It's funny really, because I spend a reasonable amount of time promoting awareness of mental health issues and encouraging openness and conversation about mental health, yet I am still so very guarded about my own experiences. Perhaps I am not as stigma-free as I would like to think, or perhaps I just believe that I am somehow exempt from the compassion that I want others to experience!
BUT I am taking baby steps in learning how to live a better way.
I am learning to listen to myself, to act on the gut feelings I have about which situations I can manage when, and what I need to do in my unstructured time (or "down time" as those who don't frequent my work environment would say!).
This isn't always fun or glamorous. It means letting people down (again unacceptable by my "rules"), letting myself down (cue even more Bad Brain Stuff), missing out, being boring, looking lazy or unreliable (another of my greatest fears).
As yet, admitting that I should avoid a situation doesn't even mean enjoying some quiet time to myself: it tends to mean a long battle with guilt, feeling worthless and useless, like a drain and a waste of time and space.
It is also risky: others may not agree with or understand my decision or preference. Those who know me well know that if I indicate a slight preference or wish for something to happen that is a sign that it is so enormously important to me that I have taken the risk to express it, no matter in how tiny or inconspicuous a manner. Those who don't will easily walk over the herculean effort I have made, completely invalidating it and making it even worse the next time I consider trying.
When I do succeed in listening to myself, articulating my discoveries and following through on them, and am stuck in that thought/feeling battle, I am learning to employ some "self-soothe" tools to help me to regulate and stay or become calmer. This is an approach introduced to me by my mental health team and is often used with people who experience high anxiety or distress. It may sound a bit whacky or irrelevant, but because of my awareness of the power of sensory experiences I had a fairly easy time embracing the idea (having said that, I thought I was doing it for about 9 months until I had one of those moments of revelation where suddenly something makes even more sense!). It still feels very wrong to care for myself when I feel that I have done something wrong, but I am learning that it is necessary and beneficial. It works really well as a calming toolbox for me, and with calmness comes the possibility of movement (both figuratively and literally!).
I am VERY SLOWLY learning to try and share with other people a tiny sliver of what is going on. I hate it. Every fibre of my physical being screams not to do it: it is like a complete block - a near impossibility. It is not safe at all in my mind, and fraught with risks and fears: I won't be able express what's inside, they won't understand what I am expressing, I will cause them discomfort (eg. fear, sadness, guilt), I will waste their time, they will be annoyed with me (even if they don't show it) or disregard the importance of what I am expressing, that they will think they understand, but not actually grasp it, and on and on and on. People trying to find out what is going on can make it even harder for me to share.
Occasionally by some miracle I manage to include somebody in what is happening in me (poor longsuffering Mr. Peggy and Ma Peggy and a couple of invaluable Work Peggies!). Sometimes it helps in some way. I'm hoping that through learning to talk about things with my psychologist it will gradually become more possible with other people.
The "mental health" (or "mental illness") road is one that I am inclined to share even less than the autism road, but I think it is important to acknowledge it, even if not to go further in sharing it. Perhaps one day it will become as "OK" for me to talk about as my autism is now becoming, or perhaps not, but for now I will keep taking the little steps that appear before me which seem to be right to take.
No comments:
Post a Comment