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Content Note: This post delves into mental health diagnoses, but also child abuse, childhood sexual violence, rape, abandonment, and more in great detail. An important piece of my mental health journey has been to embrace the different diagnoses. I have bipolar disorder Type I, I have severe anxiety, and I have complex trauma or cPTSD. […]
In October 2023, I began writing about two specific trauma experiences arising from my experiences the previous August – police interactions and riding in cars. Since then I’ve been working to process both. This post is about the car trauma. How I realized I had car trauma Back then I wrote “Then we layer in […]
Its anxiety, my old friendYou’ve come to sit with me againBecause a feeling softly does creepGrabbing hold while I cannot sleepAnd the belief that was programmed in my brainStill remainsWithin the hush of silence In childhood years I walked aloneSlipping into a silent homeWatching other families from afarMy door to comfort was ajarWhen my heart […]
Anxiety has been my constant lifelong companion. When I was young, I didn’t have the language. I didn’t understand how these awful feelings were connected to my awful life experiences. I just internalized the anguish, transforming it to shame. I remember thinking our dog would be so lonely if we left her alone so I […]
Resisting social anxiety, holiday edition. Anxiety has been a mighty foe of mine since forever. In addition to missing outings and events, it has severed my ties to my friends and colleagues. My world grew much smaller, but I didn’t even feel it happening. When I was forced to leave my home 3+ months ago, […]
Today, my therapist and I did a symptom review where we ‘sorted’ my current and very recent symptoms into three categories: Anxiety, Depression, and Hypomania. Then we looked at the intersection of these symptoms, this sorting, with my trauma symptoms. I was struggling to distinguish between Anxiety and Hypomania, so she literally created a divide […]
I didn’t know ‘dread’ is a clinical symptom. The difference between anxiety and dread is that anxiety is an unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event while dread is great fear in view of impending evil; fearful apprehension of danger; anticipatory terror. So my spin through last week took me down a dark path […]
My birthday is October 22. This year, I turn 52. I’m not at all worried about aging because I was brought up to believe that our 50’s are a great time period. Not THE 50’s but our decade of being 50. To be clear. And that’s proving to be the case. I’m a better version […]
Today is Pride. We had plans to go with a friend to see the parade and walk around the festival. Then the thoughts crept into my mind. Last night, I was fretting about the hill we’d have to walk up from our car to the festival. What if I couldn’t climb the hill? What if […]
Today is Saturday. My wife and I decided to run some errands. We set our schedule the evening before – we wanted to accomplish several things Go to the shoe store for her to get some new sneakers Drop my ballot at the County Executive Office PIck up a curbside order from Target Stop by […]
