Sitting on my bed, lying wide awake . . .

(Because I'm fully digging The Offspring right now. And Mumford and Sons. And Nirvana. And Fun. So on so forth etcetera, loud music. In fact my psychologist suggested dancing to loud music as a way to stay grounded. Pity that would tear my headphones out of the headphone jack on my laptop . . .)

So in case you're wondering where I've been for the last half a week or so, I was at Tupu Ake again. I felt really unsafe for the first half of last week, and seeing as I've been making really good progress, I wanted to put some barriers in place to destructive behaviour. I had an extra appointment with Debbie on Wednesday after DBT - I had my regular appointment on Tuesday afternoon last week due to work, so she knew already that I wasn't feeling so hot and said that if I needed to see her after group, she would be free - and we were discussing putting barriers in place and my current ability to put them there myself. Anyway she suggested respite and I said okay, because I figured I didn't want to freak out and try to kill myself. So on Wednesday afternoon I was admitted to Tupu Ake. Initially we had only arranged a two day stay, the planned exit was on Friday, but on Friday I was feeling really low and even more unsafe than on Wednesday, so we extended my stay until today. (Usually you can stay at Tupu Ake 7 days before and extension form is required, but myself and my team try to keep my hospital and respite admissions as brief as possible.)

So I came home in the middle of the afternoon.

On Saturday I had a massive freak out, I'm not even sure what was going on, but I talked to Debbie today (because you know . . . that's what I do), and she said it sounded like dissociation. Woo, fun. But anyway I got really freaked out and anxious and restless and I was thinking about potentially stabbing myself with a bread and butter knife, and at that point I realised that even being inside a house wasn't safe for me, so I went outside and walked around and around in circles for a couple of hours. (Quite literally a couple of hours.) I didn't leave the premises and I didn't walk on the motorway because I really don't want to go to prison, so yeah. Walking in circles. Apparently the staff were really worried about me, Debbie told me today that they actually called ICT's after hours staff due to their concerns. So yeah. Saturday night freak out, not so good.

And then I hardly slept on Saturday and Sunday nights. I was scared that my not sleeping was going to mean that I couldn't be exited today, but Debbie was happy for me to go home. Which is good because tomorrow I'm judging Papatoetoe Schools, and on Wednesday as well as DBT I have work with Owen. And well - I want to continue.

Oh yeah, when I got home I gave Debbie my spare medication. It's not being thrown away, just stored in a cupboard until I require it - because I have to take iron for the next three months and because I had a large amount of ponstan. So anyway Debbie is looking after those now, and I simply tell her when I need them and how much I need, and it will be given back as required. I'm mildly amazed that I was able to do that.

I don't know if any of my regular readers have done DBT, but if you have, there's an acronym in the Interpersonal Effectiveness module about how to approach people. The acronym is GIVE -
be Gentle
act Interested
Validate
have an Easy Manner -
and anyway every single time I read that acronym I think to myself, that's Debbie. Pretty much perfectly. And I told her that and she explained that she used to break in horses (which I knew, she told me before), but that the horses she was breaking in were Arabian horses. I know shit all about horses, but anyway she said that Arabian horses are really flighty and they get spooked really easily, so you have to be really gentle with them to get them to trust you. She also said that she believes you can't force people to do things, so yeah. I has a very gentle person that I trust very muchly but also she's very safe, because she's so gentle. Not weak or anything like that, not at all, just gentle.

Okay, I think I'm done spewing word soup for now.