Once (many times), when my misbehaving-brain symptoms were in full swing, I was at home trying to do two things:

1.) Take care of myself and manage my symptoms.
2.) Debating with myself if I was bad enough that I should go to the emergency room or not.

So this one time I did this instead. I went to the ER, or rather, I went to the ER waiting room. Preemptively. I didn’t go to the desk and ask to be admitted. When I was asked by a hospital employee why I was in the ER waiting room and hadn’t checked in yet, I said, “Because I wanted to be close to the ER just in case I needed to check in.”

What did this accomplish? I was able to focus exclusively on taking care of myself and managing my symptoms. If things got bad enough I was already right there and ready to check in. No need to drive to the ER when in full-blown crisis, no need to call 911 and say I’m in crisis. If things progressed to crisis, I was where I needed to be to get crisis services.

In practical terms, I took the energy-consuming and wellness-distracting debate of whether or not to go to the ER off the table.

I never checked in. I was there all night. I focused entirely on applying my strategies in my WRAP where I know I was safe and could get immediate service if my symptoms escalated to crisis levels.

And you know what? It was so much easier to work my WRAP while not equally weighing if I should or should not go to the ER. And you know what else? This revelation was borne of wisdom and life experience.

I know with 100% certainty that I pushed myself into an unnecessary crisis situation so many times by fixating on whether or not I was in crisis and needed to go to the ER.

Just because you’re in the ER waiting room does not obligate you to checking in to the ER. Just pretend it’s as if you’re camping out in front of the Staples Center all night to get first shot at Demi Lovato tix.

Cool, yes? Yes.