Emotional (dis)regulation thread for expression strong emotions and supporting each other

[erinaceus]

Inspired by a few threads on the MH boards and elsewhere on MN, this thread is:

• A safe space to express strong or overwhelming emotions;
  
• Somewhere where MNers can support MNers who are experiencing strong or overwhelming emotions;
  
• We can share strategies for coping with strong or overwhelming emotions. Healthy strategies preferred, but bearing in mind that what is healthy for one poster might not be healthy for another poster.
  
  to everyone who knows what I mean.

[Annaismyothername]

Yes MN is great for meaningless chat. I am usually reading the feminist or relationship boards rather than the lighter threads. But i did talk about wallpaper yesterday and popped into the pub.

I have relocated to sofa to watch a TED talk and then going to tackle the day. Do you have a plan?

My DC are due home this afternoon. I've survived the big black hole that is my weekend in a slightly healthier fashion than usual.

I realise it's not just for chit chat but thanks for the thread. When I'm overwhelmed with dark thoughts I usually email Samaritans.

[erinaceus]

Yes. I phone the Samaritans. It is an agreement with my DH that I do this during the night so that he can sleep.

Plan? Have a shower. That is the next step.

[FaithLoveandHope]

Placemarking. Ill today so don't feel like speaking much and am exhausted but wanted to just pop in and say hi. Thank you erinaceus for starting this thread. For those who don't know me I've a history of depression and anxiety but only recently been diagnosed with BPD which makes a lot of sense to me. Due to be starting CBT soon and have also just started reading a book on DBT which so far is very interesting. Will join in more when I'm more awake.

[Comejointhemurder]

Can I ask OP?. You reject Psychiatry and MH diagnoses. You 'burn through' therapists and enjoy 'out-therapising' therapists.

I don't understand why you think you need help with anything?. Or why you look to MH professionals for it - when you reject the idea of mental illness and think you know better than them?.

What are you looking for?. Confirmation that you 'don't fit' in Psychiatry - maybe you're too clever or too complex?

I'm not being goady. I just don't understand why you seem to think you don't have a MH problem but also think you need some sort of help with your MH but not from the help that is available - something different, something that just suits you and your needs but isn't related to a MH diagnosis?.

If you think that a lot of 'mental illness' is related to the human condition and experiences then I agree, but you're simultaneously rejecting Psychiatry but also seeking Psychiatric help. I don't understand that.

[erinaceus]

Yes, it js confusing. As to what I need?

Support. A means of articulating my emotional experiences absent jokes and a place where those experiences are not shot down, denied, overwritten with the emotional experience, not silenced. Validation. Empathy. Someone who can stop me from intellectualising my emotions away and learn to trust them instead. Company as I come to terms with the most difficult truths I have ever had to face.

After a lifetime of being consistently given the message that I am the literal pathology, I came to understand that I am not the pathology. I am a person and my anger and my terror and my sadness are real and valid and an unending grief. But if I numb myself out from all of that, I lose the capacity to love as well, at I believe that that is a capacity that can be developed, and that this is work that I need to do, for the sake of my DH and our future children should our marriage survive.

My current therapist comes from a background more in expressive sorts of therapies and not in analytical nor behavioral ones. So bit by bit I am leaning. Psychiatry is a system that sort of kicks in when one's behavior falls outside the bounds of what is culturally coded as acceptable at the time, in extremis this being when one is a risk to self or others. Risk to others is forensic psychiatry, essentially. This help is sort of foisted on me when I am not functioning to the level that other people are sufficiently concerned about me and I do not know how I can possibly live through the next moment. I accept this help because, in those moments, it removes me from being the responsibility of the people who are not going to stop caring for me but who are not able to do it any more. The medication helps with the sleeping and the depths of despair to the point that I do not feel safe alone, and I would return to psychiatry were I to feel that way again. If one spends long enough out of the system, it is a fight to get back in. One typically has to reach crisis before support is offered, which is a function of psychiatry and limited resources.

Does that help you to understand?

[erinaceus]

*overwritten with the emotional experience of the people to whom I am turning

[erinaceus]

The phenomenon of the patient goading the therapist is not uncommon, not at all. Nor is stopping turning up to appointments, lying, getting angry, refusing to pay...I take the work that I do in therapy very seriously indeed and have the utmost respect for the clinician with whom I work, in part because I cannot fathom how on earth one could bear witness to so much inner distress in other people, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, so many stories to keep track of. But that is what they do, because that is what they choose to do, and that is what they are trained to do.

[KateSMumsnet]

Thank you to erinaceus for starting this thread

She suggested that we post a link to our mental health web guide which has lots of useful resources and links.

[dangermouseisace]

to be fair comejointhemurder there are actually MH professionals who are 'anti-psychiatry'… like the Critical Psychiatry Network see link for info en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Psychiatry_Network

There are debates within MH about the usefulness/stigmatising effects of mental health diagnosis and a whole load of academic literature on the subject. I did not know this until I was studying psychology postgraduate.

[erinaceus]

Thank you Kate, and welcome, FaithLoveandHope

I made it to the shower, and out of the house, and bought a bed, which is v exciting as we have never owned one that we chose in all the years we have been together. So now I am at home trying to make bolognese and not really succeeding.

[dangermouseisace]

owning a bed that you chose yourself is indeed exciting. I think my bed and my computer and basically tied for favourite possession. Bolognese always works out if you stick at it long enough?

Today I've got that horrible feeling of something being wrong…well, everything being wrong. The grasshoppers outside sound like snakes, the sky is foreboding, the music on the radio is eerie. I don't know the solution to everything being wrong. I don't think there is one? At the moment I'm trying…alcohol! Been trying to get stuff done today but it's all very slow. Hoping that I wake up in the morning and things are better.

[erinaceus]

dangermouseisace I hope that you feel better this morning. I can't bloody wait for the new bed to be delivered! I hope that everyone has a good day today.

[AntoninArtaud]

I've recently fallen back into a deep, deep depression. I'm not sure when the last time I left my house was. I'm on a long (long, long) waiting list for therapy, so currently not receiving any (although I am on medication). I know I should get out of my house and do something, anything, but it's just so difficult and I feel as if I don't have the strength. The thought of leaving frightens me, really. I'm going to at least attempt to sit in my garden today, I think. Baby steps.

[Comejointhemurder]

Yes that does help me understand OP

[dangermouseisace]

Good luck with the garden antonin hope it doesn't rain…let us know how it goes.

Today seems a bit better- at least Mondays have lots of Monday type noises going on outside which is better than the eerie other wordliness of Sundays.

I am another non therapy person… Psychiatrist/CPN have suggested it might be useful but I'm not sure what happens NHS wise. Whatever it is, I expect to be waiting a ver ver very long time…Must admit I'm a bit scared having read through the previous posts!

[erinaceus]

Comejointhemurder

Thank you for your understanding. People come to struggle with their overwhelming emotions for all sorts of reasons, and they cope in all sorts of ways.

When one way stops, finding a newer way can leave one floundering for a while. The feeling of burning through therapists was actually about six months and two sets of about eight to twelve sessions each with one therapist and then a second one. It took an enormous amount of courage on my side to leave, because, both times, the therapist told me that they did not agree with my decision. However, I did not agree with them, so I chose to finished with them. In both cases, the door is open should I choose to go back. The second one is the one who mocked my politesse, because I chose to return for a session to say goodbye, when I could have just...stopped turning up... .

[erinaceus]

dangermouseisace I am a bit cavalier/kamikaze about the whole therapy thing. On the NHS, waits are long, and the psychotherapy part of it can get sort-of caught up in the system. It is also something of a postcode lottery. In my area, services are good and keep on getting cut so I have this horrific middle-class guilt for being able to afford to go private coupled with a sense of relief that I have something that I find helpful. You could ask your psych/CPN what the route would be or what types of psychotherapy are available to you and what sort of waiting list there might be? One thing about psychotherapy that many people do not realise is that - with a competent therapist at least - it is a team effort and not something that is done to you. The therapist does not do anything to you or for you. It is sometimes described as a sort of dance. Sometimes I lead, sometimes they lead, sometimes it is clearly all going wrong and we do what we can to get it back together.

Gentler therapists drive me nuts, and they do exist. I like to believe that my current therapist would be gentler on me if that was what I needed. She also works with children, which I imagine to be very difficult indeed. I was in therapy as an adolescent and I look back and think - wow, that must have been really fucking bleak for the therapist.

Some people find CBT helpful, but it never did a huge amount for me. So it is hit-and-miss, generally. If you are willing to give it a try, you could ask to be referred, but you may well be in with a long wait. OTOH, my experience is that if you are willing to give it a shot the waiting list tends to be shorter, whereas if your psych has to refer you will wait longer. Therapy for people who do not want to be in therapy or reject the notion that they need it and are obliged to be there must be such hard work for the therapist.

[erinaceus]

When I write "if you psych has to refer you" I mean if your psych has to refer you because they are obliged to by the courts, as in forensic psychiatry, which it does not sound as if you are caught up in(!)

[LumpyMcBentface]

Marking place to come back to later.

[erinaceus]

Lumpy.

FYI: We welcome name-changers around here, along with hangovers, side-effects from medication, and all the rest.

[unweavedrainbow]

I'm not even sure if this thread is for me. I have BPD, complex trauma, bipolar, anorexia, anxiety. The issue is that there is no "I". The body has DID. Time loss, "out of awareness" self harm, flashbacks, nightmares, voices. There's a part of the mind that wants to die and it's terrifying as "I" have no control.

There's been a lot of therapy. It's had to stop as it was too much. My CPN is trying to improve "every day living skills"'-God knows how.

[dangermouseisace]

no I'm DEFINITELY not in trouble with the courts. At least I don't think so! I had a bit of counselling/therapy as an adolescent but found that it opened a whole heap of repressed crap in my head (when I actually spoke of course…I agree adolescents must be absolutely awful clients) This opening of a Pandoras Box of Shite then had severe impacts on my daily life. So…I'm prepared to give whatever they suggest might be helpful a try, whilst not deliberately seeking out stuff myself, due to probably completely irrational fear of losing the plot again.

[erinaceus]

That's the thing, unweavedrainbow.

I believe that everybody else thinks that I stated this thread for attention

Maybe I did?

[erinaceus]

stated = started

[dangermouseisace]

I think it is rainbow