Anger And Fear . . . *Singing* (Think the tune to "Silver and Gold")

So, I missed a day. Big whoop. I just couldn't find myself motivated enough to write last night. I was a bit pissed off last night--as I am once again tonight--only now, for some reason, I can write. For some reason, that my brain has yet to have devulged to me, I'm back in therapy. This is my 7th attempt at it in 5 years. If I end up giving up on it again, I'm just going to throw in the towel and say fuck it.

It's funny; I've only gotten two pieces of good advice from any of the seven therapists that I've had:

Left-handed poetry.

When I was told that when I'm feeling disconnected from the world, I should get off the Internet and get into the real world.

In reference to the left-handed poetry (the only suggestion that I feel warrants any kind of explanation), I had a therapist that told me once that I should try doing non-dominant handed poetry. You see, the idea here was that it would somehow connect to the other half of my brain or something. Well, I was skeptical of course, who wouldn't be? And I'm not entirely sure that she wasn't just blowing wind in my face either; but I tried it and it did interesting things. For one, I ended up incorporating colors that I never ever used into my poetry. I was also able to write about things that I hadn't before.

See now, you have to understand one other thing that I believe. I think that I should have been left-handed. I'm a french horn player (a left-handed instrument); I wear my watch on my right hand (because it's easier to get on with my left-hand); I'm a left-handed sculptor; and I can write legibly with my left hand (albeit about half as fast).

But I digress. In terms of good advice from other medical sources (ie - my family doc, a good man and a good friend), I was given this other piece of advice which I have wholeheartedly followed. He told me that I should try keeping a mood journal in order that I might be able to see trends and keep an idea of where I was in my mood levels (as opposed to just having various moods sneak up on me). You see, it used to be that I would just fall into these moods and stay down or up--bizarrely--for periods of time. Now, while I still do that some, I can tell when it's going to happen, because I'm more aware of it all.

Now, he only suggested keeping track of my mood and my physical state (I track them on a scale of 1-10; and I have each number defined); but as time went on, I started adding variables. See, first I split up my mood into my morning mood and evening mood. Then I split up my physical state into physical and gastrointestinal. Remember, I have IBS and my stomach leads a lot of what I do day to day. And stress makes my IBS worse. So, naturally, then I incorporated anxiety--or fear--levels and anger levels. Lastly, I track my evening heartrate (remember, I have tachycardia and it's good to make sure my meds are working--I take a low dosage beta blocker for my anxiety/tachycardia).

On a side note, mood tracking is generally suggested for people who either suspect that they are bipolar or who actually are. Probably my doc originally suggested this because there was a period of time where we thought that I might be bipolar. But no. Just regular uni for me.

I started charting all of these variables on a chart that I set up in Paint a few months ago. I still write them out in my mood journal every night, but every so often I put them all together in order that I might see various trends.

For example, here's a chart from last September. It only has my morning and evening moods, my physical state and my anxiety levels. This is pre-beta blocker; so my anxiety levels are pretty much out of whack. I have an anxiety disorder which is made pretty clear by this chart. When my anxiety goes up, the rest of me goes crazy. I think it's pretty clear.



Okay, now here's the month of June. I think of this as sort of the ideal month, because the levels are pretty straight; my anger level isn't really acting up much--although there is obviously a correlation between anger and anxiety; and my levels aren't down in the dumps the entire time.



But I'll tell you what we want to avoid at all costs. We want to avoid another month of February. That was the month where my anxiety got so out of control that I started taking toprol (my beta-blocker) regularly. My anxiety got so bad that . . . let me put it this way--before February of '06, I had a fear of elevators. I wouldn't ride in them at night or on the weekends or alone. I freaked out a couple of times and would generally try to take the stairs whenever possible. During the month of February, when I was student teaching, I started getting on elevators hoping that they would break down. I started hoping that they would break down so that I wouldn't have to go back out into the world.

Look at the red and the blue marks. Those are my mood colors. Look how they jump up and down 3 or 4 points every fucking day. And look how low they are for the last week or so of the month. I didn't get out of the depressed range for a week (depressed range is anything below 5). Now you tell me, how fucked up is that?



Now, I said towards the beginning of this rather lengthy and drawn out post that I was currently pissed off. That's because my current therapist, therapist #7, thinks that I'm OCD and that this mood charting is one of my OCD compulsions or whatever shit.

It's bullshit. She's not willing to see that this is a valid activity, and rather she's trying make it into a neurosis.

I'm not OCD. Yes, I have OCD tendencies, but I'm not fucking OCD.

I gave her permission to talk with my doc this past week. Maybe he'll be able to clear it up with her.

Oh and she thinks that I ought to go see a psychiatrist. Luckily for me, I have no money.