Tag: mental health

The Reality of Fibromyalgia

Bones

blur-clean-clear-268854

I’ve had a fairly packed few weeks, and I’m looking at a full schedule until … probably mid February.  My anxiety is considerably higher than normal, as there’s a lot to get done over the next few weeks.  I’m physically doing considerably more and resting less.  This has a lot of consequences for me.

First being that my fibro is flaring up.  Which, yeah, go figure.  It means random parts of my body hurt.  On Friday, the middle knuckle on my right hand hurt.  Yesterday, an old injury on my left foot started hurting (and still does).  Bits of my leg hurt, and then stop hurting at random.  My knees ache more, my right elbow started hurting … you get the picture.

Today I experienced a new symptom.  I had a shower, which was all well and good.  I was drying myself off when I felt pain running down my left arm.  I quickly turned my arm over.  It was a water droplet running down my arm.

I felt some not inconsiderable pain from a water droplet.

I briefly panicked and then bottled it up.  I didn’t have the time to panic about it, so I didn’t.  It’s only now, in the later hours, that I’m sitting down to process this new facet.

Pain from a water droplet.

I’m used to abnormal pain after an injury, or additional pain after physical exertion, but this is new.  This is normal sensory input being processed as pain.  This is something I cannot excuse away as ‘a bit rough’ or ‘a bit sharp’, it’s a water droplet.

Realistically I’ve experienced this before.  Sometimes when my amazing human rubs my head or my arm, it hurts.  I’ve had days where pillows hurt to lie on.  But I have always rationalised them away – my amazing human was being unintentionally rough, or his nails were too long, and I just had a really bad headache so I was sensitive.

This is the first experience I can’t rationalise away.  This is clear proof that I have an issue with sensory input, where either my nerves are sending the wrong signals, or my brain is interpreting the signals wrong.

Today it really hit me.  I’m still not sure what to do with this information.  I’m probably going to bury it for a while and bring it out to examine at inopportune times (such as during an exam, or when I’m trying to read).  But for now, honestly?  I’m scared.  This is scary.  And I really don’t like it.

Take Your Meds

Bones

capsules-close-up-drugs-161688

I’ve had a couple of seriously stupid days.  I’m laughing about it, because nothing bad really happened, but it could have.

I have alarms I’ve set on my phone with comical noises as a reminder to take my fluoxetine in the morning, and my amitriptyline in the evening.  I would forget my own head if it wasn’t screwed on, so this is a sensible precaution.

Except when it goes off and I don’t immediately take my medication, and then I forget about it.  Like I did yesterday morning.  And yesterday evening.  And this morning.

It was only when I was lying in bed wondering why I was in so much pain and also not trembling that I realised whoops, I hadn’t taken my amitrip the night before!  It wasn’t until 9.30am that I realised I’d forgotten to take my fluoxetine that morning, and it was through a process of thinking ‘now these symptoms are a bit severe for missing one dose, I don’t usually feel this bad when I wake up late’ that I realised I’d also forgotten my fluoxetine the morning before.

The good thing is I can now say with certainty that the amitriptyline really helps.  The bad thing is I now know that I ignore my alarm!  So, on the suggestion of a friend, I got the app called ‘Medisafe’.  This post isn’t sponsored in any way, shape, or form, I just genuinely think it’s a neat app.  You plug in the medication, you select the dosage, and then you select the external presentation of your particular medication (because they vary considerably).  You tell it when you take it, how many you take, and what you take it for, and it then proceeds to piss you right off when you need to take it.  You have to go in and say you took it (which I will only ever do once I’ve actually taken my medication), so hopefully I won’t have any really daft days like the last couple.

Like I say, I’m laughing and making light out of it, but if I hadn’t run home at morning tea and taken my fluoxetine, it probably would have been a different story.  Moral of the story:  take your meds!

I Am Allowed To Be Burnt Out

Bones

burnt-close-up-macro-321550

I am allowed to be burnt out.

For me, this is a radical idea.  The admitting and acceptance of the state of being burnt out, and actually giving myself permission to be burnt out.  To be honest, I think I’ve been burnt out for years, and it finally caught up with me last year.

I am autistic.  From a very early age I was conditioned against expressing that and pressured into appearing neurotypical.  I have, up until this year, put on a facade of a successful, bubbly, vivacious and sociable business woman.  Mostly this appearance was abused into me by It, but it was also expected of me from all of my previous roles.

I have overworked and over performed in every single role I have undertaken.  I would typically arrive at 8am and leave anywhere between 6 and 8pm, having worked through all of my breaks and most of my lunch, always at break-neck speed, because there was so much work to do.  I worked myself ragged, and I went back in and did it all again the next day, because that’s just what you do.  I’ve done this in every role until I moved to my current city, so that’s a good decade or so.

Throughout most of that decade, I was also with It.  The narcissist.  The ending came about because It was becoming desperate, and eventually manipulated Itself into the position of ‘either you come with me or I go alone’.  I was in a position where I was actively pursuing the career I wanted, and I wasn’t prepared to jeopardize the career I had been working for years to be able to pursue, and I was angry that he would ask that of me while putting his own career first (always first).  So I said no.

Then I went straight back to work the next day.  And continued working, and overworking, and not thinking about anything, and putting on the facade of being a lively, successful young businesswoman.

It’s all caught up with me and there is no escaping the exhaustion that I have denied for so long.  I ignored my body at every turn.  When it screamed ‘rest’ I said ‘harden up’ and went to work.  When it said ‘no more, go home’ I said ‘nope, we’ve still got to finish this document pack’ and kept going.  And when I say I worked fast, I mean I worked bloody fast.  I put out more work in one day than most would in three.  My brain was constantly on the go planning my next move, identifying the path to take to complete the required tasks in the shortest amount of time, and in the right priority order.

Oh, and through most of that I was working a second job on weekends and doing one paper a semester at university.

So yeah, I’m allowed to be burnt out now.  I sound defensive, and that’s because I am, because I expect to be told ‘no, you’re not allowed to be burnt out, harden up and keep on going’, because that’s what I’ve basically been told my entire life in various ways.  Stiff upper lip.  Carry on.  That kind of claptrap.  Telling myself I’m allowed to be burnt out is one thing, but taking a stand and saying ‘I AM ALLOWED TO BE BURNT OUT’ to the world is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Because despite the abuse I’ve been through, despite feeling as though I’m brittle and nothing but bone and sinew, despite almost falling asleep at work on numerous occasions because I am so exhausted, I … I gaslight myself.  It’s so ingrained in me, I gaslight myself.  It has been reinforced so thoroughly in my life that I am not important, what I feel is not important, what I want to do is not important, what I don’t want to do is not important, that I can’t possibly imagine that what I’ve been through is … something.  That it’s actually not good, that I’ve been impacted by it and that feeling is valid and true and reasonable.

It’s a horrific mindset, but I’m battling it.  Slowly but surely.  Because I deserve to not be burnt out.

Today I Don’t Feel Like Doing Anything (Nothing At All)

Bones

analog-art-beautiful-963486

Today I have no spoons.  I don’t think.  I just don’t care enough to do anything – not in a bad way, mind you, I’m quite mentally alert and with it … I just … can’t be bothered.

I still did stuff.  I walked the dog at the paddock, did my feeding rounds, did some googling on light weight equipment.  I did my exercises, as prescribed by my physio.

Now I’m home and I’m thinking it’d be nice to do some writing (of the fiction kind, not this rambling mess I call a blog) and I can’t be stuffed.  I don’t want to watch TV, I don’t want to read fanfiction (or fiction … or anything).  I don’t want to knit or crochet.

I used to experience this a lot, but with more gloom.  Now I’m just feeling this but there’s a sort of … peace, contentedness almost, with wanting to feel like an amorphous blob for a bit.

I’m wondering if this is how depression is going to manifest now that I’m on anti-depressants, or if I’m just burnt out (new or continuous, who knows!  I’m sure I’ve been burnt out and barreling forward for years).  I don’t know if finding the root cause will change anything, there’s not a huge amount I can do about either depression or burnout other than what I am doing – which is continue to do the things I must, not do things I don’t, drink water, do light stretches (and the daily walkies) and do relaxing things that I enjoy.

PTSD – Re-experiencing The Trauma

Bones

dark-daylight-eerie-1165982

Yesterday, when I got back from my evening rounds, I saw a video still on my amazing human’s PC screen.  It was a paused youtube video, perfectly innocuous.  It was of two men.

One of them looked like It.

My stomach clenched and my mind went numb.  I avoided my gaze.  But it was like a trainwreck, my eyes were drawn back to It over and over again – the image was so horrifically like It that I went into full shut down (which looks like nothing more than I’m a bit more dazed than usual).  My mind blanked it.

I distracted myself and eventually fell asleep on the couch.  Later on, when my amazing human was ready to go to bed, he woke me and we went.  All was well.  We tucked in  and fell asleep.

Then the nightmares started.  It was there, in them, in my old home.  I was dealing with Its old cars.  The exacts of the dream are hazy now, I just remember keeping my amazing human hidden from It, It must never know, never meet my amazing human.  Play nice, play polite, simper, do all the things I used to do.  Scrape and bow, scrape and bow, do everything he asks, do everything he says, everything is okay, hide it all, hide my new life, don’t let him know…

It’s a mixture of reliving the abuse he visited on me and the fear of him … not ‘coming back’ but being near me, encroaching on my life that I have struggled and worked so fucking hard to build, and the positive and deep relationships I’ve built with my friends and family, and my amazing human being.

I’ve been feeling … not quite right all day.  The nightmare has been on my mind a lot.  I’ve been running it around my head, trying to make sense of it all, but all it seems to be doing is making me more out of sorts.  I’m hoping this is enough to get it out, and I can now rest, relax, and sleep a bit better tonight.  Ideally without It and the nightmares.