The Return of My Mental Illness Symptoms

Today, I am reminded of the torture mental illness caused in my life for over twenty years. I am reminded of the intense pain it caused and the power it had over my mind and body sometimes stopping me in my tracks–incapacitating me from living my life.

Today, I am reminded that mental illness is still part of my life. It may no longer be severe bipolar like symptoms or painful addiction and withdrawal symptoms from my long term Klonopin use. However, I am still occasionally plagued by PTSD and anxiety symptoms.

Working as a resident care assistant in a memory care unit can be very stressful for many reasons. I recently trained to pass medications which has added to the stress load of my job. I do not want the responsibility to be the med. passer during my shift, but it has been forced upon me in a way I have been uncomfortable with. It is extremely anxiety producing for me for many reasons and has added too much stress on me.

For most people, it would probably be best to just keep working through it and it would become easier over time. However, this is not the first time I felt this way about this job. There have been many other bad moments working there and I have already stayed longer than I wanted to.

I do not want to have the responsibilities of nurse-like skills in such a fast paced environment. I would say the cares we are required to do, are almost needed to be done in like an assembly line type of fashion. I can never care compassionately enough for the residents in the manner I would like. That bothers me and then to add the stress of passing meds at the same time is more than I want from a part-time job. This is not a career goal for me. So, it is time to depart. I have been looking for another part-time job (again) for a while but am now looking more diligently.

Anyway, I had such a bad experience the last time I worked (two days ago), I am still feeling agonizing anxiety. Every time I think about going back to work there my anxiety overflows, hurts and stabs me deep into my chest causing shooting electrical pain and sadness to ooze through my veins, arteries and nerves.

I have been feeling mentally well overall for about and a year and a half and have become spoiled from enjoying the beauty of living without the interference of mental illness pain. So now experiencing severe anxiety symptoms feels even more unwelcome than before.

This return of anxiety reminds me how strong I was and am to have lived with this pain for as long as I did. Plus, I am reminded I accomplished a lot in spite of living with mental illness, but I also made a lot of mistakes and faced many losses.

My frenemies of anxiety and mild depression cause me to feel like a bag of boulders have been placed on my chest taking my breath away. This deep pressure has taken over my chest cavity pressing down on my heart causing droplets of sadness to bleed out and fill my internal cavities with painful never ending reminders of the destructive beast mental illness is.

I hate its return and am fighting hard to make it leave as quickly as possible before it takes up a residency inside me. Right now it is just visiting and I am working hard at evicting mental illness again.

Lately, I know I have made many posts saying I have achieved mental wellness. When I have said that for the most part it has been amazing but I still have had to work through some PTSD and anxiety symptoms. They have never been this severe but still have been present. However, whatever I have experienced since my last suicide attempt a year and a half ago has never been close to what I experienced before.

The pain I am experiencing today is nothing compared to how ill I was before. It does not even touch the hot blue flame that was burning inside me over a year and a half ago and before that.

I will work through this once again. I tell myself this as I type, but I will continue to dig deep and find my coping strategies that have helped me in the past. One of them is to remove negative aspects from my life. It is necessary for me so I will find a new job. I just can’t take a chance. I gave my current job over six months. I loved the residents and have worked through the stress before, until it has reached its peak of today.

I am going to work on my mental fitness and keep exercising my mind until I work through this again. Ups and downs and hard work are part of recovery and mental wellness.

I aim to get back to enjoy the beauty of living without the interference of the pain from mental illness–without my current anxiety and mild depression.

I am a full-time member of the…

Mental Fitness and Wellness Club.

Do you want to join me?

Please join.

 

Photo credit: Photo by Haidar Rais on Unsplash

© 2019 Susan Walz | myloudwhispersofhope.com | All Rights Reserved

 

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