weekend report

i had a great weekend! we went to a cool restaurant, watched once and lives of others, had dinner with my old therapy group members, etc. etc.

yesterday was a bad driving day. at 6 in the morning, i tried to do a u turn on a bridge and then realized a cop was right behind me. so i backed up. for some strange reason, the cop didn't stop me! and then later in china town parking lot, while turning a tight corner, i scraped the side of the car on the very bottom. oh well. the unfortunate event in the parking lot might have been due to one of my medicine running out? i had to ration my meds so i could last until tuesday evening when i see my therapist. so i didn't take my dose at around lunch time. i probably wasn't alert as much as i could have been. later in the evening around 8 pm i felt like i was sinking down into the ground because i was so tired.

today is a very special person's birthday. :) happy birthday!

so beautiful

my roommate, my roommate's friend, my sister and i went wedding dress shopping for my roomnmate last night. she looked pretty in every single wedding dress! she's going to be a beautiful bride at her wedding. wow.

a mile

i am really psyched. i ran a mile in 11:20. that's the fastest i ever ran a mile!!!

wedding dress

we're going wedding dress shopping in this evening! i'm really looking forward to it. i'm probably more excited than my roommate (she's the bride to be).

perks of having finished the evening dbt program of course is that i ate dinner around 6 pm last night and i can go wedding dress shopping before the stores close.

i started a new group yesterday and let me just say that i really miss my old group!!!

oh boy oh boy

i'm done summarizing 4 out of 8 chapters for my presentation tomorrow. wow. i am half way done! i've tackled the chapters i know better so the rest of the presentation is going to be more difficult. oh well.

i didn't get the watch the hollywood party last night. isn't it a shame that i didn't get to check out pretty dresses? yeah. yeah.

at my sister's insistence i went to church yesterday. to my surprise the sermon was relevant to things i'm trying to figure out in my own life. it's a good thing i went to church yesterday. :)

i have two more days left of the intensive group therapy program. just two more days!!!

balance

i'm trying to find balance in my day today. i have to prepare for a presentation on tuesday. i still have to review the 360 page manuscript!!! i am not as stressed as i could be. so that's good.

on friday evening my group therapy program was cancelled due to the weather. so i still have 2 more days left.

lately i either feel bad or numb. this morning i can't tell how i feel at all. yesterday morning i was feeling pretty sad and crappy until i left the house around 2 pm!

my sister went out of town to visit some friends. i miss her.

fear

i feel scared of my own emotions and thoughts. i need a frozen orange!!!

family visits

my brother was here for a week. my sister came on wednesday. it's nice to have family in town!

i have a week and a day left in my intensive group therapy. it's so weird that the time went by so fast. i don't know for sure that i will cope better. but we'll see.

this weekend i have a ton of reading to do. hopefully (with med change starting tomorrow) i can get some work done.

final stretch

i have a week and a half left in the intensive group therapy program. yay! i have come to really care for the group members. and i'll be happy to have some time freed up to study.

last weekend i slept about 18 hrs in a 24 hr period. i didn't feel good so i just kept sleeping and sleeping. oh well.

tomorrow morning i will be working out at 8 am! wow. i'll be impressed if/when i get there.

strange week

group therapy this week was very strange. two people stopped coming. we had a major upset yesterday in three of the groups where group members got really upset. today we spent most of our energy hashing that out and trying to come up with solutions. i was left feeling angry but i wasn't even the person who was involved in the situations! i guess i was empathizing with the powerlessness the other group members felt in the situation. i have two more weeks of intensive group therapy left. yay!!!

holding on

i don't know how good it is to do this but i'm holding on to my target behavior as an option should things take a turn for the worst. it's not that i'm closed to the possibility that my depression can get better. just in case things don't improve, i know i'll act on my impulses.

on a happier note, my brother is visiting me and it's been great. yesterday we went to two museums that i hadn't been to in ages. it's nice to be able to spend time with my brother.

shock

i'm totally in shock. i got a good grade for the paper i was agonizing over. it's the best grade i've received since i started the program. wow. what now? do i all of a sudden have hope? i am starting to believe that maybe the dark clouds are moving, albeit slowly. thank you God!

special day

today felt weird. it just seemed like any other day. last year around this time i felt really (unrealistically) optimistic about the up coming year. as it turned out the past year was really really hard. many hospital visits, and academic troubles! this year i'm not as optimistic but have realistic "hope." maybe i'll end up in the hospital, maybe i won't. maybe i'll graduate, maybe i won't. i will just take one day at a time.

thanks friends and family for being there for me!

contract

i had to contract for safety after group therapy today. we did a behavior analysis of someone who had just attempted suicide. i got triggered during group and didn't feel so good. fortunately i was able to check in with a counselor after that group then again after the evening ended. i feel much better right now after talking about some of the issues in a group following the behavioral analysis group. thank God!!!

raw emotions

i feel raw emotions from last night when i was brain storming for ways to "final exit." i felt worse after generating some ideas about how the final exit might appear to be natural.

goupd therapy was good. we discussed how i might cope with triggers. there are no easy answers. i just have to keep at working on feeling better. there are good days and there are bad days. i just have to keep working on feeling better.

sunday worship

it is becoming harder and harder to sit through worship service on sundays. why is this the case? i feel disconnected from the worship service as a whole, disconnected from the sermon, the hymns and the prayers. it's not a good place to be for me. and yet i feel it over and over again that i have to sit through the service. maybe it will be better for me just to take a break from going to services?

i'm reading karl barth's dogmatics in outline. it's a challenge to separate out what he believes from what i believe. everything sounds kosher. what will i say in class on tuesday?

sleep is taking over. i can't get enough sleep! it might be time for a med change.

intensive group therapy day 9

it's hard to keep track of each day now. this week, we had two members join the group. they are both nice. each person brings a new perspective to the group.

everyday is a struggle - getting out of bed has been difficult. i don't want to do anything. i basically have to force myself to get to places.

last weekend was amazing. i got the paper done! and i even had time to go shopping and had dinner with my mom both saturday and sunday.

i'm learning new skills in the intensive group therapy program. whether any of it will come handy when i'm feeling intense and awful feelings, we'll have to see.

this week i became aware that i want to communicate with my parents about what it's like to be depressed. i don't know if i'll actually attempt to tell them how hard it's been. i am thinking about it. and maybe that's a start.

i haven't done any reading since i finished the paper on sunday afternoon. man oh man! i'll start reading tomorrow morning. yeah.

good enough is good enough?

i'm waking up so early now that it's more like i take a little nap in the late evening. my mom has jet lag and so she's up early in the morning. so this morning at 4 am we had pancakes. :) pancakes at any time of day is good for me.

mom and i went to a morning service at a korean church this morning. my korean is getting worse. when the pastor was reading the scripture passage i really wanted to crack open an english bible. i had one right infront of me too. i was just too lazy.

i want to turn in my seminar paper today! i think it should be 15 pages at least. but i only have thirteen pages. man oh man. i'm trying to squeeze out every drop of creativity i can find in myself but it's not working so well. i used to be able to crank more pages with less effort!

lord have mercy.

early bird

i got up early this morning because i slept early. doesn't that really make sense? anyway i went to starbucks this morning as they were opening. i got some reading done there. i then came to the library. i gotta say i much prefer the library. it's noisy in starbucks! sometimes i don't mind the noise but man oh man this morning i couldn't stand it.

anyway all this to say that it feels great to wake up early in the morning and study. big day of studying today! i'm hoping to go out to dinner. i know, how can i go out to dinner when i have this major major paper is past its due date? well, i don't think i can study more than 10-12 hrs in a day anyway. so mom and i are going out to dinner. i can't wait!!!

i used to say that i'm neither a night or morning person. but i think i really enjoy being awake in the morning. this is not to say that i don't have problems getting out of bed in the morning because i really have a hard time getting up. but when i'm up i like being conscious early in the morning (by early i mean, before noon).

moody day

today was day five, in other words first full week of intensive therapy! yipee. i got 5 more weeks to go...

group therapy was fine. we discussed weekend planning. people were really encouraging for me to get some studying done. then we had a group for affirmation. i was like huh? but then it made sense. my home work is to repeat to myself "i can do it" as many times as i can/need to this weekend.

man i was up and down today emotionally. i talked to my therapist and then had to take a nap to get over some feelings. then again after group therapy i had to get some sleep too to feel more sturdy. oh well.

big weekend ahead. lots and lots of writing and reading to be done. :)