3 p.m. or the Residential Ward, Forever.
A new chapter of "With Love and Wafflenugget" and how I learned that feelings and emotions are not, in fact, the same thing.
Good Morning, Beautiful Human,
I have not had a fugue state in two months. Two months and three days. I mean, it’s not like I’m counting or anything (biggest lol).
I believe this is the longest I have gone without one. I, of course, can’t know for certain because I don’t remember my whole life in a continuous timeline like most people do.
Returning earthside — the words I use to describe this process of re-entering my body and its memories after decades of dissociation — is nothing short of miraculous. It is also one of the messiest seasons of my life because my mind has started to download all my past lived experiences, and holy wow, are they a lot.
Most of the time, I feel like I am looking through a split screen: the present moment on one side and my past on the other. Unlike before, I am not constantly pulled between the two, hopscotching between timelines and worlds. I am no longer endlessly confused and on high alert about what is the now? What is then? Is this real? Or that? And for the love of this sweet earth, can someone tell me how long I will be here in this timeline before I leave it for the next so I can tell my boss and not get fired?
Instead, I am in both timelines at the exact same moment. I am fully present. And I am also fully enmeshed with one shard of my past life.
I’ve struggled to explain what my memory and understanding of self are for decades. I used to just say, “I lost time and along the way, myself too.”
In the last few years I began to realize that I was always looking at my life through broken glass, through endless distortion and fragmentation. On pages and pages of my journal, I would write thoughts like this:
I am shards scattered all over a universe that is constantly shape-shifting. How can I be fully me if they are all over the milky way? And how on earth can I ever get them back when they are not earthbound at all and I don’t even know how many there are
Recently, those shards have returned to me and taken shape. I see now that I am a broken mirror hidden in old drapes. I am whole, and shattered at the very same time. I am fully me and also unaware of all of me just yet. And lately, the memories aren’t coming in partial flashbacks, they arrive as literal movies. I’ve taken to calling them a “downloads.”
Downloads are that scene in The Matrix where the characters receive a new skill by harddrive. But instead of a skill, I’m downloading a past experience. All day long, I’ll be sitting there, working on things for Harvard as half my brain is watching a complete, crystal-clear movie of a past moment. When the download happens, it doesn’t feel like anything. I’m a fly on the wall and even though that girl in the movie is me, it feels like it’s happening to someone else.
Once that’s complete, though, the feelings do come, and I let them. I feel them all and process them all. Everything that happened – the hurt, the heartbreak, the overwhelm, and also the grief that comes afterward.
As hard as this is to experience, it really is a gift to me.
All I ever wanted was this — to live in the present moment and be able to trust its truth. At the same time, I never thought it would hurt this much. I also never thought I had been hurt this much, so I guess it all makes sense that it is this painful.
Writing helps me navigate the pain. So, at least for this little season, I am going to begin sharing chapters of my memoir here again – the direct results of these downloads.
I will still share all the Healing Lab nerd-outs and Lab Notes about what I’ve learned about recovery and healing, (linked to check out, if you want them), which hopefully offer context to these stories. But, at least for the moment, they will be shared as separate entries that you can engage with based on your own curiosity and timeline.
This week’s new exploration in The Healing Lab takes
a look at how Feelings operate in healing. You can read it here.
In this newsletter today, in honor of this past that shaped me (and for the sake of making peace with it once and for all) I take you back to my life twelve years ago and the next chapter in the book I hope to one day call: With Love, and Wafflenugget.
With Love and Wafflenugget | Chapter 5:
3 p.m. or the Residential Ward, Forever.
If you’d like to start at the beginning, Chapter 1 is here. If you’re just diving in for today, here is the recap (something I find impossible to offer you, because, hey shards!) from Amy:
Where we last left off in Chapter 4, Kate had moved into her own apartment in a small town at the urging of her dying therapist. At the time, she had been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and was experiencing hallucinations, fears of contamination, and “lost time,” unsure about why she couldn’t recall hours or days or weeks. On top of all that she experienced stress-based incontinence that arrived whenever her body felt under threat. She was living on her own, but was told she needed to find a doctor who would treat her on an outpatient basis, or she’d be sent to a locked ward, likely for the rest of her life. Everything was riding on what she would do next…
It took me a few false starts dialing the number. It rang and I hung up. It rang and I hung up. But finally, on my third “this-time-it’s-right” call, I let it ring long enough for the voice on the end of the line to answer.
She was everything you’d want in a mental health case manager: calm, kind, and gentle. But even still, I couldn’t stop stuttering as she tried to get my name and birth date.
Trying to catch my breath and find my words, I reminded myself of the plan. I was going to request an after-hours appointment – a time when it was dark out and no one would be able to see me. Doctor Cortado saw patients until 9 p.m. at his office on Main Street, so it had to be possible. But ever still, my mind raced with fear.
No one can see me. No one can see me. They’ll have to “get it.” They know how sick I am. They’ll get it. They’ll get it. I just can’t be seen.
Moving to downtown Hanover hadn’t worked the way my former therapist, Atlas, had said it would. I didn’t instantly fall in love with my surroundings or make friends like he promised.
Instead, I just quaked in fear more. I just stood behind my door longer. And I just isolated — even more aggressively — thinking, living, and breathing my fear as I struggled to get to my job for my two hours of work, four days a week.
In truth, the move hadn’t helped at all. It had amplified my fear of the world and showed me just how deeply I lived in the agoraphobic terror of my mind. Actually, if I was being truly honest, moving had regressed my progress. Before the move, I had learned to walk out the door of my old apartment in the woods without having an incontinence accident every time. Now, I had one almost every time I left my apartment. And worse still, sometimes, I even had one before I left, as I stood behind the door and thought about leaving.
My care team already said I was at “rock bottom” so it didn’t really change how I thought of myself. But it did add pressure. So much pressure. It meant that this appointment, with Doctor Cortado — the only doctor willing to see me and keep me outside a psych ward — had to go perfectly. And that meant I had to be perfect. And perfection, well, everyone knows sh*tting your pants is never it.
Yes, Kate. You cannot shit your pants. And daylight makes you so you HAVE to get a night appointment. You HAVE to hide yourself from the world. It’s the only chance you have to make a good impression.
After stuttering some more and breaking down in tears completely, I finally found my name and birth date amidst the jumbled thoughts of my screaming mind. And then somehow, as if sharing that had broken the seal of my usual silence, a flurry of panicked, people-pleasing words came out.
“I’m so sorry to be a nuisance. I’m so sorry. I know I am so lucky to get to see Dr Cortado. I am so lucky you are even talking to me right now but please, maybe, if it’s possible, maybe could I see him after dark? At 7? Or 8? It would be so so helpful.”
Yes Kate, you did it. You asked.
The case manager paused, her silence pained. The quick draw of her breath said it all. She didn’t have to say it. I just knew. I’d lived it for the last decade.
She hurt on behalf of my own.
“Oh I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to distress you. Please don’t worry. I am okay. I just, well, I just am trying so very hard to be okay and I will be okay or more okay if I can see him when it’s dark.”
Two loud deep breaths and a sigh later, she ever so kindly denied my request. Even my people pleasing couldn’t stop from begging.
“But please. Please.”
Unfortunately, nothing changed her mind. Even my guttural sobs and an explanation of how much more severe my fecal incontinence was in daylight. But then she said what I wrote immediately thereafter in my journal as a reminder to my future self.
“No, Katharine, if you want to be seen, you must come at 3 p.m.. Dr. Cortado was very clear. I’m so very sorry. 3 p.m. or he won’t see you at all.”
I could hear her holding back her own tears then. I could hear how she wasn’t the one who was enforcing this. She was just the latest messenger of the truth I knew.
Kate, it’s the appointment or the locked ward.
It’s the discomfort and shitting your pants in public or the locked ward.
And come on, are you really going to give up this easy? What would Maura say?
Finally finding the clarity I needed, I heard her in the back of my mind.
C’mon bipolar bear — you’ve shit yourself all over this town. What’s another one? And let’s be really honest here. it’s either you shitting your pants on Main Street or shoveling it on a psychiatric farm for the rest of your life. Is that even a choice, you silly goose?
Just like that, my tears stopped and my body completely relaxed. Then, even though it didn’t feel like me speaking at all – actually, even though I could swear it wasn’t me speaking at all – I agreed confidently. I chose discomfort over safety and a certainty that only Maura could conjure.
“Yup, tomorrow at 3pm. I’ll be there. See you then!
Holy wow. If I had only known then what I know now. I wish I could have realized that pushing myself so hard without a sense of safety was not in my best interest or well-being. But I didn’t, so day after day, I pushed past every boundary my body and mind had and actively participated in re-traumatizing myself.
This is why, as I continue to tell my story here, I am also publishing new guides that help break down the healing process and offer the tools, resources, and frameworks that I wish I had all those years I was struggling. Because if there is one thing I am certain about in all my shards and in my timelines it is that I would never wish what I lived through on anyone.
If you’d like to catch up on the complete set of posts, exploring healing concepts:
First, we started with the Nervous System, and understanding why our natural responses to stress or trauma is in fact, brilliant wiring, and something to honor (not “regulate” away).
Next, we explored how Safety is the first prerequisite before healing can begin.
Now we’re beginning on Feelings, and will be diving in deeper over the next 2-3 weeks — how they’re so often misunderstood, mismanaged, and used as a way to make us feel “wrong” and “bad” rather than as the critical and forever valid data that they are. This is all new material, and instead of saving it for another post, we want to share it here, for those who are interested in learning more.
All of these posts are published free for all, and access to the archives is available to supporting members — who make all of this work possible.
And as a reminder, I never want cost to be a barrier to healing, if you might find these resources useful and aren’t able to become a supporting member right now, please email hi@thie-healing-lab.com and we will add you, no questions asked.
And with that, holy bananas, I am off to bed. Actually, when this goes out, I am off to teach at Harvard and then – let me tellll youuuuuu, I will be sleeping all weekend long.
Wishing you a weekend.
With love,
Kindly,
Kate