Here's the Thing

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Dissociative Thoughts

I have been spending a lot of time thinking. Not that that is anything unusual, or amazing, just that that is part of why I have not been here to post - Strangely enough. I have been thinking and re-thinking over the same thoughts and trying to mesh them in a way that does not sound wrong.

Frankly, I have given up trying. So will post it, however it happens to tumble from my brain and through my finger tips onto the keyboard.

Someone said to me recently that I am 'qualified' in mental health. Not in the 'I have trained and gained some form of Masters' sense, but in the 'certifiable' sense. This, and the recent pledge campaigns of some organisations, got me thinking about mental health and my own stance on it.

I am very very vocal about the fact that I do have 'issues'. I think in some ways this is a good thing - As it means people are less stunned on the occasions where I fall apart and it all goes wrong. I do not have a why or a how though - So am very reticent about giving details on those things and I think that in the long term, people get pissed off with me and want me to just 'get over it'.

I have had that said to my face more than once in my life, so it would not shock me if it was the general opinion of many human beings that I come across in my day to day life.

I have done a lot of reading, a lot of research and have talked to and chatted on forums with many people with large variations of mh issues. I am a supporter on one forum. So know that I am often surrounded by it.

I can not say that means I understand it any more than I did when I first started out though. Mostly, it has given me terminology. A way of defining some of what I feel and think and experience so that I can express it in a unified way. I think this may also piss off the 'get over it' crowd. As they somehow feel, if I really did have these things, they would have been dealt with by now.

Sometimes I wonder if I have made myself the way I am. If my Mother is right when she says I 'take on' the symptoms of what I have read in some 'way of gaining attention'. I wonder if this is the true nature of myself. An attention whore. Then I realise that at my worst, at the times when I am really struggling, my instant reaction is to dissociate, to curl up in a feotal position, often in a fit of tears and hide from the world. Somehow in the hope it will go away and leave me to some semblance of peace.

I have dissociated a lot lately and it has left me feeling tired. I spend a lot of time fighting to bring myself back and stay 'grounded'. It is mostly only mild, but there have been a few times this past week or so when I have 'stepped away' for long enough to feel a distinction.

Dissociation - for those of you that do not know, is like a circuit-breaker in the mind which switches when the mind feels like it can not cope with an overload of stimuli, emotion, or experience. In my case, therefore, it is mostly when I am very stressed or upset, or if I am out in crowded places. Everyone dissociates to some extent - some believe that is part of what day-dreaming is. It is when everything gets that little bit hazy and you can't quite remember what happened during those five minutes. Where the world feels like it is being viewed through a bubble and is that little bit more out of touch.

I only bring it up as I have come to the conclusion this is what has been happening, gradually more and more frequently for me. It took a fair bit of research to reach that conclusion. Mostly because if you look online and google dissociation, you will be pointed towards Dissociative Identity Disorder (once called Multiple Personality Disorder) and PTSD and the suffering of some major trauma or abuse....

The most trauma I ever really had in life was a four and a half day coma at the age of 4 - when I was diagnosed of diabetes. Seconded only by the death of my Grandmother when I was 11.

That is it. Honestly. It is almost impossible to find information that does not somehow suggest there must be some onion ring in your life that needs peeling away at to find. But I digress and know this is something I have mentioned before.

I started Yoga recently. The first class, I think this was one of those times when I dissociated and was most aware of a feeling of vulnerability. In its most child-like state. Fragile and panicked and unsafe. Scared of everything and wanting nothing more than to curl up and protect the self. That is, after all, what the feotal position is for.

I would raise it as an issue or mode of thought with someone from cmht, where it not for the fact that I no longer see anyone from there... I think I am due to see the Psych next in July or something.

Beyond that... Nothing. No-one. So I will write here. To put it down. However fragmented it may seem.

Sunday 11 April 2010

Words that reverbrate in my heart

And I'm still waiting for the rain to fall
Pour real life down on me
'Cause I can't hold on to anything

This good enough
Am I good enough
For you to love me too?

Extract from lyrics to Good Enough - Evanescence (vocals by Amy Lee).

I am not sure of my lucidity, so won't say more for now. The above says more than enough, I think. It matches my thoughts and my tears.

Friday 9 April 2010

Ultimatums

There are moments in life that act as ultimatums. Something has to give, one way or another and as much as we may all like to bury our heads in the sand from time to time, it will always come back and bite us with its inevitability.

I have, today, been having one of those days when the inevitable has been staring at me with steely eyes, waiting for me to make my move. One way, or the other.

My depression feels very much like it is winning today. All the signs have been there. My focus and attention has been off. I have been tearful and avoiding people and sounds, flinching away from them like something painful will come from the vague awareness of their presence around me. I have begun stock-piling, medicines and ideas, plots and methodology.

My body sickens me. My BMI is 30.8, which makes me obese for my height and age. I need to loose at least 30lbs to be considered back in a healthy weight range. I am constantly achy as my joints are not designed for this amount of blubber and walking a 15 minute route from my home to the train station reduces me to tears.

Part of me is thinking that the extra weight will help gravity as it pulls me down to the ground from where-ever it may be that I eventually leap. The other part is planning a diet, a proper one that is due to start in earnest tomorrow.

It is that, or listen to the side of my brain that says I am fat and ugly and worthless. Because I am. Because I can give nothing to this world at the moment. I struggle to focus on anything for longer than ten minutes at a time before I have to switch away.

Part of my mind wants to curl up into the foetal position in a dark place somewhere and cry quietly to itself. It has been doing that for a while now.

Something has to give and soon.

I can not shake the feeling that whatever shifts is going to soon, one way or the other.

I can not stop the whirl-wind of thoughts and feeling. The constant gnaw of panic and anxiety chipping away at my soul, tearing it to shreds in sheer hatred and frustration. I barely sleep for the constant back and forth between one thought and another. Would this be the best? Or this? Would anyone miss me? When is the right time? What should we wear?

I have decided somewhere, amidst all this, that I need to loose weight. I need to do something to keep the 'keep going' part of my brain focused on the positive. As without that, I do not have any fight left.

I am in one of my lowest states and I know that the moment that fight stops, the moment I allow a pause, I will end up in Hospital.

Something has to give. That is my ultimatum.