I had another follow up with my psychiatric PA. She is pleased to see the difference. It is becoming increasingly obvious and I am increasingly stable. In fact the other day I listened to a lady talk at an event for my daughter and I didn't even cry. I have been able to share things and I don't even cry. When people ask me how I am I say rather automatically at times, "Fine" or "Good, how are you" instead of "interesting." Sometimes I still say that when I am feeling a little interesting for one reason or another or just because it is funny and it makes people laugh or at least smile.
Talking to psychiatric PA I tell her this I'm moving into the hard part of taking medication. Initially it was just such a relief and Godsend that no side effects were noticeable or worse then what I had been going through. I needed increases a couple of times as push back was pretty strong. But in the past week or so I have not felt the physical sensations of manic-style pushback and I am even still finding my mind calming and becoming more "rationally" level. Now we are to the point of fine-tuning the medication. I am not falling asleep as well, my brain has been a bit busy at night, and then I am struggling to wake up in the morning. This is annoying. I remember PA say, about my medication quetiapine, that lower doses can make you more tired and I wonder if maybe, even though I am not having the manic feeling pushback anymore, if the dose might still be a bit too low because my thoughts may still be running a bit too fast at night.
PA suggests this very thing also. We agree that I should try taking it earlier consistently and then she adds 50 more only I will take the extra 50 in the non-extended release. This is our game plane and it sounds like a good one.
But...
Not really but,
but it is a bit tricky, this phase. I am now worried a bit about becoming zombie like, as crazy and... umm... messed up, as it has been I have learned to enjoy it some and embracing my crazy can be fun too.... which ironically I can more fully embrace and enjoy better from my more level place, but I am a bit concerned about loosing that completely. I will miss me if I do.
Then there is the part of feeling normal.
It is amazing how quickly I can forget how high I can go. Have buried this very effectively before and I feel myself doing it again... Probably not so wise. That has caused significant confusion and problems, but actually it was this buried stuff coming out that really caused the problem, so maybe I should burry it even better... but alas silly rabbit whole, I know, there is no going back this time, you broke to big. As much as I want to just be fine without medication I know I will need it for some time to counteract the months of insanity I have endured. So it is silly to me that there is even an inkling of that idea of being fine with out it. But that is part of the nature of this bipolar beast that resides within me.
PA asks me how neuropsychologist is helping. I tell her she is helping immensely. PA is surprised I am able to trust after the last. I explain, that is hard, especially when she says similar stuff, naturally she will but it still causes a distrust reaction... funny, I hide it from her. I also am working to cut myself off before I get to attached, I told Dr. She that at my last appointment, I don't want to become too dependent on her, so even though I still greatly appreciate the frequent appointments I am cutting back as I feel more stable. I also don't ask her many questions, even though I like to hear about her and I would love to know more about her as a person, I don't allow myself to ask or be interested. I make sure it is about me... I don't love that part. It makes me sad, because I love Dr. She, but I cannot let myself make a similar mistake. Dr. She says, "You will never feel like you are my therapist," and I am grateful, but I am leery, because never is a black magic kind of word.
See, it can be quite interesting to be "crazy" so I allow it and I am thinking I can own some of it and enjoy some of it too. This is why I am writing now. This "crazy" that people are so damn terrified of is really not so scary. In it I can make sense of so much because I can see the insanities that so many people are so very blind too. I am aware of how profoundly even seemingly simple things can effect us, and I have experiences under my belt that look like typical aging problems so I am way better prepared for that. Plus I get the luxury of doing silly things like this blog. Of course I am very fortunate in my circumstances, but and I mean BUT in a big, standing upright, and speaking out kind of way, I have also worked very hard to manage and understand my mental deficiencies, my mood instabilities and my TBI related problems. I know this because I read and reread various self-help books and books on psychology I see so many things I have done and I can see the huge progress I have made. Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning, I have not read before but it resonates and I see the same message in Change Your Brain Change Your Life, by Daniel Amen MD that I have read before. Change your ANTs; Automatic Negative Thoughts. I am quite good at this really. And I am pleased with how Frankl resonates with me because truly I only made it through this crazy messed up manic cycling chemistry because I was looking at my suffering scientifically and I also was able to fight through by attaching meaning to it... Of course this has been ridiculously tricky since the damned people who were supposed to help with that were telling me I was not worth listening to or helping and denying the crazy I was telling them I was managing. There are a lot of things that I am really becoming more fully aware of the stupidity of, like how Dr. Concussion had told me Dr. He had said I had behaved inappropriately, to which I was like "I did, but I didn't. and I did and that is what I am trying to tell you" but also "so did he." Yet these things were ignored. And when she said, "There is something pathological to that," and I said "Thank you for acknowledging that." I am sorry to be rude but it makes me think they are kind of stupid. Or something.
but alas my new dose of drugs are kicking in and I am thinking I may have gone off track in my documenting this here insanity and the path to sanity (an illusion)... and now I shall retire to my bed, to edit maybe later , so lucky you are if you read this before because then you get to really see into the mind and reality of the rational crazy... goodnight.
Monday, November 4, 2019
Sunday, November 3, 2019
The Boxer
My aunt.
I am having a conversation with her. Trying to explain where I have been and why this last year. Though I have been physically absent for many family activities it is mostly a psychological explanation because I obviously have been some place psychologically strange this past year.
It is interesting to me the elements that different people will pick up on in my story. She is an intellectual and has worked in research at colleges for all her career that I know of. She picks up on the way my heart felt and the surging of chemicals. She knows something about this and knows what I am saying is real and possible. She finds it somewhat fascinating how I was physically effected by what was happening to me that seemed tied to the relationship with my neuropsychologist.
-She also knows about acid because she was a real, true, Woodstock-attending-hippy back in the day. We don't talk about that today but I find myself remembering a long passed conversation with her about the affects of acid in comparison to some of the highs I would feel with my mental health conditions. This is the buried story stuff that Dr. He had helped bring to the surface and that I initially feared he had dropped me for -with an "oh shit, she is one of those," kind of realization.
Coming back to today, as I am talking to my aunt, and she is adding some insight, and I am -as I stabilize- even still settling into realizations and understandings that I have felt and explored over the months but have fought and really was not able or willing to accept.
Aunt also points out, even before I say much about it, that the investigation was likely just a decoy to get me to say and do things that they could use against me or to justify themselves should they feel they needed to. It was a set up. She seems familiar with this type of practice. I wish I could remember the exact words she used, they were much more intelligent sounding, but that is the gist of it. My sister who works in prisons has said the same thing. She is familiar with how the psychologists can twist things to their favor.
Way back when, when I was convinced I was in love with my therapist and behaving like someone who has been groomed, I remember my sister telling me the that things he said were classic manipulations straight out of a players handbook. I knew it, but couldn't believe it in spite of the evidence. I was so broken and yet I still thought I was immune to being played like that. Plus it did not seem possible in that environment, he is so sweet and charming, everyone loves him, and I trusted him so very much... and I felt things so powerfully
... including yin and yang... I remember... including "I don't know what I can trust" .... and he how he could turn me away so easily even though "you broke me" (me) "I did not mean to" (he). Even though "I've tested your brain in ways you don't even know" (he) "I know. You have even tested how I feel about you" (me) followed by no reply from he. And even though he was "okay with being wrong" about me. Those things I felt as well... it is likely important to remember, even though I would rather not believe, they may have been significant evidence of foul play...
So at this moment in time as I am looking back I feel like a boxer,
beaten, broken, and bloodied by too many cheap shots when I went to the doctors in the first place.
At first they nurtured me and they were helping me to recover
but as my strength and confidence were returning
they saw in me the reason others had taken cheap shots
and decided that maybe they better also because in their misunderstanding of me and my manic superpowers they believed, if I ever wanted, I could take them down if I were to recover to my full capacities.
They feared they were no match if I had full strength since I was seeing the holes in their treatment before I even knew what I was saying and without even realizing I was pointing them out.
So they decided in the fear of their own insecurity and/or fraudulent practices that they had better keep me down
and they started throwing punches themselves and claiming it ethical treatment because I was a boxer before I came to them
and I had not told them so,
even though the blows to the head had caused me to forget.
So I am a boxer again
only this time beat down by the professionals that were supposed to help me up and that were supposed to help me be strong in this game.
The Boxer
I am a boxer, not by choice but because I have to be. I have to keep fighting to survive.
Mental illness, head injury... girl... Utah... middle child... ECN...
Extremely vulnerable fighters
who don't want to see or accept that they are vulnerable.
And this one, regardless of all these labels, is grateful for my own insanity, my own trials. Grateful to be strong enough, to be intelligent enough, and to be lucky enough to have so many things that are good and right in my life so that I can speak up and speak out and fight for fair treatment.
Not a boxer by choice. I'd rather be a lover, but I'll box until I burn out if that is the life I am meant to live
and I'll find beauty in that too.
I am having a conversation with her. Trying to explain where I have been and why this last year. Though I have been physically absent for many family activities it is mostly a psychological explanation because I obviously have been some place psychologically strange this past year.
It is interesting to me the elements that different people will pick up on in my story. She is an intellectual and has worked in research at colleges for all her career that I know of. She picks up on the way my heart felt and the surging of chemicals. She knows something about this and knows what I am saying is real and possible. She finds it somewhat fascinating how I was physically effected by what was happening to me that seemed tied to the relationship with my neuropsychologist.
-She also knows about acid because she was a real, true, Woodstock-attending-hippy back in the day. We don't talk about that today but I find myself remembering a long passed conversation with her about the affects of acid in comparison to some of the highs I would feel with my mental health conditions. This is the buried story stuff that Dr. He had helped bring to the surface and that I initially feared he had dropped me for -with an "oh shit, she is one of those," kind of realization.
Coming back to today, as I am talking to my aunt, and she is adding some insight, and I am -as I stabilize- even still settling into realizations and understandings that I have felt and explored over the months but have fought and really was not able or willing to accept.
Aunt also points out, even before I say much about it, that the investigation was likely just a decoy to get me to say and do things that they could use against me or to justify themselves should they feel they needed to. It was a set up. She seems familiar with this type of practice. I wish I could remember the exact words she used, they were much more intelligent sounding, but that is the gist of it. My sister who works in prisons has said the same thing. She is familiar with how the psychologists can twist things to their favor.
Way back when, when I was convinced I was in love with my therapist and behaving like someone who has been groomed, I remember my sister telling me the that things he said were classic manipulations straight out of a players handbook. I knew it, but couldn't believe it in spite of the evidence. I was so broken and yet I still thought I was immune to being played like that. Plus it did not seem possible in that environment, he is so sweet and charming, everyone loves him, and I trusted him so very much... and I felt things so powerfully
... including yin and yang... I remember... including "I don't know what I can trust" .... and he how he could turn me away so easily even though "you broke me" (me) "I did not mean to" (he). Even though "I've tested your brain in ways you don't even know" (he) "I know. You have even tested how I feel about you" (me) followed by no reply from he. And even though he was "okay with being wrong" about me. Those things I felt as well... it is likely important to remember, even though I would rather not believe, they may have been significant evidence of foul play...
So at this moment in time as I am looking back I feel like a boxer,
beaten, broken, and bloodied by too many cheap shots when I went to the doctors in the first place.
At first they nurtured me and they were helping me to recover
but as my strength and confidence were returning
they saw in me the reason others had taken cheap shots
and decided that maybe they better also because in their misunderstanding of me and my manic superpowers they believed, if I ever wanted, I could take them down if I were to recover to my full capacities.
They feared they were no match if I had full strength since I was seeing the holes in their treatment before I even knew what I was saying and without even realizing I was pointing them out.
So they decided in the fear of their own insecurity and/or fraudulent practices that they had better keep me down
and they started throwing punches themselves and claiming it ethical treatment because I was a boxer before I came to them
and I had not told them so,
even though the blows to the head had caused me to forget.
So I am a boxer again
only this time beat down by the professionals that were supposed to help me up and that were supposed to help me be strong in this game.
The Boxer
I am a boxer, not by choice but because I have to be. I have to keep fighting to survive.
Mental illness, head injury... girl... Utah... middle child... ECN...
Extremely vulnerable fighters
who don't want to see or accept that they are vulnerable.
And this one, regardless of all these labels, is grateful for my own insanity, my own trials. Grateful to be strong enough, to be intelligent enough, and to be lucky enough to have so many things that are good and right in my life so that I can speak up and speak out and fight for fair treatment.
Not a boxer by choice. I'd rather be a lover, but I'll box until I burn out if that is the life I am meant to live
and I'll find beauty in that too.
Patterns of Injury
My legs are deliciously sore. Because I haven't been doing my physical therapy and I have been lazy in exercising.
My new physical therapist had me stop running until we could build up the lower back and SI joint that the doctors are thinking is the real problem with my hip and locking pains. Last week I got to start running again, but only twice and at broken intervals of 2 minutes. Then he did a gate analysis on my run. I was on a treadmill so that likely made my gate different.
A few interesting things were found:
1. I am taking too long of strides and this can be problematic. This is interesting because as a competitive runner in high school it was always about lengthening your stride, but now the goal, or at least my goal is to get more steps per minute. We used a metronome to make this happen. Apparently 160 is what is best for me to decrease risk of injury.
2. I am too high. My stride that is. I am almost jumping in my stride. The more steps per minute help bring me back down so I am spending more energy going forward instead of up. This is interesting because it also reminds me of high school running when I learned to pump my arms straight, breaking the natural cross-over pattern people's arms follow when running, thus putting your energy into moving forward instead of side to side. This too high is also rather comical because... well, I am too high and needed a mood stabilizer to bring me down so that I had the energy to move forward.
3. I swing my right leg. This is very strange and I am not sure how or why I do this at the point of the gate analysis, but as I have run since I have reflected on this a bit. I feel that my injury had my foot loose like an over-stretched elastic that no longer returns to its normal size. I remember getting out of the car after the car accident that injured this ankle and feeling like one side of my body was now longer than the other. So it makes sense that while running I would feel a need to swing this longer over stretched leg. I have been doing it for so long now that it will take conscious effort to correct. This is so true of all the adaptive behaviors we do.
I have been fighting to understand my mood instabilities and discrepancies and trying to take care of it myself for so long that it is taking significant effort to correct some of these behaviors. I don't really need to work so hard to understand anymore because I think I understand it really well now but rather I need to figure out how to stop trying to figure it out because that is such a ingrained habit now. Yet that is not nearly as significant or as difficult as learning to not try to do it all on my own. That part is tricky. Especially since self reliance and independence is a highly valued trait in my culture and society.
What is also interesting about this gate problem and the correcting of it is that I am relearning things that have come very naturally to me and I used to be very talented at, but that were dramatically effected by an initially overlooked and seemingly insignificant injury that was left untreated for too long.
This is a pattern that is common in many ways and many lives.
But what I love about this new pain is that I feel muscles alive and working in ways they have not felt in a very long time. Somehow shortening my stride is making those muscles come back to life. And that makes me happy even if it also causes some pain.
My new physical therapist had me stop running until we could build up the lower back and SI joint that the doctors are thinking is the real problem with my hip and locking pains. Last week I got to start running again, but only twice and at broken intervals of 2 minutes. Then he did a gate analysis on my run. I was on a treadmill so that likely made my gate different.
A few interesting things were found:
1. I am taking too long of strides and this can be problematic. This is interesting because as a competitive runner in high school it was always about lengthening your stride, but now the goal, or at least my goal is to get more steps per minute. We used a metronome to make this happen. Apparently 160 is what is best for me to decrease risk of injury.
2. I am too high. My stride that is. I am almost jumping in my stride. The more steps per minute help bring me back down so I am spending more energy going forward instead of up. This is interesting because it also reminds me of high school running when I learned to pump my arms straight, breaking the natural cross-over pattern people's arms follow when running, thus putting your energy into moving forward instead of side to side. This too high is also rather comical because... well, I am too high and needed a mood stabilizer to bring me down so that I had the energy to move forward.
3. I swing my right leg. This is very strange and I am not sure how or why I do this at the point of the gate analysis, but as I have run since I have reflected on this a bit. I feel that my injury had my foot loose like an over-stretched elastic that no longer returns to its normal size. I remember getting out of the car after the car accident that injured this ankle and feeling like one side of my body was now longer than the other. So it makes sense that while running I would feel a need to swing this longer over stretched leg. I have been doing it for so long now that it will take conscious effort to correct. This is so true of all the adaptive behaviors we do.
I have been fighting to understand my mood instabilities and discrepancies and trying to take care of it myself for so long that it is taking significant effort to correct some of these behaviors. I don't really need to work so hard to understand anymore because I think I understand it really well now but rather I need to figure out how to stop trying to figure it out because that is such a ingrained habit now. Yet that is not nearly as significant or as difficult as learning to not try to do it all on my own. That part is tricky. Especially since self reliance and independence is a highly valued trait in my culture and society.
What is also interesting about this gate problem and the correcting of it is that I am relearning things that have come very naturally to me and I used to be very talented at, but that were dramatically effected by an initially overlooked and seemingly insignificant injury that was left untreated for too long.
This is a pattern that is common in many ways and many lives.
But what I love about this new pain is that I feel muscles alive and working in ways they have not felt in a very long time. Somehow shortening my stride is making those muscles come back to life. And that makes me happy even if it also causes some pain.
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