Tag: depression

The Difference Of Intent

Bones

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Intent.  It’s something you can never directly see, and yet it impacts all actions.  It’s something I’ve been thinking on a lot these past few months.

Because the amazing human being in my life does some of the same things that He did – not many, but enough for me to have occasional flashbacks.  The difference between the two is as clear as night and day, but certainly not something I would ever have seen at the time.  It is a difference in intent.

Where He supported my interests because they reflected well on Him, this amazing human supports my interests because I’m interested in them.  Where He looked after my animals because it made Him look good, this amazing human looks after my animals because he loves them.  Where He would spend a lot of money on takeaway food because it was Living The Life, this amazing human spends money on takeaway food because it’s easy and tasty and it’s a nice treat (for both of us) after a hard day of work.

Where He would interact with my friends and, when they (very rarely) visited, suggest some things He thought they might like, it was all to reflect well on Him in some way, to make them like Him more.  This amazing human suggests things they might like because they might like it and because he cares.

And now, looking back, the difference of intent is so clear.  It has just taken seeing the behaviours expressed from a selfless intent to see the difference in the resulting behaviour expressed from a selfish intent.

And you can tell, you can really tell.  The words they use, the way they put them together, their tone of voice, and their body language.  The feeling left in your gut afterwards (never ignore your gut, it knows a lot more than your brain does).

I am intensely grateful to the amazing human being I now share my life with.  He is helping to heal a lifetime of trauma by simply being his incredible self.

Today Was Not A Good Day – And That’s Okay

Bones

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The day started out wrong – my phone had reset during the night and my usual alarms didn’t go off.  Instead, I was woken by my partner’s later alarms, and couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.  So I hauled myself out of bed (admittedly after a bit of prodding – mornings suck) and pottered through my morning routine, which all went well, and I was off to work at a good time.  I just didn’t want to do anything, I wanted to be an amorphous blob, right from waking up.  I just didn’t care.

Nothing really bad happened at work.  We found a couple of old things that really should have been done a year ago (left over from the person in my role previously), and discovered a frustrating error that’s been repeated across a number of projects from someone who’s long since gone … and this may actually be a problem for this project.  It’s all gone up the chain and greater minds than I are deciding on things and will handle it.  Nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing I haven’t handled before.  And yet, by about 11.00am, I was silently panicking.

So I was panicking and I didn’t care.  I was sitting at work, in a job I know, around people I love working around, in a safe environment with two wonderful bosses who never get angry when I mess up, are always quick with praise, and who I get along with … and I was panicking and I just did not care, I did not want to be there, and I hated my job.  I got the frustrated fidgets – what can I do to get ahead, can I get another job on top of this one, what can I sell to get a bit more liquid assets, how can I maneuver myself into a position where I don’t have to do this anymore.

Instead of resisting the feeling and getting grumpy about it and saying I have no reason for it, like I always do, I took a moment to go home for lunch, sit down, and go ‘no, this is okay.  I am having a shit day, and there is no real reason for it, and that is totally okay.’  I felt a little better.

I went back to work, sat down, and within 30 minutes I was nearly jumping out of my skin again.  There was a cacophony of voices in the office – it’s all open plan, and we have a few Capable of Outside Voices Only people there – and too much auditory input is one of my major panic triggers (which I usually put down to the fact that I can’t filter any of it out).  I put my earbuds in and listened to a few minutes of white noise rainstorm, and that gave me just enough headspace to breathe, to sit back and let the noises wash over me, instead of slam into me.  It gave me just enough headspace to go ‘no, this is okay, accept this feeling, stop resisting it’ and really feel it.  It gave me just enough headspace to relax my stomach, my shoulders and the muscles in my face.

I checked myself at least 5 more times in the next few hours between lunch and home, reminding myself ‘I am having a shit day and that is totally okay‘.  By the end of the day my skin felt tight, my chest felt strangled, and I just wanted to scream at the sky.  I resisted the temptation – it’s rather alarming for people in the surrounding area – but that feeling stuck with me until I got out to do a bit of manual labour that evening.

That, along with listening to podcasts, helped flush out the last of my negative and anxious thoughts, and while I’m still feeling the after affects of an anxious day, I’m beginning to relax.

I will say that admitting ‘I’m having a shit day’ and then saying ‘and that’s okay’ made the usual frustration fidgets a lot less severe.  While my brain was turning things over, it wasn’t the usual desperate churn, and I never once felt physically affected by the desperate need to do something, but also do nothing, and be anywhere but here right now.   Definitely something to continue working on.

Narcissistic Abuse and Expressing Emotion

Bones

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I was in a long term, committed relationship, with a narcissist for a long time.  Almost a decade.  Almost a decade, to be precise, throughout my twenties.  As a result of this, I have a myriad of issues I am unpacking and unpicking, including PTSD, but one issue I’ve noticed (and I’m working on really hard) is the inability to express emotion in what I perceive as a correct and healthy manner.

As an autist, I have always experienced emotion very intensely, to the point of physical pain or discomfort.  As an autist in a relationship with a narcissist, I … edited my emotional output and expression to be palatable to the narcissist’s inability to cope with anything other than superficial expressions of emotion.  I would, in a sense, tense up my emotions, whip them up so they were light and fluffy enough to be appropriate for the target audience – Him.  This, in a sense, prevented me from fully appreciating the depth of emotion that I could experience.

Another part of my abuse was the constant pressure to be perfect, to always be happy, to never be sad or angry or upset.  Everything was always fine.  Everything was always okay.  Nothing was ever wrong.  This caused me to avoid situations that might bring up any negative emotion, to seek only things that brought me enjoyment, and to ruthlessly clamp down on feeling.

It’s so ingrained it’s now part of my coping mechanism, and it got me to where I am today.

I realised it was a problem late last year, with my now partner.  In an effort to correct this, I would spend considerable time before talking to him sitting, breathing, relaxing my stomach muscles and allowing myself to feel.

It’s taken a long time, but now I can look at him and there is no tension in my chest.  I can look at him and allow myself to smile and know that it is a genuine one, not a pinched, repressed one.  The fluoxetine definitely helps with this, but it has also been months of hard work, months of patience on his part, months of care and consideration.

It feels amazing to be at this point.  I know there’s still a ways to go in this specific area of recovery alone, not including all the other ticks I’m trying to shed, but just this level of progress is so heartening.

That Sly Manipulation

Bones

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I was going to write about the difference in feel between the same actions with different intent.  Instead I’ll write about manipulation, because a terrible ‘friend’ and manipulator has just exited my life, and I’m feeling sore.

If I went into the history of the friendship it would be a novel.  Instead I shall say that he was a good friend’s internet boyfriend when we were in highschool, and when she left him … I stayed his friend.  Dealing with him always stressed me out, because he was needy and he was very negative and he would do and say things that would make me uncomfortable.  It got to the point where I uninstalled Facebook Messenger on my phone because just seeing his face pop up made me want to scream with anxiety and frustration.  There were many a day where he would pop up and I would scream “fuck off” to my phone and be in a terrible mood for the rest of the day.

It’s only very recently that I’ve realised why.

He is manipulative.  He says horrible things about himself so that I will say nice things.  He cowers and crawls when he feels it will get him what he wants, he deliberately inspires pity.  He is incapable of seeing anyone’s discomfort or pain other than his own – I told him he’d done something to hurt me and all of a sudden it was all about him, how bad he is, how he hates himself, how it hurt him, how anxious he is, how sick he’s feeling, how he can’t cope … and this has, I realise, been the pattern throughout our entire friendship.  There is no room for me in the friendship.  There never has been.

I took him to task, and I wouldn’t let him pull his shit on me, so he blamed me for him dropping out of school and failing at work and ‘proving him right’, and how he wished I thought he was dead.  What a lovely human being he is.  How kind and considerate.  And yes, there are two sides to this story, I “attacked him” when he apologised the first time (saying I’m sorry, I’ve got the job, my boss has sent me to a counselor because I tried to kill myself, me, me, me, me) and so he “fled” (blocked me so he could continue believing I was a mean and horrible person who hated him).  But holy hell I have never said, suggested, or attempted to make him believe in any way, shape, or form, anything like  what he just said to me.  That’s just downright cruel.  I’m aspie as fuck and even I know that shit don’t fly

I’m angry, sure, but also just kind of … disappointed and deflated.  This is someone I’ve known for 16 years.  This is someone I’ve supported through depression, someone I’ve cheered on from the sidelines, someone I’ve encouraged to do what he enjoys, what he loves, to look after himself first and foremost.  I know it’s just who he is, and in a way that almost makes it worse, because I didn’t see it until now.

Except that I did, I just didn’t really know it.

Fluoxetine two weeks in

Bones

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I’ll have been on fluoxetine for 2 weeks as of tomorrow.  It’s been an interesting couple of weeks.

The first week was like I was lightly high on MDMA the entire week.  My words would trip over themselves falling out of my mouth, and my usual filter was … absent.  My brain would skitter off while I tried to concentrate on checking my work.  But I was completely anxiety free.  I was walking on cloud nine.

I also experienced increased thirst (which is no bad thing, as I live in a permanently dehydrated state), my kidneys were sensitive if I didn’t drink enough water, I had quirks of thermoregulation (I’m typically a lizard human but found myself overheating at work!) and difficulties focusing my eyes.

The second week has continued much the same as the first with regard to physical side effects, but the mood has not been quite as sunny.  I’m managing to concentrate better, which is good, because the work I do is quite reliant on speed and accuracy.  I have more energy during the day, and I’m more alert, so I don’t rely quite as heavily on caffeine to keep me moving.  I still can’t quite make words play as well as I used to, but I’m hoping the more time I spend writing in this new headspace, the more words will come back to me.

But now I’m in that irritating phase where I have a bit more energy but not the anti-depressant bit.  So I’m angry and I’m agitated and I feel like I’m stuck in the same spot pushing the same shit up hill.  I want to be anywhere but here doing anything but what I’m doing right now.  I want to be an amorphous blob.

I still experience anxiety, as well.  I still have some generalised anxiety, and oh boy do I still have specific situation anxiety, but it’s a bit more muted.  I experience it more in my head and less in my body, if that makes any sense.  My gut doesn’t drop and my heart rate doesn’t skyrocket, and I don’t start shaking, although I do notice I perspire more when I’m experiencing acute situational anxiety.  I still need to twitch, I still need to fidget, I still have my muscle ticks, but the threshold is a lot higher.

I’m hoping the third week starts picking the mood up a bit.