Ariel's Two Cents

 I have not had the best day, and I think that a venting session might be helpful.  My day was doomed from the very moment it started.  Actually.  That is not correct.  It was doomed when I had an awful night last night.  I was in an excruciating amount of pain and that was stopping me from sleeping.  I tossed and turned and begged for help for hours before I finally decided to take a clonazepam to help me sleep.  I rarely take those tablets.  I do not care for them at all, and they cause me cardiac distress the following day.  My doctor prescribes 10 of them at a time and that lasts me about 3 - 4 months.  I'm not even exaggerating.  I pick them up when I do my quarterly pain management appointments.  The clonazepam took until around 2 am to put me to sleep and when it did, I slept like the dead until my 6:30 am alarm woke me up.  I turned it off (without realizing that's what I did) and went back to sleep until my n...

 I've been in a dark place for a few days.  I haven't been able to find the words to write about it, so I'm going to try to do so now.  I may end up deleting this for the 5,430,503rd time this week.  Who knows... Back in 2021, I was seeing a psychiatrist through MultiCare.  She was treating me for bipolar disorder but apparently, she thought that I had BPD (borderline personality disorder) , also.  She never discussed it with me.  She simply wrote it in the notes of my medical chart, clearly not realizing that I read everything that has my name attached to it.  She never had a single conversation with me about the possibility of a new diagnosis.  It was sneaky and behind-my-back and I don't like people that move like that.  I need to be able to trust my providers to communicate with me when there is an issue.  I stopped seeing her after that incident and ran from that diagnosis ever since. Last month, my meltdowns started to become...

 I'm not having the best day, so I think a venting session is in order.  Nobody pissed me off this time, besides my pain levels.  I woke up this morning with a lot of joint and muscle pain.  I'm assuming that it's another Fibromyalgia flare and I hate those worse than the other types of flares that I get.  A Fibromyalgia flare is difficult for me to ascertain as the pain and other symptoms are exceedingly similar to a Scleroderma flare .  It's difficult to keep them all straight on flare days.  It's a sad existence because when one disease or condition is not flaring, there is always another condition starting a flare.  I never get a day off from my autoimmune life. I didn't go to sleep until late last night and I'm sure that is affecting my pain level.  My pain is always higher on days with less sleep.  My body seems to need at least 8 - 9 hours of sleep to combat my autoimmune diseases, but I rarely get that these days.  I have ...

 I've been on the move for weeks now, but I finally managed to carve out a day for some rest.  It doesn't happen often in my life, but occasionally a day of rest will manifest itself.  I'm grateful when it does happen.  Michael is off work today and for once, we don't have any appointments to attend to.  Normally, we would have my therapy appointment this afternoon, but Lori is out of the country for the next 5 weeks, so I am kind of on my own for getting through any mental hangups that may arise.  I think Michael is enjoying not taking me to town today.  I know it gets overwhelming for him when he literally never gets a day to rest.  No human body can tolerate that for very long.  Instead, we are spending the day together and catching up on some chores around the house. I slept 9 hours last night and the night before, but my body is still screaming at me.  It frustrates me when I get a lot of hours of sleep, but I still feel fatigued....

 Michael and I spent the better part of last night in the hospital.  He had gone to our primary care physician, Cassandra, and she wanted to send him to the emergency room via ambulance, but he would not allow that.  She did an EKG  at her office, and it showed atrial flutter , which needed medical attention right away.  Michael and I both have extreme medical anxiety, so this was a difficult situation for us.  Luckily, Cassandra understands our issues, so she sent a note to the emergency room so that they would know what to do with us.  I love our doctor.  She is so amazing.  As we were leaving, she gave me a hug and said, "Thank you for listening to my advice."  I hugged her back and told her, "Thank you."  Michael and I ran our errands, then headed to the hospital.  It took some convincing to get Michael to agree to go, but he finally came around to the idea.  He wanted to wait until Monday, but I knew that was not safe...

 Today was supposed to be a big day in my healing journey, but that is not the way things went, after all.  I had an in-person therapy session scheduled for 1 pm today.  It was to be the first of many EMDR reprocessing sessions.  I have been terribly nervous about this all week long and it came to a head this morning.  I woke up with a lot of anxiety and could not use my anxiety medication due to the effects it will have on the EMDR.  This was hugely difficult for me this morning and part of the reason that I had started to melt down.  Michael was not as helpful as I had hoped that he would be, but I'll deal with him later.  After a calm conversation, he will likely be more understanding.  I hope so, anyway.  In the midst of me freaking out about not being able to take my medication, I got a text message from Lori letting me know that she needed to do our session from her home today, which meant online instead of in-person.  When I ...

 I'm getting closer and closer to reprocessing my trauma through EMDR.  I saw my therapist yesterday afternoon and it was a rough session for me.  Part of EMDR preparation is making a "Memory List", which is a list of all of your traumatic memories, measured several different ways.  It is compiled and when you start reprocessing, you refer back to this list.  I don't know much more than that as I have not yet entered that phase of EMDR.  I have been working with Lori for 9 months now, so I have grown to trust her.  I don't trust easily and me taking so long to trust her has nothing to do with her and everything to do with my past trauma.  I have been working on this memory list since before Christmas last year and I have hated every second of it.  I hate having to tell my story.  I hate the embarrassment and humiliation that I feel when I have to tell another living soul what was done to me.  It's just awful, but if I must go throug...

I did a "thing" yesterday and I need to write about it.  I have been seeing my therapist 2-3 times per week for over eight months, and I have never, not once, ever taken myself to and from the office alone.  Last week, Lori and I discussed the need for me to prove to myself that I can do this, so yesterday was the day that I tested myself with it.  It did not go wonderfully, like I had hoped, but I did survive, so there's that!  I went through a lot, mentally and emotionally, before I even left the house.   I woke up with my 6 am alarm and the first thought in my mind was, "How in the Hell am I going to make it there and back alone?"  I could not shake the thought from my brain to save my life.  My mind was intent on convincing me that every single thing that could go wrong, would go wrong.  These dark thoughts first thing in the morning prompted a panic attack of epic proportions and I am still reeling from it all.  I woke Michael up to...

  EMDR .  Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.  These words have been the main topic on my mind for the last year.  I read the book, "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van der Kolk, and it made me a believer in EMDR.  I spent a few months searching for a therapist that was trained in EMDR, and it didn't take me long to find Lori and make her my therapist.  She's more than just a therapist to me.  She's a healer who loves her craft and I love to watch her in her element with it.  When we are at our therapy group sessions together, she just glows.  You can tell that it is, indeed, her passion.  EMDR was recommended to me many years ago, but I was nowhere near ready to deal with my trauma at the time.  I am now ready to process my trauma in a safe place with the person I trust implicitly, Lori. Lori and I have done a lot of preparation work for the reprocessing phase of EMDR.  I had a long way to go when I got to Lori...

 My heart is racing.  My palms are sweaty.  I'm getting dizzy.  My knees feel weak.  My vision is getting darker.  I almost can't see anything in front of me.  I'm hyperventilating.  I can't breathe.  I need help.  These are the symptoms that I get anytime I'm having anxiety.  I have been struggling with this since I was a child, and it has never gotten any easier for me to deal with it.  You see, I have been through horrible situations that have traumatized me forever.  I've been in a shootout.  I've been kidnapped.  I've been sexually assaulted and abused.  I've been beaten by lovers and attacked by my haters.  I have plenty of reason for reacting the way that I do.  I have been fighting a battle in my head since the chaos began.  I am a warrior!  I will never give up. C-PTSD is the reason that I struggle with these symptoms.  PTSD causes some symptoms, but when a person has comp...

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) was first mentioned to me back in early 2018 when I was seeking mental health services for my past trauma.  I had never heard of it, and I was still terrified to do anything about my trauma, so I just tucked it in the back of my mind for a later date.  That date came in 2023 when I was reading, "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van der Kolk.  The book had been gaining popularity and was constantly popping up on my social media, so I broke down and bought the book and I read it right away.  I am so grateful that I did.  When the author heard about EMDR, he thought it was just some mental health "fad" that was going to disappear just as quickly as it arrived.  He went to a person and decided to let them do the EMDR therapy on him.  He didn't believe that it was going to work, but he tried it using one trauma of his own from his lifetime.  He did the session, and it worked so well that he said ...

My therapist and I are working on several different things and I'm working very hard to learn all the various skills, tools and techniques that will help me in life.  One of the things that we are working on is me learning to be alone and to go places by myself.  This particular skill is one that I have been unable to practice because my husband likes to go with me everywhere I go.  If he is not available to go somewhere, he insists on one of the boys going with me.  It's tedious and time-consuming for them to have to go everywhere with me.  They are teenagers and want to enjoy their lives, not be my personal security guards in life! I haven't lived alone in my entire adult life, so being alone is scary for me.  When traumatic things happened to me, they always happened when I was at home, alone, so my traumatized brain does not find safety or comfort in being home alone.  Things are even scarier when I have to go somewhere alone because I live near a ...

I woke with a startle this morning and that should have been my sign to go back to bed and forget all about this day.  My anxiety has been through the roof since my appointment on Monday.  I've had flashbacks on a loop ever since the pelvic exam that day.  Normally, I would have scheduled that appointment for a time when I could take an anxiety tablet beforehand, but I was convinced to just to do it now.  It was my husband who convinced me to do it while we were there.  Of course, he didn't consider the effects that such an exam would have on me and blindly recommended it anyway.  I have a slight resentment with him about that now, but I'm working on processing it and moving on.   My state of mind this morning was awful, and I tried to tell my husband that, but before I could, he had already started a fight with me.  I was already dealing with anxiety off the charts and my heart was racing, so I know my POTS  was acting up, too.  My...