la quemada

recover from depression, heal from childhood sexual abuse

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Note to Self: 10 Lessons Learned about Depression

Note to Self: 10 Lessons Learned about Depression

I periodically write letters to myself, letters I can read when I’m not doing well. When I’m feeling better, I have a sense of perspective and acceptance that I can lose when depression closes in. Here I’ve put together not so much a letter as a series of lessons I think I’ve learned about recurrent depression.

When the depression is heavy on you, it can be hard to hang onto hope. But there are…

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Going Somewhere New

Okay, dear friends. I’ve finally done it. I’ve moved.

No more writing here on La Quemada. From now on, I’ll be blogging at Sage Burning. I hope you’ll follow me over there. It will be the same kind of blog–in fact, for now, I just transferred most everything from Quemada over there, although I’d like to do some cleanup.

One big change–the blog is going public again. I hope that’s a safe choice!…

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Broadening My Treatment

You can’t say I’m not trying to get better. Therapy, medication, cranio-sacral massage, yoga, meditation, group, blogging… E has told me, “If how you felt were directly related to effort, you’d be feeling great. Unfortunately, I know it isn’t that straightforward.”

(But at least I get an “A” for effort. I was always very motivated to get good grades, after all.)

Lately I’ve added another layer to…

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Examining What "Triggered" Feels Like

Examining What “Triggered” Feels Like

In my Monday therapy session, E and I are exploring what it feels like to be triggered by a rupture in an important relationship.

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My Way

E has this demonstration she first did with me a few years ago. She holds her hands up, palms facing me, and I hold mine up to meet hers. She pushes on my hands, saying, “My way!” I’m supposed to push back and say, “No, my way!”

When we first tried this, I laughed because it felt awkward and uncomfortable, both literally and in what it was supposed to convey symbolically: my ability to push back…

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The Blog Evolves

Ever since my son’s discovery of this blog last spring, LaQuemada just hasn’t been the same. I couldn’t write freely, knowing my son was reading everything I wrote. So after a bit, I went private. But that hasn’t been satisfying either, and it’s a big reason, I think, that I have posted so much less often over the past year.

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Energy Disaster

Somehow, it’s been a month since I last posted, when I wrote about my declining energy levels. It surprises me that so much time has passed, because each day, each hour, can feel so interminably long.

Right, I’m not better at all. In fact, I’m worse. What I called a crisis a month ago now feels like a disaster. I can’t do much of anything these days but lie around and watch my life slip through…

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Energy Crisis

It’s been creeping up on me, this lethargy, this heaviness, the fogginess in my head. First it was the day after I did much of anything, then it was part of every day, and now… now all I do is lie around in bed. Maybe I read the New York Times online… but maybe I can’t finish the article. My concentration is terrible. Maybe I sort a few of my digital photos… but maybe I can’t focus on it,  and…

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Sweet Turned Sour

Once upon a time, okay, actually in August 2017, I started a 200-hour yoga teacher training program. It was an amazing experience, creating a safe and sweet sense of community, deepening my understanding of yoga, providing me with the opportunity to volunteer teach at a women’s residential drug treatment center… and perhaps most importantly, the four-day weekend trainings were a rich opportunity…

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I Know, I Have a Bad Attitude

I Know, I Have a Bad Attitude

This evening I am going to group therapy for the first time. It’s an on-going group that E runs with eight women. She’s invited me to join it before, and I’ve always said no. This time she pushed a little harder, plus I thought it might be good for me, so I said okay, I would try it.

The idea is that I would give up one of my two sessions per week during the week that group meets (which is every…

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Return of the Attachment Wound

Return of the Attachment Wound

Just in time for Halloween, a real horror show. It’s the return of the attachment wound, that monster that turns rational adult women into screaming, desperate toddlers…

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All the Things Mom Can't Control

All the Things Mom Can’t Control

We arrived home from our vacation at midnight last night. It was a  l o n g  trip, to say the least. We’d left the apartment where we were staying in Malta at 5:30 in the morning on Wednesday (5:30 there, but 8:30 pm according to the time here on the US west coast), got a taxi to the airport (half an hour), flew to Amsterdam (two hours), then flew to Los Angeles (ten and a half hours), then a…

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And back to the blog

And back to the blog

I’ve been away from this blog now for longer than at any other time since I first started writing, three and a half years ago. And what have I learned from the break?

I’ve learned that I’ve missed it and want to come back.

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Jump

A couple of days ago, I got sick of how difficult the super-slow taper off Effexor was going. I’d been working on it since July 1, and after two-and-a-half months, I was only down 15 percent on one capsule. And I have two capsules to get rid of. At this rate, I figured it would take me 33 months to get off the Effexor. I know! Nearly three years!

And who knows if I could even keep up the same…

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Trade-offs

Lately I’ve been thinking about trade-offs. What am I willing to give up in order to have something else?

This applies in many areas of my life. For example, I gave up a high-status, relatively high-paying job with excellent benefits in order to live with less stress and more free time. Or I decided to pay high premiums ($800/month!) for insurance so that I could keep seeing the therapist I’ve…

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When You Least Expect It

When You Least Expect It

I thought I was doing so much better. No, I AM doing so much better. I’m calmer. If I’m triggered, I catch it, and I care for myself, and it doesn’t last very long. I’m taking risks in individual and couple’s therapy. I’m out in the world again, instead of hiding in my bed. Over the weekend, I told my husband, “I feel like this is the healthiest I’ve been in years, at least five years.”

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First Joint Couple's Therapy Session

First Joint Couple’s Therapy Session

Thursday, July 19, is the first sex therapy session where both my husband and I are meeting with Marie. So far I’ve met with her three times on my own: Once to broadly describe the issues I’d like to work on. Once to talk about what frightens me about doing this. And once to lay out the plan for this first joint session, so I know what to expect.

In the meantime, just the anticipation of going to…

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