File this post under: things I wish I’d known, as I went thru my 2.5 years of hell.
Because I get a chance to work w doctors, daily, we will often talk abt personal life situations & what is/isn’t causing us to spin out of control. I realize now that when I was at my lowest, I was my own worst enemy. The equation, at the time, looked like this:
– I felt awful, but wanted so badly to feel better & get back on w my life
– I didn’t know what was causing me to feel this way, & was being told by docs I needed the right pills to balance my imbalances
– This led me to believe there was something from the outside, that needed to be put IN me & “work,” to MAKE me better, & I wasnt good at waiting the “4-6 wks” to see if they were working
– I ended up dysregulating my system even more, driving up my sympathetic nervous system response, as I freaked out abt – why I wasn’t getting better, why I was “treatment resistant” & if I’d be stuck this way for life
– When you deal w the above, you don’t see “order” to your healing…you believe you are “messed up” & you’re not sure how the pieces can ever all come back together again so you can feel whole
The beauty is – once you learn abt the way in which your nervous system up & down regulates…& you learn down regulation tools, YOU take back control. You don’t stress over “if you’re a damaged person who will never return to ‘normal,’” & instead you understand that you’re in a dysregulated state, & you now have practices that can move you to a better spot on the MH continuum.
THIS understanding alone, more than any STARR Exercise or Gym for the Brain modality, has kept me in a spot where I don’t spin nearly as low as I once did.
Understanding how your nervous system moves up & down…& allowing the “bad” times to just happen, knowing you have the tools to get to a better spot – that understanding & practice is literally (no exaggeration) life saving.