How I Stayed Alive...

........during a very dark period of my adult life this book:

 'How I Stayed Alive When My Brain was Trying to Kill Me'...

Purchase book here

.... was a very vital resource for me.  I've blogged before about this book and how it helped me.

From time to time I still pull it out.  Usually I will open it to a random page and begin reading.  Sometimes it is helpful. Sometimes it is not.  Often I find myself wanting to chuck the damn thing out the window or at something.  BUT BUT BUT....if I'm chucking the book out the window...I am not hurting myself.  And that distraction could be all it takes to change my thoughts from hurting myself to this is going to be okay.

My therapist at the time suggested this book and a few others.  This particular book has a few different crisis plans. I like how they are layed out and how it helps you create one. Often people don't create crisis plans when they are not in crisis.  I mean, I didn't.  I didn't think I was in need of crisis.  Hell, I didn't even believe I was suicidal. I was just extremely overwhelmed with the loss of our adopted son via a disruption and I had gastric bypass complications.

So when I was truly in crisis mode...I was able to sum up the energy and come up with a plan. One that would work for me.  One that was doable.  One that was personalized to ME. Not some standard form the damn hospital gives you and says "before you can be released you need to fill out this crisis plan".  My response to their standardized, not-very-personalized-and-huge-joke-if-i-ever seen one....fill in the blanks crisis plan was....I threw it in the garbage.  The psych that was seeing me wasn't to impressed. He told me that I had to fill out their form if I wanted to go home.  If you have read my blog for long you will know that "Uh...I don't do well with being demanded to do anything...ever."  And well...I pretty much told him where to put his crisis plan. And then I handed him this book..with my 'etched' out crisis plan wrote on a piece of paper.  He said "did you tell the social worker you had this?  Because this is much better than the one we gave you."  I responded somewhere on the lines that "I am the crazy one...and your nurses and staff treat me just like that. They know I have wrote it, that I was reading this book, and if they gave a shit then they would have told you that I already had done a crisis plan...it just wasn't the one your staff insist on me doing."

The KEY is to find something that WORKS for you. I don't give a shit if it is on the back of a receipt with my phone number, your therapist phone number, the number to the local bar, whatever it is.....find what works for you.  That ONE thing and hold on to it.

I did.
I'm still here.