Isolation times

[maggief9812]

I haven’t talked with my therapist in over 3? weeks. She called me once to set up a phone session but my mom was sick with a 101° fever and I’d just found out. Mom turned out to be fine, but I haven’t reached back out since.

I’ve been vibrating. I shake. I’m out of work, because dental offices are closed and my unemployment pay is good. I don’t feel worried about covid? Working in healthcare, you learn to follow infection control and not think about it beyond that. I take all the precautions I always have. I follow my training.

My husband asks me why I’m shaking. When I shrug, he says “we are in a pandemic” as if it’s reasonable that I shake like I scared chihuahua.

But, I don’t care about corona. Like, yeah. People are sick. I know that it’s awful. Rationally & objectively. But emotionally I can not access it.

I don’t like myself. I don’t like where I am in life. I don’t like the family that raised me. I don’t like the way I react to otherwise normal situations. How can I care about chaos in the world when I car door closing makes my heart jump out of my chest? When my husband walking through the house normally makes my whole body tense? How can he understand it has *nothing* to do with him, or the world outside as to why I’m always on edge?

It’s frustrating. I feel so invisible. Alone. Broken and not worth the monumental work to get somewhat close to normal.

[Nathalie99 Partner]

You are worth the work, Maggie. It's very frustrating not being able to access therapist and missing the sessions.

I think that the symptoms are sometimes so intensive that it is hard to be able to notice anything else. The suffering is real even if it's invisible.

I think self compassion in such a situation might help. Therapy is a very hard work and unbearable too but it's worth it and you are worth the effort and getting better.

Sending support...

[maggief9812]

I just feel hopeless. Like, it’s this giant uphill struggle to reach where I can start to approach the life I want. When I almost never can find the will to do what I know needs to be done. I’m just trying to get through each day, when just trying to *be* takes all my energy I’m never going to get as far as I want to. I forget about things all the time and fail to do them in a timely fashion. I drop the ball time & time again. I didn’t apply to get back into school in time- for no reason. And now the career I want it going to be set back for Another year.

[Nathalie99 Partner in reply to maggief9812]

I experienced this for over a decade and still can't do things on time.

Loss of career has been incredibly hard as it happened when I was doing so well.

It's hard to explain how just being takes all the energy and at times the suffering exceeds capacity to cope.

I had plans for this year and I started functioning better, with struggles but there was hope...now I lost my progress and wondering how I will be able to get back up.

It takes a huge effort to gain momentum and enough motivation to endure the recovery work and getting back to functioning, gradually.

Then losing that progress is so very tough.

I started judging myself for feeling helpless and not doing so well which only makes it worse.

So I just don't think about it even though I feel grief.

I switched to taking a day at a time. Can't think about the future, too much. I can only do things right now and even that can be a lot at times.

It's like the trauma state can cause freeze mode where even important things don't get done because it's too much.

It means you are processing things in the background and it's tough to accept not being able to do what we had hoped.

I feel a sense of grief but I can't think about it right now so I slow down and give myself time to rest to gather the energy.

I am hoping to figure things out and find the way through this.