wednesday therapy

just do it, jess. you know you can, and you know you need to - you deserve to feel better, and this is probably how that will happen.

i think about you every day whether i visit here or not, and i send love your way.

I hope and pray that this works for you. I too, suffer from depression, but maybe not to your extent. I still understand where you're coming from.

Keep at it, girl. I think of you so often. I truly do.

I'll have extra hot sex for you tonight, then, K? Damn, I'm loving the hormones, that means it's a boy, right?

(I'd be curious, but terrified, to know what my own filters are.)

Thinking about you, Jess. Sorry I don't comment sometimes, but I feel like anything I say isn't helpful. I know I shouldn't feel that way and that means, that I definitely have my own issues. But I am thinking about you and hoping that the fog lifts quickly.

Just found your blog a few weeks ago and have never posted, but just wanted to say hang in there. It's all frustrating, it's all exhausting but it all helps. Just keep your eye on the horizon and you'll find the sunshine.

I don't post that much, but I hope that gets better for you. =[

withdrawl from effexor is THE WORST experience to go through. i'm doing it right now and i'm a fucking mess! lol

jess, you have a huge support system, you are not alone! read matt good's blog, it's great for info and support. only if you want to of course;) http://www.matthewgood.org/2007/04/hospital-music/
i also watched stephen fry's documentary that's linked to his blog...it's excellent.

The good news is, there's a reason for you feeling the way you do. I found that to be helpful when I was in therapy. In other words, you're NOT defective! It's just, shit happened to you and there's chemical blah blah blah. It's not personal, it's chemical. Ha. Good luck with your work.

When you come out the other side, you'll feel amazing!

My therapist explained it to me this way:

It's important not to hate yourself for the patterns that you developed in childhood. They are not "bad", but were in fact brilliant coping mechanisms that enabled you to survive your childhood as intact as possible. The fact that you have these patterns shows how resourceful you were in coping with the things you were exposed to in childhood. You needed those patterns of thought and behavior in order to survive, and they worked for you back then. However, they are not working for you now, in your adult life where your circumstances are different, and so you need to learn new patterns which will be more effective.

You are not broken. Your life just required you to learn different lessons than someone with a healthy family life would have learned. Now you will need to learn the 'normal' way of doing things, and of course it will be harder at this point in your life because you've been doing things the other way for so long. My therapist says that to learn and internalize the new ways of thinking, it generally takes about one month for every year that you did things the old way. So, if you are 36 as it says on your blog description, then you could expect about 36 months until you have fully internalized new ways of thinking. Which sounds like forever, but it actually goes by quite quickly, and little steps of progress along the way help you to feel encouraged that all the work is worth something. It's tough, but it's worth it. I was where you are four years ago. I'm not perfect now... old patterns can come back when I let my guard down... but my quality of life is exponentially better than it was, and yours can be too. So don't give up, and try not to fight the work even though it's scary; that will just make it take longer.