@mortimermouse gave me the idea of this ponder when he described what his family routinely does when he’s having a hard day.
This last little glitch in the mental programing wasn’t the worst I’ve been through by far. I just hate the feel of that crumbling around the edges. I can still taste the burnt, cold, over salted bitter walnut feeling that lingers afterwords.
During an episode… If I’m home, I want to be in as small as space as possible, but if I’m out, I want to be in as open a space possible.
I had help in coming back into my head, and I had to used some of my self helping tools as well.
This is for my AT HOME plan… different then my away from home plan.
Self Help at home… I try like hell to never miss my meds. Sometimes once in a while, it will happen, but not as often as it used to. Other times I will sit in my closet and in the dark, or sit in my bath tub in the dark. I’ll put on earphones with no music. I’m in a very quiet place. Sometimes I am screaming, but I try very hard to quit that. Because screaming just adds to my panic until I exhaust myself.
I will just think only of breathing. I won’t try to talk myself out of anything just yet, I won’t argue my voices. I will focus completely on the breathing. Once that starts to calm me, I will try to tell myself, it’s not real. All this happening to me isn’t real. If faces are coming out of the walls I try to touch them, and when they aren’t there, I know they aren’t real. As I calm down then I can get my voices back in their room and then I can try to sort out what in the world just happened to me.
While I’m self helping when I can… my sis has a routine too.
First, she opens all the windows and closes all the drapes. So I can hear the ocean outside but not have the feeling that people are looking in on me.
Then she gets me out of the closet into to a dimly light room that quiet and calm, either my bedroom or the bathroom. She’ll get me to sit down and leave me alone if I’m working on my breathing. That’s the hardest part I bet. Leaving me alone. Because I’m sure it’s instinct to try and DO something. But leaving me alone in the quiet helps me a lot.
She talks slower and doesn’t ask me a lot of questions. She checks my meds and does ask if I’ve eaten anything. Other then that, she sits and listens and keeps me from running outside, or if I’m starting to punch the wall she’ll get a pillow and put that between the wall and my fist. She’ll call my doc and alert the crisis team and she’ll then just hang out until I need her to go away. She’ll encourage me to take another xanax and seroquel. If that hasn’t calmed me down or at least stopped the rise of agitation in at least an hour or so, then she calls in the parents.
I was wondering what do others do as a crisis management plan for those days when it all just falls apart. What is your self help and your other help? When do you give up and go get hospital help?
