In Treatment

I’ll be gone for a while. Tomorrow I’ll start a 10 week program in a psychosomatic rehabilitation center.

Throughout the past years, my body has been giving me these signals to take a real break, to slow down and to take better care of it. There were times when it was pretty easy to ignore all those signals and just to go on, but in the past few months it became incredibly difficult to do anything real productive (tumblelogging doesn’t count) and it required a lot more energy to get the same amount of work and daily tasks done. I am burnt out, the doctors say. I guess that’s kind of a classic diagnosis in these rehab facilities. 

The truth is, I don’t know what’s exactly wrong with me, except for all those pain signals my body is sending out. And until now I was just fighting the symptoms and not finding the cause(s). 

I’ve been struggling with this decision for about 6 months but after my body was deteriorating creepily fast in the past 2 weeks - not getting any sleep at all despite taking sleep medication, not being able hold down anything in my stomach for days, not even water, losing 4 kg of body weight in less than a week, struggling with never ending anxiety attacks, feeling dizzy all day long and getting worse when treated with medication - I finally decided. So far, the docs couldn’t find any physiological causes. Ok, so it’s mental processes which cause my body to react in such a irritating way. 

So, I’m taking this step now. Being a control freak, it scares the shit out of me to give myself completely into the hands of strangers, whose profession is to help people like me. They say, I should see it as a kind of a discovery, an adventure, an exploration of my own body and mind. But I’m scared shitless about what I eventually may find out. But somehow I know that this is the only possible option I have left now. 

The restrictions there are quite tight. Visits are not welcome in the first weeks. There’s no tv and it’s not allowed to bring cell phones, laptops or any other electronic gadgets. This is gonna be hard for me. They say it would be too much of a disctraction. Right. The patients are supposed to focus on themselves, to take a real break. 

That said, I won’t be able to post here the first weeks I’m there, after a while, they let you spend the weekend at home - but until then, you’ll have to get by without my rants and reblogs. I will try to be a good patient, obeying all these rules and restrictions. 

I guess I’ll just write down things with pen and paper and post them later on. Back to oldschool. 

I just hope the withdrawal symptoms of not being able to reblog won’t be too painful. 

Well, until then, take care.