Milestone

Two days. 

Not three days, but two days. Let me explain why this is a big deal.

For the past 5 1/2 years, anytime R. has descended into a disregulated emotional state that brings on seizures and psychosis, it would last for three full days before sanity returned. At the beginning, this would happen at least once a month if not more. Then it stretched out to once every couple of months. At the beginning of this year, it was once every four or five months. The stretching out of occurrences was positive, but the duration was always three full days. By day three all of us were pretty done in. 

Today would have been day three for this latest occurrence. Today, while there were blips, R. participated in school, she ate all her meals, and I was able to safely leave for my riding lesson. This is an absolute first for her. 

We've been doing a lot work naming feelings and then working on navigating those feelings. We talk about why she feels the need to run away from us when she is upset instead of running towards us. We talk about why she feels the need to pick at siblings or do things that might get her in trouble. We talk about the need behind those behaviors. We address the real emotion underneath. Over and over and over and over. 

It's all about identifying anger and talking about what it's covering up. Anger is a very accessible emotion. It is easy to be angry, especially if it means you can direct fault for everything that's wrong to someone else. R. has spent the past five years misdirecting her feelings into anger so that she doesn't have to feel the underlying emotions that feel so threatening... mainly fear and sadness. Those are more difficult to navigate. They are the emotions that can feel as though they will overwhelm; that they feel so deep and endless that there might be no end. Far easier to be angry... at everything. And if you can't work up the anger on your own, then it is simple to trigger anger in others that can feed your own. 

Anger means you don't have to feel sad and scared that you were little and no one came. You don't have to remember when you were hungry and no one fed you. You don't have to remember when the doctor poked at you and your body hurt. You don't have to remember the people you miss. You don't have to deal with the incredible tension between loving a place and desperately missing it while also being so terrified of a place that you beg to never go back. 

There have been a lot of tears today. Real tears. Real talking. Real progress.

Two days.