You Are What You ...

Eat. Watch. Read. Listen to. 

Everything that you are exposed to has an effect. For example, people who watch, listen to, or read the news regularly tend to have a more negative view of the world and feel that crime has increased over time, because that is what they are exposed to.

I'm a highly sensitive person. Add to that extreme introversion and PTSD and you'll find that my nerves are all right there at the surface. Some of them may even extend past my skin. 

I learned over a decade ago that I have to pay attention to what I let in. Very dark books, tv shows, and movies are hard on me. I take them inside me and the darkness tends to stick. I remember the most horrific things from such stories and they pop up years later. Given my obsessive thinking, it can take days to get the thoughts to go away. 

When it comes to the news, I keep in mind the way it can bend your perceptions, so I mostly scroll over the headlines online.

Although I learned my lesson over a decade ago, I have to keep relearning it and re-remembering it, as I do with everything. I have remembered to not read books about serial killers that won't die, but I keep forgetting about TV shows. I watch CSI and CSI NY (I think CSI NY is less dark than the original). But the worst is that I've been watching Criminal Minds. That's all about mass murderers, serial killers, and bombers! It's one of the worst things I can do to myself. It's like an addiction. When the next season comes around, I'm going to remind myself to Watch Something Else. 

Now, I cannot watch movies about psychopaths, because they are monsters that exist and I'll have nightmares and my anxieties will increase. But I can watch movies about non-human monsters, such as giant sharks and behemoths that come out of mountains. And I can watch natural disaster movies — the worse the disaster the better. Maybe these are cathartic for my anxiety, my PTSD. Certainly they stimulate me and make me breath faster, make my heart race. Perhaps they are helpful in balancing out how withdrawn I can become due to the hypersensitivity and the introversion.

Some of my friends are very thoughtful and mindful of my sensitivities and will caution me about various movies or books, even going so far as to say "don't watch that, ever" or "don't read that, ever." I love that they care and that they know me well enough to be able to tell me this. Their doing so makes me feel loved.

Lately I've been bingeing on monster movies, now that I have Netflix Streaming Video. It coincides with a lightening of my mood. I cannot even apply a correlation because I have nothing to base it on; there are other things that do have some correlation. However, the movies don't seem to have a negative effect on me, so I think I'll continue. Anything to feel better, right now. Anything to feel better.

This time I'll remember what is good for me to watch, read, or listen to. This time I'll remember what is bad. This time I won't listen to the little voice that says "it won't hurt you, you enjoy this." I'm sure many people have heard that voice and knew it meant the exact opposite of what it says. This time I'll remember to sick my big, protective voice on the evilly seductive voice. Who do you think will win?

This time I'll remember to take good care of myself. Forever.

The Cure

If you could be completely "cured" of your oddities — your moods, your tics, your dysfunctions — would you?

In the past, I have fought against reining in my moods because I didn't "want to lose my creativity or lose my real self." I was in my early 20s then and felt that having large mood swings were integral to who I was and that losing them would make me dull and boring. I fought my therapist on this point and, after a particularly bad phase agreed to consciously control my mood swings. Guess what? They weren't integral to my personality and losing the extremes didn't make me dull or boring. 

I fought going on medication for my depression, because I didn't want drugs and I was afraid they would tamp down my personality, make me dull. Neither happened in that case, either. It took years, but I finally accepted that I would need to be on some medication for my whole life. I became okay with that.

I have not come to terms with the amount and levels of medications I am currently on. I have good reason to be against this on a long-term basis because last year at this time I was on just two of these meds, and at significantly lower dosages. It's my belief, thought, and opinion that once I've healed to some specific extent, or once I've dealt with enough trauma through therapy, or once a fairy drops enough pixie dust in my hair, I will be able to drop back to last year's medication regimen! 

Last year, I felt good. I felt right. I've always had and always will have mood cycles — we all do, but most people's don't affect how well they function — but they were controlled both by the medication and by me. My anxieties — free-floating, social, PTSD-related — were controlled, probably almost all by the medication. Or else, enough was controlled by the medication that the rest of any anxieties became insignificant, maybe weren't even there because the big stuff was fine. But I felt Just Right. The way I would feel if I hadn't had to struggle with this mental and emotional crap.

I'd love to be cured of needing medications. I'd love to be fully functional for the rest of my life without wondering if and when another bomb will drop me into the Abyss again. But would it be good for me to be entirely free of them? And would being free of my "cycling mood disorder of unknown origin" and my PTSD and other anxieties also "free" me of my idiosyncrasies and quirks? I know that I've always been afraid of losing myself and all my quirky bits. So afraid that a "cure" will cure me right into being just like "the norm" rather than the endearing little statistical outlier I have always been.

I've learned self-discipline (which I always seem to forget about) when I began to control my mood swings. I learned self-awareness by becoming aware when my moods were becoming negative; I could use the discipline and skills to dampen the intensity. Maybe I would have learned them some other way, but maybe I wouldn't.

However, there is no reason to stay handicapped if you don't have to be. My mental and emotional turmoil have handicapped me for months, keeping me from being able to even look for work, thus taking me to the very brink of absolute poverty (I'm not kidding here — I need money NOW). I would agree to be cured of my mood disorder and my anxieties, but not my personality or my way of looking at things from my own special perspective or even those times when I think I'm being perfectly normal and everyone else is looking at me like "and how long have you been visiting our planet?"

I'm pretty sure that no one knows where mood disorder stops and personality quirk begins. Maybe it's all just about how well you function.

Karen the Wonder Therapist wants me to not define myself as "mentally ill" or by my mental and emotional problems. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't; it depends on how they are affecting my life. I have felt terribly ill since my mom died and have been barely functional for most of the time since then. Insurance isn't paying for my therapy — they obviously have decided I'm not sick — but I'm not exactly well.

I'm just me, swimming around in the Sea of Life, looking for hospitable land and trying to not drown in the meantime. I really could use a life preserver about now.

Deep thoughts #2 --- Going ... up?

Do you ever find, after having been terribly sick or terribly down for a long time, that you resist feeling or seeming or accepting being better?

For example, I have bitten my nails most of my life and over the past decade and a half have managed to slowly make time periods between biting them longer and longer. Then last summer, when the troubles began to get worse, I began biting my nails again. I bit all of them, at some point, to the point of pain. 

A friend recently pointed out how they are growing again. "No they aren't," I said, pointing to the shortest one. "I bit this off just recently." "Yes," she said, "but I see white on all of them."

I wanted to argue with her. I'm not letting my nails grow. I'm still biting them because I'm Not Better Yet! I'm not getting better!

Why? Why would I resist any sign that I may be rising from the Abyss? Why would I want to continue to be or appear to be suffering or ill or unbelievably depressed?

Maybe I'm afraid that if I seem to be getting better, then no one will have patience with me if I'm not completely better — Now! — and all the time hereafter. Or maybe they'll think I was malingering: how long do you have to be in a Bad Place or State before you have legitimacy?

Or maybe I'm afraid I'm doing a disservice to my mom's memory by getting better now. Or maybe to myself in some odd way: if I'm well now, was I really that down and unreachable or was it really just ... all in my mind. Nerves. All those things that say I'm just a hypochondriac or just trying to get attention. Or maybe that I'm actually crazy. But something.

I have honestly turned the corner and I want to live now. That's an amazement in itself.

I'm still not doing my homework regularly, but I believe that my sleeping sickness over my vacation trumps that. Once I have the sleepiness under control and am feeling more me-normal again, the new "better-ness" will be more perceptible.

I'm going to show it off. Let others make their own judgments. I've been down to the Abyss yet again — my third time? my fourth or fifth? — and I beat it yet again. How many others can say that?

Floating lightly, as if smoke on air, and peeing

Between feeling like a cat — just a breath away from a nap — and feeling as if I have no responsibilities when I'm here (which isn't exactly correct), I've been drifting from one thought to the next, none of those thoughts being particularly deep. That's fine, but half of my two-week vacation is gone and I haven't accomplished what I planned to do: go through the storage unit to sort more of my things out and to find things to send home. I do have a couple of hours here and there I could devote to it, but so far most of my hours are completely filled. It's totally weird. And I still haven't set a time for dinner with the neighbors.

My two deep thoughts are about my health. First: why am I so bloody tired? Needing to take one or more naps a day is not normal for me, and my first (always my first) thought is that I have cancer or some other wasting disease. Because dying now would simply round out the story of my life: 1, 2, 3, 4 — Dad, Jim, Mom, me. Hypochondriac? Maybe, but more likely it is just another part of hypervigilance and always expecting the worst so I'm prepared for it. And yet, as with Mom and last summer, I'm only prepared for the worst in respect to myself. I mean, I've been grieving since September 12th; I've only been sleeping all the time for the past two months or so. The napping and the grieving don't match up.

The other health concern is about my urine. If you have a problem with bodily TMI, better skip out now. Are they gone? Okay, now it's just us. The problem with my urine is that it's gone completely clear and it smells a bit odd. No pains in my kidneys, but this seems like something wrong. Is it my medication? Am I dying? Is it something else? I've called and left messages with my psychiatrist and my physical doctor (because the psych wasn't calling back). I left info about symptoms. That was earlier in the afternoon for them. It is now mid-evening back there ... I doubt they are calling me back today. Does this mean the symptoms are nothing to worry about or that no one has actually looked at or listened to their messages? A call back would have been nice. Kind of like a signal on one of the SETI radio telescopes. "Yes, we heard you. You are not alone."

Napping and peeing: important issues at the beginning of life and often at the end. Let's just hope it's also a problem in the middle of mine. Not like I'm paranoid.

Dream a little dream

I did not accomplish all that I planned, but I accomplished much of what I wanted today. Tomorrow I must be very focused and energetic to finish it all. But I have the time, before I go to bad, exhausted and surrendering in the struggle against the mosquito bites: I've put stuff on them (Campho Phenique), I've put bandages over that. Some I haven't managed to bandage (try putting bandages on YOUR scapulas!). I'm just giving in and feeling itchy. Because some things still itch, I'm not sure if the other stuff itches less, or even not at all. You know how that happens? The sensation simply swamps your receptors and there's no way to differentiate incoming signals.

Which, unexpectedly, leads me more or less to tonight's topic: dreams and PTSD.

When I dream, my PTSD hallucinations are real. So the bug-shapes I see out of the corner of my eye in real life are large black bugs that jump at me or pursue me or go where I cannot see them in my dreams. The pet-sized shadows I see are actual dogs and cats and who knows what in my dreams. And sometimes there are people, too. As you can see, my PTSD shapes are generally not beneficial in my dreams.

Except this morning. In my dream, I was getting into my car and struggling through black webs and spiders and tree roaches and just webby kinds of barriers. When I got into the driver's seat I jumped and brought my foot up to see what was on it and it was a skinny black lizard. It wasn't scary and I wanted to catch it, or at least leave it in the car to eat the pests.

So, Julie, Dream Interpreter Extraordinaire, tell me what the heck this means?

(Does this sooth your OCD cravings for my blog posts?)

Who goes there?

Ah, the proverbial military security phrase, usually preceded by "Halt!" Movies and books have shown simple ways to get past guards: throwing gravel, pebbles, rocks. Making the guard jump, look, even go investigate. In a way, movies and books were telling us a bit about the PTSD a soldier can get. Hypervigilance — jumping at noises, seeing shadows.

It doesn't take declared war — or military action of whatever name politics calls it — to create PTSD. Just trauma, being placed in a situation (often repeatedly, but sometimes just once) where showing extreme vigilance was a survival mechanism. It means being hyperaware of sights, sounds, smells. And it means assuming, and mentally preparing for, the worst-case scenario.

The balance between gravity and flight

Tonight, I and several friends spent time on Facebook accomplishing a group project and it spawned a great deal of activity; double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking; and laughter. It has also left me with the jittery feelings that come when I let loose the dogs of hypomania, to completely destroy a phrase. The feeling is the same as when I was in college and didn't know about mania and mood swings and crashes as anything other than the regular feelings I experienced and assumed that many others experienced as well. 

In my 20s, I always encouraged and followed that emotional arrow as it flew up and up, past the birds, then the clouds, sometimes clear into the lower Earth orbit. The arrow would halt there, for a moment, balanced almost perfectly between both up and down forces, and that moment of balance was better than alcohol, better than pot, better than sex. However, gravity always won and the emotional arrow would plummet down, faster and faster until it achieved terminal velocity and crashed into the solid Earth, leaving me exhausted, in a vicious mood, confused, and often ill. 

When my first therapist first talked to me about controlling my highs in order to control the crashes, I was ferociously against it. I was convinced I would lose my personality, be some dull drone. I knew I would lose my creativity and my whimsy and spontaneity. It was another 3 years or so before I gave in and, tired of the crashes, began to recognize and control the arrow as it flew upward. I was relieved beyond words to see that it didn't kill my creativity or those parts of my personality that I valued so much. In fact, I think it made those facets better by virtue of my achieving some control. Later, when we decided to go further and add a medication layer of control, I wasn't so dead set against that. I'd grown accustomed to and grateful for control and the loss of those crashes.

In the past few years, I've also learned that I do have a cycling mood disorder and that the medication doesn't remove the cycling, it only dampens it. The rest is still up to me. I didn't have any awareness of those cycles until a friend who had gotten to know me very well and who has a keen perception pointed out to me that I fell into these phases where I would feel as if rabid hamsters were running on wheels in my mind and I couldn't control them. During those times, I would become dramatic and sure that the very worst thing that could happen would happen. These phases happened, he pointed out, every three weeks. Nothing I could lay to female hormones. 

Now that I've become aware of those three-week events, I've been able to perceive and control them. Over the  years I've come to appreciate control. So do my OCD and my PTSD and my hypervigilance and my regular anxiety ....

Alphabet soup

OCD. PTSD. ADD/ADHD. MOUSE. Some days I think my own name ought to be something like THX 1138. (Geeks will get it.)

OCD: Basically, I feel obsessed about certain things, or compelled toward certain actions, or both. For me, it's tidiness and organization. So why is my apartment chaos incarnate? Just look at my mind and my heart: I'm a total mess, paralyzed with pain and anxiety and depression. The worse the untidiness and disorganization, the more it pains me and makes things worse. When I make even one small area clean and tidy, I feel the very muscles in my body relax noticeably. 

I also have an compulsion toward collecting things. That one I've been controlling, until now. I have so many catalogs and magazines I haven't even read yet. Oh, and I collect notebooks and blank journals. When I go through my storage, I will find a large box of them. Mom hated my collection of them, but I stood my ground and would let her make me get rid of the better ones. Collections make me feel stable and rooted and protected.