Charting unknown territory

Trying to chart the course of your thoughts is like a journey into the unknown, dancing around and trying to sidestep a yawning black hole. I don’t know – I’ve gone round in circles, have done for many years now, but perhaps there is reason for some optimism: there always is isn’t there? i need to focus on ‘being’ even when i feel the need + urge to ‘disappear’.

So here i am again. I started another journal somewhere which I only wrote in when I felt suicidal or close to it, I couldn’t ( can’t) deal with looking at it when i’m *not there* – in that dysphoric state – between the devil and the deep blue sea. I need to think myself along somewhere in the ‘middle’ of those extreme states…i need to find the middling path.

Some things are strange: I’d spent quite a lot of time recently reading up about bipolar disorder: I’d worked out for a while that kept veering from one extreme to another, had this whole ‘split’ thing going on and always very rapidly: a rollercoaster. I never really did identify with the whole ‘clinical depression’ idea because it just didn’t sound like me.  Sure there were days when I couldn’t get out of bed ( ok there never was a time after i turned 7 when i could actually get out of bed willingly before 2 p.m.) and felt low, but there were the days when I felt top of the world and hyper and felt great about myself, and about everyone else. But I always always managed to come across to others as super-confident and full of beans ALL the time. ( that’s cos they never saw me the rest of the time and i know how to HIDE what I’m feeling – probably far too well) It was the flux = that really gets to you the end, you just never knew if you’re coming or going. Nowadays I can sort of pinpoint when a ‘low’ mood is coming -and try and avoid getting in too deep + thinkreally hard about being positive.  It’ s a case of trying to see patterns in my thoughts and hence behaviour. For a long time it all just seemed so chaotic, I had no idea if it was me, or the people I met, or what, etc. because I didn’t even know what ‘me’ was. Ok so now i still don’t know much but I  do know it all has a lot to do with the negative thought patterns I end up with, and then the resulting self-destructive makes everything generally impossible.  I don’t know anything about psychobiology – or I know enough to know that the scientists don’t really know much either. Chicken and egg problem anyway. I don’t see myself seeing  either a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist – when I’m ‘fine’ I just can’t see myself getting around to it ( and what would i actually say anyway?) and when I’m #not fine# there’s no way I’d be capable of organising appointments and such-like.

But anyway, not to be defeatist about it, I have been reading up more on cognitive behavioural therapy. as a child I’d read a lot about Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Therapy which i found on my dad’s bookshelves – and I hear is one of the main ‘schools’ of CBT.

But of course, it’s the reality of what’s in your head, what goes through your head. I guess I can’t really make a proper-go of it unless i write ..during and through all the different ‘times’ and ‘feelings’. and regularly. I keep forgetting – these days as well – more and more. then it all starts taking on the confusion you sense in dreams..and that is really what scares me.