New Blog, New Me! Welcome to Ariel's Two Cents

After an extended break from blogging, I have started this blog as a fresh start for my writing.  The blog platform that I used to use has become too complicated and no longer user friendly for me.  I will admit, I'm getting a bit too old to keep up with the newest technology.  I'm sad that I am going to lose over 100 posts and over 5,000 blog hits, but it is what it is.  Maybe my followers will follow me here?  Anyway... on to the point of the post...

Life has gotten in the way of my writing, but I think I’m ready to bring you all up to speed and return to regular posting.  My autoimmune life has gotten busy with so many doctors, tests, appointments, and procedures.  I have so many appointments each week that I can’t even keep it straight anymore.  This might be a long post today because we have a few years’ worth of updates to cover.  Bear with me while I try to make sense of everything that has happened.

I caught Covid-19 in September of 2023 and that started the worst depression of my life.  It made the diagnosis depression of 2018 look like a walk in the park!  It was awful.  I was in a dark and dreary place for far too long.  I thought about self-harming on a daily basis, although I am proud to announce that I did not relapse!  I still have not self-harmed since August of 2013.  I’m not sure how I made it through, but I imagine that it has something to do with finding the most amazing therapist I have ever worked with.  I can admit now that it also has a lot to do with my perseverance through all that was meant to end me.  I’ve been fighting for my life for the duration of my life.  That still has not changed.  I won’t give up now, but this most recent depression almost ended my life a few separate times.  Seriously, getting into therapy likely saved my life.  I am exceedingly grateful to my therapist, Lori, for sticking with me and never giving up on me, no matter how complicated my case was.

At the end of 2023, I read the book, “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel Van Der Kolk.  The book discusses the effects of trauma on the brain and body.  It talks about how trauma can turn into chronic health and chronic pain conditions.  There was one part in the book where the writer goes through EMDR therapy for one small trauma he had.  He didn’t believe that it would work, but he tried it anyway.  Well, it worked so quickly that he decided he needed to get trained in EMDR immediately.  I suddenly found myself in a mad dash to find a therapist that offers EMDR and the first place I called happened to be the one I stayed with.  I started with a different therapist, Yasmin, and I loved her dearly.  She is very soft-spoken, which is critical for me.  Unfortunately, she does not yet have the training for the services that my trauma requires, so she referred me to Lori and that moment was one of divine intervention and I won’t believe anything any different.  I have tears welling up in my eyes just remembering this moment.  It’s very emotional for me.  Coming to Revive was the first time in a long time that I felt hope.  I rarely felt any hope that I could heal before meeting Lori.  Every therapist I worked with in the past abandoned me before treatment ever worked.  I gave up easily, but Lori came into my life and changed that.  I have wanted to give up a few times along the way with Lori, but I don’t.  I persevere no matter how hard it gets.  

I went from feeling like a social outcast to going to therapy groups twice a week and a one-on-one session each week as well.  The ladies in the groups quickly became good friends and I am so grateful for them in my life.  I feel so less alone in this life now that I have friends who share some of my traumas.  We help each other out with anything and everything that we can.  We text and chat at least on a weekly basis.  I’m even attending the wedding of one of the lovely ladies from my group.  I almost have a social life now!  

Through everything I have endured, my poor health has continued to be a major obstacle in my life.  There are days where I’m in too much pain to make it to my session.  For my one-on-one sessions, we do them online if I’m flaring too much to go in-person.  It takes three buses each way to go from my house to Lori’s office.  On high-pain days, it’s just not doable or worth the extra pain that it will cause.  Lori has an amazing understanding of my condition because her mother had the same autoimmune disease as me.  When I discuss my symptoms with Lori, she completely understands everything I’m going through.  She has also taken care of someone with chronic health, so she understands both the physical and the mental/emotional effects of being sick forever at an early age.  This is one of the main reasons that I say that Lori is uniquely qualified to be my therapist.  Life has given her the experience necessary to lead me on my healing journey.  I gave over all of my trust to her several months ago and now we work together very well.  I am comfortable with her and feel safe.  It did take me a long while to get comfortable and to start to feel safe, but I am there now and that is all that matters.  

I may not have been writing in this blog for the last few years, but I have been writing a book all about my healing journey.  I have written it diary-style, with daily entries about whatever session I had that day.  Part of the writing process has been to write the story of my abuse and trauma and that has been both healing and emotionally taxing, but it has also been so healing and therapeutic, too.  I started the book on the day of my very first appointment with Lori.  I told her about it on my second appointment with her and she loved the idea of me writing about my journey.  I don’t think she’s had a client do that before, but I could be wrong.  Many people use writing as part of their therapy.  I do plan to publish the book when the journey is complete.  I have already started that process and have reached out to some publishers.

Back in the Fall, my depression reached a point where I was possibly in danger.  I had to tell Lori all about it, which felt a little embarrassing to me, but she never made me feel any kind of way about it besides feeling safe.  She has never made me feel like she was judging me (or anyone else, either).  As soon as she realized that my depression was severe, we switched gears and did some evaluations to find out what was going on.  It turned out that I was having a severe episode of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).  TMS treatment was recommended, and, in the meantime, I reached out to my psychiatrist, and he increased the dose of my Latuda to see if the mood stabilizer I was already titrating up would help at a higher dose.  My psychiatrist was right.  Within just a few days, my depression ended, and I was back to normal.  Well… normal for me.  Unfortunately, the TMS was denied by my insurance company, but I didn’t stress it too much because the increase in the Latuda took me out of my depression.  

I’ve been out of that depression for about a month now and life looks so different on this side of it.  I was so clouded by everything that I was going through that I couldn’t even function anymore.  At one point, Lori had to ask me if I was going to harm myself.  There were questions I had to answer and a decision that she had to make about my care.  She chose not to place me in the hospital and that was the right choice because I never even attempted to self-harm or worse.  She asked me if I was going to harm myself and I told her that if I had wanted to harm myself, I would have already done that.  I had too much time clean from self-harm and I had no intention of changing that.  She trusted me, which is good because now I know that we can trust each other, which will make it easier for me if I am in danger and need her help.  I’ll know that she won’t make any decision without carefully considering all aspects of it.  That’s incredibly important for me when I am working with a therapist.  I must be able to trust them implicitly.

Michael and I almost broke up in the midst of my depression peaking last Winter.  He has not been the most supportive lately and that has been frustrating, but we are working on better communication, and we will get there, hopefully.  We have not given up on each other yet and I think that’s the most important part.  Every marriage goes through some rocky points and ours is there now, but after 17 years of marriage, we won’t give up on each other yet.  Michael still tries to take care of me, but I have taken back some of that responsibility.  One of my biggest goals with therapy is to get to where I can be independent and self-sufficient, despite my disabilities.  I also have a goal to learn to go places with Michael or one of the boys going with me.  This has been the most difficult goal yet, but I have faith that I will get there, eventually.  I just need Michael to get on the same page as me.  We’re working on it, but we are not there yet.

Now that my depression has ended, I feel like a whole different person.  I still have my struggles, but things are getting a little easier to deal with.  I started meditating about a month or so ago and that has had an enormous impact on my healing journey.  I tend to have a lot of difficulty with emotional regulation, so meditation has been a valuable tool for me.  I have also learned some skills and tools from working with Lori and I practice them often so that I will get better at using them when I need to.  I have been able to emotionally regulate myself at times, so I am making some progress.  I’m just so proud of myself for how far I have come.  I know that I have so much further to go, especially because we have not even started the reprocessing phase of EMDR.  I can’t imagine how much better my life is going to get when we get to that part!  I can’t wait for the rest of this journey to take me to wherever I am meant to be.