Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire My box of stuff is full and I can't empty it

Might be the drugs.

Might be the drugs.

I was thinking fishing a lot more, but.......

I feel like my head is coming unglued. Strange fragments of memories keep popping up for no apparent reason. Pieces of my childhood, pieces of last week mixing together. I’ve reached out to start therapy but I don’t know what to expect from it. So far, laying the groundwork for it has raised my sense of dread. Just the unknown aspect of it is enough to get me uptight.
I’ve been having really strange dreams lately. A couple of nights ago I was working in Jackson for JPD. Patrolling Pct. 3 in my old squad but aside from my duty belt I was naked. I have no idea how to interpret this. I have had weird dreams in the past but this was hyper realistic. I killed a man in this dream but as hard as I try, I can’t recall the circumstances around that event. I have dreams about walking through crime scenes that I was never at. I have dreams of car crashes and throwing up scrambled eggs in the backseat of my dads Chevelle on the way to church. Things from present as well as things from the past merge in bizarre ways with stuff that never happened or would be impossible in reality nightly. I drink and take Ambien. Sometimes it helps, most times it doesn’t. My doctor gave me Seroquel, which is commonly used as an anti-psychotic to help with my insomnia. It does help but it leaves me feeling thick headed. I don’t take it often.
Before I can start the therapy, I have to develop a place in my head that calms me. As corny as it sounds, I have to make a Safe Place. This is something that I am having a great deal of difficulty doing. The harder that I try to make it happen the more agitated I get that I can’t. I just can’t really think of anytime that I was safe and calm. That I wasn’t worried about something that had happened or was going to happen in the future. I have never been able to really be in the moment. I tried using things from my past but honestly can’t remember a time in my childhood where I wasn’t waiting for the other shoe to drop. The closest I can get is a trip to Citico creek with Jimmy sometime in high school.

We took my MG, a tent, some fishing poles and grub and went up into the mountains to camp out and fish. We stopped at a store up in the hills somewhere and bought bait and a couple packs of Swisher Sweets. I’m not sure how it happened but we only had one cassette tape with us and there were no radio stations that we could tune in so far back in the hills. We must have listened to Moving Pictures twenty times. Every time I hear Red Barchetta I can picture driving on a winding sun dappled gravel road near the North Carolina border, the top down and two stupid kids smoking cigars like they were grownups. That couple of days, eating [bleep] camp food, is as close to relaxed and happy as I can recall during my childhood. Jimmy moved away back to Seattle and I went back to dreading the future.
Lately I have begun to realize that I have sought out jobs that were high stress and engaged in behaviors that caused my stress levels to be raised. It seems that the only way I know to function is in a state of constant chaos. I say things I should keep to myself. I spend money I don’t have to buy stuff I don’t really want after I get it. I engage in behaviors that make me feel good right now. I can not stand being wrong. It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. If I think the other person is wrong, I will make a much bigger deal out of it than any normal person would. I’m over 50 years old and am almost compulsively unable to let things be. I’ve been in a training class for the last few weeks and have argued with almost every instructor that we’ve had. I can’t just sit there and let people say stupid [bleep] without correcting them. I’m unable to just sit there and pretend like the rest of the class. I don’t know why. I know I shouldn’t be doing it while I’m doing it. I spend hours later beating myself up mentally about how ridiculous I behave. I lay awake at night going over interactions with people in my head. Kicking myself for saying the things that I say. Knowing full well that the reason that I am where I am today is a result of my inability to control my emotions.
I’m hyper vigilant almost to the point of paranoia. I can’t sit with my back to a door. I have trouble being in public, particularly in large groups. This is something that bothers me a great deal. I look at people in the grocery store and try to pick out the one who’s going to snap and start shooting. I look for exits as soon as I walk in to new place. I look for places that would provide cover if I needed it. I don’t look at people when I talk to them. If they are someone I know, I’m always looking around behind them. If they are someone I don’t know, I watch their hands. I don’t know how to stop doing this. I don’t know if I want to. I love live music but have a really hard time dealing with the anxiety of being surrounded by people. I don’t even really like being around people that I know. I’m not a loner but I can’t handle being in groups. It’s like I want to be around people but not be involved. Just sort of hang around on the outside like a satellite.
I’ve got to find a way to unload some of the [bleep] I carry around. If I told my friends or people in my family the kind of thoughts that go through my head they would run away screaming. I’m so far away from normal I can’t see it from here. I’m not even honest with the therapist about my level of daily anxiety. I guess I just need to spend more time with him and build a higher level of trust. He asks me about my SUDS level, subjective units of distress. I take a little test ranking things on a scale. The test asks how different situations make me feel or how anxious I am about them. The problem with this is that I can mostly separate myself what the stress and function perfectly well in the moment so my units of distress are skewed. The anxiety comes later, picking apart all the things I said wrong or people that I may have pissed off. Situations rarely make me upset in the moment, it’s always later that kicks in. Maybe upset isn’t the right word. Maybe I am able to function under stress from years of practice and have a different personal definition. When I get stressed, I usually get really calm, quiet almost. It’s like I have the ability to separate myself from the event, handle what needs to be done and then move on. Later, I spend countless hours thinking about things that I did or should have done. Things I would say if given the chance to go back and do it over. I think as a result of this my test result number is lower than it should be. I’m trying to be more aware of things that start the cycle of mental gymnastics but as of yet I have been unsuccessful.
Maybe it’s unresolved [bleep] from childhood, maybe it’s just who I am. At this point all I know is that it is unsustainable. Something has to change. I am looking forward to seeing how this therapy progresses. Maybe it will help.


Just throwing this out there. Maybe one of you guys has some insight.
Patrick

I got no advice.

Other than don't let any sudden urges to steal an ambulance take hold.

Is this menace to society still waking around with a badge, a gun, and "qualified immunity"? He sounds like a ticking time bomb.

Yep, I am still a cop. Not sure where you got menace to society out of that. Ticking time bomb might be a stretch as well. But hey, at least you're a Commander Cody fan so you've got at least one redeeming quality.

This right here says you've got your sense of humor and you'll be fine. Talking to someone who specializes in what you're experiencing can only help. There ain't one among us who couldn't use a little help at one time or another.