It's not your fault

Today I am excited to be alive.  Excited to write. Monday I admitted to myself that I have Munchhausen syndrome, now called factitious disease.  Tuesday I struggled to want to be alive. I was fantasizing about ways to kill myself without anyone knowing it was a suicide. Or how old would my kids need to be before I could without totally screwing them up.  Answer of course, never. I felt like I couldn't bear the pain of knowing that I had this horrible thing true about me. That I couldn't bear how ever many years I needed to live, if I had to feel this terrible anxiety.  Then I got up and decided that I would need to bear it at least one more day.  That's what I do.  Break it up into manageable chunks.  Sometimes it's minutes. Sometimes it's breaths. I knew I could totally do one more day.

Later that evening, after a quarter dose of a sedative and a lot of being out of my negative thought cycle, I had a thought. Why am I spending so much time trying to figure out how to die? Aren't there so many more things I could work really hard on? That doesn't really say it.  It was a realisation that I was giving so much more energy to wanting to die, then trying to live!  There were so many ways to try to work on living than the not-an-option dying.  

I knew that I couldn't do it. That it was just a fantasy like thinking about finding my ex husband and strangling him until he fell unconscious. Not anything I would take steps towards doing it.  I was choosing again to stay mentally sick, instead of choosing to be well. Then I could see the other paths. I think that is the tricky part. Seeing any other option.

 I get so terrified that I can't see any other choice other than staying exactly where I am, trying to fight off the fear. Talk myself out of it. Getting up is actually what I should do most of the time, but sometimes I am so fatigued that I really need to rest.  I'm probably partly anxious because I am so fatigued. But I haven't yet gotten skilled enough at getting out of my negative thought loops while resting. I'm working on it.

I started out yesterday being in a fog about this new diagnosis. Self realization. How could I ever tell anyone about the Factitious disease. How could anyone understand the exaggerating? People would shy away from me or worse.  I couldn't handle thinking about it.  I kept saying to myself that I didn't need to tell anyone.  As long as I'm as I'm not actively faking disease, no one needs to know. That didn't feel right to me though.  As hard as I am on myself, as much as I find it disgusting behaviour, as practically impossible it was to admit out loud, I knew it wasn't a dirty little secret. I chose a close friend I trust to talk to about it. He knew about a few occasions that I had faked things. One of first things he said was that it wasn't my fault. I had already started coming to that conclusion, but that was really good to hear.  He couldn't understand why I would choose to be sick to get attention, but he knew that it wasn't something that I had really chosen.

I guess that's where I got to with it's not my fault. I must have felt that the only way I could get the attention I really needed, was to be sick. There's no way I can blame a 6 year old girl for getting sick. I can't blame my parents for not being able to give me the attention I needed. They did the best job they could with the skills they had been given (or lack of skills). I guess it was just a perfect storm. I was very sick, a lot of the time, my parents were raised by parents that were missing some basic emotional skills, my older sister resented my being born, and I some how didn't gain the skills I needed to deal with the things life had thrown at me from any other source.  I was sick, I was alone, I was scared, and no one knew to tell me that I was loved and that I would be OK.  Except in a way, the nurses and doctors.  

Imagine you are one of four children, a bit socially awkward, and then all of a sudden, you are a STAR!!  People bring you presents. People come to see just you. You get to share a room with other little girls like it's a camping trip. You get a toy room with a TV.  You get to order your food off a menu, and then it is brought right to your bed. Especially for the severe asthmatic I was, I felt great in the hospital!  I felt better than ever. The medications gave me lots of energy, I was able to breathe better, and all my pain was gone.  Heaven.

I'm wondering right now how much the knowing exactly what was expected of me was a factor.  You have nurses that completely structure your day.  You know when to eat, when to shower. When to be resting, when to be out of bed. You know what you're supposed to do, and if you do something wrong, you'll be corrected quickly. Not a lot is expected of you, so it's easy to be really good at it.  Don't complain. Be cheerful. Be accommodating.  The only problem I was, was that I was too happy and well, hyper. I got asked to go to another room for a while a couple of times because I was being entertaining and the other girls needed to rest.

I know that is a big factor in why I was so religious for so long. Knowing exactly what you are supposed to do. And when. And when you were doing something wrong.  

I do believe that there is something in me that isn't just made out of cells. A soul, or a spirit. How much was I born with wanting to be reassured. Was I already insecure? Was I aware from the womb that my mother was worried about me living? Was I already receiving messages that I wasn't OK, and being not OK is something unbearable? Was this from a previous life?

I know that I have the ability to give myself the love I need. I can choose whether or now I panic. I can change the way I think, and feel, and act.  And this time, I'm not giving up from fear.

March 22nd, 2017

Decided that I really need to start journaling my psychiatrist visits.  I definitely type faster, so even though I will lose some of the expression from my handwriting, I'm doing it here.

We talked today about what seems to me to be the last layer of personalities that hold me back.  This really needy little girl. I mean she's starving for affection, that was really standing out last week.  Unfortunately she's learned that love looks like someone that gives her pills, or attention for being sick.

After spending the last week thinking about this aspect of myself and wondering what she needed, or how I could separate her from my true self, I hadn't come up with much.  It seems obvious now, but the problem with her, the little girl, is that she is linked with the malnourishing mother. My Mom really gave me all she had, I believe that.  Only, she wasn't shown hardly any love, and a hell of a lot of disapproval.  She had to comfort herself, and learn how to grow up and survive without anyone to show her how.  So she taught me that I should take pills to deal with my fears, and sedate myself if I got too upset.  Indirectly, she taught me that I shouldn't reach very high, or try too hard, because she was constantly needing to protect me from dying!!!

I actually had a conversation with her today about "the Power of Now".  I love that we can have these completely different conversations about trying to use healthy thoughts to defeat anxiety now.  That we don't just talk over each other, each of us wanting to be heard how hard our lives and health were.

So back to 6 year-old me.  The one who's always in my dreams with me when I'm stress dreaming.  That I have to take on a ferry, or pack up and leave a hotel to drive back home.  The one that I'm struggling to take care of.

This week has been really, really challenging.  I don't think that it is an accident that this week is so difficult after last week's discovery of the little girl. My son, through a variety of events, some of which weren't his fault, ending up being AWOL overnight.  The police were involved, very little sleep was had, and anxiety was being put off.

In the morning, my daughter got up feeling really unwell, at the same time that I was shaking and feeling nauseous.  The combination of my being unable to care for her, my son missing, very little sleep and what turned out to be rather vicious diarrhea, just about did me in.  I was sitting ( I won't mention where), and telling myself that this could be a turning point if I let it. I could let myself panic and beg someone to take care of my sick child, and medicate the hell out of myself, and possibly lead to a downward spiral.  Or I could choose to calm down and try to do the best I could.  My daughter is able to take care of herself well enough. I didn't need to take care of her right then.  I was getting rather sick to my stomach, but just to get through it instead of imagining all the horrible things that could happen.  Son was most likely asleep with his buddy and would call me soon.

I had been trying to decide whether or not to take some ativan.  I couldn't decide if that was just giving my inner child more of the nourishment that just makes her sicker or not.  As I was trying to take out just a half a pill, a full pill fell out and landed exactly on my foot.  I took that as a sign from the universe and took the pill.  When talking about it today, doctor told me that maybe it doesn't have to be only bad for me or good for me.  Once again I'm forgetting that there are nuances to everything.  Just as I phoned my friend and asked him to be a cheer leader for me, to which he responded (which we have previously set up), "what do you want me to say?"

I told him that I didn't think I could handle what was happening, and could he tell me that I could and that I was strong, etc.  Which he did, and wisely suggested that I try to get out of my head by literally getting out.  Doctor asked me why I wanted friend to say those things to me.  Why wasn't it enough for me to say it?  I just don't believe myself yet. There has been so many years of my filling myself with glue like poison that I don't trust what I say and need others to confirm that what I'm thinking is true.

Don't trust myself.  Don't trust my thoughts. Or instincts.

I have been meaning to start writing again since Christmas. I just started having a panic attack and decided to come on here, and as I was looking up my blog, which my laptop didn't even have saved, I found this article on this woman who suffered from Munchhusen syndrome.  The article was called, "addicted to illness". As I read this article, which was basically a lot like me, my anxiety started getting worse. I forced myself to keep reading.  I wonder if my shrink has diagnosed me with it. I know he knows that I have either exaggerated symptoms, or flat out faked them, but does he call it that.

Have I ever flat out faked symptoms? Hmmm. Not sure.  Not that that makes a difference really. I had this feeling like I was all shaky at times when I was pregnant, so I exaggerated them to the point of being hospitalized twice.

I had a sore stomach, because I often made myself feel ill from avoiding pooping. I was getting attention from my Mom for the pain in my lower stomach, so I avoided pooping even more.  She had my Dad, who was around because he was dropping one of us off, take me to the hospital, where I was given the odds that there was a 60% chance that I had appendicitis, and if I did, an 11% chance it would burst. I chose the surgery. I knew I didn't have appendicits.

Right now I think one of the main reasons I'm feeling so much anxiety is because I took marijuana to try to help with the MS symptoms I'm having. Real MS, real symptom. Shaking. Similar to the way I felt when I was pregnant. Instead of taking the normal CBD, I took the other one. The one that isn't recommended for anxiety.

Gah. I will write about going to others for compassion later. I need to get up for a while to get rid of some of this anxious energy.  And to probably poop more from anxiety.

Ah the ironies of life. I get anxious and have to poop becasue I never learned how to deal with feeling anxious from needing to poop.