Unraveling The Ball Of Mental Health Dysfunction

When you’ve got a long list of dysfunctional shit going on, it can feel like a huge ball of tangled yarn that’s got no end or beginning — it’s just a whole lotta random thread that’s inexplicably connected and impossible to make sense of.

I like to imagine my yarny ball of dysfunction to be full of threads that are different textures, colors, and size — much like something you’d find under my 9-year-old’s bed, only it’s 10 feet tall, so it wouldn’t really fit unless she gets one of those jazzy loft beds from Ikea…

Allow me to showcase my colorful collection of individual threads that come together to form my towering ball of doom:

• Depression that comes and goes with varying intensity and duration
• Anxiety that makes it impossible to sleep
• Obsession with weight and body image that dictates my moods and self worth
• Fear of abandonment (aka nobody liiiiiiikes me)
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Weird self-image and identity issues
• Parenting oh-fuck-I’m-not-qualified angst that never takes a break
• Mysterious autoimmune shit that makes me tired and my body hurt

Impressed? Horrified? Me too. It’s literally baffling that one human can be so full of alarming traits and still walk upright.

The Core Of Dysfunction

My ball of dysfunction is unique in that it has an ever-regenerating nucleus of self-loathing that puppeteers the tentacles of my mental health smorgasbord. It knows how to stay well protected and deeply hidden so it can survive evil threats like love, compassion, and kindness.

So, that’s the core of my dysfunction. And who knows where it came from, but I can tell you that I don’t remember a time when it didn’t exist. I’ve always felt this immense hatred towards myself that has a slippery and evasive quality — I can’t really define it like I could an inanimate object.

Either way, the situation is pretty fucking dire and I’m working my ass off to heal.

But there’s light up ahead and I’m coming to you live from some higher ground. Thank GOD I’m not in my shit, drowning, hanging on for dear life — I’m working the hell out of my tools.

And, no lie, it took WEEEEEERK to get here.

• Individual therapy 1ce a week
• DBT skills group 1ce a week
• A nutritional plan all day e’ry day
• Meditation in the morning
• Mindfulness as much as I can remember
• Journaling in the AM and PM
• Practicing my DBT skills in scheduled intervals every day

I think it’s safe to say that exploring the rats nest of tattered threads and tangled yarn that have kept me sick for so many years is finally paying off.

I wanted to pass along a helpful tip that I learned from my work in marketing that’s helped me begin to unravel the Great Ball Of Dysfunction -

Segment Your Misery.

Yup. Untangle your big-ass ball of hopelessness by naming and separating the threads that make the whole and then write it down like I did above, into your “shit that hurts” list.

Why? It helps to name or identify those specific somethings that are hurting you so you know what you’re dealing with and it helps expose the core.

Being that I’ve never really gone toe to toe with my flaming core of self-loathing, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with it, but my therapist says to keep doing what I’m doing and it will start to melt.

Could you even imagine? Loving yourself? I mean, what does that even look or feel like?

• Having self confidence
• Living inline with your values
• Looking in the mirror and liking what you see
• Knowing that your value doesn’t hinge upon external circumstances or things
• Avoiding food that takes away from your physical and emotional vitality
• Telling nasty people to fuck off nicely
• Having boundaries that protect your health and affirm your values

I’m not sure, but I think this list could get pretty fuckin’ huge.

What you do next isn’t my place to say, as I’m not an expert on unraveling balls of greasy yarn shit, but it might give you a jumping off place to start when you make an appointment with a qualified shit-unraveler, aka therapist.

I’m also a big fan of:

• Having the right diagnosis (this can take years if you’re unlucky like me)
• Having a therapist who gives you tools that work (hint: if you’re doing them and they aren’t making a dent in your miserable situation, you might have the wrong diagnosis or the wrong therapist)
• Being open to different modalities of treatment/therapy
• Check out Dialectical Behavioral Therapy to help you manage your emotions and make real change (e’rybody should be all over this shit)
• Considering self-compassion (easier said than done)
• Journaling — knowing thyself is an important piece, but hide that shit — it’s nobody’s biz
• Mindfulness

One last thought — I’ve spent years giving attention to each of my misery segments or tangled yarn threads and it didn’t really do shit for me. I think exposing the core — the springboard of my suffering — is going to be the thing that finally stabs the beast in the heart and kills off all the limbs.

Fingers crossed like a motherfucker, dontcha know.

Peace to all of you and your balls — there’s gotta be a way out of this, so let’s keep seeking and fighting together.

Originally published at http://audaciouslynormal.com.