Not bad overall

One good thing about having talked to Dr. Mind 2 times during the last 10 days is that he knows how vulnerable I'm feeling and how fearful I am of having someone scold me or be angry for all of this and how embarassed I am and ashamed of my behavior in doing everything I'd been taught to not do.  So he treated me as the delicate flower I am at the moment, mostly.  Of course this was while he packed away every sharp thing in my house.  And he made a point that nothing he is doing with helping keep either meds or sharp things away from me will stop me if I choose to hurt myself.  Oddly it's not something I'd thought about.  I knew it factually but either I am done with that part of my life and came home feeling that the safety measures are comforting (if annoying) and; I know they will be effective.  But he's right.  I could replace everything I gave him plus more.  After a week of repeatedly saying things like "I'm here because I lied" "I didn't know how to say what I felt so I hid it" "I wish I had died.  I want to die still.", or being in a group the day after Christmas (ie when the only reason you're on the psych unit is you want to die and are actively being stopped) and asked for everyone who was there because they were suicidal to raise their hands.  Every hand in the room went up.  Mine included.  And I was a lot further down the path to action that many or most of them.  I can't explain how painful I found it to find myself saying many times, saying it because I needed to hear myself say it, that I wanted to die and more than that wanted to cause it myself.  Saying the words "I had a plan" was so shocking they kept echoing in my head.  That was followed by "I had a plan and I meant to carry it out the next time it hurt too much".  That still makes me a bit sick.  But not as sick as "You know Jen if you really wanted to do this nothing I do would stop it".  Because it is true.  Because I managed to fool him before by lying and there is not much he could do to make it stop.  He's right.  This isn't something he can protect me from.  He can try, and he can decrease my ability to do something impulsive, but I can easily beat the system if I want to.  I don't. I hope I never do again.  i think if this every happens again it will be easier for me to get help; I know what those words sound like now.  I know pretty much the whole process of dealing with it and I know that my life would have been a lot less painful if I had chosen to get help weeks ago.

I'm learning that this takes a certain chunk of your life away.  Late fall/early winter Dec. 2011 is lost now.  It is so entangled with the desire to die that I can't even start to sort it out.  That part of my life was overtaken by suicide.  I don't really want to remember.  But this did not happen without a price, a price much lower than it could have been.

That was a very quiet and solemn session.  We talked a great deal.  In fact Dr. Mind thought the time was up and instead we had 15 minutes left.  There was the strong point made at the start, followed by lighter talk and the IOP thing and then back into harder stuff.  The last 15 minutes he was reading the typed and edited to eliminate what I had for dinner version of my notebooks from the hospital.  I wrote about 150 pages during that time and writing helped me work through the shame and horror I felt, take steps along the path to getting help and ending the denial that I was in big, horrible trouble, and the analysis of how I got to be in that position.  With enough time I was able to once again speak aloud of some of what I've thought and felt, and having this in his hands gives him the ability to know what I thought, how I got to today from a week ago, and lets him see things I could never say.  I also have been able to use this to point out to him ways in which I know now I had been lying/hiding/avoiding telling him and signs that this is what is going on inside.  Because I don't remember much of our last few sessions I am telling him some of this and then finding out I was using other words.  I also was able to share with him that my saying I am feeling numb is a danger sign because it seems to be code for I feel so helpless that I have no feelings because I have blocked them off.  We also talked a bit about the grieving process that I have started for my life before these last 6 months.

I'm actually feeling a bit sleepy so I'm going to go and see if I can sleep.  Probably not but I like to try when a chance arises.  It wasn't until today that I realized WHY my anxiety meds were taken away.  Duh.  If that is what I want to kill myself with why would they give me more?  I'm on antihistamines now and had to ask for those. They aren't ideal but they help except at night when I think I need more or something else.  I want to have something so I don't need sleeping pills nightly.  I see Dr. Brain next week.  So we'll see then.