A New Psychologist And A Holiday

I see my psychiatrist every three months or so and while she is AMAZING keeps my meds in check and does talk therapy I really benefited from seeing someone for therapy more regularly. I was hesitant to find a new psychologist; my first one was incredible but when she left the next person I saw was a really bad fit. 

Frankly, the rigmarole of going through my whole story again only to potentially not click with them seemed too much like hard work. But when I saw my GP the other day to get a new script she told me about a new person starting at their clinic she is new to the psychology field and as a trainee she is still getting her hours up and therefor is providing a free service for 6 months.

It had been more than a year since I last saw someone and it was too good an offer to refuse so today I met up with Fiona. She was lovely! She asked me what I wanted to achieve from our sessions and I said I finally wanted to work on my eating disorder. The thing that rules my life and makes me the most miserable is also one of the hardest things to let go.

This session was mostly giving my history but she was able to read me quite well, she seemed to understand the way I think and gave some helpful insights, I am looking forward to working with her more and terrified at the same time. I am scared of losing my control, I am scared of getting fat and I am scared of not caring that I’m getting fat – which doesn’t really make any sense but then again, what part of this does?

In other news, school went back today and I am going to Brisbane on Thursday!! I am sick to death of the negative zero temperatures where I live and so sunny Queensland should offer a nice respite somewhere in the mid 20’s ahh T-shirt weather, have I mentioned how much I HATE winter? (Yes Jamoalki, I KNOW it’s nothing compared to where you live but I have a low cold tolerance!)

So I am going with my father for his birthday and taking my oldest son to visit my brother who lives there with his family while my Mum is gallivanting around Canada with her sugar daddy. (more on that later…) We are really looking forward to it, particularly Mr 14 as this will be his first time on an aeroplane. 

Well the day has flown by and I must retrieve the killdren children from the bus now, I will take my laptop to QLD and hopefully get a chance to do some writing, blogging and photo taking while I am there.  

Do you click well with your psychologist?

Are you a winter or a summer person?

Am I a wuss for thinking minus 8 Celsius is really fricken cold?

Anxiety & Grocery Shopping With Children

Today I am supposed to go grocery shopping, the kids are back at school tomorrow and ordinarily I would just do it then, however I need to buy Mr 14 some new clothes as he is growing like a weed and he needs to try them on, I have been putting it off all holidays.

As a mother of four children I have developed a relatively regular routine during the school term which helps the family function as well as keeping my bipolar fairly stable. I am forced out of bed rain, hail or depression to take the kids to school, I feed/clean the animals, exercise for 60 minutes which quietens my eating disorder voice, then I have to shower as I am too sweaty not to and tick off a ‘to do’ list of household chores while getting my social interaction through Twitter & blogs. 

Image stolen from here

School holidays throw me right out of whack, I tend to have trouble sleeping at night then fall asleep around 4am until 10am and often don’t get a chance to exercise until the evening. I have less opportunity to write, other children come and go from our house and I am expected to socialise in real life with real people often over meal times. The disruption in routine triggers mood swings and the lack of control flares eating disorder behaviours and somewhere in between I have to make time for grocery shopping. 

My husband has difficulty understanding why I have so much trouble taking the kids out of the house to go grocery shopping, they listen to him better than they listen to me, they don’t seem to beg him for things the way they beg me and while I know this is due to lack of consistency on my part simply the thought of the impending outing sends my anxiety skyrocketing. 

Grocery shopping is an anxiety trigger for me at the best of times, my eating disorder dramatically impacts the way I shop. This is better at the moment than it has been in the past as I now eat different meals to my family, generally the same three things week in week out, and that helps me feel calm enough to purchase pre-determined ‘safe’ foods for myself without having to stop and read the nutrition panels 100 times.  

Nowadays I shop on Mondays, I pre organise the week’s meals and have a shopping list that I stick to which is written out in the order that the aisles go. I can buy the food for my family without worrying too much about it as I know I am not going to be eating it anyway. I stack things in the trolley so they are easy to unpack onto the register, I still get anxious but I have my system and it works for me. 

When I throw taking children with me into the mix it complicates my routine, they of course want to help, which should be wonderful except that they run off in different directions getting things and throwing them into the trolley at random while I desperately try to organise the items into their ‘proper’ place. I know this is my problem not theirs, it’s a control thing.

Then the kids inevitably start asking for items not on the list, we are on a fairly tight budget since I haven’t been working and maths isn’t my strong point at the best of times, let alone when I am in a busy supermarket trying to rearrange a trolley and being asked 4 different questions from 4 different children.

I tend to say yes much more often than I should, this started when they were very young because I couldn’t stand them having tantrums in public because I felt so embarrassed and harshly judged. As they have grown the tantrums evolved into whiny incessant begging which turns my already anxious brain to complete mush, they have learned if they beg hard enough and stress me out enough they will eventually get what they want. 

My husband simply says ‘No’ once and they leave it alone, because they know he won’t change his mind. He doesn’t understand how I am intellectually aware of this hole I have dug for myself but my anxiety impacts my ability to put my foot down and start climbing out of it. Usually by the time we leave the supermarket my anxiety is through the roof and I am swearing blind that I will never take them out of the house again, I get angry and shouty and shaky.

So it’s 1pm and I have been putting this shopping trip off since around 9am but I’d better go soon or I’m going to run out of time as it takes over an hour just to get there. I woke up angry and stressed and this was followed by lots of things that could go wrong going wrong ie accidently dropped a glass, broke the dogs ceramic water bowl, spilt coffee all over me… I was kind of concerned that if I left the house I would probably be in a car accident or something. 

I feel much calmer after writing this though and Hubby has said that I can drop the younger kids off at his workshop and just take Mr 14 to get his clothes and the groceries so I’d better stop procrastinating and go. Wish me luck!

Do you take your children shopping with you?

If so, what coping techniques do you use?

My Sanctuary

I live with my husband and four children and although the house is a decent size it’s impossible to forget the fact that I share my home with five other people. But there is a tiny room, well its more of a nook actually, that I use as my study. This area is MY sanctuary, a special place for me to write and be alone with my thoughts. I have filled it with things that make me happy, little tokens of my life and soul that have special memories attached or simply put a smile on my face.

Here I have my desk, my computer, stationary stuffs, “Stanley” my indoor plant, a wooden cube my husband made one day when he was killing time that I just love for some reason, there are photos of family & friends on the wall, twinkling star shaped fairy lights, a little jar of marbles (in case I lose mine), a magic 8 ball (decisions aren’t my strong point), a wooden block with “Writers” written on it (haha), a couple of mindfulness adult colouring books (haven’t quite gotten around to using those yet, they were gifts and the extended psych ward stay of 2015 gave me enough colouring in time to kill that desire for a few years!) 

My old acoustic guitar is in here and while I can’t play to save myself it brings back happy memories of my youth and late winter nights singing by bonfires. I have storage tubs filled with (dusty) scrap booking stuff from a manic phase years ago, a box with little trinkets of happy memories such as the flashing eyeball from the ‘Dracula’s’ themed restaurant in Melbourne, the bracelet from the first Coldplay concert I went to in Sydney, shells from the beach, the hospital wrist bands from my kids when they were newborns, teeny tiny origami creatures the size of finger nails that my firstborn painstakingly folds, the aluminium love heart my hubby hand made for me from melted down soft drink cans (don't ask). 

With the possible exception of the computer, these are all things with the combined street value of $2.99 but they things that are priceless to me. They make me happy to look at, they make me feel something on those days when depression and numbness take over and my memory can’t stretch past the last few hours. 

I also keep in here memories from the darker parts of my life, journal entries written from dark lonely nights in the hospital fueled by fear and psychosis, poems of sadness and depression as well as the suicide letters I had written for my loved ones. While those memories can be painful they are also a part of my history and can be important reminders of just how far I have come.

My sanctuary is an exhibition of the world I have experienced, it has darkness and light, fear and hilarity, stillness and hurry. It is a reminder of a life well lived but often forgotten, a place to reflect, absorb and a place to simply be.