a reminder of the past

i am BEYOND stressed with my job. without going into too much detail, myself and a few others, are training brand new staff on the trainings we had MONTHS ago. they are not able to have the actual clinical staff come to them for 4+ hours of training. so we are left to hand the baton down.

immediately i was deemed the "DBT guru" as i have mentioned numerous times..i know DBT like the back of my hand (complements of 8 stints in treatment)

along with that, we are training them in DBT, PMT, Mental Status Exam, etc. 

along with DBT i have taken on the MSE (mental status exam) part of the training. in graduate school, i took a semester class full of working on a mental status exam..to the tee. so i volunteered to be the "trainer" for both.

needless to say..i have my work cut out for me.

i went through the handouts we received in trainings at my job. then i went through my handouts from treatment. there is SO much material i dont know what to do with. i have over 7 binders from treatment..they are repetetive with the DBT handouts but i needed to be thorough in reviewing them. 

it brought back a lot of things..good and bad. i was looking at art therapy exercises i did in 2008 and beyond. CBT handouts i completed, relapse prevention treatment plans i made with clinicians during all the years i was in treatment, etc. it was the last 4 years in a rubbermaid container. it was the grey rubbermaid container sitting in my room untouched.  so full and heavy. the exact opposite of how i want to feel. my behaviors make me small. take up the least amount of space. be frail. but this container was big, bulky, and heavy. it took up so much space that it too much to lift. . it was bigger than i ever wanted to be. i literally had to lift it above all the other "things" in order to get to it.

needless to say, there is a time crunch as my client comes home in TWO WEEKS. 

with all of those handouts from my ED treatment, i was looking for my notes from my classes in graduate school. i unfortunately, misplaced the notes i had from graduate school about the MSE.  lets just say, my room is beyond disorganized since i have moved a ridiculous amount of times. i found the two notebooks from graduate school (that i kept from the semester i withdrew from classes) and sifted through them. i threw the material out that i needed. the notes i had were from the spring semester 2011 before i withdrew. how did i throw out something that was so pertinent? something that could benefit me and my clinical work in the future? i was immediately enraged at myself. i "threw away" a part of me and my profession  that was important. i threw away a part of me that was intelligent. the part that had a grasp on the clinical side of psychology.

to make a long story short...i miss graduate school. i miss doing what i LOVE. which is psychology. helping others. writing up psychological assessments, learning about psychopharmacology etc. my eating disorder took all of that away from me.

i SHOULD be mad. but i am not. i have lately resorted to my ED because it is comfortable. safe. familiar. it has ripped my dreams from me. that was made clear to me the last two days.

but yet..that is not enough to make me stop...

when is enough, enough???