What's Your Plan?

Okay, so where were we last?  Oh, yes, the pills.


Suffice it to say that the next time I hopped into my friend, Angie's, car under the premise of a quick lunch, I was not altogether surprised to see the car being wheeled firmly into the parking lot of Summit Pointe.


I went in willingly.  We had a nice conversation with one of the crisis workers.  He evaluated my immediate state and deemed me safe to be released back into the wild.  He was going to, however, give me a follow up call with the name of a therapist he thought might be a good fit.  This was fine with me.  I held out not a lot of a hope, as the three I'd already tried had been complete and total busts.


Life went on.  Work.  Home.  A dangerous stew of emotions had a hold of me.  The follow up call didn't come for more than a week.  Once transferred over to scheduling, I was told I couldn't get in to see anyone for more than three works.


When you feel the way I do, three works seems like an eternity.


So I figured I'd better get something started on my own.  So out came my Filofax to save the day.  I fell back on my strengths of writing and drawing, and tried to use them to problem solve.


I decided it was time to take inventory.  I dated my page, and doodled out a gigantic mindmap.  In the middle was the largest bubble:  Losing Control.  Surrounding in came smaller bubbles that may have any contributing factors:  listening to negative forces, spending too much money, not eating for days at a time, taking too many meds, giving into guilt, missing work, isolating myself, and not art journaling anymore.


I sat and mulled these over for awhile, and then made a corrective plan for myself, including the following:

• Art journal everyday
• Be around comfort people
• Fight the guilt
• Eat healthy
• Rein in your spending
• Cut out negative influences

This seemed doable, all except "fight the guilt".  How in the world do you do that?  Shoulder shrug here.  So, I googled it.  I found an article about challenging negative thinking, and a section devoted to guilt, in which they suggested looking for evidence- facts, not feelings.


So if you flipped the page in my Filofax, you'd find another little mindmap.  In the middle:  Cory died from vehicular impact.  At all sides are these little facts:  "I was not driving the car", "I did not push her", and "I was not charged with her death".


It was a start...