Struggling this afternoon and evening

October 26, 2026

I live in a senior community, which has more great things about it than not great. Because we are all aging, many are going through loss of their agency in many ways. Hearing loss, mobility issues of all kinds, loss of cognition through disease or simply not caring. I live in a small apartment alone. I share a meal twice or three times a day with 80 others in a well-staffed dining room. For many years, I’ve navigated this with kindness, love, conflict resolution in groups, and very little conflict with individuals. I woke up this Sunday morning having slept 7 hours for the first time since I began this recovery nightmare 5 months ago. I KNOW that sleep is healing! My mind told me that I was healed. (Sheesh!) I dressed for church and continued to breakfast as usual. Then church, which is always inspiring. Then lunch with the 80 home folks, and my anger soared by the discussion. In hindsight, it’s not important. But what I’ve decided tonight is that all the people, and all the interaction today sent my central nervous system into overdrive. My mood is low. I stumbled in church, but was caught before falling. I was shaking then . Also shaking all day. This is not new. I know that it is my CNS, and only tonight after hours alone I realize that I overloaded myself today. Okay. I’m calm now.

In my life, have been on Prozac, Wellbutrin, Amytriptiline, Ambien, Seroquel, Zoloft, pamelor, Nortriptiline, Clonazepam, Suboxone (for insomnia), Effexor, Valium, Trazadone, Zanax, and Gabapentin. These, I remember.
Currently on,Duloxetine 60 mg — 2 yr — holding | without clinician

2 Replies

Kitty29m ago

Welcomer

I hope you feel better Peggy. I am living with family and working at a job that invalidates me all the time. I learned to desensitize myself to what they say or feel. Only a very limited amount of people at work actually does care about how I feel. I don’t even bother answering my husband or mother in law. I find answering them leads them to telling me what to do and their way is better. I learn that if you truly want to change someone for the better, you don’t put what they do down. Honestly most of the stuff they tell me are wrong. They are too stupid to realized it

Kitty16m ago

Welcomer

Sometimes it is the people around you that are stressing us out. Yes, the withdrawal symptoms are there but it’s because of these withdrawal symptoms and how intolerable I am to bullshit that I realize how much crap people put me through. I actually fixed a lot of problems at work that I had because I refused to take the crap I dealt with for the last 12 years there. I fixed my husband too. He doesn’t buy me stuff. When I used the joint account to buy something, he questions me and criticizes me. So I bring back how I use my own money to pay for meals in the family that costs a lot more than what I bought with the joint account. I said are you going to pay me back because I paid more? He totally ignored what I said and still criticized about what I bought. I bought food for myself to eat and it was $10. I learned to just ignore selfish people like that. This is nonsense I deal with.

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