Holiday Angst

Back last spring at the height of my illness I worked very hard with my psychologist on letting out much of what I was feeling. I am good at showing positive emotions and horrible at showing negative ones most of the time. This had, over time, caused me to not do a very good job of dealing with a lot of the sadness and anger that went with my diagnosis. So, I spent many, many hours this summer crying in the psychologist's office while talking about so many things that bipolar has taken away from me. In effect, I learned to cry.

One of my problems with crying has been that I know it helps. I have panic attacks, and a really good way to have one is to let the pressure build up. This is my current problem.

I don't have time to cry. I also don't seem to have the ability to just cry, and possibly not to cry unless it starts with the psychologist so that I know it's safe. I seem to be unable to handle something that feels so scary unless I know that it is occurring in a window of time which is finite and with someone who can help me stop. I learned to do it some this summer, but I did not apparently manage to take what I learned and apply it to when life is more normal and protected than my months off. Which is turning out to not work so well, but at this point I really need to just deal with feeling sad about things at this time of year. I need to have that outlet to handle frustration, because this time of year is frustrating and hurtful at times in my field.

This is further confused by feeling like I am risking losing my precious, fragile control if I experience "bad" feelings, nightmares, or the like. That would be now.

I have an odd problem of being capable of handling constant pain from bipolar, but when the bipolar isn't an issue I have no idea how to handle "normal" problems that ordinarily just flow right into the general mess. I am so used to forcing myself to try to "handle" day to day problems that I am no longer good at allowing them to be the main event.

I really need to cry...