Don’t forget we moved!
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Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent
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The ACTUAL fuck.
I’m so sorry. -
Someone called in to a bunch of schools in northern Utah today and claimed that an active shooter was firing at students. It was a hoax.
I don’t fucking understand who could possibly do something like that. I am so angry about it I am literally shaking. My son was home from school today but even just the possibility of him being so scared and traumatized over some fuckhead’s sick prank is unbelievable.
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@Wizz Pennsylvania too. Rage.
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Now I’m sitting here wondering if school shootings are so common that school policies include how many snow days to cut from the calendar to make up for days lost to shootings and prank shooter alerts; and I’m getting very depressed as I think about it.
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@GF The answer is no, we don’t account for them.
Welcome to the club other states. So (sarcastic) glad to be a pioneer in gun violence in schools.
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Tfw pneumonia recovery might be hitting the stomach flu speedbump. fml
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@mietze God I’m sorry. I’m recovering from pneumonia too and I’m mostly just tired as fuck. Deep sympathies.
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My older brother made the decision that he no longer wants any more care. They are starting to wean him off all medications and will discuss hospice options tomorrow.
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I need to talk to my doctor about increasing my dosage of antidepressants. This last week I’ve been in what I mentally call the Hole has not been great.
I have not been in the Hole for a long time, and I’ve done my absolute best to prepare myself when I know I’m in it. I hate how it can last a few weeks to potentially a few months. Or even longer. The last time it was truly this bad, it lasted 11 months of isolation in 2017. But I was unmedicated back then, so I don’t think it’s to that length of time.
Still. I don’t like where my mind goes lately. It honestly scares me at some points. Friends feel kind of like strangers sometimes, staring at words on a screen and trying to determine if they actually care or if it’s just words and noise. Going to the gym helps steady and balance myself, it’s one of the few things that does. But I wonder if that’s more because I’ll work out till I want to collapse and just go to sleep.
Even with that I still feel kind of lost, hoping that something pulls me out, or I find something that draws me out.
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He is gone and I don’t even know where to start thinking
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@junipersky I am so sorry for your loss.
Did you manage to get him on hospice? If you did, they can help you with where to start thinking. Dealing with the procedures can provide a weirdly effective combination of ritual and distraction; and if their hospice is any good, they should also offer counselors to talk to.
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My younger sister and I work together and are a LOT alike in many ways - but I’ve discovered we grieve very differently. She went to work the day we found out after our brother, and said it was the right decision. I fed the kittens and that was it. Today we both went in. She felt energized and comforted being there. I lasted until the last hour when I had to ask to leave because I was about to vibrate apart holding it together.
I feel like I need to keep up with her energy but it is so hard to be around people right now.
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@junipersky said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:
I feel like I need to keep up with her energy
No, you really don’t. Really.
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@junipersky said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:
I feel like I need to keep up with her energy but it is so hard to be around people right now.
I’m a real-life grief counsellor (I know, right? Me, helping people?) and this is a natural and normal thing to feel - both the need to keep up, and the need to isolate.
Both are potentially dangerous for you.
Grief is a process that can take a long time, there’s no timeline you should set for yourself, but it might be helpful to set some mild expectations for how you want to process through the grief. Not a timeline per se, but things you’d like to get back to doing in some reasonable-to-you time.
Don’t punish yourself if you can’t do all of them by the time you expect to, but complete withdrawal is something to keep an eye on.
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I’m very much trying not to. Just finding that my already abysmal social battery is even smaller than normal.
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@junipersky said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:
I feel like I need to keep up with her energy but it is so hard to be around people right now.
Everyone grieves differently. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Just make sure whatever way you grieve, it suits you. Be kind and gentle on yourself during this process, because, really, you are finding /your/ new normal for yourself after your brother’s passing. That’s not going to be the same as your sister’s new normal.
I say this as someone who lost my mother at age 22 in 1996, where it took nearly 20 years for me to heal, and then my husband in 2019, where it took me 3 years for me to finally feel like I could get back out into the world actively outside of work again; part of that was compounded by the pandemic, but most of it was the grief spirals I’d find myself in. Take the time you need.
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I got an email about the Intuit TurboTax settlement today and had to laugh.
Wow, thirty whole dollars???
For me???that’s not even a quarter of what they misleadingly charged me in 2017 but ok, things are looking up!!
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@Wizz same I laughed and I’ll use it to buy myself a drink!
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I took over my brother’s audible account after he passed. Should this be a thing inherited? Probably not. But I’ll pay the money to keep it going for now. I’m listening to the books he listened to, and finishing the series he never will be able to.
It is bittersweet. On one hand, I’m really happy to have this connection with him.
On the other hand… lord he listened to some awful misogynistic science fiction. >.>
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I just fully finished a really tough clinical rotation today. I’m not exactly sure why I expected I wouldn’t, but I had a pretty rough time of this whole exit process. For context I worked as a clinical psychology extern at a VA residential facility for homeless veterans who often had substance abuse issues loaded on top of PTSD, depression, anxiety (typically) and serious mental illness (more rarely). Since my emphasis is in trauma, I worked with people who were highly traumatized using primarily cognitive processing therapy, but occasionally prolonged exposure in addition to substance abuse treatment. During my final staff meeting, they did this thing called Thanks & Goodbyes (T’s & G’s) which is usually done with residents graduating from the program.
The thing that got me the most was that I kind of assumed I was a background player, largely unnoticed and just nose-to-the-grindstone working with my patients. I had a large-ish case load and only taught a couple classes (dialectical behavior therapy, and CBT for Substance Use Disorder). It hit me that I kind of internalized this idea that I was separate from the team, so when people started expressing gratitude or talking about how they appreciated this or that about me I had no idea how to hold it and felt extremely awkward in the moment. I also have a history of substance use, and was very grateful to be able to help people who were currently in a material position that was similar to how I’ve lived in the past. A couple of my patients this year relapsed upon release from the program, and at least one of them died as a result of overdose following relapse, so I won’t say I did a perfect A+++ job, but I always did the best I could and advocated hard for everyone. Having been in that world, I know what it’s like to go through the sobriety/relapse cycle, and fall into an old habit that might be beyond your old tolerance.
Anyway, due to a lot of other things in my life (child, spouse, research, work), I generally feel like I don’t have space to hold the kinds of emotions that I need to have about this experience, and I need to get it out somewhere else I fall into bad negative patterns (see above). So, here I am writing about it, I guess.
