Tag: self care

Fatigue and Lethargy

Bones

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So as you probably all know by now (or, if you’re a transient blog surfer, you may not know – and also, hi!) I have fibromyalgia.  I am also being treated for trigeminal neuralgia.  Jury’s out on what’s causing that, I’ve got a referral so let’s see where that takes us.

Fibromyalgia unfortunately involves chronic fatigue.  Fatigue is defined as “extreme tiredness resulting from mental or physical exertion or illness” (thanks google dictionary), but for some reason I find that word too … lively.  It’s the ‘t’ and the shortness of the word.

I actually prefer the word lethargic, and it’s defined as “a lack of energy and enthusiasm”.  While it’s an accurate description, I do indeed have a lack of energy, it doesn’t take into account the severity of that lack.  But, still, I like that word, because you can elongate the ‘e’ and the ‘a’ and it becomes a long, slow, exhausted exhale of a word, bringing to mind a sloth on a branch moving in that incredibly slow way of theirs.  It sounds how I feel, although fatigue describes it.

I was going to do things today.  I got up, I had my cuppa coffee, I took my meds (I’ve doubled my morning tegretol, as the pain from my trigeminal nerve is increasing), and I had my brekkie.  I lay around for a bit, read a bit, and then realised I was having difficulty focusing on the words.  My eyelids drooped, so I sat up and started sorting out a mindless but fun computer game to play (shield bashy bashy, sword smashy smashy).  I was just starting up when everything slowed down.  My arms weighed down with lead, my shoulders dropped, and the fatigue hit me in the face like a two handed hammer.  Oof.  It’s hard work just typing this.

I’d been improving so much with my fibromyalgia and my balancing act that I haven’t felt like this in a wee while.  Anxious and depressed and like I don’t want to do anything, sure, but not this whole body-weight drained fatigue.  I actually suspect it’s a side effect of the tegretol – I’ve found myself less able to do things lately.  Or it could be the pain from the trigeminal neuralgia fatiguing me in a shorter length of time to what I’m used to.

Regardless, I’m now going to put my feet up, put something on Netflix, and doze for the rest of the day.  When the fatigue hits, you just gotta rest.

PTSD Flashbacks

Bones

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Today I had a PTSD flashback.  It was the worst PTSD flashback probably since the instance in the hotel lobby.

I smelled cinnamon and nutmeg.  It’s Christmas time, so someone was probably feeling particularly festive.  Or maybe the cafe downstairs was making a lot of things involving cinnamon and nutmeg.  I love cinnamon and nutmeg, I love the smell, I love how festive it feels.

It’s also the smell of chai lattes, as a colleague commented.  And that was the trigger.

My gut dropped and I went numb, my mind had a few seconds of racing then just disconnected.  I kept my breathing even and my face blank – I was at work, no one could know what was going on (this is part of my self preservation mechanism).  I messaged a friend to get it out and then kept on working while everything inside of me screamed.

Fortunately an urgent piece of work came up which allowed me to scoot my wheely chair across the room and then back to my desk, and with (very forced) cheerfulness, I continued with my day.

I’m still shaken.  All through the rest of the afternoon I was shaken and very very carefully maintaining my facade of general competence and cheeriness.  I probably will be for a while.  I had a few things to do this evening and I made the executive decision to ask someone else to cover me (as I cover for her when she needs it) so now I can spend some time properly relaxing.

When a big shock like this happens, it’s very important to implement greater than normal self care measures.  So that’s what I’m doing.

I Am Allowed To Be Burnt Out

Bones

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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.

Fibromyalgia and the Sequelae of Stress

Bones

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Two days ago I had a very stressful day.

It was an intensely busy day at work, with a very short turnaround on the preparation of some complex documentation to finalise an urgent process the next day.  This is what I’m best at.  I cut my eyeteeth in one of the busiest teams in my first firm in one of the busiest times they’ve ever seen before or since.  I excel at very quickly grasping the scope of the procedure, understanding the interconnectedness of the parties, and logically organising and processing multi-party documents.  The way I work also results in me being prompted to cross-check the information several times before the documentation goes to the person / people I’m working for and so improves accuracy while saving time.  My brain goes a mile a second, checking and cross checking, tracking progress on each party’s bundle, planning two steps ahead so the second I’ve finished one, it’s off for checking and onto the next, and constantly finding ways to optimise the process.

It’s exciting.

The next day?  Not so.  I woke up and my legs didn’t quite want to work right.  My hips and knees had poor stability – I had to walk slowly and carefully to ensure each step was solid and my hips wouldn’t suddenly go whoop out to one side and cause me to fall or slam into something.  I could have walked normally, but that would have involved a massive amount of effort, and I did not have that kind of energy.

Getting my food from my plate to my face was hard.  Every movement I made was shaky and jerky, like my muscles would do one tiny portion of the movement and then stop for a microsecond and then do the next tiny portion of the movement, and so on.

I went to work.

I struggled with putting paperclips on paper.  My arms, hands and fingers were jerky and shaking, my fine motor movements inaccurate.  My entire body trembled.  I had a tiny muscle going tick tick tick tick in my right buttcheek.  I had to walk slowly and carefully and ease myself into and out of my chair.  When I re-stocked paper, I couldn’t crouch like I normally do.  Any bending over required additional support to make sure I didn’t topple, and I relied a lot more on counter-balance rather than on my muscles to hold me stable.

And it was a busy day that day, too!  Only have of the procedure was complete, and I had to finalise the other half, as well as finalising another urgent matter, and receiving (optimistic) instructions to start and finish another the same day (we said nope, that’ll be Monday if we’re lucky), on top of the usual end of the month wrap up.  I took no breaks, half my usual lunch time, and left late.

All the while fighting an extreme muscle weakness, nausea, exhaustion and entire body instability.  By the time I got home last night I was done.

This morning I’m still pretty unstable through the hips and legs, and my movements are still a bit jerky, but nowhere near as bad as they were yesterday.  The weather is pretty crap this weekend so it’s going to be snuggle up on the couch and nap most of the weekend away.  Hopefully I’ll have recovered enough by Monday to do it all again!

PTSD – Re-experiencing The Trauma

Bones

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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.