Self Care

I’m still struggling with the emptiness.

It’s so abundant.

My symptoms of hallucinations and delusions have been very quiet the past several days.

It’s odd because it’s not that I miss them when they’re gone.

It’s just that, from everywhere, comes such a deafening silence.

A sort of calm just before the storm rolls in.

Where everything is just mildly swaying in the breeze.

Ignoring the dark sky creeping in.

Or oblivious to it even.

So still.

So calm.

My vision isn’t playing tricks on me.

My hearing is uncluttered.

It’s not normal for me.

But it’s becoming easier when it’s here.

Easier to understand.

It’s almost to the point where it’s a relief.

And not terrifying like it was last year when it first started.

I’m able to do constructive things on these mild-if-any symptom days.

Self care things.

I started juicing today.

I shaved my legs for the first time in months yesterday.

Plucked my eyebrows the other day.

And I noticed that I’ve been showering twice a week now for the past three or four weeks.

Which is much better than the maybe once a week – which was happening for the past year or so.

It’s weird to have the capacity to think about things other than my current mental illness symptoms.

I have had the ability this week to take care of myself.

And that’s fucking huge.

It hasn’t been a chore.

It’s been sorta nice.

Sure I drag my feet on myself sometimes, especially when it comes to showering.

But after I get finished with it, and park back down on the couch, I feel so much better, in general, than I did before.

The small self care things that most folks do automatically are so laborious for me.

But that doesn’t mean they’re unattainable.

And a lot of that is thanks to medications.

And loads of work on myself.

Medications open up my capacity levels and give me a new way to be able to live.

Speaking of a new way to live, I was looking at my mood app the other day.

I’ve been using it for almost a year.

I think I have twenty five more days or so until it’s been a full 365.

Which is great.

I can’t remember the last thing that I did, for myself, every single day, for an entire year.

I usually stop after five days or so.

And, looking at it, I can tell when my medications were upped or added or changed.

I can see where my episodes are, and I can see the constant fluctuations in my mood.

It’s amazing really.

When everything is laid out as a data point, it’s easier for me to see why/when/where/how things occur and happen.

If you’re reading this, and struggling to get some behaviors in line, regardless of how much effort is put in, I highly recommend some sort of mood tracking app.

Especially if a lot happens between psychiatrists appointments, but then when you’re in the office, you can’t remember any of it.

It’s a game changer for me.

I recently got a second one.

One that has CBT guided journal entries and other cool features.

Totally different purpose from the main mood tracking app I use.

It’s helping decentralize my cognitive distortions with helping me reframe things right then and there.

And trying to find the positives in any shituation.

The distortions just take over so quickly when the voices aren’t there.

So regardless if I’m having symptoms or not, I’m drowning in misery and spiraling.

Either by symptoms, or by my own, unconscious and automatic doing.

And I’m just so fucking tired.

Something’s gotta give.

I gotta keep moving on this.

I gotta keep up on my travels with neuroplasticity. 

I feel like I’m on a plateau right now though.

All of my growth and better habits are all around me, and I know I have a lot of things ahead of me, but I just can’t seem to go anywhere right now.

It feels like I’m paused for some reason.

That there’s nowhere to go right now.

I guess that’s probably the lack of symptoms talking too.

Whenever I get some reprieve I think about all of the things other people are able to do in a day and then start to feel shitty.

When, in reality, I have very few super lucid days like today and I am doing the best I can with where I am right now.

I’m healthier mentally than I’ve ever been.

Just because I feel stagnant doesn’t mean I am.

It just is what it is.

Radical acceptance. 

And that’s good enough for me today.

Hopefully I can remember that tomorrow.

But life with my symptoms is really day to day.

One day at a time if you will.

I never know when symptoms will pop up.

That’s one thing my mood app doesn’t really show.

Probably because my symptoms are very constant.

They show up with little relief in sight.

But one of those relief days is today.

If I didn’t have lucid days like today, I don’t know what I’d do.

– Keren