Hello my old forum friends – it’s been a loooooooong time since I ventured this way on the open boards (or at least it seems like a long time). Certainly been some changes since I last posted, that’s for sure. Just got back from three weeks holiday and decided to catch up with what’s been happening on forum, thought it would be a good time to update on what’s been happening for me, seeing as how I sort of just disappeared and I’m assuming that some people anyway will have wondered what’s been going on for me.

What a long intro para! Not much has changed for me obviously, at least not in terms of verbiosity .

Haven’t been doing very well at all for quite a long time now . Left my last T some months ago and went back to a T I’d seen for a few sessions two years ago – that seemed to be turning out to be a repetition of every other therapy I’d experienced except that at least I felt like I could just talk to her and she listened, even if she didn’t really understand anything I was saying.

She ended up suggesting that I go see a Pdoc because what seemed to be ‘wrong’ with me was turning out to be so incomprehensible to every T I’d seen – in fact I’d been thinking along the same lines myself, because it’s become pretty clear to me that the mess my head is still in, stems from an episode of out and out psychosis of many years ago.

She managed to get me a referral to a clinical psychologist (psychiatrists over here are IMPOSSIBLE to see privately, unless you take yourself off to Harley Street and who has the bucks to pay for that????) – actually clinical psychologists aren’t so easy to unearth privately either, it all seems to depend on who you know, word of mouth and having the contacts.

Anyway finally I’ve been able to talk to someone about all the mad shit that goes on in my head and actually be taken seriously. This woman, the clinical psychologist, whom I’ve seen twice now for assessment/diagnosis, has worked extensively with psychosis and off the planet type issues so I have some confidence in her, at least she seems to have some idea of the issues I’ve been dealing with. I start a trial therapy with her in a couple of weeks.

I don’t feel ok about any of this, it seems to me like I just came to the end of the line with therapy and being helped and trying to work my stuff out, and something changed for the worse since leaving my last T. This new clinical psychologist got me to do a whole raft of questionnaires and apparently I come out with severe depression, severe anxiety disorder, and having borderline personality traits. Hm yeah right. I agree with the depression and anxiety stuff, I’ve never really been depressed before but I do recognize that’s what I am at the moment, and anxiety, well I live in fear all the time so that’s not a surprise. But I suspend judgement on the borderline stuff, she might be right, after all how would I know how other people perceive me, for all I know while I’m seeing myself as being calm and reasonable others might be experiencing me as frothing at the mouth out of control livid with rage.

Anyway that’s my update, but I also have some questions, some of which about BPD I’ll post in a separate thread, some of which about anxiety I’ll ask here, for anyone who can relate.

Anxiety, big thing. I find that I don’t even know that I’m scared most of the time, even though I am. Does anyone else live with so much fear/anxiety that they don’t even recognize half the time that they’re anxious or scared? That it’s so much the status quo it just seems normal to live in daily fear?

I also wonder if anyone else has intense anxiety associated with what they think? I find that I’m scared of my own thoughts, because I have this monstrous anti-me entity (like an inner critic only to an extreme degree) that jumps on everything I think and tells me how bad and wrong it all is and therefore I am. I’ve been fighting it for over thirty years and am still losing – it is based on fear and I’m only just beginning to see how pervasive that fear has been and how it’s shaped my world view and all my perceptions. I guess I am wondering how others deal with having such a terrifyingly vicious inner critic type entity that because it lives inside your head, knows every single thing you think and feel. (I’m sure rather a lot of you know what I’m talking about here, sad to say .)

LOL another thing that hasn’t changed, I’m still writing mega posts.

I hope to be around a bit more now, but as I’m feeling so crap all the time, chances are I’ll be doing a fair bit of coming and going. Just to let you know in advance that I might not be posting as prolifically as I used to...

Lots of hugs to everyone here, I hope everyone is doing ok, or as best as they can, considering what they’re going through.

LL