OUCH!
So…Tomorrow is my last day of IOP, and I’m a little nervous.
Over the past seven months, I have learned a lot about myself and how the sexual assault and other traumas I experienced have affected my life. When I was a young teenager, I developed behaviors and ways of thinking that helped keep me safe. At the time, I needed them. As I grew older, however, those same behaviors stopped helping me. In fact, many of them began getting in my way.
I’m older now. I’m not thirteen anymore, and I’m not facing the same circumstances or challenges I faced back then. Yet those old patterns remain.
That is one of the frustrating things about maladaptive schemas. They become so deeply ingrained that I often don’t even realize they are there. During my time in residential, PHP, and IOP, I have begun to understand what these schemas are, where some of them came from, and how profoundly they affect my behavior.
Out of the 18 maladaptive schemas, I struggle with 16 of them. Obviously, I’m not going to change all of that overnight. It takes awareness, time, patience, and a lot of practice.
One of the hardest parts is simply recognizing when a schema has been activated. They operate quietly in the background, influencing how I interpret situations and how I respond to them. They are also self-perpetuating. A schema becomes activated, I react to a situation through the lens of that schema, and my reaction can create an outcome that seems to confirm what the schema was telling me in the first place.
And around and around we go.
I think of these schemas as paths that have been traveled so many times that they have become deeply worn into the ground. My brain knows exactly where those paths go, so it automatically follows them. Now I have to learn to notice when I’m heading down one of those familiar paths and choose a different direction.
That is incredibly difficult.
My WET (Written Exposure Therapy) has helped me identify some of the schemas working quietly in the background. Now that I can recognize them, I have an opportunity to challenge them. I can begin asking myself whether the old pattern really fits the situation I’m in today or whether I’m responding to something from long ago.
I know this work won’t end just because IOP ends tomorrow. In many ways, I think I’m leaving with a better understanding of the work I still need to do.
I have to keep trying.
And I will.
In other news…
Because apparently I needed another challenge, I tore a muscle in my calf while exercising.
It sucks. So. Bad.
School starts in a few weeks, and I’m really hoping I’ll be able to walk normally by then. I see an orthopedic doctor on Monday, so hopefully I’ll know more after that. I’m also hoping to get a knee scooter because the crutches I’m using right now stink. Getting around is ridiculously difficult.
I’m sure I’ll get better at navigating all of this as time goes on.
Until then…
OUCH!
More later…
