{"id":1028,"date":"2019-07-04T09:05:12","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T21:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/?p=1028"},"modified":"2019-07-04T09:07:22","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T21:07:22","slug":"living-with-the-myself-aint-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/?p=1028","title":{"rendered":"Living with the myself ain’t easy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I never recognised depression or anxiety within myself for many many years
My perceived strength didn’t allow me the grace to recognise or acknowledge them
I was too strong
I had to be strong
to survive
Along the way there were times
When I cracked
just a little bit
But not enough for me to acknowledge the causes or the effects
It took me a very long time to completely break
But in breaking I then began learning about myself
Learning that my strength was what protected me
Helped me endure
Helped me cope through all the traumas
But even the strongest things become brittle over time
And brittle breaks

And despite all the therapy over the past 8 years
all the self learning
all of the self care I am allowing myself
Yes – I still have to negotiate in my head that I need and deserve to love myself enough to care about myself
that I deserve to put me first
I still break
But each time it is a less substantial break

I give so much of myself
I still put myself last
I still struggle to stand up
and speak out
for me
I am so good at standing for others
speaking up for others
advocating for others
But I am total shit about advocating for myself

And that is classic victim mentality
Damnit!
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On the home front here in New Zealand
Sexual abuse victims are able to access therapy via ACC sensitive claims
Part of this involves undergoing psychological assessments to ascertain authenticity and then ongoing treatment \/ well-being plans
Some fight this process
They perceive a stigma attached with mental health diagnosis
I don’t have an issue with it
If my legs were broken or paralysed I would accept help
So if my inner being is damaged I also need to accept help
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Since I broke eight years ago I have undergone two assessments
I got to a place where I was so broken I needed to accept help
No matter where it came from
And no matter what strings they attached
I was initially diagnosed with PTSD
that’s an easy one
yeah, well not so easy really
It’s actually a bloody nightmare to live with
but I’ve managed to wrap my head around that over the past 8 years
and I’ve been learning to understand myself within it
But during my recent assessment there was an added diagnosis
Recurrant Depressive Disorder
Great!
Another official stamp
I so hate being put into boxes
But officialdom decrees that to fund my ongoing healthcare I have to tick boxes
So anyways…
Combine these two along with the constant sleep disorder that delights in being part of the party
And the results are at times not pretty <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Several weeks ago the tears began
The sleeplessness revved up
I was breaking
Life was attacking me from so many quarters
It is like I have 69 different people demanding from me all at the same time
But each of those 69 do not realise that there are 68 others
It is like a relentless attack on my brain
My nervous system goes into hypervigilance
I become incredibly anxious
My sleep becomes fitful
exhaustion, migraines, physical pain, irritibilty, all increase
I become hyper alert, hyper aroused, anxious, fearful,
And the tears just wont stop<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I know that living with me is hard
but
Living with my self is nigh impossible <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am becoming more aware now though
And trying to be more proactive when I feel myself breaking
Recently I just had to shut down
I allowed myself to
Take time
Pull back
Unload
Accept help
Increase self care
And, the biggest hurdle of all
Ask for help
Sometimes talking with my therapist is not quite enough to get through these patches
This time I have started taking natural ‘meds’
Personally I struggle with taking medication
I have fought it for years
But now, after a consultation, I am taking 5htp, B6 plus some extra strength multi vitamins
They seem to be helping
I am feeling changes
A few days in and I realised
I was smiling again

I am also making a resolved choice to pull myself out of this current hole
I’m not out of it yet
But I sure as hell am a heap better than I was several weeks ago

And I sure as hell am so grateful for my BFF’s who carry me through these dark days in their own special ways

and to my incredibly supportive fianc\u00e9 who holds the umbrella during my storms, he not only encourages me to go lion buying – he goes with me \ud83d\ude42
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never recognised depression or anxiety within myself for many many yearsMy perceived strength didn’t allow me the grace to recognise or acknowledge themI was too strongI had to be strong to surviveAlong the way there were timesWhen I crackedjust a little bitBut not enough for me to acknowledge the causes or the effectsIt took … Continue reading “Living with the myself ain’t easy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,69,20,47,4,67,17,49,60,48,68,70,1,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1171,"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions\/1171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybigballofstring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}