Crisis point
Huge apologies for not posting sooner. Things have been pretty tough lately and I have been barely able to string a sentence together at times, let alone write a coherent blog post.
However, in true spirit of capturing the whole of this difficult journey, not just the good parts, I am now ready to reflect on the last few weeks.
In essence, I hit my breaking point. After so many months of holding it together, striving, campaigning, being positive and cheerful and perhaps crucially, of sweeping therapy issues under the carpet, life suddenly became overwhelming. I began to struggle to see the good in anything, the point in anything and my mind took me to some very dark places. It was a typical BPD crisis and in that vein, everything I was feeling was to the extreme.
Whilst I knew rationally that it was a typical crisis and that eventually it would pass in the same way that all those in the past have, emotionally I was fully involved in it and could see no way out of the darkness.
Things became serious and I knew I had to tell someone how I was feeling, ask for help. That was really difficult but the fact that I could see things were going so rapidly downhill and acknowledge that I couldn’t cope on my own meant in reality, I was a step ahead of where I have been in the past. I can see that now and am quite proud of myself for getting there but at the time, the fact that I was experiencing my first real crisis in 18 months made me feel like a failure and compounded my desperation.
Thankfully, my experience of asking for help was a positive one and I received good support from the professionals involved in my care. I was referred to the local crisis team and had several visits from them, which I appreciated since I always find them to be more effective in person than over the phone. There was a stage where a hospital stay was seriously considered but that filled me with terror. The last time I was in an acute ward was a traumatic experience for me and I was determined not to go back there- not only because of that but also because I have fought so hard to move on from that stage in my life over the last two years and I desperately didn’t want to take what I perceived, at that time, to be a backwards step. Fortunately, I have managed to stave off an admission.
I am now feeling a little more in control again, although still totally exhausted, but am aware that I need to learn from this experience. It is too easy for me to keeping going and doing and saying yes to things which might not actually be good for me. I need to get more of a balance in my life and not be as consumed by avoidance strategies as I have allowed myself to become. I need to take time to process the things which come out of therapy each week, not run away from them or pretend they’re not there, and I need to practise more self-care rather than always being busy doing something for others. Neither of this things are easy for me, especially when you consider that alongside my EUPD, I also have Avoidant Personality Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, both of which I will have to fight to keep those resolutions.
Things are not easy right now but at least the rollercoaster ride has become less like Oblivion and more traditional in its course again. I guess sometimes that’s the best I can hope for.
