new therapy tomorrow

I start a new form of therapy tomorrow, an intensive outpatient program (IOP), hip hip hooray, everybody cheer!

Basically I will be doing (virtual) group therapy sessions several days a week + weekly individual therapy sessions (totaling about ~12hr a week)

I’ve only ever done individual therapy sessions (and definitely not on a weekly basis lol) so this will be a new experience for me but I’m optimistic 🙂

right now my biggest goal is to just be a functional human being again that isn’t on edge 24/7 (and also to stop being anti-social – but people and social settings are scary rn, even the thought of doing in-person group therapy made my body tense up and my heart race)

I just want to stop constantly ruminating over all of the bad things that have happened to me and the people I’ve hurt and lost because of it 🙂 🙂 🙂

I’m afraid to do anything now. both afraid in that I am cautious/avoid things, but also afraid/anxious in that I can’t open myself up to ANY new experiences – a really good example, I can’t listen to new music. I haven’t been able to for months, every time I try listening to something new my body feels really weird (I’m working on how to describe the feeling but I also don’t want to keep subjecting myself to it just for the sake of attempting to understand it lol) so I keep going back to the same 4 Spotify playlists because I don’t even have the energy to organize my library or make more playlists…

I also recently realized I can only listen to music I enjoyed through 2021… Early 2022 was when I fell into my Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson/One Direction phase and every single one of y’all KNOW how obsessed I was. Most of y’all have seen my entire right arm of tattoos (90% are most definitely, really, totally not inspired by Harry and/or Louis lol)

Anyways, yeah, since the end of last year until now I genuinely cannot listen to any of their music (even though I was obsessed with them for the last several years to the point they’re inked all over my body), it makes my body feel bad things (dread? fear? sadness? stress? I need to take a “feeling emotions” class designed for toddlers because I really, really do not fully feel or understand my feelings lmao)

Both Harry and Louis released new albums earlier this year and I can’t even look at their names without feeling like shit so I had to mute/block them on Spotify so I can listen to all of my other music in peace lol I wish I knew what was wrong with my brain. like this clearly isn’t normal but I don’t think “blocking Harry Styles” is a symptom for anything listed in the DSM-5

anyways I just feel stuck right now lol, fingers-crossed this new therapy program makes a dent in the rusted cogs of my brain