For instance, since my Mom passed I have found myself doing things spur of the moment more. Not weighing the pros and cons of things. Doing things that are in fact foolhardy. Going for walks in the middle of the night, for instance. Just throwing caution to the wind. Why would this be?
Any intellectual types out there who would like to tackle this question.
Are you still seeing a therapist?
Actually, there is a stigma for anyone going to therapy or having a mental illness. One is assumed to be mentally ill if going for therapy, and that is not always the case. Everybody needs some support at times in their lives, and a third party can often help, if just to listen, and you leave feeling heard.
Starting with an evaluation by a psychiatrist, then a referral to a counselor seems a good plan of action, for any caregiver who has had to set aside their lives for someone else for so long, and has therefore not tended to themselves properly for so long-like a garden left untended-one must get in there, do the heavy weed clearing, find yourself and plant stuff that reflects the new you.
But mostly I'm the opposite - keep catastrophising. Slight slip on the stairs, and in a flash I see myself lying at the bottom with a broken neck and the dog howling the house down until I'm discovered half-eaten three weeks later.
Going for a walk in the middle of the night doesn't sound insanely reckless. If you start picking up strange men or joining a base-jumping group, now...
Are you having a lot of trouble sleeping?
I too dislike the kind of therapy where one learns to contemplate their belly button f o r e v e r , lining the pockets of the therapist.
There are some self-help books that can teach CBT.
It isn't quite the same, but I have noticed that whereas before I used to counsel myself not to worry too much about other people's opinion of me, nowadays I don't need to do even that: I really don't care. For example, encountering snotty shop assistants. Before, I'd remind myself "you don't dress to impress somebody who works on a checkout." Now, I wouldn't even notice, or if I did I'd just note internally that this young person has a lot to learn.
Could it be a rebound from having a responsibility lifted, do you think? Are you worried about it, or can you think of positive ways even to exploit it perhaps?
I haven't become reckless, I'm still a fairly cautious person, but I have become less judgmental of my own and other people's occasional lapses. I know that each of us is going to die, no matter what we do. And some of us are going to suffer in that process. I still take my pills and take reasonable (if not rigorous) care of my diabetes. I wear my seat belt. I have all the medical tests I'm supposed to have, more or less on schedule. I don't put myself in harm's way. But I know I'm not going to live forever and I'm a little more accepting of that idea than I was before Coy developed dementia.
Does that make sense, Gershun? Is it at all like what you are experiencing?
This kind of behavior is not like me. I hope I don't sound like I'm reading too much into something that is not important but I am just curious I guess and wondered if anyone else on here who had lost a parent had changed in odd ways too.
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