I swear to god I would give body parts to be surrounded by people who understand that my crazy is a real serious permanent condition, and that I don't need their denial when I've got enough of my own thanks. At least a kidney. My brain is trying to kill me and I have to field idiots telling me I don't seem mental or it's probably just the fucking weather. If platitudes were Prozac I'd never have to fill another prescription.
In emotional Safe Mode
May. 17th, 2011 08:23 pmThis weekend, there was a death*, a birth**, a wedding*** and some fighting****.
I'm currently feeling fairly detached from everything. This is probably for the avoidance of explosions.
* One of the little kids from karate. One of those very sudden inexplicable things.
** Family friend, emergency c-section.
*** Old school friend. First church wedding I've ever been to.
**** Karate competition. Got my ass kicked. Very very full of adrenaline afterwards. Didn't help that I found out about the kid just before.
I'm currently feeling fairly detached from everything. This is probably for the avoidance of explosions.
* One of the little kids from karate. One of those very sudden inexplicable things.
** Family friend, emergency c-section.
*** Old school friend. First church wedding I've ever been to.
**** Karate competition. Got my ass kicked. Very very full of adrenaline afterwards. Didn't help that I found out about the kid just before.
Evil overlords are evil
Apr. 14th, 2011 11:48 pmVia ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skibbley: Equalities Act is being debated on the Red Tape Challenge website. Because ensuring equality for the vulnerable and stigmatised is OMG RED TAPE BUREAUCRACY POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD.
Particularly since the Equalities Act, er, pulled together all the different pre-existing legislation. It was not, in fact, a brand new Act bringing in a bunch of new stuff. Fucking morons probably should not be talking about scrapping something if they don't know what it is.
skibbley: Equalities Act is being debated on the Red Tape Challenge website. Because ensuring equality for the vulnerable and stigmatised is OMG RED TAPE BUREAUCRACY POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD. Particularly since the Equalities Act, er, pulled together all the different pre-existing legislation. It was not, in fact, a brand new Act bringing in a bunch of new stuff. Fucking morons probably should not be talking about scrapping something if they don't know what it is.
Amazingly productive day
Mar. 21st, 2011 07:31 pmIf there's anybody who reads my LJ who doesn't have some kind of mental or chronic illness, it's probably not clear what all the fuss is about. But for me, this is one of the best days I've had in a long time, and I've done a bunch of stuff I've been meaning to get around to. There's still stuff that needs doing - I didn't get around to picking up my prescription, for instance - but still, this was a damn good day. Recently, if I'd managed one of these things, I was calling it a success.
( Stuff I did! YAY! Go team me! )
Phew! Now I think I'm going to bed.
* Bad thing: discovering the raspberry bush you want to save is thoroughly tangled up with couch grass you want to fatally kill very hard to death until it dies of it and isn't alive any more.
Worse thing: starting the uprooting and untangling process with your bare hands, and finding the large and thriving nest of red** ants in there.
** Since I didn't get stung, I'm thinking they were actually yellow ants, which are less aggressive. Still startled the hell out of me.
( Stuff I did! YAY! Go team me! )
Phew! Now I think I'm going to bed.
* Bad thing: discovering the raspberry bush you want to save is thoroughly tangled up with couch grass you want to fatally kill very hard to death until it dies of it and isn't alive any more.
Worse thing: starting the uprooting and untangling process with your bare hands, and finding the large and thriving nest of red** ants in there.
** Since I didn't get stung, I'm thinking they were actually yellow ants, which are less aggressive. Still startled the hell out of me.
I always figured it was scaremongering
Mar. 4th, 2011 08:26 pmThe internet hadn't hurt my attention span. I was as patient as I'd ever been (not very). Nor did I jump to conclusions on insufficient evidence.
Then I spent a very frustrating hour playing Don't Shoot the Puppy.
Then I spent a very frustrating hour playing Don't Shoot the Puppy.
I am, to quote Christopher Brookmyre, suffering from a condition referred to in the medical journals as "all fucked up".
I'm just all stressed and antsy and discombobulated. I think I overestimated my caffeine tolerance today - it has been creeping up, but not to the point where I can drink three cups of sod-the-teaspoon-just-pour-it-in coffee when I'm working at the most sleepy and tedious campus and I've nothing to distract me. So that hasn't helped. But generally, I'm all... eh. Karate helped, but the high from exercise is a temporary solution. I'm so stressed out about the things I'm not doing that it's stopping me from starting to do them. And I know the way to deal with this: a little bit at a time, focus on what I can do rather than what I can't, ditch the idea that if I can't do everything then I can't do anything. I know. Come on, girl.
It's just difficult, again, and I'm tired. I think it's unreasonable how I have to keep doing things like cleaning the house, shaving my head, weeding the vegetables... can't I just do it once? I could manage to do it once.
Eh. </whine>.
I'm just all stressed and antsy and discombobulated. I think I overestimated my caffeine tolerance today - it has been creeping up, but not to the point where I can drink three cups of sod-the-teaspoon-just-pour-it-in coffee when I'm working at the most sleepy and tedious campus and I've nothing to distract me. So that hasn't helped. But generally, I'm all... eh. Karate helped, but the high from exercise is a temporary solution. I'm so stressed out about the things I'm not doing that it's stopping me from starting to do them. And I know the way to deal with this: a little bit at a time, focus on what I can do rather than what I can't, ditch the idea that if I can't do everything then I can't do anything. I know. Come on, girl.
It's just difficult, again, and I'm tired. I think it's unreasonable how I have to keep doing things like cleaning the house, shaving my head, weeding the vegetables... can't I just do it once? I could manage to do it once.
Eh. </whine>.
I want a real feeling, dammit!
Feb. 16th, 2011 10:44 pmSo today I realised that my feeling of cranky and frustrated and generally out-of-sorts is exactly 28 days since I last felt like this. D'oh. Apparently, it really is PMT.
I swear, once upon a time I had actual emotions. Now I just have hormones and bad brain chemistry. It's kind of depressing.
I swear, once upon a time I had actual emotions. Now I just have hormones and bad brain chemistry. It's kind of depressing.
Who's been in Waterstones recently? It's bloody horrible! It used to be this nice quiet soothing place I went to because I could commune with the books and ignore people. But now the staff pounce on you the moment you get in the door. "Have you found what you're looking for?" Well, no, because I wasn't looking for the doorframe or the welcome mat. Gimme a minute! Then they hover behind you and ask follow-up questions. It's okay; I'm not going to steal anything. Please fuck off out of my personal space now. Sheesh.
Today I have to go get my head shrunk in the morning and my cervix scraped in the afternoon. Shoulda registered with a dentist; I could've gone for the hat-trick.
This evening I think I will kill zombies on the PS2 and drink.
Nope! This evening it's hot, violent chicks on wheels, aka roller derby. Day's looking up already.
Nope! This evening it's hot, violent chicks on wheels, aka roller derby. Day's looking up already.
The oddest things trigger me.
Jan. 26th, 2011 08:26 amI don't know if this is a reasonable thing to be bothered by. I absolutely cannot stand training courses about communication and interpersonal skills, especially when I'm quite clearly the only mental in the village. I need to stop going on them, because they fuck up my mood and my day.
There's just far too much talk of how people think and what people do and how people communicate. And, being your friendly neighbourhood nutcase, I don't think like that or do that or communicate like that. And so for several hours, I get to be reminded, constantly, that I'm a freak and I'm doing it wrong. That I don't work like normal people work. That, as Elizabeth Wurtzel puts it, I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and I should've been sent back long ago.
The behaviour you see as friendly and encouraging I find creepy and intrusive. There's talk about how they don't understand why people from different cultures would want to segregate themselves, and I'm thinking, well, it's probably for the same reason that I don't like hanging out with non-crazy people. They don't share my experiences or assumptions or shorthand. They don't understand my needs. They march over my triggers and hit all my buttons. They're exhausting, and why the hell would I want to be exhausted by my social life?
For example, they were talking about eye contact, what it means when someone won't make eye contact. And after this long list of negative meanings, I piped up, "Or maybe they just have autism or mental health problems?" Because I find eye contact exhausting. I don't understand the rules for it. I overthink and obsess and panic. And when I get stressed, I stop being able to interpret sensory input correctly - for instance, when my agoraphobia's kicking in, I don't experience a crowd of people; I just experience colours and shapes and noises coming towards me.
So when I'm stressed, nervous or just uncertain, I will drop eye contact. I might start doodling on a bit of paper, or picking at my hands or, if I can get away with it, knitting. It's not that I'm not listening to you; it's that I'm having to concentrate on your words extra-hard and so I don't need your face distracting me. I'm not bored; I find simple repetitive motions soothing, and I can multitask conversation + simple movement a lot better than I can multitask conversation + incoming panic attack. I can't follow your words and your face any more than you can follow two simultaneous conversations in different languages. You might understand both languages individually, but at the same time, they just become nonsense.
And it is intermittent. Some days and situations are better than others. I can switch it on and off, up to a point, at the cost of my finite energy and emotional resilience. One day I might be sitting in the middle of the room taking part in the discussion; the next day I will be sitting as near to the exit as possible, scowling furiously at my notes. And it's nothing to do with you.
I think this is another beserk button for me, the notion that anything I do out of the ordinary must be some kind of message to someone else. No. Crazy is supremely self-absorbed and when I'm trying to fight a panic attack, everybody else in the room could catch fire for all I care. Managing my brain is a full-time job and I simply cannot spare the energy to act normal at the same time. Dear, fragile, well-meaning, easily-offended, non-disabled folks: it is not all about you.
There's just far too much talk of how people think and what people do and how people communicate. And, being your friendly neighbourhood nutcase, I don't think like that or do that or communicate like that. And so for several hours, I get to be reminded, constantly, that I'm a freak and I'm doing it wrong. That I don't work like normal people work. That, as Elizabeth Wurtzel puts it, I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and I should've been sent back long ago.
The behaviour you see as friendly and encouraging I find creepy and intrusive. There's talk about how they don't understand why people from different cultures would want to segregate themselves, and I'm thinking, well, it's probably for the same reason that I don't like hanging out with non-crazy people. They don't share my experiences or assumptions or shorthand. They don't understand my needs. They march over my triggers and hit all my buttons. They're exhausting, and why the hell would I want to be exhausted by my social life?
For example, they were talking about eye contact, what it means when someone won't make eye contact. And after this long list of negative meanings, I piped up, "Or maybe they just have autism or mental health problems?" Because I find eye contact exhausting. I don't understand the rules for it. I overthink and obsess and panic. And when I get stressed, I stop being able to interpret sensory input correctly - for instance, when my agoraphobia's kicking in, I don't experience a crowd of people; I just experience colours and shapes and noises coming towards me.
So when I'm stressed, nervous or just uncertain, I will drop eye contact. I might start doodling on a bit of paper, or picking at my hands or, if I can get away with it, knitting. It's not that I'm not listening to you; it's that I'm having to concentrate on your words extra-hard and so I don't need your face distracting me. I'm not bored; I find simple repetitive motions soothing, and I can multitask conversation + simple movement a lot better than I can multitask conversation + incoming panic attack. I can't follow your words and your face any more than you can follow two simultaneous conversations in different languages. You might understand both languages individually, but at the same time, they just become nonsense.
And it is intermittent. Some days and situations are better than others. I can switch it on and off, up to a point, at the cost of my finite energy and emotional resilience. One day I might be sitting in the middle of the room taking part in the discussion; the next day I will be sitting as near to the exit as possible, scowling furiously at my notes. And it's nothing to do with you.
I think this is another beserk button for me, the notion that anything I do out of the ordinary must be some kind of message to someone else. No. Crazy is supremely self-absorbed and when I'm trying to fight a panic attack, everybody else in the room could catch fire for all I care. Managing my brain is a full-time job and I simply cannot spare the energy to act normal at the same time. Dear, fragile, well-meaning, easily-offended, non-disabled folks: it is not all about you.
I don't know why, but I've been dwelling on the end of my last bout of counselling.
( Read more... )
And I just feel tired, and depressed, and like any freaking time I ask for help someone just sees that point of weakness and goes for it.
At this point, I'd like to make a request of people going into the mental health professions. Please, get your shit together first. You should be less clingy and needy than your client. You should take things less personally than your client. And if you're going for my squishy bits, use needles, not fishhooks, so I don't tear bits out and leave them all over the carpet when I try to get away.
( Read more... )
And I just feel tired, and depressed, and like any freaking time I ask for help someone just sees that point of weakness and goes for it.
At this point, I'd like to make a request of people going into the mental health professions. Please, get your shit together first. You should be less clingy and needy than your client. You should take things less personally than your client. And if you're going for my squishy bits, use needles, not fishhooks, so I don't tear bits out and leave them all over the carpet when I try to get away.
Probably should've done this at the time
Nov. 4th, 2010 08:00 amSo at karate class last Thursday, I got kicked in the spine by someone much heavier and stronger than me. Like, direct hit, time slowing down while I wonder if I'm gonna be walking after this. It's been aching all week, and I haven't been able to lift all the stuff or move in all the directions I usually can. This morning Sensei ordered me to go to the doctor.
I hate going to the doctor. I'm sick of the sight of them, and I'm always expecting to be told a) there's nothing wrong with me and I just want attention or b) if there is something wrong with me, it's my own fault. I mean, after I passed out and cut my chin open, I hid in my room for a few hours before going to a walk-in centre. Where they said, "And it didn't occur to you to go to A&E?" I said, honestly, "Er, no." And then the woman put me in a taxi to A&E because she didn't trust me not to bolt. *shrug*
I hate going to the doctor. I'm sick of the sight of them, and I'm always expecting to be told a) there's nothing wrong with me and I just want attention or b) if there is something wrong with me, it's my own fault. I mean, after I passed out and cut my chin open, I hid in my room for a few hours before going to a walk-in centre. Where they said, "And it didn't occur to you to go to A&E?" I said, honestly, "Er, no." And then the woman put me in a taxi to A&E because she didn't trust me not to bolt. *shrug*
So yeah. Argument from analogy is for people too stupid to comprehend abstract thought. Which, at last count, was almost every mental health professional I've ever met, so hey. Allow me to explain why cognitive approaches do not work for me and, by extension, why I dumped my counsellor.
I'm riding a unicycle. While doing a headstand. I'm pedalling with my hands and juggling chainsaws with my feet. On a tightrope. For years.
Me: Can I get a safety line?
Them: Why are you thinking so negatively? Don't you want to balance? You won't need a safety line if you try harder!
Me: Fuckin' Cirque du Soleil get a safety line grumble grumble. Whatever. I'm getting kind of tired. How far is it to the next platform? Can I have a rest when I get there?
Them: We can offer you a taster session on Standing Upright For Beginners!
The Point: Screw this, I'm outta here, flying right over your heads.
I'm riding a unicycle. While doing a headstand. I'm pedalling with my hands and juggling chainsaws with my feet. On a tightrope. For years.
Me: Can I get a safety line?
Them: Why are you thinking so negatively? Don't you want to balance? You won't need a safety line if you try harder!
Me: Fuckin' Cirque du Soleil get a safety line grumble grumble. Whatever. I'm getting kind of tired. How far is it to the next platform? Can I have a rest when I get there?
Them: We can offer you a taster session on Standing Upright For Beginners!
The Point: Screw this, I'm outta here, flying right over your heads.
Longer post when keyboard works
Oct. 27th, 2010 09:38 pmI hope Chris Grayling gets a lifelong, invisible, highly-unpredictable, stigmatised, potentially-fatal, FUCKING MISERABLE illness. I genuinely do. Give Major Depression a whirl, you arsehole.
And when I'm done rolling on the floor laughing, I'll probably be offended and upset and whatnot. But for now, I'm Lorna the ROFLator.
So, today I discovered that my counsellor, the person I go to to try and come to terms with the chronic mental illness that might kill me, has a problem with mental illness. Actually, I'd say my soon-to-be-ex-counsellor is part of the problem with mental illness.
I'd been suspecting that his view of depression and mine were not the same, given his use of weasel words like "problem" and "issues", and his obvious discomfort when I used words like "crazy" and "brain disease". Today I managed to get his view out of him, with a bit of poking and acting more innocent and ignorant than I in fact was.
Apparently I am not crazy, because I'm not *strange wobbly arms-and-torso gesture*. (He has in the past said that I don't "act crazy", which makes me worry, if the people in his life stare at the floor and cry uncontrollably and that's somehow normal.)
I claimed ignorance.
He explained that crazy is schizophrenia, which is serious.
I pointed out that someone with depression is more likely to kill themselves than someone with schizophrenia.*
He said - wait for it, because this is a good one - that schizophrenics kill other people. ( Read more... )
So, today I discovered that my counsellor, the person I go to to try and come to terms with the chronic mental illness that might kill me, has a problem with mental illness. Actually, I'd say my soon-to-be-ex-counsellor is part of the problem with mental illness.
I'd been suspecting that his view of depression and mine were not the same, given his use of weasel words like "problem" and "issues", and his obvious discomfort when I used words like "crazy" and "brain disease". Today I managed to get his view out of him, with a bit of poking and acting more innocent and ignorant than I in fact was.
Apparently I am not crazy, because I'm not *strange wobbly arms-and-torso gesture*. (He has in the past said that I don't "act crazy", which makes me worry, if the people in his life stare at the floor and cry uncontrollably and that's somehow normal.)
I claimed ignorance.
He explained that crazy is schizophrenia, which is serious.
I pointed out that someone with depression is more likely to kill themselves than someone with schizophrenia.*
He said - wait for it, because this is a good one - that schizophrenics kill other people. ( Read more... )
Oh thank god
Sep. 30th, 2010 11:25 pmThe guy who'd shut Birmingham city centre by preparing to jump off a bridge for 29 hours has been dragged down.
After over 24 hours, I suspect "seized an opportunity" means "he fell asleep".
Hopefully the arrest was a formality and the poor bastard'll get the help he needs.
After over 24 hours, I suspect "seized an opportunity" means "he fell asleep".
Hopefully the arrest was a formality and the poor bastard'll get the help he needs.
Shorter last post:
It's sort of getting to the point where yes, I'm sure you're sorry you trod on my toe, and no, I know you'd never do such a thing on purpose, and yes, I'm happy to forgive you, and no, I won't hold a grudge or anything, and yes, I know you're deeply hurt by the idea that there could be any malice behind your actions, but please, will you STOP FUCKING TALKING ABOUT IT AND JUST GET OFF MY DAMN TOE?!?!?!?!
It's sort of getting to the point where yes, I'm sure you're sorry you trod on my toe, and no, I know you'd never do such a thing on purpose, and yes, I'm happy to forgive you, and no, I won't hold a grudge or anything, and yes, I know you're deeply hurt by the idea that there could be any malice behind your actions, but please, will you STOP FUCKING TALKING ABOUT IT AND JUST GET OFF MY DAMN TOE?!?!?!?!
I'M HUNGRY AND I WANT COFFEE
Sep. 28th, 2010 07:58 amStupid blood tests.
I hope they're not expecting me to be cheerful and friendly.
LORNA HUNGRY AND UNDERCAFFEINATED. LORNA SMASH.
I hope they're not expecting me to be cheerful and friendly.
LORNA HUNGRY AND UNDERCAFFEINATED. LORNA SMASH.
