sometimes i don't know about therapy. i know that i need it, but i find it completely overwhelming sometimes.

we've just reached the social skills chapter in the dbt book. i've spent three days in something i'm now recognizing not just to be depression, but a mild form of shutdown. it's almost as though i can feel the switches going to the off position. i turn nocturnal again. i bury myself in repetitive activities. for me, this means either computer games or pencil puzzles. i have other interests, but these are the ones i turn to when the world is feeling much too big.

it isn't even that i don't want to be social. but this is a social skills chapter written for those who don't have other challenges. it's written for people who can make sense of the basics with ease, and for whom social interaction doesn't represent extra 'tests' and stresses.

i feel that i'm about to enter class 501, and i'm still working on 101.

i know i've been socially isolating. but really at the time, it was a necessity, because i was completely overwhelmed, and i couldn't do any more than i was doing.

i think i'm slowly starting to move out of complete avoidance of everything. and then i'm presented with something that feels so hugely challenging. and it's overwhelming. and i want to move back into shutdown.

i'm not sure what to do. i know i need to keep going. i've decided that just giving up isn't really an option.

time to talk about it all again, i suppose. i don't know what else to do.

and all of this is happening when i'm coming out of denial of my neurological differences. and i'm coming out of denial largely because i can't afford to be there any more. and because i just want to know. some days, when i'm feeling particularly out of the loop with all of it, i want to attribute my quirks to about ten different things. but i know deep down that i process things differently, and i've always known it. nld---and even asperger's---explains so much in that regard.

occam's razor . i really think it works best.

i think i'm more at peace now. i brought in a video by nalo hopkins to my therapist, a sci fi writer who talks about her nld. she does it beautifully, and, as much as i can babble once i get my hands on a keyboard, i'm frequently tongue-tied when needing to talk about important things face to face.

it went well. it took a little silence and time to collect myself, but i got it out: how the sensory issues are sensory issues, the difficulty with reading social cues is difficulty with reading social cues, and that they're not part of ptsd. (i have enough symptoms of that to go around.)

she thought that the way i sometimes go quiet when having difficulty reading a social situation---while at the same time needing to express a need---may be related to ptsd. this sounds somewhat true to me.

either way, it would be good to learn to express that without going quiet, regardless of the source.

it feels good. i was afraid of saying anything, but i realized i had to---so i did. it feels more peaceful and less obsessive.

so, i'm a little tmi (too much information). i think i figured that out from reading something about nld. still, i thought this journal entry belonged here.


i'm in therapy currently for bpd issues and/or traits. i decided i need dbt for difficulty with regulating my emotions, self-injury, things like this. it is a therapy structured primarily for those with borderline personality disorder (although it works with other things too.) it's extremely similar to cbt, although there seems to be extra emphasis on black of white thinking.

personally i just think of borderline personality as being largely a combination of chronic fight-or-flight paired with a fear of abandonment. (and yes, that can be a recipe for a completely disastrous social environment. i know this from the inside out.)

i believe the chronic sense of fight-or-flight can be biological---some are born with an especially sensitive limbic system (and there are studies that indicate that the left amygdala is larger in those with bpd than in non-bpd's, just as is true with bi-polar disorder.) i also believe it can be a reaction to a chaotic environment: as in a particularly chaotic upbringing, repeated violence, invalidation over these things which then causes isolation, a sense of otherness from the rest of the world. and it can also be any shade or gradation in between.

either way, it's a little like having ptsd. and some practitioners feel that complex ptsd (ptsd from prolonged and repeated frightening events vs. one) and bpd are one and the same. i really think that in some cases, they are one and the same.

so all of this fits.

but it's also strongly possible that i have a non-verbal learning disability as well. the main features are a difficulty in processing visual information, thus difficulties with math and any sort of spatial sense, such as a sense of direction. there are generally challenges with reading non-verbal cues, there are also difficulties with balance and coordination (which i definitely had in childhood and still have some as an adult---so much so that it took me years of effort to learn to ride a bike, and i still can't catch or throw, despite fairly decent handwriting.) there are a hundred different little 'quirks' of nld that describe my life, strengths as well as challenges.

i had a memory for words as a child that i couldn't shut off if i wanted to. once a word is in my head, it stays there for good. i lived for reading, (this is another feature of nld.) and i felt at home with the written word and even used it to help me excel across some parts of the academic terrain. but i forgot my multiplication tables every year and i still have to add on paper, even fairly simple equations.

i'm also endlessly curious and capable of focusing on one topic of interest for a very long time---i have a difficult time not focusing on something if i find it interesting. at the same time, i'm terribly disorganized and forgetful. i have a difficult time seeing the whole for the details.

i have mild sensory issues. lots of lots (noise, bright lights, movement--such as in a large store) exhausts me, unless i can sit largely by myself and zone it all out. certain sounds are painful (electronically modified ones especially), and as a child i was generally feeling nauseous because smells were so intense.

it fits. and i know that it fits.

the difficulty sometimes is telling the issues apart---which thing belongs to which 'label' or category? difficulty regulating emotions can be a part of nld as well (meltdowns, a tendency to be largely in the dark about what you're feeling until suddenly there is a meltdown, along with, in some cases, chronic anxiety, depression, which i have. self-injury and eating disorders, especially anorexia, are also common. fortunately i don't contend with the last any more. but it was an issue during adolescence. it's not that i thought i was fat. it's that i couldn't see that i wasn't. i was too...

[ Continued ]

i didn't realize you can't cut and paste here. i had an image of a smile (frog smiling), but i don't see a way to upload images either.

oh well. sometimes i think it's not bad to smile, even when things are kind of painful. it helps. but sometimes, when i'm stressed, it just comes out as a grimace.



a smile anyhow.

eeks. i just started therapy again. i'm giving dbt a go---both the class and individual sessions. i think it might be okay. this therapist doesn't seem to be put off by the fact that i'm an atheist. she's very matter-of-fact, and i think i need that right now.

the current situation: my landlord/former friend/neighbor is a peeping tom. the saddest thing: at first, i was so crushed out on him, i thought it was okay.

it's not. i can't make it okay. it feels terrible.

but maybe in the end, it's good. i've gotten myself into a huge hole. i alienate everyone. i isolate. i don't mind complete solitude in the day-to-day, so it takes something fairly catastrophic to jolt myself out of it. i can't live without my behavior, but i can't live with it any more.

so... off to therapy i go. :)

a strange thank you to the landlord. he's been a vast source of confusion to me since i've moved in. (oddly, this is one of my crush triggers :D. don't ask... ) but maybe, in a strange way, he can be one step to clarity too. (none of that stops me from watching 'dexter' obsessively, though... or from going off and yelling... or from wondering why he does what he does.)

i don't know. i'll have to see. all i can say is: life is very very strange sometimes.




i'm not really done yet. this is all the bare bones, and i have a tendency to do that. i leave the emotions for poetry or for tears during things that seem unrelated (a tv program, maybe), or things like that. i set them aside because they're so confusing.

i've had so many confusing and conflicting feelings about this. i still miss the friendship i thought i had with him. i know that's crazy. because it wasn't really a friendship. i always had the sense that we were having two different conversations. (i'm used to this, however. i have no sense of social cues, and so i just tend to go on about whatever. people generally relate it to something directly social. but often, i'm just off on a topic.)

we were having two different conversations. i was talking about one thing, and what he heard was completely different. apparently it all fed into his voyeurism in one sense or another. i wanted to talk about 'sherlock' and andy warhol and frogs and whatnot. he heard: 'she wants me to engage in my addiction.'

oh well. i don't know. sometimes i hate him. i mean i really hate him. but then i'll be watching something about a lost friendship and just burst into tears.

i still have to sort all of this through, though---on an intellectual level first. because it makes no sense to me emotionally. it just doesn't.

it doesn't make sense to me emotionally either. but maybe if i keep wading through it, i'll find something to take away from it that can move my life forward, out of this terminally stuck place.

i don't know. i just wish i could grieve clearly. but i go into anger, and i have a hard time bringing myself out of it.

the end result: this is a mess. it's a big mess.