Mood Swings

So where am I emotionally? I don’t even know. I’m glad I worked so many
hours all week, it helped me put some space between myself and that
horrible therapy session and move away from the initial raw feelings of
pain. Oddly enough, the therapy session wasn’t even really that
horrible, it was only a catalyst for a horrible backlash afterward. We
mostly talked about the “muppet” diary and about my real dad but
something about that combination set me up for a terrible backlash once
I left. I couldn’t even think straight long enough to figure out what
the backlash and pain was all about at first. Now, since there’s some
space, I realize more that there was something going on with me… some
response of, “There must be something so wrong with me that my dad
couldn’t love me like that…” But when you can’t acknowledge that
thought process on the surface, you don’t know what to say to yourself
in response. If it’s just something that’s simmering below and you
don’t know what’s going on, you just respond, you’re just emotion, not
thought.

I don’t know how to explain this well. Anyway, I had to
distance myself a bit before I could wrestle with this and that is why
I’m grateful I was too busy to have to wrestle earlier in the week. I
still feel very shell-shocked. Therapy is not usually like this for me.
I’m thinking maybe I’ll have to take a break during the summer or
something. We’ll see. If things are going to get like this, I’m just
going to have to stop for awhile. I can’t have another week like this,
I can’t bear it. This is when the cure gets worse than the disease.

Part
of it may be that I haven’t been taking my anti-depressants regularly
either. I’ve gone back to taking a full one for the last few days and
tried to remember to take them on a daily basis. I try to remind myself
that they are like my son’s insulin. I may have to take pills for the
rest of my life on a day by day basis in order to stay grounded.
Sometimes that leaves me feeling ashamed, as if I can’t just FEEL
normally on my own… again, what’s wrong with me. Then I try to take a
different perspective and tell myself that it’s an endocrine-type
problem. I certainly don’t think any less of my son because he needs to
take insulin, so why do I think less of myself if I have to take
something to stabilize my serotonin and mood swings, right? Well,
wrong… I end up hearing that nagging voice telling me that there is
something fundamentally wrong in my character that not only caused my
dad to sexually abuse me (a Godly man of strong character) but also is
displayed in this weakness that I show when I go running to
psychotropic drugs and therapy every week.

Intellectually I
realize how faulty this train of thought is, but emotionally it rings
so true and, for some reason, it all rang particularly true after
therapy last Wednesday. I don’t know why and I’m afraid to think about
why. Was I too candid in my hour? Have I exposed myself too much to
him? Do I feel rejected by my therapist? Have I allowed myself to
become too vulnerable to him? I don’t know and, like I said, I’m afraid
to think about it. It makes my stomach feel sick and makes my body
temperature rise. And I feel angry at him, like I want to lash out and
tell him I hate him, so – I don’t think it takes a brain surgeon to
figure out something’s going on. I generally keep my therapist at a
cool arm’s distance, admiring his work but not getting my feelings
involved. I THINK hard in there but I don’t FEEL hard in there. I never
even cried in front of him until over the last few months… an anomaly
that he thought odd and maybe even unfortunate. I didn’t really cry in
front of people for a long time, it was a private thing I did, if ever.
And, once I started, it was only in front of SOME people.

Oh
well, it’s all too complicated to figure out now and I don’t have to go
back for two weeks so I can relax for a moment at least. As the next
session approaches I can get stressed and figure out what I’m going to
do.