Going round in circles

We feel we've woken up today. We read a friends blog where she's struggling with anorexia. She wrote about her determination to get better. It got us thinking. We hadn't thought of getting better, we've stopped thinking of the future, of being well enough to work again, well enough to stop self-harming. Well enough to wake up one day feeling refreshed, full of energy and motivation, wake up wanting to do something. We're merely existing. It's not a life. We're back to the stage of frustration, depression over the fact that all we ever seem to do is go round in circles. Circles of feeling better, doing something, enjoying something, crashing, sleeping, getting depressed, having bad thoughts, feeling low, existing, feeling better, doing something etc. I don't know how to break the cycle. I feel that I do try. But at the moment I feel I have no reason to try, nothing to look forward to, no reason to get up in the morning and do anything because I'm not going to get better. When we get better, feel better, someone eventually turns round, says they can't cope feeling like this, and shuts us back down to nothingness

Reading what I've written, looks like depression. I've tried about 6 antidepressants over the years, now I'm back to considering trying again....trying, because I've often given up on them because I can't stand the side effects. Maybe I don't have a choice, maybe I have to face the fact that I'm not going to get better with therapy alone, maybe I need medication intervention in order to be able to live, to feel the fresh air running through my body, that energy, the drive to get up and do something. Now I just want to cry, I feel so alone and stuck in a rut not sure where to turn or what to do I hadn't realised that I wasn't living, I had blanked it out, just like everything else in life.

Don't have much to say, but we know the feeling. -Crow & Atlas

We feel the same, too.

Maybe it's depression, maybe it's just the status quo. Sometimes (most times, actually) for me, it emanates from a place of not feeling worthwhile enough to get better, or fear of losing the internal comfort for the external life. It's hard, and I don't know what I could say that would make it easier, other than to let you know that this is a constant in our life as well. It almost always is hard merely to survive, let alone thrive. I hear ya, and you're not alone. Sending good thoughts and hope your way.

we're so sorry your feelin that way but we sure get it to. it's like a constant circle that u described so good. we beginin to think that its just cuz there are so many different parts that need healed that it seems so often that were makin no progress but maybe we are and maybe someday we will be more than just survivin but if we dont work to keep survivin we'll never know that it can be better. i hope that we all can see that we're makin steps, no matter how little, to bein better. hang in there sammy

Thanks, its nice (but feel sorry for you too) to know that others do/feel the same.

abreality wrote:fear of losing the internal comfort for the external life.

That is so true, sometimes we get to a good place where we are starting to go out, do stuff and start planning for the future. Then someone gets scared and can't cope with the real world so we go back inside. At times when they are gone we miss them so, the constant chattering, them making decisions for us

sammys group wrote:we beginin to think that its just cuz there are so many different parts that need healed that it seems so often that were makin no progress but maybe we are and maybe someday we will be more than just survivin but if we dont work to keep survivin we'll never know that it can be better. i hope that we all can see that we're makin steps, no matter how little, to bein better.

That makes sense, sometimes we know that in order to get better we first have to go down to get those parts out, allow them to tell their story in all the pain and only then can we start to go up. It's a shame but it took and OD and admission to hospital to heal 4 of them, they're not asking if we have to do it again to heal some more.

Seeing the small steps to getting better - that always used to frustrate us, not so much anymore, we just don't seem to care. When we were seeing our last T everyone in the external world used to question if it was working and if we should see someone else. It then used to make us doubt ourselves and question whether it was helping. It took a lot of thinking and out T's help to realise that when we started we were unable to talk, just hid, cried, shouted etc at her. It was a real internal battle just to make it through the door let alone talk about the weather, the furniture, how we were getting home etc as we just didn't trust. To us, talking about anything in sessions was a step even if we weren't talking about our 'issues' but everyone else just saw the 'your not able to do this and that yet' as the anxiety was still immense, and made us think that nothing was happening. We wrote a really good story to tell of our journey, we may post it on this forum for others to read.

debetoile wrote:It then used to make us doubt ourselves and question whether it was helping. It took a lot of thinking and out T's help to realise that when we started we were unable to talk, just hid, cried, shouted etc at her. It was a real internal battle just to make it through the door let alone talk about the weather, the furniture, how we were getting home etc as we just didn't trust. To us, talking about anything in sessions was a step even if we weren't talking about our 'issues' but everyone else just saw the 'your not able to do this and that yet' as the anxiety was still immense, and made us think that nothing was happening. We wrote a really good story to tell of our journey, we may post it on this forum for others to read.

the trust is the big thing and yeah we get about it being a big deal to just talk about anything. most of us have never been able to talk and if we did we'd just get in trouble. being able to talk is a step in the direction of healin - you are makin progress and i guess we are to cuz we don't fight about goin to see our T no more and sometimes its more of a fight as to whose gonna get to talk to him and sometimes we just kinda laugh cuz he's tryin so hard to stay on top of whose talkin that we actually think he needs to see a T to help him deal with us.

its so nice when things are going in the right direction and we have hope and if other people dont think we're gettin better well i guess thats there problem. but we also know that any day or hour or minute things can change around and some of us wont know whats been happening for weeks at a time or what's worst for me is when i gotta try to keep our job cuz our mom part has went away for some unknown reason.

i'm just gonna enjoy now cuz its going pretty good now. we gotta work on remembering the good days when the not so good ones come around.

hope you share the story you wrote sometime