09/30 Biochemical disorder

[darkemeralds]

I was gonna title this post "Mental Illness" but I'm no longer sure that there's any such thing as "mind," so the concept of having one, and it being ill, doesn't really mean much to me.

However, I got through the day by repeating "Mental Illness" (and "Relapse") to myself because it was infinitely more comforting than responding to the voices in my head.

For the first time ever, I think I've managed to separate state from cause while I'm in the state. (I still am, by the way, so warning for unreliable narrator here.)



I almost wish I could say that something serious happened, because my current state would make more sense if I'd been in a car wreck or been exposed to violence or danger.

I haven't. There was just a string of tiny shakeups that culminated today in a breakdown situation. A sounder person would have been unfazed by the things that brought my hair-trigger out of hibernation and then pulled it.

I thought I'd become a sounder person. I have become a sounder person. It's been almost two years since I was anywhere near this condition which used to be my baseline. (God, how did I survive?) Still, feeling the state slam into me again after a long period of peace was extra-shocking.

In the past when it has hit I've focused obsessively on the pointless, chaotic and cruel swirl of mental sewage that is unleashed in the breakdown and masquerades as its cause: memories of things said, done, experienced, omitted, all tainted by the biochemical toxins of the breakdown condition itself. They mean nothing. It's taken me forty years to understand that.

Today, somehow, reason got a few words in edgewise. "Look at the state," it said. "Only the state." So I did. I kept dragging my thoughts back up from the neurochemical shit vortex to focus on what was actually happening.

If you'd seen me you wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. (Unless you were the nice man behind the meat counter at New Seasons--then you might have wondered what there was to cry about in six bratwursts and a pound of ground beef. By the time I got to the checkout I was able to say, "Excellent, thanks, and how are you?" and not actually give voice to the "Liar, liar, liar" part shouting in my brain.)

Maybe it would have been better if, in the past, the state had rendered me non-functional. I might have been forced to get more help than I got. But it virtually never did. I could always hide it, more or less, and engineer a life and mythology for myself to help keep it hidden.

Today, I managed a real day. I got some groceries. I had a visit from my sister (she didn't suspect a thing, go me). I rearranged some furniture and tidied a bit. I ate lunch, I'm pretty sure. Watched a movie. Did some knitting.

The shaking hands come and go in waves and I didn't even break anything this time--just dumped a tray of ice on the kitchen floor, not exactly billable property damage.

My disorientation wasn't that much worse than usual, and if I had to take the long way home from the store because for the life of me I couldn't figure out the short way in the neighborhood where I've lived most of my life, well, nobody knew. So I forgot half of what I needed a few things. Big deal.

And I really did kind of need the new table lamp that I suddenly, absolutely, had to make a separate trip to go buy, right-now-today. It's not like I ran up a credit card for it.

There are a few obvious physical symptoms of the state: my hands hurt; the pain comes in waves (according to one therapist, this seems to be unique to me and may be related to a specific trauma--I don't know); there's a sensation in the middle of my body like being unzipped and having my heart and lungs grabbed; I'm at the edge of tears for hours at a time, and when they come they come in an open-the-sluice-gates kind of way--extra-wet, extra-voluminous; there's a buzzy, fizzy feeling in my hands, arms, and mouth. I lose my appetite. I feel a great need for sedatives and will take them if I can get them.

(I couldn't get them today, so I fell back on a cocktail of magnesium, calcium, L-tryptophan, ashwaganda and ibuprofen. I know...)



Now that I've written all this, I'm feeling the sewer-overflow recede. Ten hours, one chocolate bar, eyes not too swollen--not bad! By tomorrow the chemistry will be heading back to normal.

It would be so easy to let it go at that. But I think I need help. I can't survive many of these. They just cost too much.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

That sounds extraordinarily unpleasant. I'm glad they're fewer and farther between.

[darkemeralds]

Thank you. Me too! :D

[scribblemoose]

*hugs* Out-of-the-blue episodes are so hard to cope with. It's definitely worth asking for help.

[darkemeralds]

Thank you!

[kis]

Sorry to read this, and I hope you can find some appropriate help.

[darkemeralds]

I suspect that antidepressants might be an available last resort, but needless to say, I'd like to postpone that choice forever if I can. Hunting around today for prospects of help in other forms.

[panisdead]

That does sound unpleasant, especially out of the blue. I hope you can get some useful help.

[darkemeralds]

Thanks. I can usually spot a developing combination of circumstances that might trigger a cascade, but I didn't spot this one, which is why it had that "out of the blue" quality. I'm staying home today and at least thinking about where and how to get some outside help.

[executrix]

What everybody else said! But in a lot of ways, being able to pass for functioning is a lot like actually functioning.

[darkemeralds]

Very true. And a lot of people function through a lot worse than this.

Oddly, this episode has given me insight into the adage "You create your own reality." Not that I think I've "created" this underlying condition. But in choosing to pass for functional--often a razor's edge choice--I've made a million small decisions, most of them involving isolation or control, and everything about my life today reflects that trend. I never saw the pattern before yesterday.

If I let myself slip into Which Came First territory, I'll never emerge, but it's a tempting question.

[executrix]

Insight: like truffles. Expensive and not everybody likes it, but when it's in season some people really go a ton on it.

[darkemeralds]

Whatever else may be fucked up in my brain, I've always had very expensive taste in truffles.

[ravurian]

I'm sorry you're going through this, but glad that you're recognising what's happening and responding to it with the insight, perspective and resilience that are your hallmarks to the world-without. That this may not reflect your inner landscape makes it all the more impressive. Keep your chin up, and your powder dry (except if you don't feel like it, in which case don't).

[darkemeralds]

Not sure I actually have any powder to keep dry, but things are much mended today--so much mended, in fact, that I have to remind myself that they're not actually mended and that I'm still very much subject to the overspending, overeating, and generally self-medicating behavior that I need to watch out for.

It was good to take the day off, though, and ride my bike in the sunshine. And get a manicure.

[branchandroot]

Being able to observe the state while you're in it, being able to see the pattern... that's really amazing. I mean, that's a /big/ thing. Especially when your brain is cascade-dumping negative associated memories and every neurochemical is spiraling into the downward feedback loop. That's /so hard/ to break. You saw it for what it was, and did things to take care of yourself. That's amazing.

You're totally right about getting some help to keep it from happening more, too. That's also good self-care, the sign that you're still there, you're still seeing the world as it is and can be. And you saw that present coping mechanisms could get out of hand (again?) pretty easily, which is also really good. Those are all good mechanisms; they just need to be tuned up nicely.

I hope you can find some help that works well for you. Maybe meds or supplements (I can recommend the Neuroscience products, if you're feeling like you can monitor yourself reasonably well), maybe just someone to help you track down causes and triggers and manage them.

The important part is, you're still here. You're amazing. You can do what you need to do.

[darkemeralds]

Thank you for being so encouraging and positive. It's helpful and uplifting to know that someone else understands the difficulty of the chemical dump.

My coping truly is a case of practice making perfect--or at least helping. I've been on this battlefield for a long, long time--40 years, I'd say--and I've developed a toolkit for intervening in the chemical dump.

Nevertheless, yesterday was a breakthrough and a first. In the past I've been able to halt a bad spiral before going completely out of control, but this was the first time I've ever been able to get some actual distance on it, and sort of see it for what it really is.

I've got a Neuroscience Products tab open right now and the products seem right up my alley. When my eyesight comes back online (I always get a little blurry-eyed in the aftermath of these things), I'll give the site a closer look. The products prove one thing beyond a doubt: I'm not alone in this, if someone's marketing whole ranges of supplements to combat similar states.

Thank you for the reference.

[dine]

oh, ugh. I'm sorry you got hit like that - out of the blue can be harder than a slow slide (not that warning is always a help); I agree that maybe toughing it out is no longer the way to go, and finding someone to help would be a good idea

*hugs*

[darkemeralds]

Thanks. For the first time in my life I feel like I could give a good description of the criminal to the craziness police, and thereby cut many sessions' and dollars' worth of bullshit out of whatever therapeutic process I decide to follow.

[tehomet]

That state you were in sounds really unpleasant, to say the very least.

I am amazed at your perspicacity in recognising and analysing what was happening to you while it was happening. That takes some cool nerve, also to say the very least.

If anyone can find the tools and measures needed to deal with this, I am confident that you can, and that you will.

♥

[darkemeralds]

My lifelong coping strategy of isolating myself and staying alone kind of paid off yesterday, because while I didn't have much in the way of help or support, I also didn't have anything in the way of interference or interpretation. It was just me and a free day (and my bike--that helped, though I'm sure some of the neighbors I rode past wondered about the crazy lady murmuring to herself on her funny looking bike. Doomed to be a crazy lady. Oh well...). So I really was free to work through it.

Thank you for your kind and encouraging words.

[ranunculus]

It sounds like you have actually already built a tool kit for this: that you actually already have a LOT of the things you need to cope with and resolve an episode when it happens. Now you just need the missing ingredient. What you have already acomplished is huge.
One thought is that the compulsive behavior reminds me of compulsive gambling, some of which is chemically driven in the brain.

[darkemeralds]

Thanks for your constructive outlook. I think I really have developed a good toolkit. This incident has reminded me that it could always be better, especially in the area of early detection.

There's no question that the compulsive behavior is a form of actual, physical self-soothing. It must provide some kind of neurochemical counter-cascade. The fact that it's compulsive implies pretty clearly that the state it's trying to resolve is dangerous. The state has been described as "global high alert" so of course emergency measures are required.

In my case, a $40 lamp and a chocolate bar are hardly life-altering, but in the past, when this state was a constant, so was the chocolate and the financial mismanagement. Lives have been ruined by less.

[ranunculus]

I mentioned the compulsive gambling because there is apparently also sometimes a mood/chemical imbalance problem there. I'm really happy that you are going to go get some outside help with it. Go you!!

[darkemeralds]

I've heard, but can't currently cite, that cutting has a similar component. As I recall, some study showed that blood-letting triggers a release of a very specific neurochemical--serotonin, perhaps?--suggesting that cutting is adaptive behavior, a valid attempt on the part of the person to balance a state perceived as dangerous. That's not to say it's healthy behavior, but in any given moment it might actually be the most effective available action. I don't doubt that gambling does something similar.

I just don't see how we can get anywhere in healing these types of disorders without first recognizing that they're attempts to solve real problems, and that they're physical, not mystical, in nature.

[ranunculus]

I agree that usually there is a psychological component to these behaviours, and that should be explored. However, what you described seemed less depressive and more chemically related, though with the tangle those things usually are it is hard to say which came first the egg or the chicken.
NPR did a whole segment at one point about a woman who totally ruined her family finances, lost the house ect, due to chemical imbalance and gambling addiction. As SOON as the chemicals (as I recall it did involve serotonin) were addressed the whole compulsion went away. Anyway it is good to go trace Arachne's thread through this mystery.

[darkemeralds]

We're both trying to articulate the same idea, I think. As I see it, all signs point to there being no such thing as psychology per se--what remains in the realm of "psychology" is just electrical and chemical processes in the brain and body that haven't been fully mapped out yet.

The years of my life that I wasted trying to be healed through psychology can never be retrieved. My only consolation is that psychology was basically all we had. I'm excited about the prospects for cures like the one you describe for the compulsive gambler.