Going over my most recent tracking sheet from the past 7 days, it’s evident that overwhelming feelings of loneliness and sadness were prevalent throughout the week. I battled with reaching out to people of my past for help.

What tracking sheet? Well over the last month I’ve been using a “Coping Skills Mood Tracker” and a “Dialectical Behavior Therapy Diary” to keep track of my moods, thoughts, flashbacks, feelings, and the coping skills used to deal with them. You can download blank copies for your own use if you like, right here.

So yeah, containment. I’m supposed to focus on containing my thoughts on my problems to 30 minutes per day and beyond that when a feeling comes I’m supposed to tell myself, “nope I’ll think about it later”, and then do something to take my mind off of it.

Sounds logical enough right?  Yeah right, when you’re an over thinker, logic isn’t always as easy to rationalize as we’d like it to be.  One big problem is, all of my coping skills are starting to lose their effectiveness so I need to find a new one(s).  Which I may have in the way of starting this new website, but I guess time will tell how effective it is.  My therapist thinks it’s a good idea as long as I don’t let it consume me.   Of course we both know when I start something I go all in, with me it’s all or nothing, there is no middle ground.  So that kind of scares me but I have to try to do something to deal with my thoughts and contain them.  I’ll still play my guitar, listen to music, look at pictures, play on my phone, clean, write, or other things like that but those are all distractions and as said they aren’t quite as effective these days.

She’s hoping the flashbacks start to diminish; right now I’m averaging 4-5 per week, usually in the mornings. She suggested I try and change up my morning routine, but I’m not sure what else I can do differently. There’s only so much time in the morning. I’ll have to think more about this….yeah right, cuz that’s a good idea!

This is also day two of being on Fluoxetine.  Still not feeling much in the way of change, really no change at all yet. That’s an entry for another time though, going on meds.

So after all that, how do I contain?  Shit, I don’t know..I haven’t been able to yet so how in the hell do I start now?    Definitely easier said than done…