• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Strange Star

When I reflect through my intellect on this knotty problem I have, I think the vicious cycle goes something like this:
The pain is my body's way of making me lie down. When I lie down, the pain mostly recedes.
I lie down to rest, and I am assaulted by flashbacks of various sorts--mostly body and visuals.
I try to stay present when this happens, reminding myself that I am safe now, but often I fail and get hijacked by young parts.
When I get hijacked by young parts, other parts of the system kick in to make it stop, and they are quite effective. Occasionally, I just go to sleep--check out completely. More often I go into some bizarre state like catalepsy where my body does not move without profound motivation and effort on my part--and when I'm in that state I am totally not myself. Or, occasionally (and much more appealingly) I am driven from bed to DO something. Write, draw, paint, clean the kitchen, do laundry...whatever it is just do it and keep doing it until...
the pain and exhaustion shut me down again and the whole cycle begins all over again.

This shit happens several times a day. Every day.

So I guess I can see why Wags wants me to sedate myself with seroquel. She says I have too much energy and it is getting in the way of my healing.

I have decided to trust her. And have decided to go on starvation diet along with the pills. Because I cannot cannot cannot gain any more weight or I will be rolled back to the self-destructive mire because much of my trauma is connected with my body and my weight in really complicated ways that I am not even close to sorting out yet. Can't even put words to it.

Wag asked, I think, that I take the med for two weeks and see how I feel. I suppose I am willing to do this. Maybe this will be the magic pill that helps me heal. It did nothing when I was on it around 1.5 years ago, but I think that was a very low dose. This one is pretty significant. I'm scared.
 
I lie down to rest, and I am assaulted by flashbacks of various sorts--mostly body and visuals.
Can you picture yourself following your silver cord and lying at the feet of your higher self. Ask for whatever you need in the moment (meaning your higher self's thoughts on this) and ask if you can rest there. I found this super helpful for me when I was flashing so badly during rest. It may take practice - but - well just a thought.
 
I've not yet started the new med. Drug store doesn't have it yet. I am sort of glad, because I am afraid to take it. Afraid of sinking into sleep I guess. That's really what I'm afraid of more than the potential weight gain. And, of course, I am beginning to realize the significance of this. Because bad things happen when I go to sleep. At least that is what many parts of me feel. I lose control when I go to sleep. My system does not like to go to sleep, as much as it craves sleep. Lol! Kind of like disorganized attachment. Disorganized sleep. Sigh.

I stayed in bed all day yesterday. I did sleep some. A lot of crap surfaced. But I was okay enough. Nothing bad happened except inside my system. I have to keep remembering this. It is what Yoda meant when he used to remind me that feelings and memories cannot kill me. I know that, but I don't know it all the way through my system. So somehow I have to sort that out.

Because I know that if I don't make some peace with taking this medicine, it will not work. I have had this experience many times before. All of me has to be on board with taking the med., not just the parts of me that want to be out of pain, or that know I need more sleep. All of me. Mr. Famous Psychiatrist is famous for that theory--the idea that people's parts (not just DID people, but all people) all have to be in agreement to let the medicine work, or it will not give the full effect.

Hey, maybe if I can get all to agree, I won't gain the weight that made me stop this med the last time I was on it! Wouldn't that be something for the books!

I am feeling somewhat more oriented and less in pain today. I will go to see Yoda and maybe talk about this med thing. The psychiatrist is going to talk to my husband supposedly (with my blessings). I am not good at letting him know what is going on with me. It always comes out all garbled up. So maybe she can clue him in.

I still have so many reservations about her. I told her I trusted her on Wednesday, and she said, "No you don't. You don't trust anyone. I know that." And I said, "Well, okay, but I trust you more than some people." Which is true. But she confuses me so much. And I think some of this is me because I get so scrambled when I go to see her, but some of it is also her because she is an associative thinker and it feels like the things she says to me are all over the place and no follow through. She wouldn't give me the "literature" she had said she would on Wednesday, because she said it was not the right time yet. I know I was pretty messed up when I went there, but still. And in previous weeks she had talked about wanting me to get a neuropsych eval, but then she hasn't brought that up again.

Seriously, I don't know if it is that I am so scrambled and unpredictable that she can't quite figure out what to do with me, or if it's that she is just really disorganized. But I do like her quite a bit, and she is very kind, so I will continue to give it a chance. Same with Yoda.

So this is parent's weekend at my daughter's school. My husband is coming up tonight. Big days tonight and tomorrow and Sunday morning. I am hoping I can push through it without totally crashing myself. I really feel I can't not go. Although today I told my daughter I would go to just one of her classes this morning, but probably not any others. She was disappointed, but I think she understands that her dad has to work, and I have to go to my appointment and then come home and rest. I just can't be perfect mom. I try damned hard, and I think I do a pretty good job, but I am starting to learn that it is totally not worth crashing myself out over some things (like spending all day going to her classes with her today when I will do some of that tomorrow.). That's a start in self-compassion, I guess.

Grudging self-compassion.
 
OMG. This seroquel stuff is intense. I'm managing so far. Will wait to see if it gets better before I send up the white flag saying I cannot function anymore, it just doesn't work. I have figured out that my doctor wants me to take this because she thinks I am bipolar, although she is telling me that it is so I can get some rest. I think "get some rest" is what she wants for me literally, as in sleep, but also she means it as get some rest from my manic brain. I still don't think I have bipolar, but maybe I do. Who knows. I would have laughed at you if you'd told me a few years back that I had experienced trauma as a child or that I have PTSD. I just don't know what normal is. Maybe my normal is bipolar. But this medication is seriously messing with my ability to function except in little windows like this one. It's like the air clears briefly before it closes in again.

Night one: I fell into the bathtub when I was trying to get to the toilet. Did not sleep well.
Night two: I was seriously messed up--in and out of total shutdown about 30 minutes after taking it. Not sure if it was med related or not because I felt something coming on before I took the med. But middle of the night, I managed to get to the toilet without falling. But was awake most of the night off and on anyway.
Night three: I slept some. Woke at 2:50 AM, one of my usual times of waking up, and got to bathroom okay but it was a monumental effort to get out of bed and walk. I am stumbling off and on. Today I am very tired but I cannot go to sleep even though I lay in bed for 2 hours. Even though I really want to.

I can't seem to do much of anything except in little random bits. But together, despite the randomness, I was able to clean the bathroom, put the laundry away, and start a new knitting project. But when I was knitting, I started getting this barrage of parts talking. I finally had to stop.

I am really feeling like a "psychiatric patient" now. I don't like it. But I have promised I will give this medicine a reasonable try. I think Wag thinks a reasonable try is around a month. I am not sure I can tolerate this for that long.
 
Don't mean to make a big deal here but Seroquil screwed me up horribly. I am concerned that you don't have an adult there while you are on this new drug. You are right, it is intense and it made me into a totally different person. I was thankful that my friend who was housing me at the time was watching me and insisted that I rethink the idea.
 
Hi @shimmerz thank you for your concern. I'm a bit concerned too. It seems to take around 16 hours to wear off...thus it is now 4 PM and I'm feeling normal(ish). I took the pill at 7 last night. Ugh. By 9:30 I was incoherent and went to bed. I see the psychiatrist, Wag, on Wednesday and I will talk with her. Right now I'm on 100 mg of plain old seroquel, and waiting for the 200 mg. of extended release to come in to the pharmacy. Maybe that will be better as it is XR.

The real issue is my clumsiness, and that it seems to have slowed my brain down enough that the parts are making themselves very present on the outside. Yet somehow I was able to pull it together this morning and be normalish for my daughter and drive to school...just kind of fell apart when I came home. So I kind of don't get it. Maybe when push comes to shove, my manager parts can override the effects.

Anyway, I'm just babbling. This is all stuff for Wag I guess. I'm kind of debating asking my husband to come and stay for a couple of weeks. But the down side of that is that this cottage is VERY small and having another person here would make me feel quite overwhelmed I think. And anyway it doesn't solve the issue of whether I am okay during the day by myself. But, here I am today, by myself and I'm okay. I don't FEEL okay, but nothing bad has happened. Very strange indeed.
 
Started Wednesday night on seroquel xr 200mg.
Yesterday morning, I got up and to the coffee maker. By the time the coffee was brewed, I was dizzy and thought I would throw up and collapse. I went back to bed. Thankfully, my daughter had a "sleep-in" day (didn't have to be on campus until 8:55 instead of 7:55). So, all worked out okay. I felt better after going back to sleep for 45 minutes. The day went okay...some nausea and a few times of having to lie down lest I keel over. This morning I woke and felt okay (just sleepy), but when I went to pick up the dog's dish to get her breakfast, I tipped over forward. Now, after a cigarette and a cup of strong coffee, I'm sort of getting some control.

The med makes me feel like I am quite drunk. I hate this feeling. But I remember feeling this way when I started on the Gabapentin too, and it did go away after a few days. But I have had seroquel in the system for a week I think, and it is still making me feel this way.

Driving is challenging. Everything is challenging. But I am doing it. I even went out to lunch with a friend today. I have kind of super-power manager parts that generally get me through until total collapse. THAT is what I'm worried about...my inability to stop being functional for long enough to rest so that I don't reach the point of collapse--which often involves a prior self-harming activity in a last-ditch attempt to remain functional.

It is very hard to explain to my therapists what this problem is. Because therapists are invested in helping the person be functional. And I am mostly functional, so long as the demands on my efforts aren't too much. And at the moment, they aren't. But one of my problems is and always has been being too functional. Meaning, I guess, staying in control of myself. Keeping the internal world internal. But these days, it's leaking out ever more. And in the past few years, the more the young vulnerable parts leak out, the more destructive the mean ones get--and sometimes they leak out and hurt me physically in my body. That push-me, pull-you effect generally leads to collapse of one sort or another before I hurt myself too badly.

So I KNOW I need to rest a lot. But I can't seem to make myself do it. And when I do finally lie down, the parts start zooming in and I get flashbacks until finally the system shuts down and I go to sleep. Then, when I wake up, it all starts over again. Ugh it is a rotten cycle.
 
I am still hanging in there. Went to therapy on Friday and was totally out of it. Yoda called Wag. I think we are all trying to keep me out of the hospital. Not sure I can make this happen but am trying. Wag says with a lot of rest the intensity of how messed up I feel ought to pass within 4-7 days. I am now on day 4 and not much has changed. But I am doing basic stuff. Trying to tough it out. If I thought this was going to be the new normal, I would be off this med in a flash. But Wag says it will get better. So I am pushing through and hoping she is right.

What scares me a bit is the driving which is when the suicidal parts seem to come out most. Fighting the urge to drive off the road. Yoda says sleep. They want me to call in my husband to take over for a while but I don't want to do that. The part that feels the need for respect will not allow me to show my weakness.

I feel useless enough as it is without working and with having given up most all my activities of regular-person life. So I have to force those. I went to church with my daughter today which was good. Took doggie to walk in the marshes yesterday. I found a paddle washed up with the tide. LOL. I keep thinking, "So this is a sign that I'm no longer up a creek without a paddle. I have a paddle now, even though I'm still up a creek."

I'm very tippy physically. Seeing double or blurry. A little dizzy. Dropping things a lot. I have dropped one of my canes at least a half-dozen times today. My hands are not working well. But it comes and goes. Like a tsunami or a riptide. LIke right now I am typing okay-ish. The muscle memory is there if I can focus hard enough.

I think I am in trouble. That I should be in a safer space somewhere where other people can make judgement calls for me. Like I shouldnt be driving. BUT also, I am able to do these things so maybe it is just the part that is the disasterizer that is feeling this way. It is all very confusing. So I am going to go to sleep for a while and hoping to feel steadier and clearer as a result.
 
No idea how I lost track of your diary again *heavy sigh*. So very sorry my friend.

I am very concerned about this. How long are you going to give it before you say 'enough'? Ultimately you are the biggest loser if thing go south because of these drugs right? Be so very careful.

As far as the driving - is there another means to get your daughter to school and back? Just for a while? I was on a drug and almost had myself killed a few times. It is nothing to play around with honey.
 
No idea how I lost track of your diary again *heavy sigh*. So very sorry my friend.
No worries. The notifications for diary posts are really inconsistent.

I was on a drug and almost had myself killed a few times. It is nothing to play around with honey.
Yeah, it is dangerous stuff. If these effects don't wear off soon, I am going to go off of it because I cannot live this way. I'm doing okay though. Getting the hang of what I need to do to drive safely and just generally move around in space safely. I haven't had any more falls. I have to just be...sigh...very mindful.

I am meant to sleep all day. So depressing. But it is what the body needs, I suppose. The problem is that this drug makes me VERY tired, but when I lie down to sleep I am battered by flashbacks so I have to get up. It's a vicious cycle.
 
So I had an interesting experience yesterday.

I was texting with my husband, who mentioned that he'd had a marathon texting session with an old college friend of his, C. My husband said C was asking about me because she felt a really deep connection form between us when she came to visit with us in the Summer of 2015.

It was nice to hear that she felt connected to me and wanted to see me again.

And then I realized that beyond the familiarity of the name, I had zero recollection of this person. Zero.

Now that kind of thing happens to me with fair frequency--people who seem to know me or know all about me but I have no recollection of them. I have always been very angry with myself about this, and it also makes me feel frightened by my horrible memory, and very anxious as obviously I ought to know this person. When it happens, it churns into a big mess with me kind of pretending that "oh, of course I remember you," as I hope that the memory will actually connect as the conversation continues. Usually something in the conversation clicks enough that I get some context. Like, "Oh, this is someone connected with the neighborhood so I can talk about neighborhood issues." Usually, I just get through the interaction and move on to other things. Most of the time the other person doesn't notice any disjunction.

But yesterday was interesting. It was a different experience because I was not interacting with the person I didn't remember (so no feeling of crisis), AND the conversation was happening in text form, which gives me time to think before I respond (so even less stress).

And that is when I realized that this situation, this not remembering significant interactions with a person, is an example of what can happen with DID. That obviously I interacted with the person in a normal enough way that she felt connected with me, wanted to visit again, etc. But obviously she was interacting with one of my parts and I couldn't connect it all up to remember meeting her.

And I had this moment of self-compassion. That maybe the reason this happens to me is because the way my brain is wired. That maybe it's not that I have a bad memory, but just that it's fragmented because of dissociation. That this is why I have a very good memory sometimes, but not other times. That I don't have to feel ashamed of what I have always considered a significant flaw in my personality.
 
Back
Top