I’ve learned in the past few years that I have a fairly addictive personality. I think that happens to a lot of us when we struggle. We get into patterns of sedating or distracting ourselves to avoid how we feel.

Aside from the really unhealthy substance addictions, I have also been addicted to self-harm. It’s actually hard to figure out whether that is an addiction or a compulsion, or maybe a bit of both, but I guess that’s just semantics.

The upside of my addictive nature is that it often makes me really productive. I easily get caught up in being busy; with one job leading to the next until the whole day is gone without me noticing. This isn’t great for anxiety, as there’s an urgency that takes over, but it means I have these bursts of getting so much done. It means, for instance, that when I run out of ‘normal people’ cleaning to do, I end up washing walls and hoovering the attic.

Right now I am struggling with knowing I have a week ahead without my usual structure of therapy sessions to punctuate it. Because I’m not doing therapy, I am frantically trying to dodge my feelings. I’m running away from myself because I don’t want to get absorbed in how I feel and have no way of expressing it or making sense of it.

I’ve made as many plans as I can for the coming week. I know that if I fill my spare time with being busy I can hopefully keep from sliding into the dark thoughts.

The weekend has been a challenge, because all my plans fell through. We were supposed to go away to visit friends for a few days, but our dog incapacitated herself. That meant we had to stay home and keep her quiet to give the stitches in her leg a chance to heal. As you can see, she hasn’t found the R&R thing too challenging.

I filled the empty time with being creative. Going back to the addiction thing; I sat down around lunchtime to make three or four Christmas cards. I got hooked playing with embossing powders and three hours later this had happened.

Yesterday I got my paints out and spent the afternoon creating this wise-looking turtle.

Who knows what else I’ll get up to later this week…