About two and half years ago I went into emotional lockdown, in what I assume was a bid to protect my fragile mental and emotional state. A doctor on campus desperately wanted to send me away to a very nice facility in the area that deals with mental health and addiction issues, and has been doing so for the past 118 years. I on the other hand had other ideas. The birth of my oldest brother's first child, my only niece, was a month away and I had an education to attend to. I used some fancy word magic and somehow she let me out of her office with only a prescription for a few medications and a promise not to do anything untoward to myself over the weekend. I also had to report to her office again on Monday to see how things were going. Thus began a long journey into mental illness and bi-weekly doctor's visits.
It was a traumatic time for me. I had difficulty formally admitting I had serious clinical depression with a touch of situational anxiety and the occasional panic attack. Even now it’s not something I’ve really told anyone about. I can be an intensely private individual and I’m afraid of the repercussions that such a disclosure could have. I think I fear the stigmatization that comes with it- or perhaps the loss of privacy, as my immediate family would become vigilante to my every move and mood. It’s not something I want to deal with in the near future.
Somewhere in this whole process I became numb and started to shut down emotionally for fear of losing control of myself. I have no idea how to snap out of it now, even though I desperately want to. In this whole process I left the six-year relationship with the love of my life, became “that girl” that I never wanted to become, you know the girl with all the baggage, and lost all desire for any kind of a physical relationship. I can’t remember the last time I have wanted to have sex with anyone, let alone someone in particular. That fact alone is depressing. So here I am, emotionally detached from a large section of my life and not knowing how to let myself feel again, without wondering if I'll end up in a doctor's office or worse this time.
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6 comments:
I feel like I'm going through something similar right now, and I'm not willing to admit it to anyone either, really. If you don't mind me asking, what's the thing that brought you to the doctor? I have this nagging feeling that I need to go, to get help, but I'm scared shitless.
Pam, it's sort of complicated...but if you stick around I'll write you up something tomorrow after work, since it was something I was planning on writing about anyways.
hi, may i know what it means by an "emotional lockdown"?
Hi Rae, like I mentioned in the post I basically stopped feeling. I detached myself from my emotions and anything I was feeling and went numb. I was overwhelmed by the depression and the emotions I was going through so I shut down.
I guess an analogy would be like a grocery bag that's been filled with too much. The bottom falls out from overweighting it and your left with an empty bag that was supposed to have your groceries, but is now broken and unusable. Poor analogy I know, but maybe explains it a little better?
~ Jane
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
how exactly, did you "shut down" emotionally?
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