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.

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.

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.

Subjective Self

I have not visited this site in a while. I have had nothing of great magnitude to say that has not already been said before, many times. That is not to say I have not been thinking just as much and mulling things over. I just have not recorded them, partly, because I have been afraid that writing them down would make them real or somehow overly trivial in the eyes of the world.

I should come back though - For the catharsis, if nothing else.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the notion of self and self-worth. About the values that people build their world around and where they come from. About how people can be so cruel at times and not appreciate that their view may not be the same as that of the other.

I have been ill some of the time I have been away, I have also been on holiday to Cyprus (much sunshine and a week of relaxing and not worrying about work). I am, however, still here, still churning the thoughts in my mind and breathing in and out. I am still not entirely convinced on the why and if it should continue that way.

I have had two resounding thoughts this past week. I should not be here and I am sorry that I am. It occurs to me that one has to place a low value on their own self-existence if they feel the need to apologise for it. I am not sure what my brain is convinced I have done wrong, yet I can not help but want to apologise for simply existing. For failing so far in my path to self-destruction and in doing so, for dragging everyone around me through the miserable mire that is my minds own creation.

These thoughts are not at all helped when those few people that bide their time in ridiculing others decide that I am a worthy target of their jokes. This happened last night and is, if anything, a common occurrence in my life - I have a sign somewhere on me that just seems to say "I am not normal, take the piss out of me." I was traveling home after a fun day out and this small thing chewed up the little self worth I had gained through the day and spat it out the other side into the trash. I cried the rest of the way home.

I spent a number of hours thereafter thinking through, not entirely rationally, what the concept of normal is and exactly how subjective that is from person to person. One sees another, but they do not fit into the tight box criterion for that person's sense of 'normal' even if it is perfectly normal to the other. Does this mean that person is abnormal, or are they just different and when does different become bad?

I am often a person that people struggle to categorise. So much so, I can not categorise myself and this leaves me wide open to the parts of my brain that are determined to see my demise. That part of my brain is loud at the moment, it can pick apart my every flaw and re-define my every thought and meaning, my every breath and step to drag me towards an ultimate end. There is still a part of me that fights this, which writes and tries to think rationally, that puts things on hold until a later date in the hope that something can be found between now and then that will improve the self, or the world, enough to make its continuation less painful.

I am a constant, ongoing battle between the two. Undecided, conflicted and scared of the many thoughts and actions. The plans and times and dates. The what ifs and why nots. It is no surprise that I tire myself out. I have given up on professionals providing any help - They have made it clear that they will not help, unless I take very particular actions. This traps me in the conundrum. I have no faith in an ability to be able to stop should I let that side of me loose.

These are in no way finished thoughts, I am sure I will return to them. For now though, that will have to do, as my brain has run itself into a muddle that makes no sense to put down here.

Strength Deployment Inventory

I was out all day yesterday - in training. All of the PAs (well, bar two, one of which was in Scotland... which is a wee bit of a commute, and the other ill) and me sat up in one of our meeting rooms for a whole day and had training on a thing called the Strength Deployment Inventory.

This, is basically a system that sorts you into a personality type based on what your personal strengths are when things are going well, and when they are not going well and how you can use them to over-come when things are not going so well.

My results were not surprising for me, I had a hunch what type I would turn out to be. That is a Blue-Green blend (Cautious-Supporting). Then, when in conflict, I slip fully into being much more Green (Cautious-Analytical).

What was revealing for me in the day, I think, was not finding out about myself - since, mostly it was stuff I already knew. It was discovering that the other PAs were mostly Blue (Altruistic-Nurturing), with one Hub (Flexible-Cohering) and that the idea of using your strengths to work with people who have other strengths is not the reality of the situation at all.

Instead, what the course expected people to do, was second guess the strengths of others and then steer your actions towards what suited them. What this means, is that as the other PAs are Blue's and the Hub can be seen as a potential Blue, my Analytical, formal and details driven style has to be put on the back-burner while I write in an in-formal, pleasant people focused style to them... even when I am trying to do my job, of asking them to meet a deadline, or format a document correctly and on time.

Oh, and I have been told not to do that as often... even though the reason I do, is that the deadlines are rarely ever met, so I remind them more often.

We did a whole section in the afternoon that just felt like an attack on my style of working. In effect, because everyone else already fit into the Blue Zone, I was the one expected to do all the work to please them, because the deadlines and structure and routine that make me comfortable and safe, and that I work with best, do not work with/for them. I instead have to be 'open-minded' and flexible, to be informal and step away from routine communications that are fairly straightforward to understand, because they need to be padded out with superfluous niceties.

There were a few pointers for them to work with me, but it felt like they were undercut by the discussion and this, by the end of the day, just re-affirmed everything I already knew: I love my job and I am good at what I do, I just do not fit with the other PAs. We are too different.

I took many good things away from the day. I just also took away that sour taste in the mouth that you get when you know you have hit a dead end.

I guess in many ways, I am fairly strong in the green sections of my personality. I am a bit socially-autistic. I have social-anxiety! When I was younger my communication was frequently attacked as stupid or I was told to shut up if I ever gushed over something. So I stopped doing it. I am an awkward communicator, the formal, standardised style suits me as I can do it without stepping away from what is needed, without having to do the whole informal thing that makes me squirm at the very thought. It is a learned response - and I have just been told that in order to work with others I have to unlearn it, and they don't have to lift a finger to try to unlearn the fact that they can not handle something formal.

I will stop ranting now, it isn't going anywhere. Just needed the grumble.

Paranoia, Self-worth & a lack of caring

Sometimes I think Paranoia is the thing that breaks me. It makes me loose what little faith I have in human beings - that is, the ones I know and would normally trust, not the ones I am shite scared of when my social anxiety is playing up.

To explain. If you have a friend, a colleague, that tends to imply that you value their opinion. Say one day you are walking down a corridor and you see said friend or colleague, talking, maybe laughing or seeming cross and gesticulating in your general area. The human brains natural reaction is to be defensive and assume they are somehow laughing at you, because you must be stupid, or look ridiculous or they are just plain fed up with your attempt to be friendly and normal around them. A lot of people are able to brush aside this thought and assume it is something completely irrelevant to them. I am unable to do this, at the moment (note: sometimes I can) as my perception gets more and more distorted by the workings of my own brain against itself.

With Paranoia/Depression/Social-anxiety, this is made worse by the belief that everyone hates you, that you are worthless and truly a waste of time and that any of the evaluations your brain says others are saying about you are not just correct, but under-exaggerated. You are, in fact, much much worse.

What if they found this out? How much would they hate you and laugh at you then? How can you stop it, when you are not even sure you can pin-point what part of you it is that is so flawed and distorted?

I say this may be the thing to break me, because I have such a low self-esteem. Because my brain tells me, all by itself exactly how bad I am - The last thing I need is to believe that this is what everyone else thinks of me as well. If anything, I try to achieve the opposite. I do my best to be 'normal' and 'stable' and friendly. I do everything I can to try to help others, to please them. All I want, in some part of me, is for other people's approval. I get horribly upset if I feel I have done anything wrong. Anything that may prove that negative self-destructive part of my brain just may be correct.

I will be honest in saying I am struggling at the moment. I spend much of my time trying to improve myself - I have bought a rowing machine to try to help with my fitness, I try to jog during the week (even if this does mean accepting that people will sneer and laugh at me, because I will never be one of those people that is just skinny as a rake and looks good in sports clothes).

I can not, however I try, crawl my way out of the black hole I have been sucked into - The one that sung so loudly from my last posts. I feel stuck in this low phase and everything is gradually getting harder - To the point where sometimes, I really do not care. I do not have the energy to stand trying to tidy my eyebrows (however much they need it), I really don't care if I have showered or got dressed (frankly on the weekend, I rarely do) and getting out of bed is just something that takes too much effort. More importantly, I am beginning to not care about whether or not I continue to fight this thing. What is the point? All I will do is go around the same road and reach the same conclusions. There is no point. There is no magical value to my existence - so why fight to improve or continue it any further?

If people hate me so much, if I am that bad that they have to talk about me behind their backs, or I somehow do something that annoys them - Why bother?

I was watching a Dylan Moran DVD at the weekend, he made the point that humanity is the only species that the world is trying to tell to 'Fuck off'. One may well do it a favour and get it over with.

I have a holiday in March. It has been paid for, so I will go. There is nothing after that though. Nothing planned, nothing scheduled, no people to let down.

I have found my when.

Moments of Decision

I have come to the rather distressing conclusion that I am running out of 'go and fight'. That is, the thing that keeps one going even when depression is gnawing its way through your heart and soul. It is often said that such times can be got through by breaking them into smaller segments; minutes and hours that form the days and weeks of our lives. Doing this, however, can take a lot of self-talking and stubbornness and can be very tiring.

Imagine those mornings when your alarm goes off and you really wish it did not have to, that you did not need to get up out of bed, or move, or take the next breath. That there was no need to reach across and switch the damned thing off to save it waking the house-hold. Say, it is cold outside, or you did not get to bed until much later than planned. Now times that, tenfold. Mix in a lack of self-worth, a lethargy that makes breathing feel energetic and the realisation that you are somehow still here, alive even though a large chunk of you wishes it were otherwise.

All that, just to get up. Mostly, I am able to force myself out of bed. One of the things I have learnt through years of practice is that if I let myself just lie there. I will never get up. I will stagnate and this makes things worse. I know this, as I have done it. It gets you nowhere - least of all, out of bed.

When I write that I am running out of go and fight. It is that stubbornness and self-bullying that forces me to move. To keep breathing. To keep fighting. To ignore the dark caverns of my mind and soul as they scream and tug at me, trying to pull me down. Each moment is getting harder to push myself through - As though there is some thick myre in the air, a sludge that pulls me backwards.

The thing that makes this distressing, is that in previous moments when this has happened I have ballasted myself on the promise that I would speak to a Doctor, a Psychiatrist, or a Therapist and we would find a solution. We could change my medicine or see what is going on that is wearing me down in that moment. This time, I feel like that ballast has floated off into some distant dark place that I can no longer see or reach. The Medical Profession has given up on me and essentially said there is nothing they can do.

Oddly, there is very little that has held me upright this week and weekend.

Firstly, the lethargy is a strange thing in that, there is such a thing as being so depressed, one does not have the energy to act on the suicidal and self-harming impulses - This lasts for a while until one reaches the Moment of Decision - That famous bit where the depressed person decides on their course of action and is somehow magically better to outside viewers, because they can see an end to all of it. A literal end. A permanent one. I am not at that point yet, I have, however, had constant thoughts and plans swirling around in my head and know that without the second thing that has held me up, I probably would have acted and taken that Moment of Decision. It is at that point now where I am having dreams about it.

The second thing that has held me up, is also odd. It has been the British Weather. Anyone that knows me, knows I hate the snow, and it does very little to improve my mood. What it has done however is acted as a logical delay. Any decision to take action normally takes everything into consideration. Mine, included how overly stretched out British Emergency Services are. Why, would I want them to be wasting their valuable time on me, if there are people out there who genuinely want to live and are struggling through the snow and ice, who may have fallen and injured themselves, or who may have hypothermia or need help that is stuck somewhere in a snow drift. All very mellow dramatic, but also very true and reflective of our current News Reports. The weather is so bad, people are dying in it. People that shouldn't.

I know some-where deep inside that there is an inevitability to all this. It will happen. It is just a case of when. I suppose I write here in order to help sort out the mass of thoughts in my head and ensure I can not deny it to myself at a later point. These are true thoughts, they are mine and I have been having them increasingly over the last few weeks.

I do not write here as a cry for help, or for attention. This is not a little-white flag that is being waved in hope that someone will come magic everything better. I am beyond believing such things work. Please, if you are reading this, do not patronise me by assuming that is all this is. I did my 'cries for help' when I made appointments with the Doctor's and the Psychiatrists. I went and told them what was going on in my head and asked for help. They sent me away with nothing to show for the effort. Unless you are able to clobber them over the head with a mountain of common sense, I doubt there is little that can be done but watch as it unfolds. Which it will. I can feel it unravelling slowly but surely.

I know what my final messages will be though, my dream told me that, short and simple and sweet and sent in every format achievable. E-mail and text and twitter. My dream showed me the way and it was surprisingly simple.

I woke crying, as I am now, but it still made sense to me. I just have to wait for the right time.