Sunday, May 10, 2015

Battling My Mind

Been a while since I've seen you, darling reader. My life has been quite the roller coaster in the last...gosh! A year and a half. My posts on my WordPress site disappeared on me..so huge gap in posts! I don't think I really posted much in that time frame anyways.

So, what happened? My mind went on an adventure, leaving me practically house bound. You all know from previous posts I have been diagnosed with OCD. I went to my doctor last June because my intrusive thoughts were bad. I could leave the house to go to work and that was basically it. Toby would try to get me to go with him walking the dog, it was like pulling teeth, without novocaine, to step out the door.

Off to the doctor I went, finally. I passed the clinical depression test (sounds much better than failed the happiness test!) and was put on an anti-depressant. Then swapped to another one because I was tired all the time. Then she added an anti psychotic because the intrusive thoughts just kept getting worse. Then, the biggest drop in the roller coaster, I wanted to kill myself.

Thankfully, I told Toby, and he got me to tell my doctor. Since I was not literally about to kill myself, she put me into a partial hospitalization program (PHP), instead of recommending an impatient program. It helped. It was two weeks of intensive classes and psychotherapy. A new diagnosis was added as well. I have Bipolar Disorder, Type 2.

After that, I went through a 10 week class (once a week) called ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I just finished it last week. Such a revelation! It taught me to think about my conditions and my thoughts in a completely different way. (Info on ACT here, if you're interested.)

Throughout all this I have managed to keep writing in spurts. I've started a rewrite of my novel Ivory. My writing ability has grown since I first sat down to write this novel during NaNoWriMo in 2007. One thing I've learned is that all these thoughts I have, no matter how horrible they seem, I can live with them. The interesting ones I write down now. I've gotten some great outlines since I started doing this.

While my mind and I have been at odds for the last year and half (okay, longer but who's counting?), I feel that I'm nearing a peace treaty with it. We're definitely in talks, no assassination attempts in a while. There's hope I will learn to live with my mind, rather than trying to destroy it.


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