifestation from varied sources. When the same thing is being shown to me over and over I do take note. 

Quantum manifestation is the concept that our thoughts and intentions can influence the quantum field, allowing us to create our desired reality through focused energy and consciousness. 

Can I do this while not really believing it? Or are we back to the theory that if you don't believe then it's your fault when nothing works out? I do believe in the brain's neuroplasticity to rewire and restructure. I believe in my own tenacity and resilience. I believe speaking your truth really does set you free.

I'm trying.

I Dropped My Basket

Though a recently posted about feeling better, and some fog lifting, the full truth is that the past year for me has been one of the darkest of my life.  "I dropped my basket" is an old southern saying that basically means you lost your mind. I dropped my basket. I have a long line of mental illness in my family, both diagnosed and others that could use a diagnosis. I tend to lean towards my mother's side of the family in most things and most of the women lose their minds at some point. Though we'll never fully know how much was from abuse and trauma, and how much is their chemistry. I've lived my entire life fearing the day it happens to me, and there have been many moments in my life where clinically it likely did. I'm processing if this latest episode has been the worst of them all. 

At 16 I had suicidal ideation. It started before then but this was the time where I was planning to die. It's a story I sometimes joke about as I was getting so high all the time I forgot my death date which I'd meticulously planned. I was furious and decided I couldn't kill myself until I found what I considered the perfect date. I may have slight perfectionism issues alongside the crazy.

In my 20's I found out I was sexually abused as a child. I'd always suspected it, and I mentally collapsed hard over the discovery. There was a secondary discovery, with more evidence, in my 30's and it nearly paralyzed me. This compounded with depression kept me in a constant state of sorrow. Medication, therapy, medication, therapy, nothing, everything, and I just gave up. 

These are some of the bigger instances but it's really a lifetime of them. The first entry in my diary was "I'm fat". I was 6 years old. I learned to stuff the feelings down and not bother crying as it felt like no one cared anyway. My mother once said, "If you keep refusing to cry, one day you'll start, and it won't stop." That is what has happened. 

In a matter of a few months my precious kitty died, and I had to be the one to decide to euthanize quickly, I was let go from the job I'd loved for 7 years, and I lost who I felt was the love of my life. I don't say this flippantly or to be funny...I had a mental health break. For whatever reason I'm able to be functional while hanging from the edge of the cliff. I'm grateful I can do this, yet it also leaves me in a state of never being real. I tried to tell people, alluded more than fully disclosing, and that's met with cliches and brush offs. And I understand this as it's painful to sit with someone who is falling apart and there isn't a good answer as to what to do. "Things can only get better!" They got worse. 

While smiling in pictures, and laughing in a crowd, I come home every single night and collapse to the floor sobbing. Sometimes I can barely make it to my car. I'm told "let it out", yet this is over a year, this is a lifetime, my issues aren't that I just need a good cry. I can't stop crying. While not planning as I'd done in the past, and I won't do anything because of my son and cats, it's a rare day that I don't have a fantasy of dying. 

I want to be delicate here, as I know people who have lost someone to suicide, but I also want to share how we feel and why there aren't easy answers for anyone. What it feels like for me is being on fire with a pain so intense you can't think and your only thought is I need this agony to end. Then well-meaning people, ones that truly love and care for you, are on the side saying "Hang on! It will get better!" and all these other feel-good lines which may or may not happen. All while the flames hurt so much, and intensify, so you do everything you can to numb it with anything no matter how destructive. Drugs, alcohol, sex, behaviors, rage. You know you'd hurt so many people to choose to die, all while you can't take another moment. 

A dear friend bought me a hypnotherapy session as I'm unemployed (no benefits) and she could see I was getting progressively worse. I feel better. Still crying but it has lessened, and I don't feel on the edge of it at all times. I'm not happy, I'm sad beyond words, but I feel like trying again. 

I don't have a way to tie this up with a cute ribbon, and smugly positive quote. I also don't want pity. This isn't writing about being a victim, but a disclosure about my silences and destructive behaviors. For those that care about me and have tolerated this, thank you.