I feel like my issues are too complex to recover from

[Friday]

Did you find that feeling better tended to come before the exercises or after? Every time I have got be...

Significantly after. Like, weeks and months after.

Talking much more of building a routine of management in place, and letting that settle, before the next level of routine could be added. And then the next. And the next.

Spoiler: Longer answer

When my stress levels are so high that I’m constantly running hot? There’s no quick* fix. It’s, very literally, back to basics. A big piece of which = Bleeding stress every single day, many times throughout the day... later? That turns into bleeding stress in advance of when it’s needed. But when I’m running hot, that’s like shaking up a 2 liter of soda and then opening the top... and trying not to let anything spill. Not gonna happen. It’s cleanup duty. After I’ve been DOING stress management routines for awhile? It’s like I know where the fountain is going to spray the most, so Incan stick a bucket over there. And have a mop ready. It’s not so much of an OMFG! Soda everywhere! It’s pretty dang normal, so I’m learning to work around it, and less spills all over the floor. As more and more layers get added (a tarp, opening the lid just a smidge to let gas out before opening it all the way, etc.) shit gets more manageable. And more manageable. And more manageable. But it’s not instant. Its not like taking a Valium, and I’ve got a 2 liter of still water in my hands, instead of a 2 liter of shaken up Coca Cola & pack of Mentos.

It’s a slow process. And one that gets interrupted by life, on a fairly regular basis. 2 steps forward, 1back. 2 sideways, 6 back. 3 forward, 2 back. Frustrating as hell, especially with the comparison for when my life IS more manageable and these things have a lot more effect. But even the small effects build up over time. To mix my metaphors a bit? It’s lesrning to run a marathon. Before? I was a top notch athlete and could do 10k before I decided to train for a marathon... and now? I’m not even able to walk up a flight of stairs. And by the time I learn to run a single mile? Break my leg, and have to wait 6 weeks to walk, and 12 run even at half a mile??? So that comparison of what I COULD do back when I was an athlete deciding to train, vs a convalescent deciding to train? Doesn’t mean that my walking a mile is useless. It’s still necessary to walk a mile. Then run a mile. Even if it seems like bullshit. It’s not nothing to be walking a mile. It’s just starting further back.

* I’d very occasionally get a buy. Do something & have immediate result. These have been rare enough that I have marked them on my calendar. Just as a happy thing to remember.

 

[Sandstone]

Can you describe what severe stress, level 8+ is like for you? We all know how we define it for ourselves, but your experience of it may be different from mine.

 

[Neverthesame]

People are recommending things that are useful a lot of the time to a lot of people, but don't work for me.

I have never seen anyone in a similar condition who has improved significantly

I want you to look very carefully at these two statements.
I see this over and over in what you are writing here.

I am not helped by the things that work for just about everyone else.
Followed by:
I'm not willing to try things that don't work for just about everyone else.

If conventional wisdom doesn't apply to you, why shoot down everything else?

I would quite literally rather die.

Nope. Not even going there.
Really?
Drugs can be stopped. Death cannot be undone.
That's a train of thought you might want to examine closer.
Choosing a permanent solution (I use that term very loosely) to avoid temporary discomfort?
Come on! Put alot more thought into that.

 

[Deleted member 39476]

Significantly after. Like, weeks and months after.* I’d very occasionally get a buy. Do something & have immediate result. These have been rare enough that I have marked them on my calendar. Just as a happy thing to remember.

Same here, I have all 3 times I felt decent in the last 2 years marked on a calendar.

I am not helped by the things that work for some people
Followed by:
I'm not willing to try heavy medication

Fixed. There is nothing standard about antipsychotics, to a larger extent there is nothing standard about taking almost any psychiatric medication, the entire basis of their study is rotten at best, intentionally corrupt and abusive at worst, throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks. Antipsychotics don't even seem to stick when thrown at a wall for most people, SSRIs stick about as much as placebos do. I tried the SSRIs, they made me worse, I'm not touching the heavier shit.

Can you describe what severe stress, level 8+ is like for you? We all know how we define it for ourse...

To me 8+ is

• severe muscle tension all throughout body, including a 24/7 tension headache
• severe anxiety in general, not feeling safe closing my eyes, checking behind me, feeling watched, general feeling like something bad is always about to happen
• severe stress in general, upset very easily, negative attitude in general
• constant dissociation, never feeling present at all, losing my sense of time, looking at the world through a pane of glass, often not being able to move my body, feeling not very real in general
• hypervigilance, I'm constantly scanning my environment for potential threats, thinking constantly, analyzing everything constantly
• Obsessive compulssive behaviour, I very easily become obsessed with very small things, getting really upset if I don't tap my foot properly or something
• constant intrusive memories of things that upset me a lot in the past, often with very distant triggers, for example getting reminded of an upsetting breakup that happened years ago just by looking at a picture of a woman
• executive dysfunction/unstable personality, often times I cannot make any decisions and want to do two totally contradictory things, like badly wanting to get out of bed and badly wanting to stay in bed, never being satisfied either way, never able to decide. Sometimes I will think I really want something, and then 10 minutes later I won't care at all, confused at why I wanted it to begin with, or I will react to something way too intensely and then not understand why I reacted so badly.
• Difficulty sleeping, takes hours to fall asleep, I get recurring nightmares with the same theme almost every single night.

Come to think of it that list looks more like a 9/10 than an 8/10, I don't really know anymore. I do know that literally everything on that list changes when I calm down significantly. Last time I felt a bit better every single symptom on that list was significantly improved, and my headaches disappeared immediately.

 

[AnD]

I am so sorry for your pain and that you can not see a way how to handle your inner child that turns into a monster. It must be terrifying.

How are you sleeping? Perhaps you need to start with trying to find a way or medicine to help you sleep. I guess you sleep poorly at the moment.

Have you thought about seeking help, I am not sure what the word is. Where you live in the hospital.

It seems that you are desperate and in need of help.

Crying helps me. If I can't cry I do TRE (search on youtube), listening to Heartscape meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn (youtube) and listening to music, Tom Waits is good.

I hope you find something that helps, don't give up

 

[EveHarrington]

So you’ve tried two classes of drugs that don’t help many of us. SSRIs and benzodiazepines.

SSRIs don’t help me because I don’t have a seratonin problem. I just kicked my Benzodiazepine to the curb.

I’m on a VERY low dose of an antipsychotic. I use it for its tranquilizer properties, not its antipsychotic properties that only kick in at higher doses.

I’m on an anticonvulsant. Yes, it’s an off label use of an epilepsy medication. It works by regulating electrical impulses in the brain. It doesn’t f*ck with seratonin or norepinephrine or dopamine. It just regulates the electrical systems in my body so that I don’t go on overload. (I seriously have known for awhile now that I don’t have a neurotransmitter deficiency, and my neurological system is f*cked up. This medication is perfect for me.)

I also take a blood pressure medication that fixes my nightmares to the point where I wake up SMILING! Crazy, huh?

Medication doesn’t “fix” us. But you know what? I think that’s the wrong mindset to have. There is no cure for this f*cking disorder. Many of us can’t heal on our own with just therapy and diet and coping skills and exercise. BELIEVE ME, I’VE TRIED! I have done everything. But yeah, at the end of the day there is no “therapy” or exercise or diet that will fix a damaged nervous system that cannot regulate on its own. This is why I take medication, and why I’m fine with it. If you knew that medication was the key to feeling as good as I do, I guarantee you wouldn’t be against it at all.

 

[Deleted member 39476]

How are you sleeping?

Have you thought about seeking help, I am not sure what the word is. Where you live in the hospital.

Crying helps me.

Sleeping poorly to the point where my therapist recommended I talk to my doctor about some drug that helps control panic while sleeping, just so I can at least get decent rest, haven't tried it yet though. Not interested in hospitalization, I'm functional enough to live, just have serious difficulty working or maintaining relationships, very unhappy all the time. If I started self harming or something I would probably consider that option. Crying is definitely very enjoyable, but I have a very hard time getting tears out when I'm under fight or flight, so its not often I can actually just sit down and let the emotions flow.

Medication doesn’t “fix” us.

I'm not interested in maintenance, I'm interested in recovery. I'm still young, 21, and I have nothing. I can't work, I can't maintain relationships, I have very little of a social life, I sit inside all day browsing the internet. If I was married with kids and had a stable career I might consider some maintenance strategies like long term medication just to keep my life together, but I have literally nothing to keep together. If I can't make a proper recovery I'm not interested in living, I don't want to spend the next 50 years of my life battling mental illness constantly while on meds, to me it just is not worth it.

 

[EveHarrington]

Sleeping poorly to the point where my therapist recommended I talk to my doctor about some drug that he...

Ok, so you have an “all or nothing” attitude for getting better.

I honestly see this as a HUGE problem.

We don’t get to choose how we heal, or even how much we heal. We don’t get to choose which skills work for us and which ones won’t. We don’t get to choose which therapies work for us and which ones won’t.

Medication isn’t just some band-aid for people who are lazy and don’t want to do the hard work.

My therapist has worked with traumatized kids at Sheppard Pratt. (One of the best trauma hospitals out there.) She tells me I’m one of her hardest working clients. And, she’s a no-BS kind of person (like me), so I know she’s not just giving me a line. So if someone can work as hard as I have, and still not be able to “do it all on my own”, it’s not because I’m slacking or not putting in the hard work, or even because I haven’t tried a bajillion different therapies.

My nervous system is FUBAR. Yeah, that’s why a medication that regulates electrical impulses is actually giving me my life back. If you know anything about physiology, you’d know that a damaged nervous system is VERY slow to heal, if at all. So yeah, it’s not just about healing a damaged mind with therapy. I can’t WILL my nervous system “better” any more than a diabetic person can wish away blood sugar problems.

As long as you have this strict view of healing that has to be on your terms, you will be your own worst enemy when it comes to healing.

 

[Deleted member 39476]

Ok, so you have an “all or nothing” attitude for getting better.

It's not all or nothing, I have a threshold. I have felt what it's like to be reasonably happy. Not perfect, not amazing, just reasonably happy, and it is night and day different from how my life is right now. I got there without drugs, I am trying to get there without them. If I can't, that's it for me. I'm not aiming for perfect I'm aiming for genuinely good health. If that ever was ruled out, I would consider my life over, just as it would be for a cancer patient who is past the point of hope. It has not been ruled out obviously, hence why I'm here, but that is my standard.

I'm not criticizing your use of them at all, especially with a messed up nervous system, but in my personal circumstance I will not touch them, natural or bust.

 

[EveHarrington]

It's not all or nothing, I have a threshold. I have felt what it's like to be reasonably happy. Not per...

So you could become 95% healed with one pesky symptom that holds you back majorly and you’d kill yourself?

Oh good lord.

 

[joeylittle]

In my current situation I am terrified of doing anything that isn't numbing, therapeutic or not, so no matter how much I say I want to do it I normally cannot force myself to even try, but the off times I do try it I get the opposite of useful effects.

You are clearly suffering a great deal. Try this thought: what is there to lose?

I do understand that terror you are talking about. What has helped me move through it in the past is telling myself the next logical thought - which is, if I am this miserable, and it is this unbearable, then it's worth the risk for a possible change. This is going to sound really callous, and I do not mean it that way - but sometimes you just do have to clench your teeth and do the thing that can create change. Now, that change may be for the worse, not better...but even that will get you to the next step. Honestly. Stuck is barely functioning is only going to continue to wear you down. Forcing change may help force other things.

that's why I'm so desperate looking for a way to calm down reliably, even a bit.

Use this desperation to choose trying over fear.

I have heard people say things like "you are supposed to feel more stressed out when you start the process, but it helps if you keep going for 10 minutes." I don't believe this at all.

. I know you don't believe it, but have you set a timer and forced yourself to go for that long?

Not interested in hospitalization, I'm functional enough to live, just have serious difficulty working or maintaining relationships, very unhappy all the time. If I started self harming or something I would probably consider that option.

You're not functional.

One of the massive benefits of inpatient is the removal of all responsibility. Planned inpatient - which is not the same as emergency hold - planned inpatient will just take every possible stressor in your current environment and reduce them to almost nothing. Your mind needs to unclench. If you:

• are unwilling to try other drugs to help
• are unwilling to push past your skepticism and fear to try physiological tricks to force relief
• would rather choose suffering, because you can't find a path through the pitfalls of your belief system

I would say that your only option is hospital.
And going back to my first point - when I arrive at the series of thoughts that I've shared, above - it helps me see my barriers differently.

Your mind is working against you right now. Lack of sleep is compounding it. I know it doesn't feel like you are choosing to keep yourself in this state, it feels like you have no options. That feeling, and the belief that you are trapped and nothing will work for you, is one of the most common low points. I'm not calling it common to diminish it - rather, to say that it's understood by so, so many of us.

But it's an illusion. You just need to find the key that breaks through it. I think, given everything you've written, that focusing on the physical symptoms and the tangible things you can do to start to bring that anxiety down, that's your best bet. You're not going to conquer your medication bias in the near future, not in the state you're in. And cognitive stuff is hard when you're as stressed as you are.

So: breathing is one. It's essential. It will work for everyone. You do need to get clever about solving the puzzle of it for yourself. @Sandstone's story of breaking through the breathing barrier is a great one. Keep trying.

Splash your face with cold water. I'm serious. And if you can do it, just dunk your whole head into it. If you need to, get into the shower and make it be cold, and stick your face in that cold shower of water. Mammalian diving reflex is a thing, and humans have it. I got through a lot of bad times getting into the shower, fully clothed, just to bring myself back and back down. You do it as much as you need. If it's 10 times a day, it's 10 times a day.

Can you do hard cardio? Figure out the physical activity that will literally have you almost to physical exhaustion in 5 minutes, 10 max. It's a different way to force the body into a different state, but it will force it into a different state.

Force change.

 

[Friday]

Force change

I can’t like this enough.

As Joey said; meds are one way, hospitalization another, direct action a third. Combos in spades.

You’ve got options. Hell. We all do. Seeing them is often hard. But we’ve got them.