Happy Covid-versary?

Note: this post talks about covid-19 and quarantine. There is a description of blood and a brief mention of suicidality.

My “covid-versary” is March 13th. Friday, March 13th, 2020, was the day the pandemic changed my day-to-day life. That’s when I left school and moved back home with my family, where I stayed for 10 months straight, before coming back to campus this January for my senior spring.

I remember the day I left really well. It was a bad day in the middle of a bad week, and I was having other major problems that weren’t related to covid. I had had my period for five weeks straight. I was dizzy from a lack of blood. I went to the gynecologist (my last trip out and last doctor appointment for a long time) at the start of that week. She gave me a birth control pill to take to stop my period. It made me suicidal. I stopped taking it.

Then on Friday I moved out. I had to pack everything up very quickly. (note: blood) I got a bloody nose, and it dripped blood on my shirt (one of my favorite shirts!), and I remember feeling like there was blood coming out from all over me, because I was also still having the other bleeding. It was also Friday the 13th, which is supposed to be unlucky, although I’m trying to not be superstitious anymore because it’s not a healthy way for me to think.

I was lucky that I got to say good goodbyes to all my friends. I was taking the coronavirus much more seriously than my friends seemed to think it would be. So I really did say goodbye to my friends thinking I may never see them again. I spent the whole day with them while I was packing up (they weren’t leaving…yet), and I got to give them all long hugs. I’m really glad that I did. Now that I’m back on campus this semester, and some other people are, too, I’ve gotten to see some friends in person, but there are some people that I still haven’t seen in person since that day, and I truly don’t know if I’ll ever see them in person again, since we’re graduating now and going in different directions.

It’s funny to me (and very unfortunate) that a lot of my predictions actually came true. I think it’s because trauma has taught me that bad things can happen and they can be really bad, and my friends, I guess, didn’t really know that. When we got the announcement that classes were cancelled, my friends cheered for no school. I was horrified. I knew that if things were bad enough to cancel classes, they must be really bad. My friend tried to calm me down by saying that the death rate was “only 5%.” That is a huge percentage, and so many people have died this year, because 5% of a large population is a lot of people. My friends might have thought I was making too big a deal out of saying goodbyes, and that I was being overly cautious by going home… but those ended up being good things to do. I wish the worst hadn’t happened, but it did.

I remember wondering to my friends if we would forget what “normal” life was like, and them having an attitude of, “no, of course we’ll remember it, this won’t last long.” And then just today I saw an article in the Atlantic about all the people that are forgetting what pre-pandemic life was like.

Some things seem to have permanently changed in my life. One is zoom, and also google meet and FaceTime. It’s really useful for staying connected to people in other places, and for…everything. I think classes will (or at least, should) continue to offer online attendance as an option even when it’s safe to go back to classrooms. It does make it easier for me to attend, but there’s also a lot that I miss out on by not being in the classroom, like having side conversations with friends.

Another change is that I now go on a walk basically every day. And I have been doing this now for almost a year. This is strange to me; I can’t imagine a pre-walking life anymore. I didn’t see walking as an activity, a social thing, a form of exercise, or a fun thing before quarantine. I only saw it as a way of getting from one place to another, and I only walked if I had somewhere to go. Now I do it all the time, just to walk for fun, not to go anywhere. It helps my muscles/joints, it lets me get out in nature and out of my room (very important!), and it is a (relatively) safe way to see someone in person.

I feel like a lot of people talk about how their health has been impacted by the pandemic, but this hasn’t really happened for me that much. My physical health has gotten much worse and also better during the pandemic, and so has my mental health. I had some really bad times, physically and mentally, at the end of the summer, and again in the middle of the fall. But now I’m doing possibly the best, mentally, that I’ve been in years (not 100%, but better!). And physically it’s a mixed bag right now. My health does not seem to be directly correlated with the pandemic.

Anyway… it’s been a year.

Things I’ve learned about myself

I’ve done three weeks of my treatment program now. I have at least one more week in the program, maybe more, depending on what I decide to do. I have learned a lot of new skills and ways of behaving, but I have also learned a lot about myself!

I have learned:

• Dissociation: I dissociate a lot. I know I am beginning to dissociate when I lose track of what is going on, ask “what?”, feel like my legs are disappearing, feel confused, have trouble moving, and have trouble focusing my eyes on things.
• Minimizing: I minimize my problems a lot. I say, “Eh, I’m just having a bad day, but it’s okay,” when really I am experiencing intense fear, shame, sadness, and anger and have very strong urges to engage in my target behaviors (self harm, suicidal ideation, etc.). This interferes with asking for help because I think my problems are “not bad enough” to deserve help. But they are.
• Self-validation: It is hard for me to validate myself. I tell myself that I “shouldn’t” be feeling emotions, and I try to block them out. It is hard to be understanding and kind to myself and to acknowledge that there are very valid reasons I feel the way I do. I may be overreacting to a situation, but I am overreacting for reasons that make sense, given my life.
  • Before my therapist left for her vacation, I told her to be safe on her trip and that I was scared that she was going to die. It was hard to say that, and especially hard to say it without prefacing it with, “This is weird, but…” After some talking, I was eventually able to validate myself by saying, “It makes sense that I am scared of this because it has happened before.” My family and I nearly died on a trip once. That doesn’t at all mean that my therapist is going to die when she goes on this trip, but it is valid for me to feel that way.
  • All emotions are valid! The specific emotion, intensity, and duration may not fit the situation, but it is still valid to feel that way.
  • Maybe I look to therapists, friends, and the internet for validation so often because it is hard for me to give myself validation, yet I still need it.
  • Purposefully reminding myself of my trauma (looking at my scars, going through old papers, finding triggering things), even though it upsets me, also serves the function of validating that something bad did happen to me and that it was real.
• Judgements: I judge my feelings and thoughts a lot. Now that I think about it, this could be the reason I minimize and invalidate myself. I say out loud or in my head, “This is stupid,” “This is weird,” “I’m so weird,” “Shut up,” “It doesn’t matter,” “It’s nothing,” “It’s weird; don’t say it,” etc. I am working on being more nonjudgemental and only stating the facts, not my judgements of them. For example, “I notice that I am feeling scared. I notice that I am having an urge to run away. I notice that I feel my heart pounding.”
• Abnormal behavior: I am learning what is normal and not normal behavior for a teenager.
  • Making plans to run away from home is not normal.
  • Staying up to 1 am and sleeping in to 9, or 11 or 12, is normal for a teenager.
  • Staying in bed or in my room for five hours after a nightmare is not normal.
  • Being afraid of going to sleep and as a result doing everything I can to put off going to sleep for hours is not normal.
  • Having feelings of wanting to die every day is not normal.
  • Having panic attacks every day is not normal.
• Avoidance: I avoid a lot of reminders of my trauma, and I have many methods of avoiding them. I have a list of triggers with over 50 items. I avoid looking at said list. I refuse to share it with my current therapist. I don’t look at pictures we have in our house that remind me of the trauma. I tune out of conversations that only indirectly remind me of it. I limit the places I go. I barely watch movies or read books because I’ve been upset so many times by them. I limit the classes I take in school to avoid topics where memories might be brought up. I clamp down on thoughts of the trauma, when I have them, and I very, very rarely talk about what actually happened (even just the basics).
  • I also avoid thinking about how I am feeling. In DBT, I have to fill out a “diary card” every day with my symptoms, emotions, target behaviors, etc. When I show it to my therapist, I flip it over, push it to the side, and try not to talk about it. It is hard for me to think back and explain what was happening when x on my diary card occurred because I bury it so deep.
  • This isn’t something I’ve learned about myself but something I’ve learned in general. Avoidance is okay in the short term but a problem in the long term. Avoidance is okay when it prevents me from engaging in target behaviors. In exposure, I will gradually stop avoiding, but it will be done in safe ways. 
• Relationships: I am scared of pushing people away and losing relationships. I genuinely don’t understand why certain people don’t hate me by now.
  • I had several close friendships end abruptly in my childhood. This could be why I feel like this.
• Self-hatred: I have feelings of self-hatred and worthlessness, and think I don’t deserve kindness, compliments, or good friends.
• Wanting to be a therapist: It is common for people who struggle with mental health issues to want to study psychology and become therapists. I am not weird for secretly wanting to be a therapist or to take psychology courses, even though I’m currently studying a totally different field. It’s okay for my interests to change.
• Diagnoses: I don’t actually know what diagnoses I have, and I’m not sure if I want to ask. I know for sure that I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and that I have had (but maybe don’t at the moment? not sure) Major Depressive Disorder. Other illnesses I think I have or have had at some point (but I could very well be wrong because I am definitely not qualified to diagnose myself) are Social Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Hypochondria (health anxiety), Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Pre-Mentrual Dysphoric Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Panic Disorder.

I am learning so much! It makes me sad to realize how badly I’m actually doing, but I think that that’s necessary in order to actually address my problems and recover.

What is something you know about yourself?

(here is Things I’ve learned about myself, part 2)