Sleep and Mental Health

Bones

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These are two things that are intrinsically linked.  The better quality sleep you have, the better your overall mental health.  And, typically, the better your overall mental health, the better quality sleep you have.

And yet sleep is often the most difficult thing to get in sufficient quantities or quality to maintain good mental health.  It’s often one of the first things affected.  Either you sleep more, or you sleep less.  Or the quality just goes to crap.  You’re able to track these things with sleep tracking apps (my favourite is Sleep Cycle, but that’s mainly because I used to use it years ago and I don’t like change) which give you a rough idea of how deeply you’ve slept, and the length of time you’ve slept.  Its main use is looking blearily at it first thing in the morning wondering why on earth I feel like absolute crap and seeing very little deep sleep and going ‘oh, okay, that’s why’.

There are things I’ve found to improve sleep quality and quantity.  One of them is dietary supplements.  I’ve found magnesium (taken at night – I don’t know if this actually has an affect) calms the nerves and allows better quality sleep over a long period of time.  Taking magnesium was the first step I took in my walk to wellness.  I’ve also just started taking sublingual B12 drops, so we’ll see if that helps the muscle fatigue and aches and resistance to relaxation that plagues me.

Other than those two, I’ve found that I am able to fall asleep on the couch (not nap, no, this is proper sleep) when I have Forensic Files on the TV at a very specific volume.  I apparently can no longer fall asleep in bed unless I have either the amazing human being or the amazing dog on / in the bed with me, so on evenings where amazing human being is doing his amazing human thing past my bedtime … I don’t go to bed.  I put Forensic Files on, flip my hood over my face, and fall asleep on the couch.  It works a lot better than trying to fall asleep in bed.  And, bonus, I know I can zonk out early if I need to catch up on a bit of sleep.

Sometimes when sleep is being insanely stubborn, I’ll fall back on guided meditation to put me to sleep.  It’s important to find the right guided meditation for you – some voices are going to agitate you, and aren’t going to sit right.  Others deliver it in the wrong way.  I prefer male voices, mainly because my ears are incredibly sensitive to treble, and I get very stressed when I’m trying to find something to soothe me and it just makes my ears hurt.

I’m not yet at the stage where I’m contemplating medication to help sleep, but I know of a lot of people who are, and who do.  It’s important to note that if you need that much help to get to sleep, you need that much help to get you to sleep.

And now it’s time to fall asleep to Forensic Files, because I slept like crap last night.

Processing Trauma In Dreams

Bones

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Dreams have long been touted as insights into your deep psyche, with a myriad of sites and experts claiming they can interpret your dreams and tell you … well, what you’re thinking, how your life is panning, and possibly even your future.

And it’s not all bollocks.

I’ll often find myself dreaming of spiders when I’m overly stressed.  Or that my car’s brakes don’t fully work – they sometimes slow the car down but never quite stop it, and sometimes they just don’t work at all – when I’m feeling like life has swept me up and I can’t slow down.

Last night I had a series of dreams.  There were five distinct ones.

In the first, I was loved and cherished, and I improved people’s lives by going full aspie on a water spirit who had people in its thrall (it’s not like there was a negative impact on them, just that they’d waste a lot of time in its thrall splashing around in its waters because it wanted the company).  It was so flattered that I was taking an unreasonably intense interest in what it was doing and what it was that it stopped the thrall and we sat and talked for hours and it realised it liked conversation more than splashy company.

The second one involved a frisbee, a stolen prototype helicopter, monster robots and a toy world warehouse.  There was a lot of screaming from me, and a lot of very creative piloting (of the suddenly small enough to fit between toy boxes and through open-backed shelving helicopter).

The third involved bears.  I couldn’t get the door shut and locked, and there were bears.  I finally got the door shut and locked properly (it required a huge shove and a perfectly timed key turn), then ran around making sure all the windows and doors were locked and the blinds were pulled so they couldn’t see in.  This was actually related to a conversation about Alaska and Canada and the bears and the fact that I won’t be able to go tramping out there without a big fuckoff gun because bears.

The fourth and fifth … well I’m not entirely sure which order they came in.  One involved It.  I’m starting to realise that a lot of Its behaviour, especially around sex, was abusive.  In this dream I told It he could take his blue balls and wank off, I wasn’t responsible for it.

The other … the other I’ve just realised is me speaking back about my sexual abuse to my abuser.  It and Thing (as that person will now be known) are two different people.  Very similar people, but definitely two different ones.  They were, in fact, best friends.  They suited each other well.  Both were self absorbed, showed little empathy for others, and were largely sexist.  They joked, they said they were joking, but their actions always said otherwise.

Mind you, I never realised this until this year.

So this part of my dream.  This final, crucial part of my dream.  I was at work.  I wasn’t at my current work, I was somewhere else … not entirely sure where, but I was in an office and I was working.  There was a loud male colleague over the other way, a real jokester, and he’d leer at me.  I got up to do some work at one of the benches.  He got up and came past and stood behind me as he reached for the printing next to me and ground his crotch against me.

This is what Thing did.  At parties we had at our house, he would get drunk and then pester me to give me a massage because he “gives great massages” and later because I “loved his massages”.  I’d already been conditioned by It to agree, to do what I was asked to do, to do what I was told and to not make a scene.  I’d inevitably agree.  We’d then go to the room I shared with It, I would lie face down on the bed, he’d insist I take my top off and try to convince me to take my bra off (that one never worked), and he’d give me a massage.  The first few were actually really great massages.  It was only later that he started to press his erection (in pants) against my ass and rub while giving me a massage.  I would wait a few minutes (so as not to be rude, how laughable) and then say ‘that’s great, thanks Thing’, and I’d put my top back on and we’d go.  Much later, he’d grab me by the waist during parties and sit me on his lap and grind his erection against my ass.  I’d escape pretty quickly then.

He breathed heavily.  I still panic when there is a male heavy breather around.

So back to the dream.  This ‘colleague’ ground his crotch against my arse and then sauntered back to his desk with his printing.  I was furious.  I held the end of the bench, then I went and sat down, and then I thought, no, I’m going to tell him that what he did was inappropriate and if he did anything similar again I would report him for sexual assault and pursue him to the full extent of the law.

So I did.  I got up and I went over there and I leaned on his desk and he smirked.  I told him that what he did was unacceptable and if he did anything similar, I would report him for sexual assault to HR, and then I would file charges against him.  And he started laughing and making light of it and started turning his chair away from me to laugh with his other colleagues and make a big joke of it.  So I grabbed the back of his chair and spun him around to face me fully, and told him in a much louder voice (which always carries in an open plan office) that he did not get to laugh this off, or make light of it.  That grinding his dick against my arse was sexual assault, and I would pursue him to the fullest extent of the law, and I would make sure he was locked up.  That what he did was serious and absolutely inappropriate to do to anyone.

His little beady eyes glared up at me as I woke up after delivering my grand and impassioned speech.

It’s been on my mind all day.  I’ve been turning it over and over again, trying to understand what it was.  It was only this evening that I realised that dream was me confronting Thing and not allowing him to dismiss his actions, to dismiss his impact on me, to minimise what he did or make light of it.

Once It is no longer a part of my life and I am fully in the clear of It, I will no longer have to pretend to like Thing should I ever see him again at mutual friend functions.  I will be able let mutual friends know that Thing and It have traumatised me and abused me – probably not the details, but I can let them know in no uncertain terms that these two creatures have seriously harmed me.  I won’t have to pretend.  About any of it.

The Problem With Spending

Bones

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I just bought something.  For myself.  I didn’t need it – it’ll make things easier, but I didn’t need it, and I didn’t need it now.  There was a sale on, it was a bit cheaper than it would normally be, and I could afford it.

But the conditioning from an early age – I was an anxious and empathetic middle child, and mother’s face got so pinchy when I needed new shoes or clothes and I hated it – and the decade of abuse from a narcissist obsessed with money and the perception of power, going straight into being an impoverished student with too many animals, has meant that I cannot spend money.  If I spend money on myself bad things will happen and I won’t be able to afford to pay for the things I have to pay for.

Because that’s what would happen.  I would budget, make sure we could afford everything, give myself nothing to spend, and he would spend it all and fuck the budget.  My mind damn near exploded when I had a problem that would require financial input this year … and I realised that I could pay for it and no one would fuck up my budget so I couldn’t.  But I still couldn’t spend money on myself.

So I, understandably, panicked.  I felt guilty.  I felt awful!  I’d just spent money that didn’t need to be spent!

A friend of mine, who experiences these same issues, suggested that I budget in ‘my money’, the money I’m allowed to put aside and spend on whatever I want and is separate from my savings.  I will definitely start doing that, because I have difficulty with the ‘savings’ distinction.  I have difficulty identifying what it’s there for, but now I will have two ‘savings’.  One is for emergencies.  The other is for me to spend on myself.  On whatever I want.

The Abuser Returns

Bones

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I am quite fortunate in that my abuser now lives in a completely different country.  This means I don’t have to worry about It (I’ve decided to call my abuser It from here-on-in) ‘being in the area’.  I don’t have to worry about It bumping into any of my friends in our city of birth.  I don’t have to worry about bumping into It when I’m in the city, either.  This keeps my stress levels relatively low.  I can have my own life, and feed It very select bits of my life.

It’s going to be in the country.  It’s returning for a brief period of time.  Even though It will be half a country away, I’m in a state of dissociated panic.  I am under no illusions that It can find where I live with only a cursory look, were It so minded, and I am not so far away that It could not “visit”, despite It only being in the country for a few days.

I am really hoping Its narcissistic arrogance, and the fact that in order to find my address, It would have to access a website that has more negative implications for It than for me, will prevent It from looking me up.

I do not want It coming near me or the life I’ve made for myself.  I still have to ‘make nice’ with It, and I don’t think I could face-to-face.  I think I would just start screaming, and I’m pretty sure that’s not considered a ‘suitable greeting’ for someone you are supposedly ‘amicable’ with.  I had nightmares last night about It.  For the first time in months It was in my dreams again, tormenting me.

I will need to be very careful to get a lot of sleep over the next week or so, and do nice things that involve staying inside and basically hiding.  Whenever I’m outside I’m going to be on extreme high-alert for It, so distraction is going to be key to surviving the coming week.

I Did Too Much At The Wrong Time

Bones

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I did too much at the wrong time.  I knew I was starting to come down with something, but the weather was so lovely and I had things to do … so I did too much.

Last night I got home exhausted but kept on doing things.  I didn’t dive into bed like I should have.  Instead, I did a bit of (necessary) adulting correspondence, some crocheting, and actively watched some TV.  Then I napped on the couch, which never quite equates to ‘restful sleep’.

As a result, today I feel rather like death warmed up and chucked through the flu.  My workmate took one look at me and said “you look terrible, go home” so, at just past 10.30, that’s exactly what I did.

Now I’m going to lie in bed with the windows open just a bit to let in the wonderful fresh air, I’m going to put Forensic Files on, and I’m going to sleep.  Hopefully one (or many) of the furry horde will join me in bed and I’ll have a cuddle buddy (or two).  But it’s a timely reminder to pay attention to what my body is saying, and to really pay attention when I feel like I’m coming down with something.

Always take care of yourself, even if it means not ‘making the most’ of a sunny weekend.  You can always make the most of a sunny weekend by napping.  You don’t have to go out and do what other people say you should do.