PHP, Round 2

PHP, or Partial Hospitalization Program, is like inpatient treatment but you go home at the end of the day. Lasts from 10 to 15 days total usually. Due to COVID, it’s now virtual. Which is a shame because they had these awesome chairs:

So it’s virtual, and the schedule is the same thing, check-in and group and lessons and such. The staff are all very nice, and some even welcomed me back. I didn’t have the heart to tell them I don’t remember any of them. I do miss getting to know my fellow PHP folk between sessions. That’s how I took up knitting last time!

No direct word on the short term disability, but the wife has checked in with work and they’re being super supportive and I don’t feel like I have a looming deadline of “PHP is over, back to work” any more. Which should help, but hasn’t yet.

No word on TMS yet, either, but there’s no rush and I am pretty sure I’m on the list. They’re just checking with insurance.

As for me, it’s been a hard week. Cabin last weekend and I was in the most idyllic place, calm and peaceful. Brain didn’t get the memo though, so I was rocking the anxiety hard, and when it went to sleep depression clocked in. Literally exhausting to be this wound up. It’s like you’re in school and have to read a paper you’ve written and it’s 90% of your grade. Except you didn’t write it. And you wore pants that don’t fit. And your bully is in the front row, right next to the classmate you’re crushing on.

That feeling. From the moment you wake up, to the moment you realize you’ve been falling asleep during this episode of Superstore. And as I said, if the anxiety quiets, you have depression to fall back on. And the internal monologue (not voices) is saying all sorts of things about how you’re a failure, and you’re a drain on those supporting you, and the ones that love you are just saying that to make you feel better. Garden variety nightmare stuff.

The depression is like an old friend. I can slide right into it, warm and secure in the knowledge that things can and likely will get worse. It’s the anxiety that puts the fight or flight instinct in you and then tells you to wander from the kitchen to the living room without telling you what you were meant to do there. And back again. I think I referred to it as “the screaming mimi’s” in a post forever ago. But I have memory issues, what do I know?

So I have my routine, and tasks that I need to plan and then carry out. It’s the simplest of existences, technically very calm. Almost Zen-like, I guess. Except for the Anxiety and Depression, of course. They never forget me, so I should never forget them.