(health,morning writing, stimulus-response shape)

[elainegrey]

My vacation turned to sick-stilled rest. Sunday i had a video visit with the UNC Health virtual practice and have a antibiotic and steroid prescription. While i would love to see my primary care provider, he's so booked. On August 18 i booked my physical at the next available date: February 22.  It is so fortunate to have an option where i can go online, late Saturday night, and decide that i can wait until 9:40 and not take the first available appointment at 6:30 Sunday morning. They clearly don't sit around if no one takes early appointments. I'd passed on the 8:30 appointment but got a text on Sunday morning that they were ahead of schedule and ended up being seen at 8:30.

I didn't work but did see my therapist yesterday. Summer disruptions have jostled our schedules and i thought i wouldn't see her for another three weeks. I'd spent some time at the beginning of my vacation reflecting on the "shape" of what i think of as "critical voices" or thoughts. I'd realized i didn't actually perceive a "critical voice" -- maybe once upon a time some conditioned stimulus caused me to frame negative thoughts about myself, but i have stopped much of those self denigrating thoughts. There is still a conditioned stimulus-reaction, though, and i know i have a learned aversion to the unpleasant reaction. I feel my day shaped by this in a way i don't like, don't want.

So, last Friday i took three of the stimuli that occurred in short order. Yes, they are in the "shape" of a "should" but the reactions are not really self critical but are feelings, and different feelings: frustration in one case, a complex of guilt, shame, worry in another, and the third had so much sadness i really couldn't finish writing about it on Friday, and right now i feel the sting of tears and the same tightness at the back of my throat following my esophagus to near my heart as i did yesterday when i talked to MK about it.

We agreed (well, i wasn't discouraged from thinking) that right now, sick, my faculties for feeling will probably spin these feelings into darker places than they will go when i am well. (That hard to distinguish depression-vs-being-sick state so learned in my body and mind has deep ruts i don't need to follow.) So first, i will get well.

Then i want to experiment with experiencing, interrogating, and i guess just feeling these feelings i have been dismissing like snoozing an alarm.

Comments

[tamena]

**gentle hug**
things are so much harder when you don't feel well
I hope the meds kick in and start working asap

I never considered depression vs being sick/broken as being a state my body and mind gets stuck in. I like the rut symbolism. I mean I realize I'm broken and depressed and i'm working on both but not how much of a negative impact it has overall if that makes sense?
I appreciate your honesty and transparency in these posts, knowing I'm not the only one feeling this way is never a bad thing and learning how other people handle it all helps

I hope today gives you a surprise that makes you smile all the way to your toenails ♥

[elainegrey]

My toesies say your message including them makes THEM smile, and the smile moved up from my toenails up to my face. Thank you!

My experiences of being depressed and of being sick is that there are strong similarities: tired, unmotivated, food becomes meh, or things i like to do loose spark. Things that might normally be easy are instead a major task.

"Things are so much harder when you don't feel well" is so true!

As i've spent time depressed (but otherwise healthy), i've developed mental ruts towards cognitive distortions. Part of getting out of depression is getting out of those ruts of thinking.

It seems that even if i'm "just sick" the ruts are much easier to slip into.

The frustrating thing is that doing things often helps get me out of being depressed, but doing things is not the rest one needs when sick or healing.

It sounds like your healing is going well. All my fingers and my happy toes are crossed for you. (And what timing with your mother. Oh my.)

[adore]

It's sometimes hard to distinguish whether depressive feelings start due to mental health or physical health, sometimes, especially when either or both are chronic.

I'm glad you're working on not suppressing these feelings anymore, and that you don't do negative self-talk. *hugs*