coping with change on all levels

[Eleison]

I'm facing profound changes on many levels. At work and in my therapeutic journey towards myself.

And I'm under a lot of stress.

I'm aware that I am both resilient and fragile all at once. I have a diagnosis of long term depression and complex PTSD, so it's pretty congruent with that.

Today is the first time I've been able to rest, with having a day off work.

My main workplace is closed for refurbishment for 4 months, from Thursday just gone, and I'm starting at another library in the borough for that time as from Monday.

In therapy I am really starting to feel how.. alone I have become in my life, and how much I've isolated myself, as a defence, protection, shutting people out. I need to get through this to more connection with others. But my alternate self-state is fighting this intensely.

I see my psychotherapist 3 times a week. I see my GP once a fortnight, occasionally weekly. Both are important anchors for me.

Therapy is hard with my alternate self-state fighting growth. Her long held in fury explodes from me from deep within.

I feel utterly displaced with the work situation. It's like losing a family and home. [the stable family I 'never had', the only child of untreated depressed parents in a constant state of conflict/domestic violence, and with being bullied at school]

I am dissociating a lot, losing myself rather than losing time, going 'blank' and dizzy and losing my feelings and my ability to think. It comes on in waves and totally shakes me up. I also keep fragmenting emotionally. Its stirred up self harming again, too.
And I'm scared.
I'm doing all the coping mechanisms I know - journalling, reaching out, therapeutic art, internal dialogue.
I'm also taking my medication - mirtazapine daily, and zopiclone prn.
But it's really hard.

So I'm wondering if you have any ideas on other things I can do to help support myself through these changes, and ease any feelings of losing control of myself completely.

[Eleison]

Thank you Dr Gould. I've been carrying what you said there with me this week, along with all my work and connections in therapy.
I wanted to wait until I'd completed the first full week before reporting back.

Well, I've made it through the first week pretty successfully. I'm being treated like a human being, which is wonderful, so amazing it can take me by real surprise at times - as I become more human to myself, of course others become more human to me.

The thing that's really limiting me right now is deep exhaustion. I get so so tired, right through into my bones. I am pretty bright and focused for the mornings, slow down about lunch time, then an hour before the end of the working day I can barely sit up and keep my eyes open - but, as is historically the case for me [and my therapist is supporting me in learning to take proper care of myself], I push myself to keep going, somehow. But it's not good, because then I start to fade out/dissociate, get irritable.... and all other things like that.

My next step is to attempt to communicate to my managers how exhaustion is effecting me, that I'm not being lazy, far from it, and ask for any possible ways around it, like splitting breaks, or something.
Ideas would be welcome from anyone for how to convey this.
Thanks.

[Roger Gould, M.D.]

It sounds like you are doing almost everything already, the most important being the direct work with your therapist.  The one more thing you could do is harness the intelligence you display in this summary to take the action steps that are absolutely necessary, and that is to make friends with the people at the new library branch...suspend your fears, take small baby steps in the direction of human contact...