LJ Is For Whining

[kiya]

So I do it here.


I am becoming increasingly suspicious that I need psychiatric medication. At least until I get over this hump of problematic stuff. Because I am just not managing this situation well, and it's not improving. I have been getting steadily worse since February, with a pretty dramatic downturn two weeks ago when I stopped sleeping.

If I miss a single day of the B vitamins, I start having panic attacks. Or something, I don't know if they qualify as panic attacks in whatever technical sense panic attacks are defined in. I get depressed; things start to overwhelm me. The overall emotional context is something like, "I'm in a deep dark hole. And it's so high up and the walls are unstable and it's all going to come down on my head and bury me alive, and I can't risk moving or touching anything for fear of setting it all off . . . ." When I'm on the vitamins, it is, instead, "I'm in a deep dark hole. Well, that fucking sucks, now, doesn't it?"

As scales of improvement go, that is both gigantic and laughable.

Of course, to get psychiatric medication, I need a counsellor and eventually a referral to a psychiatrist or someone else who's qualified to do the medication. I note here, tangentially, that the concept of psychiatric medication terrifies me irrationally: taking the B vitamins to control the depression and its spinoffs is correcting a deficiency or a glitch, and I can handle that in my head. I don't know how the antidepressant stuff works, the side-effects of getting one that doesn't work with my biology are frightening, and I don't know how it works. Did I mention I don't know how it works? Black magic. Black magic in my thinking is not comforting.

Some of the side effects are things that I'm looking for counselling to help fix too, so the possibility of getting one of the sets that causes, say, sexual dysfunction is not terribly encouraging since a fair chunk of my SAN damage at the moment is due to psychological crap around sexual dysfunction.

But anyway, back to the counsellor thing. I need one. I need to deal with childhood damage stuff. I need to deal with the lasting effects of the assault. I would like to know if that one chunk of what's wrong with me qualifies as PTSD, just so I know what it is. I could probably use some relationship counselling help too right about now, which means I definitely need to make a poly-friendly counsellor a priority. (I suspect I will not deal with the possibility of a multiplicity-friendly counsellor at all by simple expedient of being as much singlet as plural and not bringing it up. Yes, it's chickening out on activism. No, I don't have that many spoons.) So a poly-friendly counsellor, ideally one who's good with helping someone deal with sexual violence issues and can handle someone with serious neurochemical fuckeduppery. And is T-accessible, because I still don't drive.

Which means that I need to call strangers, possibly more than one of them, interview them to see if I'm likely to be able to develop a working relationship with them (I have never had a counsellor that I could trust, but I was also never choosing them or trying to work on things rather than being sent out for repairs by someone in authority). And I need to have a functional capacity to make a scheduling commitment and get out of the house to it on a regular basis, on my own, when I am currently not confident of being able to do anything other than sit in the corner with a blankie most days.

I also need to learn how to drive, which is something that has been stressing and embarassing me for about ten years now. I don't like the prospect, doing it frightens me, but I've been picking up some of the kinesthetic skills I need from observing my reactions to being a passenger and cultivating the situational awareness, so I'm at least not as bad off as I used to be. I am no longer hitting the same panic-level sensory overload at the prospect, which may mean that I'm capable of picking up the skills at this point rather than freaking out and refusing to contemplate touching the thing again for quite some time when unable to make the car turn on when being asked to perform for an audience.

I need to get back on the horse and start back to college. Part of this is because I actually want to now (when I was seventeen, college was more of a because-it's-expected thing), so I'll have better odds. Part is getting Dad off my case about it. Of course, because I've been out of full-time school since 1997 and out of school entirely since summer of 2000, this has its own exciting hoop-jumping. While I really like some of BU's stuff, including the possibility of speaking to the Ifa priest there as something of a seeker, I've had enough people warn me about the school experience there that it's sliding down. Also, keshwyn pointed me at a pretty good returning-to-school program at Tufts that may be swingable, and which allows for part-time students. (I suspect that part-timeness is going to be necessary for my sanity.) Also, BU's adult education program sucks slugs through a straw, as far as I can tell.

I was already planning to go to NSCC or some other community college for a bit to start getting myself back in the swing of things; the Tufts program requires some recent coursework, so that works out all right. Of course, this means getting the paperwork and stuff they need for that to be sorted out, with things like transcript requests and so on. I'm planning on taking a non-credit course on small business stuff, which actually reduces my stress level, as otherwise I'd have to have a paragraph or two about, "AUGH! I want to start a small business and I have no idea how to do it and where to start learning!" I can just say, "A solution is possible" and stress about getting a proof that I graduated high school down the street and wonder if I can go back to school this time without suffering the sort of catastrophic breakdown that I did last time. (Though it occurs to me that I am not getting migraine from this stress level, which means that it differs in some ways from the sort of stress I was in in 1997 when I was booted from Wellesley for being too fucking crazy to associate with proper high-class types. Or however one wants to put that.)

The NSCC class I intend to take this summer is an online course, and thus does not involve the whole "I melt down when contemplating leaving the house on my own" problem. There are also some classes in the area of my potential future major that appear to be online courses, which is a possibility for later that will probably help. Making a transition from that to going to classes in person is intimidating to me, but I hope can become manageable if I manage to approach sanity as anything other than a suddenly flaring comet.

I have currently set aside the possibility of trying to get a part-time job in the State House, for all that I'd love to do it, on the basic principle that I should not attempt to commit to working outside the house until I can leave the house without feeling like I'm about to burst into tears. Inflicting additional crazy on local government = not a good idea. So this is only a minor thing, a "I wish I weren't such a fuckup" type stress rather than one of the things that's trying to fall on my head.

The state of the house is driving me insane. There is very little I can do about it (though I should get off my ass and work on my long-neglected painting work), because a lot depends on teinedreugan organising contractors and us finding a clear weekend to get people over to demolish the basement. This does not mean that the unfinished repairs that are currently weighing over me are not driving me spare. We have the basement wall to blow up and replace, with all the mildew to clear out there. We have the fucking hole in the bathroom ceiling, though teinedreugan is intending to fix that this weekend. We have the busted lamp in the bathroom, which will presumably be dealt with when we get someone in to deal with the wiring SNAFU that is our three fuse boxes. There's the paint job in the hallway that I need to finish. Plus there's the generalised cleaning and such that I need to work on so that we can consider showing the house if we're serious about moving, and which is holding us back from the possibility just as much as the failure to have the damn basement dealt with is.

The writing is actually not currently a source of stress, perhaps because I am not at the moment trying to do any. I'm waiting for more comments on The Devil's Due before I start an editing pass, though I've got a few things that I know for sure need tweaking. I should probably pick up The Otter and St. Jude and work on it a bit while I'm waiting; I suspect I can actually handle it, but I'm afraid to take on the sense of obligation to work on it again, because any form of failure at that level is at the moment deeply crippling. I'm not making much progress on my other writing obligations, but that's okay by me. We'll take it slow.

I think I've run out of obvious medical and external shit; I've been trying to avoid the personal stuff because it terrifies me. But I should at least vent some of it.

I haven't been sleeping well. The beginning of this severe downturn corresponds to a period of the better part of a week where I was functionally not sleeping at all; this has been improving since the middle of last week, and significantly improving since this weekendish, but is still not good.

I do not currently have any partnership relationships I consider functional. In the case of oneironaut, there is no actual systemic problem other than the fact that we are both having years that we'd like a do-over on, are therefore both in need of emotional support, and attempting to ask for it (or, for that matter, provide it) is likely to lead to the destruction of furniture from the explosion that results from the overload than anything useful. I feel vaguely guilty about not being able to support gtst, but I am attempting to live in reality on this one and thus keep things to a level I'm able to provide, such as making obscene jokes at lstone's expense.

In the case of teinedreugan, what we have is the accumulated detritus of a number of things, primary among them my depression. This is actually feeling significantly better than it was a few days ago (when I melted down behind lock), because we've been talking about some of this stuff and thus reaffirming some deeply neglected connections. He has been (since I melted down and thus made him aware of some of the extent of the difficulties I'm having) very supportive and generous with his time and energy, which has kept me from breaking down in tears at random several times. However, we still have a bunch of cruft to clear out, much of it in the area of my sexual glitches. Dealing with this will probably be extremely stressful for both of us, and it would probably be best if I had counselling support for some of it so I can try to address the portions of it that are consequences of the assault. I am very much feeling in a state that I am a failure as a partner to him, and while he has never suggested that I'm deficient, that doesn't stop me from having a guilt complex the size of a medium-sized arcology, complete with well-preserved mental swamp environments.

In the case of brooksmoses . . . there is a great deal I cannot say, because I cannot discuss the state of that relationship without either breaking down in tears or becoming extremely angry. I cannot predict which result I will get, either. Situation is currently on pause-and-degenerate-steadily-into-disgusting-gobbets-of-rotten-goo until I have permission to shout. (And when I do shout, the content will be inappropriate to comment on here.) Shustal. There are occasional moments when it's possible for me to fake the feeling that it's actually possible for it to work well enough that it does not cause active, significant pain for a little while, and then the snap-back to normality leaves welts.

My studies are going by the wayside. I'm behind on the middle_egyptian classwork, though I do have glyph flashcards. I did finish Behind Closed Eyes. But I am not capable of maintaining the Feri work I'm trying to do at the moment, which is causing me tremendous stress. (I know that if I don't get the trance work done I'm going to feel catastrophically behind and have a meltdown, which is a fair part of why I'm going to try to get to queenofhalves's place tomorrow. That will be a major expenditure of spoons, but I know not getting it done in the long run will take me deep into the red on silverware.)

I am not entirely certain how much my state of sanity or lack thereof comes across to people I'm spending time with. (Tonight, arawen said, "Stay sane." I think I was closer to laughter then; right now the phrase makes my nose filll up with that horrible chlorinated feeling of half-present tears.) I apparently fake it incredibly well, even to people who know me well; I don't think even teinedreugan knew how bad it is in my head before I posted the meltdown. And I find it tremendously difficult to talk to people about it without going detached and cracking jokes about it, because otherwise I'll start sobbing and screaming and that really derails a fucking conversation, you know? Also, highly developed junior high school survival instincts: never let them see the belly or the limp, because people are hyenas. The hardest thing to put down is a shield you no longer need and all like that there.

Everyone who's asked me how I am today has gotten the answer, "Clinging to sanity with orange-tinted fingernails." I'm trying, in a lot of ways, to distract myself so I don't explode; making fun of my nitroglycerin resemblance is one way I'm using to do that.

I forgot to take my vitamins the other day. The vitamin thing is a routine I established a long time ago, to the point that it is pretty much automatic, something that I don't need to think about or actively remember. The fact that I forgot them was a shock to me, a sign of how messed up I am. (And the level of insanity that resulted was spectacular.) And I don't think that that shock translates well to anyone out of my head, who doesn't know the natural progression of routines, how hard it is to establish them, how much it takes to break them. Well, I suspect it'll translate to some people, actually, but that's less rhetorically impressive.

Sometime this past week, weekend, somewhere, I went upstairs to get ready for bed; when I stepped out of the bathroom, teinedreugan was there. I tend to startle easily, but I usually recover moderately well; as it was, I yelp-screamed, then stood there, transfixed by the shock of it, and shook for a long time. I want to say five minutes. Then I burst into tears.

Which is about how things are going these days.


I have a horrible horrible suspicion that I've forgotten a factor or two. Ah well; they'll surface again soon enough. :/

Comments

Part 1

[artan]

(since this is covers many things it seems to require a multi-part response, so I'll break to topics (and apparently multiple posts, as it triples the comment size limit))

On psych-meds:
I can't give first-hand usage experience (not for lack of trying on the part of my mother who had a brief you-need-prozac! run) but I've seen lots of people on lots of different things, both very useful and very problematic. From that I've mostly been able to deduce what you already know - different things work differently for different people depending on how your brain parses reactionary stimuli. At least now there are mostly easily available websites describing what things are supposed to do and how they function. If you find someone to prescribe things try keeping a journal of effects, it will help if you run into meds that don't work well or have conflicts/side effects. The question is more what you intend to get out of them. Are you looking for a long-term medication solution for chemical stability or just something to bring you to a stable functional level in order to face down some other issues and bring things into focus (whether short-term means 6 months or 6 years who knows)?

On vitamins, movement & chemical stability
I've noticed that overall there are certain levels of physical movement that are basicly required in order to have the energy to do anything. (at least, most of this is from my perspective but is likely applicable) Once off the movement habit it immediately becomes more difficult to do anything because on some level it registers as work to get up to get lunch, another thing that must be done on the already overwhelming list. The problem is of course beginning some kind of movement/exercise when in the state of depressive lethargy. I'm not particularly good at that jump myself so there's little I can say. The only way it seems to work for me is if I can get the voice screaming to get up and do something to drown out the voice that says that it's ok to sit down for a few minutes. It's sort of a cycle though - it works better when founded on chemical stability (proper vitamin base and stable blood sugar levels) and falls off if that isn't maintained, but the movement itself develops a habit leading into holding the pattern of vitamin/sugars balance. Exercise can be as simple as clearing a path and walking circles around the house for half hour (I'm hoping your hip is overall in better condition, but since it hasn't been mentioned as problematic and you seemed to be walking without difficulty I'm guessing it is). It's also the kind of thing that if properly constructed can be done as a devotional or meditative action, which helps by focusing the energy of the physical into mental/spiritual work. Like I said though, this is just something I tend to need but fall off of too often. Hopefully there's something there you can use... Of course another thing that I forget to do for myself - movement helps sometimes with holding back panic when it's just on the edge of breaking. When there's the desperate need of something-to-do but too many things-to-do on the list, just walking helps with centering and fills the biological do-something need, even if not marking off tasks.

Part 2

[artan]

On Councilors
I can't say as much here, except maybe to email rigel, who I remember journaling at one point about having a poly-friendly councilor who was vaguely T-accessible (but I think that was in Cambridge, so maybe less useful? that will depend on your tolerance for traveling distance)

On Vitamins vs. Drugs
the concept of psychiatric medication terrifies me irrationally</>
Yeah, I know that one... One of the big reasons I always flat out refused to take psych meds (besides the feeling that I had situational and discipline problems which did not need medication but rather proper instruction on how to deal with them) was the fear of losing my Self. Years later (and from a somewhat more detached perspective) I can see it as all just biochemistry. Vitamins are required for proper nutrition so that communication pathways work and the brain remains in balance, but what if the imbalance is something not covered by basic vitamins (high or low seratonin levels for example)? In that case any chemical which balances the system to a level of better (where better is a rather subjective term based on the situational desires of the one imbibing said chemical) functionality is the effective parallel of taking vitamins. Yes, certain drugs don't get along with certain people, yes, too strong a dose will do more harm than good. Too many B vitamins will result in some serious adverse reactions as well. Balance of chemistry... Of course better knowledge of a given drug's chemical pathways will help the rational voice in its arguments but that would have to wait until a given one is actually suggested. Also there's the practical/irrational side - if it works the way you want, use it.

On Learning to Drive
I'd like to help with this (as in actively instruct) but I don't think that I have the time/mental faculties/openings on my to-do list. I taught several people to drive long ago, so it's not a hard thing. What exactly have been the conditions of your learning to drive? I've found that the best place to start and familarize yourself with a vehicle is school parking lots at 3am. Once you can zip around those without problems then you can move onto streets at 3am. Once you're comfortable navigating there it's more of a conceptual translation to heavier traffic. When I learned to drive I also learned directly on a stick shift. I actually found that it helped - more things to focus on on a mechanical side brought up the get-it-to-work mentality rather than being concerned about fear or worry. The offer for instruction will stand once I finish with house painting and some other things (august/september?). whispercricket also wanted to learn to drive standard properly, so potentially conjoined lessons (or not if that would be more distracting/stressful). Driver's ed would also likely be a necessity, but a varied perspective on things sometimes helps (plus, most driving teachers aren't willing to do night classes when no one is around).

On College Courses
Little I can offer here except something that I've been wanting to poke around at for a long time and never seem to get to. Have you looked into MIT Open CourseWare? More study-at-home self-paced stuff, so not too obligatorily stressful.

Part 3

[artan]

On House Repairs
I will be able to help with basement demo some time after finishing house painting (as that's my current mind-breaking project that I'm afraid to start). Hopefully that will be some time in July. Just let me know. As for cleaning in prep, big plastic crates hold books well (though get heavy) but don't stack too high (not designed to hold 6 other 120lb crates on top of them...). With proper labeling they're good storage for the books that are unlikely to be referenced any time soon but you still want to be able to find. They're also then prepackaged for the eventual move without having to stress about it. I'd like to recommend a competent electrician but he lives in Billerica, so I'm not sure that he'd travel there. Our other electrician seems to have fallen from existence and liscencing...

On Sleep
I've found for me at least that lots of the whole sleep thing is pattern and mind. If I develop and hold a pattern (something I can NEVER do) then it works and I fell better and am less depressed and preoccupied with the annoyance of personal weakness (which in turn contributes to not sleeping well, etc.). Exercise helps maintain a balance in the physical. There's also the option of sleeping pills. I haven't used them or had any direct experience with anyone who has (thus would have to push caution in the consideration of use), though I've considered for a pattern-building tool. It might help just to force yourself into a pattern that you can use and get you rested enough to have the mental faculties to deal with other stuff. The fear there is psychological dependence or biochemical conflict. It's probably a talk-with-your-doctor item but as they're sold OTC they shouldn't be too bad for occasional, informed use with caution.

Part 4

[artan]

On Sanity
I likely made a poor choice of words. I realized that soon after it had been said, but I felt the need to say something and the thought wasn't quite fully formulated. I think it's coagulated a bit more, enough at least that I can squeeze it into something resembling a recognizable shape, but still missing the detail I'm trying to convey. So:

Sanity exists on many levels as both a subjective an objective state. There's the persistent question of how sane it truly is to be well-adjusted to a mad world. From that perspective I'd say that most of society doesn't qualify as fully sane. From their perspective they are though, because they have something important.

On the surface people are categorized as sane if they can function when they need to and get by. I think that's the upper layer of what I was trying to convey - you left the house, you came, you talked with people. We know you're having a tough time of it at the moment but that step, the getting out and holding things together for a few hours, is part of objective sanity. It's what allows people to function in the world. If you can hold onto that it's the foundation for rebuilding whatever else you need. It will allow you to go the places you need to go, do the things that need doing and as long as that can hold the other softer bits inside can see a few small successes and have a base of some small confidence to build on.

The problem with that form of objective functional sanity is that it's a hard shell. Everything inside can be scrambled and shattered but no one may notice if the shell is hard enough, the jokes fast enough and the patterns of expectations are detached and followed without caring about how things look inside. It is both the beginning foundation of further development and the preventive enclosure that many people never get beyond.

Being able to write all of what you did is a form of sanity. You're weren't twitching on the floor. You could create and follow strings of thought, even if there were sometimes too many or too fast and some got lost. The jello didn't eat the cat and then morph into Orson Wells, who absolutely insisted that the Boston Symphony Orchestra convert to a full coconut ensemble. You're more sane than you think. Your mind makes internal sense and in most situations can be understood externally by others, though context is sometimes required. (context is always required for language since each person's language is an independently evolved symbology system, but that's a different topic) You're just trying to deal with everything all at once, so its becoming an emotionally jumbled battleground. You recognize stability issues. Recognition of internal problems is a form of sanity.

Re: Part 4

[artan]

The problem with hard objective sanity in the broad sense of society is that many people become walled up in it, blocking off even their own sense of what they are and how they function to focus solely on the doing-in-the-world, the saneness of their sanity so to speak (meta-sanity? I'm looping on things and don't have the right words, hence the two word crunchiness of yesterday). You're willing to face your subjective sanity, to realize that you have issues that you want to deal with rather than running from them. It's a big step, a stable decision, though likely to be difficult due to the very nature of the problems to be faced.

Still though, the ability to analyze ones own problems, to recognize the weaknesses and the strengths, this is a very sane thing to be able to do, but with borders on the edge of madness. There's the problem of getting absorbed in the meta-function, analyzing the motivations of your motivations forever. At some point it just breaks down to manipulation of functional symbol. A thing has meaning or need before being fully deconstructed and can be manipulated on that level. Understanding the basis of the symbol gives more power in its control but doesn't invalidate the upper layers of function. Analyzing down too far begins detaching too far from the problem and the symbols for those levels don't have the same meaning anymore. The more detached mind will think in a different way than an irrational active mind. It can manipulate symbol and program but may not be able to understand what the other mind invests fully in it. (I think I've lost myself in meta-reference again, hence demonstrating the problem of what I'm trying to say, or something...)

Anyway, the main thing I was trying to say is: you're more sane than you think. The willingness to face fears (the willingness to WANT to face fears is a beginning. If you didn't want to face them I suspect that some of this wouldn't be coming up and you could happily slip into objective-sanity-shell without all the messy self-functioning analysis) is a strong, sane thing to do. It's the first step in solving a problem. The ability to summon up the objective-sanity shell long enough to function to get something done which is needed for overall mental health (subjective sanity? the squishy bits of personality functioning).

Maybe I didn't mean to say "Stay sane". Maybe I did, but the moment is passed and I just don't know anymore. It can't be changed but only interpreted as memory and moved from. Maybe I meant to say "be sane", or more constructively, "be brave". Who knows. What I was trying to convey somewhere was that you've better than you give yourself credit for: braver, saner, stronger. There's just the hurdles of time, fear, and persistence. Things don't change instantly even in the mind (though we sometimes think that they do... but guess what's telling us that.) so obviously they can't change instantly in the rest of the world.

Re: Part 4

[artan]

You seem to know what you need to do to start moving, so it's a question of motivation/desire/Will and then maintaining some momentum. You're capable of putting on the outer shell of sanity when necessary, so that's enough to get you through the 5 minute calls to psych offices or the T-ride to places you need to be as long as you can compartmentalize for the necessary time without succumbing to being unable to release it when needed. The multiplicity might be able to help (I can semi-relate to that as I tend to be good at compartmentalization and process isolation when necessary, but I really don't have the direct perspective so that might be completely off) if you can move yourself to a point where it's possible to swap drivers for completion of tasks (rationality/practicality for setting up/getting to councilor but switch to the more emotional/communicative when actually there so that some of the problems can actually be reached?). I don't know if that works though of if you'd have trouble relinquishing a paradigm once in place.

Again, all of this is purely interpretation and will mean something entirely different to you (everyone really, as language is subjective communication). Many of the words are missing or jumbled or confused somewhere in the course of writing them down but hopefully something helps. Let me know if anything else would.

*hug*

(ok, so this was huge and potentially only semi-coherent...)

Re: Part 1

[whispercricket]

A quick addendum to this:
There was a study (not the best link, sorry) that showed exercise to be as effective at treating (moderate) depression as SSRI drugs (I believe they used Zoloft, not sure). Would it help you feel better? I have no idea (I'm sure it doesn't always work, as there are many different types of issues lumped into the single descriptor "depression"), but if your body is up to it, it might be something to try.

There have been times where I just wanted to scream at the world, or hit someone at work, or break down into a mess, and I left and went to the gym and used the elliptical machine as hard and as fast as I could, sort of outputting the internal scream into an external focus, and it helped me cope. Sometimes there can be so much frustration and energy bottled up inside, storming around and around, and it's hard to figure out how to get it out, but if it doesn't come out, things could explode. [I don't know if this applies to how you're feeling or not - if it doesn't, I'm sorry.]