Emotional Entrapment

There’s evidently an evolution of emotions going on for me. And I don’t like this stage of it!

Historically, I have always been a positive person. When life has felt hard, I’ve always been aware of how I really have nothing to complain about; others have far more difficult situations than me. I have been grateful for this and do not take it for granted. The ‘motto’ came out of a time when I felt like everything was going wrong; I gave myself a hypothetical slap, made myself look at things in a different way and got on with it. And I have kept telling myself this whenever things have been hard. In the most part, this has been how I’ve prevented myself from getting down.

Yet, a few months ago, I clearly was losing this positivity. I wasn’t able to keep on top of the psychological impact of life’s challenges as easily.

I gradually became tearful extremely readily. I have always struggled to cope with upsetting circumstances that I hear or read about. I have increasingly avoided watching news. Instead, I have tended to use my daily flick through facebook to keep an eye on what I should know about; I follow BBC News/local news etc and medical pages/forums as well as the obvious ‘social’ side. But even this was becoming a burden; I would see headlines and images before I could help it and that would traumatise me for hours, days or even longer.

The tearfulness in the last few days before I ‘broke’ was almost continuous. I don’t even know why. It was the beginning of feeling like I had lost control of my own mind.

Then, once I ‘gave in,’ the relief seemed to make me numb. There was no energy left to even cry anymore. There was nothing left at all. Just the ‘chaotic emptiness’ that I have previously described.

This has persisted since. Apart from the odd moment when I have been talking about things to someone and a few tears break through.

But, it’s not enough. I feel like I need to let it all out. But it won’t come. For me, even at the best of times, certain pieces of music would have been enough to set me off, but even this isn’t happening now.

Why? I’m still utterly exhausted. This was a major factor in why this happened anyway. On top of that, sleep remains erratic so I am not getting on top of this lack of energy yet. Also, the medication I have been put on is known to ‘blunt’ emotions; reducing the lows but reducing the highs too; patients have described this to me in the past. I have no idea if this applies to me or not. Although I have made progress in the last few weeks, I don’t know if this is because of medication or simply that I have had most of life’s usual pressures taken away allowing me to rest, especially psychologically.

There is the feeling that I don’t ‘own’ my own mind and emotions and am not in control of them. Right at the beginning, I didn’t trust myself not to act on the desperate yearning to escape what I was feeling. Now, I am mainly just seeing everything more negatively than I should be. But I can’t perceive that that is what is happening until somebody else tells me so. I still cannot comprehend that this is all happening to me. ‘Derealisation and depersonalisation;’ common in this situation but difficult to grasp these concepts when applied to myself. This is frightening and frustrating. I don’t know who I am at the moment.

At some point, I am hoping things will just fall into place. I will either have a good sob and feel better. Or I will no longer feel like I need to.

Maybe, I will just go back to being ‘me’ and fine….hopefully soon!