Quite frankly I’m just at a loss at this point. Been on the therapy and meds journey for almost a year now, and did the whole exercise shebang consistently for like 2 years. I was doing cardio for an hour every 1-2 days.
I am getting quite disillusioned and don’t understand what I’m even doing anymore. I’m getting so caught up in various things that I’m just confused as all hell. Every time I think I figure something out, I end up so wrong it’s almost like it’s not even funny.
I have intense reactions to rejection. I have extreme and intense negative emotions that persist for many hours and days after a trigger and they are very painful and difficult to deal with and can impair functioning. I have a lot of social anxiety, which I did not think contributed much to this. But now I’m wondering if I have a pattern of social anxiety --> extreme rejection sensitivity --> extreme emotional dysregulation.
I have been on escitalopram (Lexapro), then lamotrigine (Lamictal), and now quetiapine (Seroquel). I do not have ADHD. I do not have bipolar disorder. I don’t even have persistent depression. I have periodic extreme episodes that cause a lot of distress and can cause functional impairment like how my work threatened to fire me. I also have intense shame and self-hatred, often babbling to my online friends nonsense about how I’m a “demon” when I get this way. I am also totally normal 90% of the time. It’s only the remaining 10% that causes the struggle.
People always tell me to “go to therapy”. I am. I have seen multiple therapists and have been consistent with this one since the fall. People tell me I don’t put enough work. I am. People tell me I am not honest enough to my providers. I am. People tell me try a different therapist. I have tried many (I stick with my main one for continuity and so that I don’t have to keep rehashing my backstory).
At this point I feel like I don’t know what is down and what is up. I no longer understand what my problem is anymore. Every time I think I figure out what my issue is, every time I think I figure out a technique to help me, I’m wrong.
I’m starting to think that this is who I am. It is unchangeable. I experience a lot of pain and sensitivity where others don’t. I wish that wasn’t the case, but I think it can’t be changed.
Idk where do I go from here, friends? Thank you to those who have read my entire rant lmao.
Funny you should mention EMDR. I have heard of it, but to be honest it had always sounded a bit like quackery to me lol. The DBT book I have actually referenced EMDR as one of the exercises! They mentioned that it is unknown whether or not the eye movements themselves actually help with the trauma, but rather just that the therapy and exercises as a whole is what seems to help people.
It’s really hard for me to figure out wtf kind of therapy will work best. There are many more modalities that I had heard of when I started this journey lol. EMDR, IFS, etc. Most recently I have heard of MBT. I should investigate more into all of these. MBT sounds interesting to me, as it seems to be a newer treatment for emotional dysregulation. Of course this means that most therapists are not going to be familiar with it enough to use it.
DBT is what I’ve been trying to use so far, but it’s been exhausting trying so hard every day for months and months only for the pain to not begin to be touched. I started this journey to try to help with my intense and distressing negative emotions. And I eventually found that DBT was supposed to be the “best” treatment for emotional dysregulation.
Yeah I have heard of both emotional flooding and an overactive amygdala, but not necessarily amygdala hijacking. From the things I ever read, I’m guessing that my amygdala is for some reason wayyyy hypersensitive compared to most people. I was sensitive even as a child. It’s frustrating because even though these techniques might help to calm with a behavioral response, it doesn’t seem to help with the emotional side.
I wish there was a therapy techniques or medication that could help my amygdala chill the fuck out lmao.
I’m also on the fence about if EMDR itself works or if I’d get similar results if I was doing anything else repetitive that also required my full focus. I think it just got my overactive mind to get out of its own way, but it worked!
DBT might not be the thing for you, or may be more helpful later. My early therapy was almost exclusively CBT, which is luckily what I needed since my internal narrative was real ugly. I picked up on DBT later and I think it would have been harder to learn and less effective early on.
I’m sorry you’re in the funk. A lot of us have been there, so we can relate and commiserate. I can assure you it does get better if you keep at it. The work may never become easy, but it does get easier as you do and learn more over time.
Well, like I said…I chose DBT specifically because it is supposed to be the gold standard for emotional dysregulation lol. I learned last year that it’s my core issue! But I guess it’s trauma/chronic invalidation based (granted that’s how you have the issue in the first place). CBT I find kind of hard to apply and invalidating…it’s like my whole life I have always felt that my thoughts and feelings are wrong. It’s always been hard because I am never able to trust myself. The cognitive distortions don’t really help me much.
DBT seems a lot more gentle in questioning your thoughts instead of just giving you a long list of how you’re wrong. Like in one chapter, my book states to compare your level of anxiety to what is actually happening. Are you in real danger? If yes, act. If no, that’s ok that you’re anxious. Let yourself feel anxious in the moment, but try to use calming techniques to help. I find it harder to apply for anger and guilt, but it’s a start.
Thank you. I guess I hate that it’s almost like I’m back in school but the reward isn’t really improvements or getting a good grade lmao!!
I think I need to try to celebrate little wins more. I have celebrated these before, but it feels like my wins are so few and far between anyway lol.
You might be doing better than you realize. Change on this stuff is so slow that it can sneak up on you. Do you journal at all?
Not really. Idk what I would really have to journal about. My life is pretty mundane. My therapist had me filling out an emotion log for a while but tbh I stopped doing it. I could only log stuff certain times a day so I ended up reflecting more than noticing in the moment. Now when I feel something negative, I don’t wait until the end of the day to reflect and log, but I try to do it when I notice it come up.
I mega failed a couple of weeks ago. Had an incredibly sustained stressful week where all of my skills failed to soothe me. I tried to use them repeatedly and repeatedly and tried riding the waves again and again. It culminated in a very heightened, distressed state in the end where I could not ride the last wave. I forgot all of my skills and didn’t use TIPP and could not calm down without saying some things that scared a lot of people. I haven’t been that bad in many months, but I also hadn’t had that many sustained stressors/triggers in a long while either.
Every time I make a couple of steps forward, intake 17 steps back.