Well ventilated.

The very next day goes down as the worst in my work as a shrink so far. Things came to a head and I managed to cry in front of a patient. I negotiated an early end to my shift with my line manager and went on to have a panic attack in the car on my way home.

I thought I was dying or going to kill myself. At some point I noticed I was starting to feel dizzy and later realized this meant I was hyperventilating. It was the worst breakdown I ever experienced in my life.

I am grateful beyond words to the person who talked me out of my catastrophizing feedback loop. I could not possibly have found better words. Goes to show who your real friends are and what professionalism actually means.

The mind is both a powerful, beautiful and incredibly dangerous and hurtful place at times.

In a nutshell.

Feels like a culmination of the worst possible outcomes today. All the accumulated crap of the last few months came crashing down yesterday and I swing from suicidal scenarios to self pity [is there a difference?] to aggression and back again. Waves of emotion. No fucking point anymore.

And still I somehow manage to maintain a validating and largely non-judgmental interaction with my clients. This is hard work. What feels like playful banter while I’m doing it seems to really take it out of me after the fact.

I feel isolated from my colleagues. I feel totally invalidated. And all this was wrought by a few words that caused some neurons in my brain to trigger the devastating cascade of self-pity and self-loathing.

I’m fucking suffering here.