I went and saw my T today and had a really good session. I told her what has gone on the past few days. The fact that I wasn't sleeping. The fact that now I'm good and am sleeping a normal amount. The fact that I saw my ex-best friend who is now maybe a friend again (something which took me like 9 months to get over) I don't know if she was too thrilled about me seeing this girl again. The story behind this is that my best friend (lets call her A) stuck with me through senior year of college. She stuck with me through my highs and lows and through all the shit I pulled before realizing I was out of control and sought help. We were destined to be best friends and everyone referred to us as pooh bear and piglet (if you know whinnie the pooh you know how close he and piglet were). Well last labor day I still hadn't sought help and I became very suicidal. I said goodbye to A and then quit responding. She freaked out cuz she was five hours away and couldn't do anything about it. Since then she has disappeared countless times throwing me on an emotional rollercoaster that I was not equipped to handle. My T and I have worked through that and I have been doing very well, but it was a long healing process. So we talked about the effect seeing A had on me this time, which surprisingly it didn't have any. I enjoyed seeing her, but it meant nothing.

We also talked about how I tend to communicate better through writing. Hence this blog now. It helps me get my thoughts down. She said when I first came to therapy she know I was devoted to seeking help cuz I kept coming back and I was trying, but yet something was missing for her to understand me better. When I was having a really hard time, she told me to email her daily whatever was on my mind. Since then we have kept that channel of communication open because she said that was the missing piece. She can now see that I take time to process things and like to write them down. She says my emails really help her understand me and see that I really am listening to her and trying what she tells me.

Today she also made me list 10 things I like about myself cuz I'm really hard on myself and she wants me to see that there are traits that I have that attract people and make people want to be around me. She says I get stuck in this dark hole sometimes and I don't think anyone likes me and I think I'm a huge failure and she wants me to see that I'm not and that people do like me, but maybe not when I'm in that dark place. She has challenged me to come up with 100 things that make me unique. I had a hard time coming up with 10 things I liked about myself so this is gonna be a challenge. I'll share some over the next few days.

We also talked about how there was a period of 5 days where I got 4 or less hours of sleep and was perfectly fine, but was really irritable. T explained that I was probably manic. I told her I wasn't in a really good mood though which was my understanding of what mania entailed. T then explained the one sure sign of mania is insomnia and being fine the next day. She said that irritability also goes with mania as well as depression, so she believes I cycled through mania then crashed on Saturday with depression and now I'm normal again. Its really confusing and frustrating if you ask me.

Finally we talked more about my communication skills with my friends. She explained yet again that my friends aren't trained to understand what goes on in my mind, so when I'm constantly switching its really hard for them to want to be around me since I'm not the person they were friends with. She said that whenever I'm in the dark place, I need to communicated with my friends and explain to them what is going on with me. She said that's going to be really hard to do but if I don't start explaining stuff I'm going to push people away even more. I thought this was a good insight. We talked about coping skills to try and help me get out of that dark place. T told me some of her coping skills to help her when she is sad. I told her that it seems like the same list I use whenever I feel like I'm going into a state of panic. My coping skills include: working out, playing with my cats or neighbors dogs, reading, going on support sights, calling a friend, cleaning my closet, having a cup of tea, working on anything that will keep me focused, or simply taking a nap. I usually try these coping skills to prevent myself from lashing out to others.

It was a really good therapy session today and I'm really learning a lot of skills to help me keep myself under control :)