I have been struggling with several issues that I am trying to find a way to cohesively outline without going on long stream-of-conscious rants that I've noticed a tendency for.
your long rants are great, and you're an excellent writer with introspective superpowers. i mean, cohesion is certainly good, but your search process is high quality stuff, and not to be underrated--for my tastes anyway. they're such good explorations, honest, precise, they might be worth more even than the solutions, although clearly solutions are what you're after. sharp and accurate observation is priceless in the search for any sort of truth. theories... may come after, but don't always have to. and often they confuse things.
so i'd say trust the essential observation process, and the truth and cohesion will come eventually. what you're trying to do is difficult, you're trying to untangle a complex web of contradictions, and i don't think there are simple/easy answers. but i can see you getting there in steps.
Jesus Christ I’m re-reading my journal for the first time (I was very scared to do so coming back) and am horrified at the cycle that things seem to follow. In fact, could increased goal-setting behaviors/working on health/finding peace really be just a stretch of road up to the peak of mania where I will fall again?
It seems like my latest entries are really the exact same as my entries from 2019. And it is also sounding eerily similar to my mother, who I would mistakenly become happy that she was “doing better” only for things to get very bad.
I am honestly a bit terrified right now, I haven’t been able to see that I have been circling around the same thoughts for years. It seems as if I want the same things, spin out of control, then come back to my thoughts as if they are novel or new and will somehow work out this time.
Things have to change. I cannot put my significant other through the stress of another episode. Rereading was horrifying—you mean I had figured it all out 3 years ago only to spin out again?
I am not going for success. At the cost of what? I would not reach success without spinning out, so any beneficial “good” I would maintain would not be achieved, and I’d be left alone and in debt. Success (in terms of career) is off the table.
I also notice a trend that is seasonal—much like my mothers. Of summers being the time of my highs and my destruction. That means I need to watch out now, and it means that I am right to be concerned with no sleep regardless of my now 5x my initial dosage of seroquel—notorious for knocking you out. My goals will ALL be for stress reduction. I will also be limiting daylight as I believe that is where the seasons tend to get you (sun makes me feel very very good).
I am going to lay off the more extreme parts of ERE simply because I think it may be partly symptoms of upcoming episode despite my overall belief in them. I will continue maxing out 401k but that may be it momentarily.
The only good that’s come from my episodes is that I am now a rabid feminist, and that did help me deal with many neuroses I had before in terms of dissociated parts (homemaker and mother wife vs career woman). Those paths seemed all was available but I now know stepping outside of the paradigm is possible, though difficult.
Other than that, my entries from three years ago looks exactly the same. How exhausting, and more than that, terrifying.
The kind of growth that you're experiencing by being able to look back at patterns, recognize them, and also recognize a tendency to repeat them, is very painful. I've experienced some of that with respect to relationship and addiction patterns. That is different in the details of what you experience, but I recognize that kind of terror you describe of circling around. I hope you are able to leverage that into a better experience. It sounds like you are making good decisions around it.
Your partner will probably have their own thoughts about it. Hopefully the two of you can talk about that.
I'm not able to stay on a super focused ERE path myself. But there's a lot that I learn here, and I'm onboard philosophically, and I try not to get too self-judgmental about it. I'm grateful that folks like us can be a part of the forums anyway. Life is messy...and the messiness is not evenly distributed.
Anyhow—I'm inspired by your ability to reflect and grow, and hope you keep sharing here.
