(Selections from August, 2009)
I think Stress has a problem with me. I've been keeping meticulous track of my health, nutrition, etc. for several months now. I am like happy clockwork, but now the work-related stress has increased. I lose my very explicit health journal somewhere, please anywhere but the friends' house we stayed in last weekend. I take two days off for a pre-booked holiday. I run out of omega vitamins. And my temperature drops. Sudden continuous cramps. Skin gets worse. Anxiety levels start to broach dissociative levels. Migraines. I know what hormones are causing this, but they shouldn't be causing it a week before ovulation.
Can I be the supermodel of mindfulness?
Because certainly without this very active monitoring, I would be far, far worse. Even when I feel the sour taste of dissociation, that lingering soup of emptiness "what if" floats in, I:
Look out a window
Hold his hand
Take a photograph
Read a chapter
Watch a show
Play a game
Eat
The latter being the least healthy of the above.
I'm losing faith that I will ever be able to cope in a job that involves some intensely stressful times. Would this be worse if I wasn't regularly exercising (which I love, when I actually go)? Should I count my blessings that it's only affecting me this much?
I try to remain ambivalent, but I recognise the patterns too well now. I am deteriorating.
---
I'm going to see a specialist. An endocrinologist, in fact. Despite working in healthcare myself, I feel a bit uneasy about it. What if I'm wrong? What if it's all in my head? I don't have a medical degree, so I feel automatically unqualified to make any decisions about my care. So, here's the evidence:
I was shorter and more boyish than my female counterparts, until puberty hit. Magically, in a year, I grew to my full height and suddenly I had breasts of porn star quality. I take it that doesn't happen for everyone? It's supposed to last longer than that. Puberty. Periods were extremely light, and I often never had them at all. Didn't miss them.
I had no desire. Not really. If I did, I wouldn't have turned away all those guys over those years in physical disgust, sometimes literally. Even the ones I loved. I was completely asexual. Not homosexual and not heterosexual: Asexual.
I steadily gained weight, entirely in my torso, and it continues today. Entirely in my torso. I look pregnant. This doesn't seem normal, to me. If I lose weight, I look even more pregnant, as my legs and arms become more and more toned. But still, the belly persists. The breasts are balloons. I look like an asexual pregnant porn star. Or a classical Venus of Fertility. Except, I am neither a porn star nor fertile.
Which came first, the stress or the addiction to it? No doubt I had an extraordinarily stressful childhood. I suffered severe, chronic stress and depression for many, many years. Not months, years. It seems like pocket change now, 10 years. A dime. 315,360,000 seconds of cortisol and sugar and tears.
And then I got sick.
And kept getting sick. Getting sick, sick, sick, until I left home. And then the sickness went to my head. I was so fragile. So sensitive. So raw. I couldn't cope with any criticism, any negativity. I held everything together for 1 year. 2 years. Crack. And then I was sick.
I don't know when the anxiety appeared. It was subtle. It still is. I coped by leaving. Leaving home, leaving school, leaving work, leaving him, leaving the country. It always worked. For at least 31,536,000 seconds. And then I get sick.
In all honesty, much of that time has been spent trying to understand why. I'm not working in healthcare solely because of a great desire to heal the world. It feeds my addiction. Second by second. Coping, lasting, getting to tomorrow. Another 1440. Anything to know more, to solve the mystery of me.
People honestly don't live like this? I'm not sure I can comprehend that. My number one goal in counselling was to stop leaving, but I ended my last session still having no idea how I got to the point of leaving, to begin with. And then I left my job and...
I got sick.
Scientifically, I know practically the entire process. Psychologically, I cannot accept it. Am I responding to bad situations that need to change or am I responding poorly to average situations and I need to change? Surely 630,720,000 seconds is more than bad habits and coincidence?
I know myself. I know my life. I've been keeping busy and doing anything I can to get by. I'm damned lucky. And I'm damned good at surviving. That's saying something, because I am definitely not well. I have never been well.
This insidious imbalance in me will not win.
---
Thinking on my scattered and many talents, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I didn't know what to be when I grew up because I didn't actually want to be anything at all...
Except me, just as I was.
And will always be.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Saturday, 1 August 2009
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Catching you up (14)
(Selections from July, 2009)
My interjected memories are the most benign memories I have. I don't know how or why they became affiliated with such a rush of adrenaline and anxiety.
I don't remember the good moments.
---
I am not 'mentally ill', because I don't believe in that sort of label for myself. Everyone is, to some degree, mentally different. Some differences are more healthy, more consistently healthy anyways, than others. For much of my childhood, I suffered extreme, prolonged stress and depression. This will have certainly had a lasting, physical effect on me: my body, my brain, my personality, my everything.
I possibly disagree with the theories that disorders like PTSD can be cured. It's shown that the body can recover and so certainly the brain can as well, but most illnesses are incredibly complex things: more than just the sum of their symptoms. A diagnosis is rarely more than a best guess to guide best practice. Medicine, as a science, has a very long way to go, especially when it comes to neurochemistry.
I am no longer me without those interjected memories, those 20 unforgettable years. So it really becomes inconsequential whether I am, right now, mentally ill. The path forward doesn't need that diagnosis. Whereas, having an abscess really does require some sort of clear description. I still have the abscess, but I am no longer physically ill. Now it is a part of me, and I cannot pretend I should be any different.
I have a small lump that wanes and waxes with the day. I have breathless, vivid reminders of people and places of my past, dancing with today in my brain. I am perfectly fertile but have no children. I struggle to remember satisfaction. Feelings, good and bad, don't have a great shelf life in Chez Eliza.
And these are imprecise pieces of me.
---
The solicitor who triggered my PTSD and anxiety several years ago with the multitude of ways he and his staff royally messed up our conveyancing and then verbally attacked me for writing a letter of complaint.... is still, several years later, writing us letters revealing yet another way they've messed up our conveyancing.
It's taken me, well, four years to get over that particular trauma, and I still can't handle explaining to people what happened as it makes me so stressed. I'll be damned if I get pulled into another abusive situation over a bill they forgot to pay. YEARS, not months. And they didn't even post some proof of invoice with the letter, just a letter begging for money. Right. Like I trust them over the random African businessman begging for money in my SPAM folder. Never.
---
I've been keeping detailed journals of my nutrition and my health for nearly two months now, and even knowing as much biology as I do (which is a lot) I am shocked how much of my moods and well-being is affected by hormones. I can see now, how some of the natural cycles of the body feed into cycles of mental health.
For example, increasing progesterone post ovulation raises the core body temperature and results in hot flashes. Between the two of them, I start having broken, inadequate sleep, resulting in headaches and increased stress. I concentrate less and get less housework done, which further increases my stress. The temperature rises to a point where the broken sleep causes dissociation and feelings of 'death/detachment' in addition to delirium. I suffer anxiety about feeling so sick/low, which to be honest is right on time as the increase in estrogen causes marked anxiety and strong cravings for fullness, ironic because my cells are so bloated. Menstruation almost seems like a relief, when you really look at it.
I merely point out to my male audience that they don't even have the luxury of that break, so there's no opportunity for gloating.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
My interjected memories are the most benign memories I have. I don't know how or why they became affiliated with such a rush of adrenaline and anxiety.
I don't remember the good moments.
---
I am not 'mentally ill', because I don't believe in that sort of label for myself. Everyone is, to some degree, mentally different. Some differences are more healthy, more consistently healthy anyways, than others. For much of my childhood, I suffered extreme, prolonged stress and depression. This will have certainly had a lasting, physical effect on me: my body, my brain, my personality, my everything.
I possibly disagree with the theories that disorders like PTSD can be cured. It's shown that the body can recover and so certainly the brain can as well, but most illnesses are incredibly complex things: more than just the sum of their symptoms. A diagnosis is rarely more than a best guess to guide best practice. Medicine, as a science, has a very long way to go, especially when it comes to neurochemistry.
I am no longer me without those interjected memories, those 20 unforgettable years. So it really becomes inconsequential whether I am, right now, mentally ill. The path forward doesn't need that diagnosis. Whereas, having an abscess really does require some sort of clear description. I still have the abscess, but I am no longer physically ill. Now it is a part of me, and I cannot pretend I should be any different.
I have a small lump that wanes and waxes with the day. I have breathless, vivid reminders of people and places of my past, dancing with today in my brain. I am perfectly fertile but have no children. I struggle to remember satisfaction. Feelings, good and bad, don't have a great shelf life in Chez Eliza.
And these are imprecise pieces of me.
---
The solicitor who triggered my PTSD and anxiety several years ago with the multitude of ways he and his staff royally messed up our conveyancing and then verbally attacked me for writing a letter of complaint.... is still, several years later, writing us letters revealing yet another way they've messed up our conveyancing.
It's taken me, well, four years to get over that particular trauma, and I still can't handle explaining to people what happened as it makes me so stressed. I'll be damned if I get pulled into another abusive situation over a bill they forgot to pay. YEARS, not months. And they didn't even post some proof of invoice with the letter, just a letter begging for money. Right. Like I trust them over the random African businessman begging for money in my SPAM folder. Never.
---
I've been keeping detailed journals of my nutrition and my health for nearly two months now, and even knowing as much biology as I do (which is a lot) I am shocked how much of my moods and well-being is affected by hormones. I can see now, how some of the natural cycles of the body feed into cycles of mental health.
For example, increasing progesterone post ovulation raises the core body temperature and results in hot flashes. Between the two of them, I start having broken, inadequate sleep, resulting in headaches and increased stress. I concentrate less and get less housework done, which further increases my stress. The temperature rises to a point where the broken sleep causes dissociation and feelings of 'death/detachment' in addition to delirium. I suffer anxiety about feeling so sick/low, which to be honest is right on time as the increase in estrogen causes marked anxiety and strong cravings for fullness, ironic because my cells are so bloated. Menstruation almost seems like a relief, when you really look at it.
I merely point out to my male audience that they don't even have the luxury of that break, so there's no opportunity for gloating.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Monday, 1 June 2009
Catching you up (13)
(Selections from June, 2009)
There's new writing on my blackboard. "Do not self-censor."
I don't mean say and do everything that comes to mind. But everything deserves due consideration. When I am used to living so privately, so carefully, so avoidantly... I need to stretch. I need to ask myself: "What is really stopping me?"
"What am I trying to hide?"
---
The memories, those little wisps, they are starting to interject themselves into my days again. Breathless, disjointed pauses. Just one unified moment of taste touch smell sound... sight. One hour, researching NHS guidelines. One millisecond, Lost friendship. Remember. And it lingers, that one millisecond of nothing, while the rest of the hour fades away.
They are coming, more and more frequent. The answer is two months. Two months of stirring up dust. Two months new. And then the brain starts flipping channels.
Tonight I walked in place.
I will forget. I will.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
There's new writing on my blackboard. "Do not self-censor."
I don't mean say and do everything that comes to mind. But everything deserves due consideration. When I am used to living so privately, so carefully, so avoidantly... I need to stretch. I need to ask myself: "What is really stopping me?"
"What am I trying to hide?"
---
The memories, those little wisps, they are starting to interject themselves into my days again. Breathless, disjointed pauses. Just one unified moment of taste touch smell sound... sight. One hour, researching NHS guidelines. One millisecond, Lost friendship. Remember. And it lingers, that one millisecond of nothing, while the rest of the hour fades away.
They are coming, more and more frequent. The answer is two months. Two months of stirring up dust. Two months new. And then the brain starts flipping channels.
Tonight I walked in place.
I will forget. I will.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Catching you up (12)
(Selections from April, 2009)
I am 'between' therapists. This is my 'regrouping' period.
I change jobs soon. This change should be enough to keep me going for a while. It's also fixed term, which means I am not obligated to stay on in a new contract. Most people probably see that as a negative, but it gives me a sense of relief. There is closure, already, and I have not even begun.
I have been listening to myself but still not treating myself well. Vitamins, flossing, moisturiser -- much of the time. Not most. Indigestion, spots, and now cramps. A year now since I started therapy and also a year since my last proper menstrual cycle. In many respects, the lack of cycling hormones has helped me achieve a certain stability. But not being able to have children means we've stopped trying. Or rather, I've stopped trying.
--
I'm trying to use my 'powers' for good.
I recognise the transition into detachment (depersonalisation?) now: that horrible and condemning feeling of deathly solitude. It glides underneath a layer of frenetic anxiety, like slipping through quicksand, and I will do anything to avoid it. Give me the years of depression back. I will trade this mad cycle in: to be quiet and sad again.
The take-home message is that I do not deserve support. Not as much as the next person, who does not have my strength, who cannot see herself as clearly, who does not learn as fast. These gifts.. I refuse to see them as the cause and certainly not as the solution. They do not make it easier. They make it different. I am different. My body has different failings. My life has different challenges.
So I need different tactics.
It hurts (a lot) that there is no single answer. Not for any of us. I wish more experts would acknowledge that a single human being -- one brain, one body, one life -- is far too complex for us to ever know (muchless heal) completely and correctly. Medicine is an imperfect science, as most science is imperfect, based on small pieces of sound logic and then applied statistically across a sample. The actual equation, in reality, is far too complex for us to ever get right. There will always be outliers. Always be exceptions.
Not that this should stop you from trying.
It certainly does not stop me.
---
I keep trying to write and fail.
Vitamins, Exercise, Sex, Laughter -- these things get me to tomorrow, but really, what's the point? Why do we all even bother? I'm not considering nor recommending suicide. As safe and secure as I am, though, I can't help but think I'm better off being too stupid or too dead to care about 'why' like I do.
Two days. On the third day, I broke.
Most people just sit around and watch TV on their days off.
But I don't seem to have come with an off button.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
I am 'between' therapists. This is my 'regrouping' period.
I change jobs soon. This change should be enough to keep me going for a while. It's also fixed term, which means I am not obligated to stay on in a new contract. Most people probably see that as a negative, but it gives me a sense of relief. There is closure, already, and I have not even begun.
I have been listening to myself but still not treating myself well. Vitamins, flossing, moisturiser -- much of the time. Not most. Indigestion, spots, and now cramps. A year now since I started therapy and also a year since my last proper menstrual cycle. In many respects, the lack of cycling hormones has helped me achieve a certain stability. But not being able to have children means we've stopped trying. Or rather, I've stopped trying.
--
I'm trying to use my 'powers' for good.
I recognise the transition into detachment (depersonalisation?) now: that horrible and condemning feeling of deathly solitude. It glides underneath a layer of frenetic anxiety, like slipping through quicksand, and I will do anything to avoid it. Give me the years of depression back. I will trade this mad cycle in: to be quiet and sad again.
The take-home message is that I do not deserve support. Not as much as the next person, who does not have my strength, who cannot see herself as clearly, who does not learn as fast. These gifts.. I refuse to see them as the cause and certainly not as the solution. They do not make it easier. They make it different. I am different. My body has different failings. My life has different challenges.
So I need different tactics.
It hurts (a lot) that there is no single answer. Not for any of us. I wish more experts would acknowledge that a single human being -- one brain, one body, one life -- is far too complex for us to ever know (muchless heal) completely and correctly. Medicine is an imperfect science, as most science is imperfect, based on small pieces of sound logic and then applied statistically across a sample. The actual equation, in reality, is far too complex for us to ever get right. There will always be outliers. Always be exceptions.
Not that this should stop you from trying.
It certainly does not stop me.
---
I keep trying to write and fail.
Vitamins, Exercise, Sex, Laughter -- these things get me to tomorrow, but really, what's the point? Why do we all even bother? I'm not considering nor recommending suicide. As safe and secure as I am, though, I can't help but think I'm better off being too stupid or too dead to care about 'why' like I do.
Two days. On the third day, I broke.
Most people just sit around and watch TV on their days off.
But I don't seem to have come with an off button.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Catching you up (11)
(Selections from March, 2009)
I've tried writing, several times. It just hasn't worked.
Nothing has changed. Except, therapy is ending now, my grandparents are dead, and I like myself a lot less than I did this time last year.
---
It's still a struggle to write.
6 And I say, ‘O that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
7 truly, I would flee far away;
I would lodge in the wilderness;
Psalm 55:6-7Is there a name for someone who can't stay?
This is more than wanderlust. This is desperation.
It does not matter how good things are; I always need to go.
---
Well, a finale. First round of therapy over. First year over. What have I done?
A necessary and controlled deconstruction:
I am not withdrawn, numb, cold, and emotionless. I only develop the emptiness to hide and protect myself. Rather, I am acutely sensitive and empathetic. Yesterday, I walked in the grounds of an abandoned church amidst the freshly attended graves of strangers, and I cried for them. I know when the wind changes. I can tell all the subtle ingredients in a dish. I can smell the perfume of a woman who used the office earlier that day. I notice that half-second pause before you answer and the flick of your eyes down, left, up.
I need time to process my day. I am overwhelmed. I am aching, I am lonely, I am filled. I no longer blame, but I am still scared. I cannot unlearn a lifetime in a year. I tense when teased. I fight when I fail. I doubt you. I question you. I challenge you.
I forget myself. I am suggestible.
But I am not yet lost.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
I've tried writing, several times. It just hasn't worked.
Nothing has changed. Except, therapy is ending now, my grandparents are dead, and I like myself a lot less than I did this time last year.
---
It's still a struggle to write.
6 And I say, ‘O that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
7 truly, I would flee far away;
I would lodge in the wilderness;
Psalm 55:6-7
This is more than wanderlust. This is desperation.
It does not matter how good things are; I always need to go.
---
Well, a finale. First round of therapy over. First year over. What have I done?
A necessary and controlled deconstruction:
I am not withdrawn, numb, cold, and emotionless. I only develop the emptiness to hide and protect myself. Rather, I am acutely sensitive and empathetic. Yesterday, I walked in the grounds of an abandoned church amidst the freshly attended graves of strangers, and I cried for them. I know when the wind changes. I can tell all the subtle ingredients in a dish. I can smell the perfume of a woman who used the office earlier that day. I notice that half-second pause before you answer and the flick of your eyes down, left, up.
I need time to process my day. I am overwhelmed. I am aching, I am lonely, I am filled. I no longer blame, but I am still scared. I cannot unlearn a lifetime in a year. I tense when teased. I fight when I fail. I doubt you. I question you. I challenge you.
I forget myself. I am suggestible.
But I am not yet lost.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Thursday, 1 January 2009
Catching you up (10)
(Selections from January, 2009)
It's natural that as therapy progresses, breakthroughs are slower.
---
Before I forget again, the key:
I was bullied. Many are bullied. But the connection between Moving, Bullied, and me is the years of not-exactly-depression. Rejection didn't wound me (a marvel that convinced me I was careless and cold-hearted). No. Rather, I wholeheartedly reject(ed) everyone.
Again, common knowledge.
The key is why. Recognising why. Saying why. Believing why. Why one person can be simultaneously so cold and yet so kind. The path from accepting I am different has led me here. My greatest fear: I have always been able to see, feel you. The good and the bad.
I am not empty. I am too, too full.
---
I am not at home right now. I'm walking, quite literally, in my past. And rather than shutting down at the first threat of emotion, I'm breathing slowing in.
I am the source of my trauma. I made the choice to push everyone out. I only ever wanted to be alone. Not because of anger or fear but because I could not handle the overwhelming reality of being human -- which, in my case, meant being empathically and intuitively gifted. So, I couldn't be angry at anyone. They were only being themselves, with varying levels of ignorance and cruelty and kindness. My trouble is that I find it too remarkably easy to remember how all of that feels.
At some point, growing up, this was a novelty to me. Books became bespoke dreams, filled with vivid emotions. So I started writing my own aching fairy tales at the age most children move out of picture books. Not all emotions were so structured though, and before I could write, I felt it all in song and dance. And then life become its own opera: it's own frightening, endless novel.
I suffered from intense grief at moving. I did not understand what I was feeling. I was not reassured. But I easily mastered how to manipulate others, because I already understood how to know them. So with time, I grew more quiet, and there were fewer opportunities to connect and to care. Rather, I watched and I felt it all.
When I was ridiculed by my peers, any shame was outweighed by a speculative confusion. They did not care how I felt; they were not capable of caring. And my silence, my patience, my disregard for social acceptance -- that, in turn, ridiculed them. I rejected them.
What a different life it would have been, if someone had recognised then what I barely grasp now: my real nature. Someone with power, I mean, someone in charge. For there were people who knew me better than I knew myself, even if I was never capable of being their friend, and I never accepted their judgment of me. You see, they knew my intolerance had a limit. Beyond that, I was reliably, openly, unavoidably... kind.
So, I'm not a monster. I'm not uncaring. I've just never learned how to manage the multitude of emotions and perceptions that rush through me with every breath. There doesn't seem to be a halfway point. When I let people in, I let them in entirely.
I am capable of deep empathy and uncanny intuition. I feel what others feel. I see what others see. It empowers and disables me -- enabling a series of manipulative successes while simultaneously drowning out my own thoughts and desires. No wonder I am so lost.
There are many paths from here. I can continue searching for 'true feelings of achievement' to guide my choices, focusing on my career and education. I can return home and readdress my relationship issues in therapy with this new understanding. Mostly, though, I want to find a way to moderate the empathy and sensitivities. I want to be able to step into my past without such clarity and passion.
Then, perhaps, I can fully forgive live.
---
Steps back.
I've been taking my vitamins. Better ones, even. So if it's related to diet it must be entirely due to the fact that we have been stuffing sugar and fats down nonstop for several months now (Christmas! New Years!). I concede I need to eat healthier.
But it's been about a year since I last felt like this. So is it coincidence? Was my grandmother's death a trigger? What is happening now that happened then, for me to lay in bed at night and feel like I am dying?
Last time I felt like this, I determined that the best description of it was as a mixed episode: a sweet blend of agitation and depression, a growing wash of fear and loneliness, or just plain: feeling like you are mentally ill. I don't mean crazy; I mean a general flu of the psychological variety.
But I know I am not bipolar. So I must be experiencing bonafide panic attacks. Cue my own false assumptions, as I always thought panic attacks required hyperventilation. But, apparently not. So let's just accept this diagnosis and go with it for a while, as the only real need is not to name these awful experiences but figure out how to stop them.
This level of honesty was inconceivable a year ago.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
It's natural that as therapy progresses, breakthroughs are slower.
---
Before I forget again, the key:
I was bullied. Many are bullied. But the connection between Moving, Bullied, and me is the years of not-exactly-depression. Rejection didn't wound me (a marvel that convinced me I was careless and cold-hearted). No. Rather, I wholeheartedly reject(ed) everyone.
Again, common knowledge.
The key is why. Recognising why. Saying why. Believing why. Why one person can be simultaneously so cold and yet so kind. The path from accepting I am different has led me here. My greatest fear: I have always been able to see, feel you. The good and the bad.
I am not empty. I am too, too full.
---
I am not at home right now. I'm walking, quite literally, in my past. And rather than shutting down at the first threat of emotion, I'm breathing slowing in.
I am the source of my trauma. I made the choice to push everyone out. I only ever wanted to be alone. Not because of anger or fear but because I could not handle the overwhelming reality of being human -- which, in my case, meant being empathically and intuitively gifted. So, I couldn't be angry at anyone. They were only being themselves, with varying levels of ignorance and cruelty and kindness. My trouble is that I find it too remarkably easy to remember how all of that feels.
At some point, growing up, this was a novelty to me. Books became bespoke dreams, filled with vivid emotions. So I started writing my own aching fairy tales at the age most children move out of picture books. Not all emotions were so structured though, and before I could write, I felt it all in song and dance. And then life become its own opera: it's own frightening, endless novel.
I suffered from intense grief at moving. I did not understand what I was feeling. I was not reassured. But I easily mastered how to manipulate others, because I already understood how to know them. So with time, I grew more quiet, and there were fewer opportunities to connect and to care. Rather, I watched and I felt it all.
When I was ridiculed by my peers, any shame was outweighed by a speculative confusion. They did not care how I felt; they were not capable of caring. And my silence, my patience, my disregard for social acceptance -- that, in turn, ridiculed them. I rejected them.
What a different life it would have been, if someone had recognised then what I barely grasp now: my real nature. Someone with power, I mean, someone in charge. For there were people who knew me better than I knew myself, even if I was never capable of being their friend, and I never accepted their judgment of me. You see, they knew my intolerance had a limit. Beyond that, I was reliably, openly, unavoidably... kind.
So, I'm not a monster. I'm not uncaring. I've just never learned how to manage the multitude of emotions and perceptions that rush through me with every breath. There doesn't seem to be a halfway point. When I let people in, I let them in entirely.
I am capable of deep empathy and uncanny intuition. I feel what others feel. I see what others see. It empowers and disables me -- enabling a series of manipulative successes while simultaneously drowning out my own thoughts and desires. No wonder I am so lost.
There are many paths from here. I can continue searching for 'true feelings of achievement' to guide my choices, focusing on my career and education. I can return home and readdress my relationship issues in therapy with this new understanding. Mostly, though, I want to find a way to moderate the empathy and sensitivities. I want to be able to step into my past without such clarity and passion.
Then, perhaps, I can fully forgive live.
---
Steps back.
I've been taking my vitamins. Better ones, even. So if it's related to diet it must be entirely due to the fact that we have been stuffing sugar and fats down nonstop for several months now (Christmas! New Years!). I concede I need to eat healthier.
But it's been about a year since I last felt like this. So is it coincidence? Was my grandmother's death a trigger? What is happening now that happened then, for me to lay in bed at night and feel like I am dying?
Last time I felt like this, I determined that the best description of it was as a mixed episode: a sweet blend of agitation and depression, a growing wash of fear and loneliness, or just plain: feeling like you are mentally ill. I don't mean crazy; I mean a general flu of the psychological variety.
But I know I am not bipolar. So I must be experiencing bonafide panic attacks. Cue my own false assumptions, as I always thought panic attacks required hyperventilation. But, apparently not. So let's just accept this diagnosis and go with it for a while, as the only real need is not to name these awful experiences but figure out how to stop them.
This level of honesty was inconceivable a year ago.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
Catching you up (9)
(Selections from November 2008)
Even without the vitamin supplements, which worked wonders in making me more agreeable and calm, I'm certain I've reached another plateau. Acknowledging my giftedness brought with it an introspection into my intellectual confidence and creative potential. It's hard to accept how I hold myself back, how I've resisted taking charge of my decisions: making real choices that pay real respect to my real feelings and beliefs.
I attribute this to withdrawing from my parents and withholding my thoughts and ideas (and life) from them, as well as the many years of being bullied. I'm comfortable with submission. That cold, numb place is more familiar than anyone's arms. But I've said this already. What I really want to know is how being gifted yet not being gifted impacted my mental health.
I think a lot about graduate school. More specifically, I think about the circumstances surrounding me leaving it. It's a recognisable turning point in helping me to finally seek treatment today, and I know it deserves more consideration. Despite the massive lows, studying that subject under that professor was something that really inspired and challenged me. I understand now why he selected me to work with him and pulled so many strings to make it happen. He saw in me exactly what I now see in him: another passionately gifted person struggling to resolve the same life experiences. I knew that, but I felt like my failure to stick with graduate school meant I didn't have the same thirst for understanding anymore, that I wasn't meant to be a professor.
I do not regret leaving school. The breakdown was inevitable. I needed to consolidate my life experiences and be in a more stable, loving environment. As I fill those needs and the world becomes a safer place, it becomes easier to recognise the more complex aspects of me. I can point a finger at myself, ask myself candidly again… Why am I afraid of going back to graduate school? …knowing full well the answer is blinking in neon lights in every memory I have. School has only ever held me back, bullied me into submission, or provided a platform for my exclusion.
When have I ever truly been welcomed, accepted, and understood by someone? I don't just mean pieces of me. I mean the whole, unrestrained me.
I am not blaming others for rejecting me; most of the opportunity has been lost by my own self-willed reclusion. I have undeniably been playing it safe: playing up to what I know people prefer, fitting my own needs into what is blatantly possible. Could it really be that I underachieve when others still marvel at my talents? I can feel myself holding back from asserting that belief. But it's me I'm talking about, and I know what it feels to really try, to push yourself, to concentrate and perform. I haven't performed at that level in a long time.
And I need to.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Even without the vitamin supplements, which worked wonders in making me more agreeable and calm, I'm certain I've reached another plateau. Acknowledging my giftedness brought with it an introspection into my intellectual confidence and creative potential. It's hard to accept how I hold myself back, how I've resisted taking charge of my decisions: making real choices that pay real respect to my real feelings and beliefs.
I attribute this to withdrawing from my parents and withholding my thoughts and ideas (and life) from them, as well as the many years of being bullied. I'm comfortable with submission. That cold, numb place is more familiar than anyone's arms. But I've said this already. What I really want to know is how being gifted yet not being gifted impacted my mental health.
I think a lot about graduate school. More specifically, I think about the circumstances surrounding me leaving it. It's a recognisable turning point in helping me to finally seek treatment today, and I know it deserves more consideration. Despite the massive lows, studying that subject under that professor was something that really inspired and challenged me. I understand now why he selected me to work with him and pulled so many strings to make it happen. He saw in me exactly what I now see in him: another passionately gifted person struggling to resolve the same life experiences. I knew that, but I felt like my failure to stick with graduate school meant I didn't have the same thirst for understanding anymore, that I wasn't meant to be a professor.
I do not regret leaving school. The breakdown was inevitable. I needed to consolidate my life experiences and be in a more stable, loving environment. As I fill those needs and the world becomes a safer place, it becomes easier to recognise the more complex aspects of me. I can point a finger at myself, ask myself candidly again… Why am I afraid of going back to graduate school? …knowing full well the answer is blinking in neon lights in every memory I have. School has only ever held me back, bullied me into submission, or provided a platform for my exclusion.
When have I ever truly been welcomed, accepted, and understood by someone? I don't just mean pieces of me. I mean the whole, unrestrained me.
I am not blaming others for rejecting me; most of the opportunity has been lost by my own self-willed reclusion. I have undeniably been playing it safe: playing up to what I know people prefer, fitting my own needs into what is blatantly possible. Could it really be that I underachieve when others still marvel at my talents? I can feel myself holding back from asserting that belief. But it's me I'm talking about, and I know what it feels to really try, to push yourself, to concentrate and perform. I haven't performed at that level in a long time.
And I need to.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
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