#i feel the dissociation or the executive dysfunction or the depression start to set in | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

onerebuplic · 9 months

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-I’m not sure if I have time to try all my options

-I’m not sure what to do first with the time I do have

-When I do know what to do first, I run into resistance or curveballs, like being hungry, thirsty, overheating, medication issues, cptsd issues, or depression issues

-when I don’t run into that resistance, I encounter the executive dysfunction and time blindness from ADHD. I often end up fumbling my time or not completing things or doing them in an unwise order.

-so maybe the issue is:

-I already have unrealistic expectations for each day.

-My failure to plan ahead with routines, checklists, and more when it comes to food/meds/errands is disrupting my ability to focus and get into flow.

-Having unrealistic expectations and then not planning ahead, or taking care of the small things, is destroying my ability to get BIG things done.

-Being unable to get BIG things done and track progress is continuing to undermine my confidence, self trust, self worth, and general feelings of safety and trust in my future and my environment.

-Having low self worth, self trust, and confidence as well as feeling triggered and unsafe are causing me to either dissociate, binge, or make bad decisions with my time (in order to avoid these feelings and the pain of unintentional failure)

-Setting myself up to dissociate, binge, and make bad decisions with my time only digs the hole deeper and ensures the worst case scenario will happen:

-Because I believe I deserve the worst case scenario, I can’t do anything to avoid it, and my actions are worthless.

-I believe I have no control over my life and that helps me avoid accountability and shame, because I’d rather be sad and depressed than guilty and desperate.

-Believing I have no control over my life and that I’m not capable of doing better is keeping me from believing a better life is possible and a better me is possible.

-Not believing a better life and better me are possible means I’m making choices that reflect that, whether intentional or unaware.

-Knowing that my subconscious and nervous system are as damaged as they are, and as powerful as they are, but disregarding that and hoping that I just “get better” and that life magically gets better is anti intellectual, even if it’s what I was taught growing up.

-Any choices you make with the intention to help yourself grow and do better, will help reinforce the subconscious notion that you deserve better and you can achieve better.

-Each failure is a chance to do better. Each bad moment is a chance to do better.

-It’s not that you’re out of time to do better.

-It’s that you’re out of time to start believing you can do better.

Give yourself a try.

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painted-crow · 3 years

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Secondary Toast Revolving Door, Part 1

I guess I should start with a little about me, since that’s easier than making you pick through previous asks for information and some of you guys are new here. This one’s going to be heavily personal, so you can skip it if you want.

I’m a double Bird. My Bird primary system is heavily Badger influenced, and I also use Lion to support it by telling me when I should investigate something more closely. If we can dip into primary territory for a moment, I guess you can say I understand the world through systems that model things around me. But not all of those systems are things I’ve consciously examined, or fully investigated.

My understanding of how historical people dressed is pretty limited, for example, because I haven’t studied it in depth to get all the information—but I consciously understand what I do know about it. You could say this system piece is tiny but clear; I could expand it if I chose to find out more.

My understanding of how someone I’m not close to thinks might have more data to work with, but I haven’t consciously processed it; that’s the kind of thing where my Lion primary model will tell me to look closer if that person starts acting weird. This system piece might be described as huge but fuzzy; I could clarify it if I sat down and thought about it. I probably have more of these than I realize, but Lion basically takes care of monitoring those. I don’t have to investigate everything.

But some of my systems are both large and fairly clear, because I’ve taken the time both to gather data on them and to examine it. My understanding of myself is… well, I won’t say it’s terribly clear, because I’m in my early twenties and I’m still constantly getting new information, plus someone keeps changing the environment and mucking with my data (that would be me). But I have to examine it, because my brain is like a notoriously buggy piece of software and I’m the poor schmuck saddled with tech support duties.

Basically, the reason I’m good at playing therapist with other people is that I’m constantly doing exactly that thing with myself. (This probably makes me a very annoying patient for actual therapists.)

About that buggy brain, then.

I have major depression. That was professionally diagnosed when I was a teenager and it’s probably genetic. I take medication for it, when I remember to. It especially flares up in the winter or when I’m under stress. I probably have some kind of anxiety disorder too.

I’m almost certainly autistic, which I’ve never brought up with a professional—the first person to figure it out was the system I’m now best friends with, because they’re autistic and they knew I was within two weeks of talking to me. It took me two years to catch up with them and figure it out myself.

In my defense, I thought executive dysfunction, sensory overwhelm, dissociation, and hyperempathy were like… secret menu items for depression, because those only really bug me during depressive episodes. My current theory is that they’re related to autistic burnout instead.

I mask a lot, subconsciously—it’s actually really hard to turn that off normally—and I just can’t do that as much when depressed. If I do, my tolerance for everything else goes way down and I’ll go into overwhelm and start having shutdowns and dissociating. I recover pretty quickly (hours, not days), but if you’ve never spent 15 minutes standing in a Walmart aisle trying to decide whether you want a jar of peanut butter, but you can’t make decisions because you can’t access your emotions and you don’t really feel like you’re “here” but you kind of just want to go home… well, be glad I guess.

Of course, I have other autistic traits that show up when I’m not under stress, but they’re seldom associated with autism because most people don’t know what autis are like when we’re actually happy. Like, hyperlexia? That’s not even an “official” word, the auti community just uses it because “official” literature hasn’t caught up. I taught myself to read at age three (according to my mom; she says I was reading news headlines and stuff, not just books I’d memorized) and wrote a 35k word novella when I was ten, with no external prompting. My audio processing used to be terrible, but I routinely tested at college age reading levels as a kid.

I also might have ADHD? If so, it’s also mostly just noticeable if I’m under stress, and then it’s hard to tell if that’s the issue or if it’s just autism/depression again.

You might be getting a clearer picture of how my secondary and its model end up burnt so often!

(Resisting a very strong urge to cut stuff from this post.)

In short, I was a Gifted Kid. I spent a lot of my teen years biting off more than I could chew, honestly. I felt that I should be able to do more, and I wanted to be taken seriously, but I had basically no idea how to take care of myself because my needs are different from everyone else’s. I’m still figuring those out.

I’m kind of like an orchid plant: incredibly picky about conditions, wants a different “soil” and watering schedule, gets stressed if stuff changes too quickly, but when everything is just right and it does bloom, it goes all out.

I’m not kidding when I say that I have odd needs. One of them is the need for creative work, which seems to be hardwired into me. When I say that art or writing keeps me sane, I often hear back “oh yeah! I’ve heard that can be very therapeutic,” which is an innocuous reply, but it’s always bugged me, and I think I’ve figured out why.

First, because that’s not the reason I make things… I just… have to. Second, I can’t “make up” not doing creative work with some other kind of therapy. Third and most importantly, I’d much rather think of “artist” as my ground state, and depression as a condition that happens when my needs aren’t being met, rather than thinking of depression as the default that I’m just using art to escape from. That seems to me a healthier way of thinking, and probably a more accurate one, but I’m probably the only one who can see that distinction.

If life gets in the way and I can’t make space for creative work, it will actively make my depression worse. I know this because, multiple times, I’ve been unable to pinpoint why I’m feeling shitty, and then I go back to my easel or my writing or (ukulele, cooking, even just taking care of houseplants) and realize I haven’t done anything creative in like a month and thaaaat’s the problem.

I crack open a bottle of gesso to prep some canvases and it smells like… well, I don’t think you can get high off gesso? But it’s not like when you’re out of it on painkillers or cold medicine or whatever. It’s incredibly grounding, like the world snaps back into focus but it’s also oddly euphoric. Or I write ten thousand words in a couple days and it just… I don’t know what that does. I’ve never run across a word for it.

The writer of Smile at Strangers (a really good memoir centered around women, anxiety, and karate) describes a similar feeling in relation to her martial arts practice.

It’s also a bit like when all the snow melts after winter and you step outside and there’s the smell of wet soil under sunlight and I’m not sure if this fully translates for people who don’t have seasonal depression. Sorry.

Dammit, I want to paint… I haven’t had space to set up for like eight months. I’ve been nose-deep in writing projects since last summer for a reason, but right now my friggin Ravenclaw secondary is off angsting about something because of Life Stress Bullshit, and I don’t have the focus to work on any of my writing projects. Apart from this one. But it’s not really what I want in terms of creative work.

*velociraptor screech*

Oh, yeah. I guess I could mention this is why my nickname is Paint. Not sure if that was obvious before. The header image (which is more visible in the app for some reason) is one of my paintings. It’s a tiny one and it’s not one of my favorites, but I had the photo on my phone and the colors work well enough for what I needed.

(restrains self from negging my own painting ability)

This is starting to get into spoiler territory for what burned Ravenclaw secondary looks like, huh? It’s peaced out for a couple weeks at this point. I’m trying to write about what made it take off, but my ability to think of words and form a coherent sentence kinda flew out the window when I approached it directly.

Let’s just say that around the start of the month, someone I was talking to online (if you’re reading this, it’s definitely not you) kindaaaa hit a nasty depression trigger of mine. Not their fault—it’s very specific to me, and I struggle to explain why I can’t really talk about it. Basically, I spent years studying programming and web design, and due to several different but related issues during that experience, it’s now a trigger for me. I very much want it not to be, but trying to train that out of myself has induced more than one panic attack and I’m stuck between giving up on it or figuring out a way to go back to it that doesn’t totally shut my brain down.

That paragraph took forever to write, by the way.

I think I have to end this here. I… am going to go take out the trash, and water my plants, and make my bed, and file some paperwork, and maybe I’ll even mix up some bread dough or do some laundry. Spoiler alert for what it looks like when my Hufflepuff model takes over, I guess.

Oh. And I should maybe probably eat something. I almost forgot about that... again.

#sortinghatchats #time to overshare on the internet i guess #secondary toast revolving door #mental health #burned ravenclaw secondary #hufflepuff secondary model #ravenclaw primary #paint speaks

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myfandomrambles · 4 years

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Timeless Children & Trauma

An examination of the way the trauma experienced by Baby/Pre-1! Doctor affects The Doctor into the current incarnation.

I'll split this into three main sections:

The effects of the trauma generally on each doctor (1-13)

Look at implicit memories specifically

Relationship with trauma experienced as an adult

General Trauma Effects

In The Timeless Children, we are shown the doctor was separated from or abandoned by her own people which is an abandonment trauma and attachment trauma.

Then we have a parent in Tecteun who was emotionally abusive and subjected the child to medical trauma. After the first regeneration (a stressor on it’s without the knowledge beforehand) we then have extreme medical, physical, psychological and emotional abuse.

These experiences would set the foundation for how The Doctor would be to view themselves, other people, relationships, love, trust, belief systems and how they would understand what is normal.

Going forward we will look at the experience of having their mind wipe as similar to a combination of dissociative amnesia and gaslighting. The symptoms discussed are based on the known symptoms of DTD, CPTSD and general effects of complex trauma.

Here is a breakdown of the Developmental trauma effects displayed by each Doctor.

First:

Agitation

Anxiety

Attachment issues

Chronic Boredom

Feelings of being other or different

Emotional dysregulation

Executive dysfunction

Fear of Abandonment

Identity Issues

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Phobias

Self-isolation

Struggles in education

Second:

Anxiety

Attachment Issues

Co-regulation dependency

Executive dysfunction

Dysregulation

Feelings of being other or different

Purposeful (and unintentional) disregard for others opinions

Sensory integration issues

Three:

Agitation

Chronic boredom

Dissociation

Emotional reactivity

Interpersonal relational issues

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Irritability

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Four:

Attention Issues

Chronic Boredom

Dissociation

Executive Dysfunction

Emotional Reactivity

Feelings of being other or different

Interpersonal relational issues

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Impulsivity

Five:

Adult C-PTSD (Those w/ this label experience other PTSD symptoms but are linked to other trauma’s)

Anxiety

Depression

Dissociation

Emotional dysregulation

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Interpersonal relational issues

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Hopelessness

Hyperarousal & Hypervigilance

Lack of impulse control and recklessness

Obsessive Thoughts

Six:

Adult C-PTSD

Chronic boredom

Emotional Reactivity

Emotional dysregulation

Fear of abandonment

Hyperarousal & Hypervigilance

Identity issues

Intense Anger

Interpersonal relational issues

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Irritability

Self-regulation issues

Seven:

Adult C-PTSD

Agency, locus of control and/or control issues

Anger

Anxiety

Chronic boredom

Chronic loneliness

Compulsive behaviours

Emotional reactivity

Emotional dysregulation

Fear of abandonment

Hyperarousal

Identity issues

Irritability

Interpersonal relational issues

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Obsessive thoughts

Self-Isolation

Trust issues

Eight:

Adult C-PTSD

Agency, locus of control and/or control issues

Agitation

Anxiety

Attention Issues

Attachment issues

Chronic boredom

Chronic loneliness

Compulsive thoughts

Compulsive behaviours

Co-regulation dependency

Depression

Dissociation

Enmeshment & Co-dependency

Emotional reactivity

Emotional dysregulation

Executive Dysfunction

Fear of abandonment

Hyperarousal & Hypervigilance

Identity issues

Impulsivity

Intense Anger

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Interpersonal relational issues

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Irritability

Memory disruption

Obsessive behaviours & thoughts

Panic Attacks

Psychosis symptoms

Recklessness

Risk-Seeking behaviours

Self-Esteem Issues

Self-Harm

Self-isolation

Sensory-Integration Issues

Shame & Guilt

Suicidality

Nine:

Adult C-PTSD

Agency, locus of control and/or control issues

Agitation

Anxiety

Attachment Issues

Chronic boredom

Chronic loneliness

Depression

Enmeshment & Co-dependency

Emotional reactivity

Emotional dysregulation

Fear of abandonment

Hyperarousal & Hypervigilance

Identity issues

Impulsivity

Intense Anger

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Interpersonal relational issues

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Irritability

Panic Attacks

Recklessness

Self-Esteem issues

Self-Isolation

Shame & Guilt

Trust Issues

Ten:

Adult C-PTSD

Agency, locus of control and/or control issues

Agitation

Anxiety

Attachment issues

Chronic Boredom

Chronic Loneliness

Depression

Dissociation

Enmeshment & Co-dependency

Emotional Dysregulation

Emotional Reactivity

Fear of abandonment

Hyperarousal & Hypervigilance

Identity issues

Impulsivity

Intense Anger

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Interpersonal relational issues

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Irritability

Panic Attacks

Recklessness

Self-Isolation

Shame & Guilt

Trust Issues

Unstable Schemas

Vacillating self-esteem

Eleven:

Adult C-PTSD

Agency, locus of control and/or control issues

Agitation

Anxiety

Attachment Issues

Chronic Boredom

Chronic Loneliness

Co-regulation dependency

Depression

Dissociation

Disordered Eating

Enmeshment & or Co-dependency

Emotional Dysregulation

Emotional Reactivity

Executive Dysfunction

Fear of abandonment

Hyperarousal & Hypervigilance

Identity issues

Impulsivity

Intense Anger

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Interpersonal relational issues

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Irritability

Obsessive Thoughts & Behaviors

Panic Attacks

Psychosis Symptoms

Recklessness

Sensory Integration Issues

Self-Isolation

Shame & Guilt

Suicidality

Twelve:

Adult C-PTSD

Agency, locus of control and/or control issues

Agitation

Anxiety

Attention Issues

Attachment issues

Chronic boredom

Chronic loneliness

Compulsive thoughts

Compulsive behaviours

Co-regulation dependency

Depression

Dissociation

Enmeshment & Co-dependency

Emotional reactivity

Emotional dysregulation

Executive Dysfunction

Fear of abandonment

Hyperarousal & Hypervigilance

Identity issues

Impulsivity

Insomnia

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Interpersonal relational issues

Panic Attacks

Obsessive behaviours & thoughts

Recklessness

Risk-Seeking behaviours

Self-Harm

Sensory-Integration Issues

Shame & Guilt

Suicidality

Thirteen:

Adult C-PTSD

Agency, locus of control and/or control issues

Agitation

Anxiety

Depression

Dissociation

Chronic Boredom

Fear of abandonment

Flashbacks

Hyperarousal & Hypervigilance

Insomnia

Intense anger

Intense and/or unhealthy relationships

Intrapersonal understanding deficit

Irritability

Jaded feelings

Self-isolation

Risk seeking behaviours

Implicit Memories

Much of what I think can be traced from these experiences outside of some underlying symptomology & the predispositions it left The Doctor with is the experience of implicit memories.

Implicit memories are memories we don’t fully remember that influence our patterns of behaviour and emotional reactions via our subconsciousness. They are formed through early life experiences, repeated events and complex trauma. This is very influential for The Doctor because the events we are discussing happened before they had their memory wiped to prevent regular recall & visual flashbacks. This mind wipe is highly analogous to dissociative amnesia/repressed memories.

As we look through their behaviour we can see possible connections implicit memories:

Anxiety around being controlled and authority. Very understandable in connection to being held down, gaslight, and used.

Deep feelings about justice and injustice needing to be rectified.

Never being particularly fond of medical treatment.

Parental and/or mentor style relationships replay these unhealthy patterns. Rassilon, K'anpo Rimpoche & Borusa that were all intense to downright abusive. Due to having their mother being abusive (and possibly abandoned or losing their birth parents) The Doctor would likely be used to these patterns of relations.

Patterns of becoming deeply attached to people, pushing others away, and trying to control how this happens. A childhood of abandonment and abuse by loved ones often leaves people stuck in needing this type of emotional connection.

Reactive to feeling like they are being used we see this in the refusal to take normal time lord positions and resist being a soldier.

Re-playing the pattern of running away, getting hurt and then running away again. This is a direct copy of the trauma of leaving their home, ending up on Gallifrey, and then entering an unhealthy behaviour.

Under-reactivity to physical pain, a childhood of physical pain changes the bodies natural reactions.

Relationship With Other Trauma

This foundational developmental trauma would continuously affect The Doctor in the ways mentioned above. Due to the effects of developmental trauma, they experience the new trauma's more viscerally and they become re-traumatized and worsen all previous symptoms.

The adult chronic trauma and shock trauma The Doctor experienced all caused symptoms like flashbacks to those events, intrusive thoughts, obsession, specific phobia, and create altered thought patterns based on those specific events.

Basically, by this point in their life, The Doctor has experienced thousands of years of complex trauma starting with medical child abuse, the abuse within the academy, bullying, the losses of the early doctors, torture, exposure to war, the violence they have done, loss of loved ones, the Time War, Trenzalore, the Time Dial and many more continuous losses of those they love.

Erasure of Later Trauma:

Many people have tried to make everything The Doctor has done, said and felt about these early experiences. As I described in the first two parts, I do believe these events would and have affected The Doctor for their entire life. And I agree that things like wanting to help, fearing authority, disliking being trapped, the need to run away, and certain beliefs around parenting could be based here. But I think some things are innate to people, and aliens, that are not born from trauma like being a huge nerd and their compassion. And on top of that, as I just described, these early traumatic experiences do not erase all of the general emotional experiences The Doctor has had and doesn’t mean the “adult” traumas would not be the cause behind their reactions.

For example scenes like Twelve describing his nightmares and flashbacks in Zygon Inversion does not have to be about his screams during the events shown in The Timeless Children (which I saw pointed out), it can still be about the Time War, Maybe Trenzalore. We know this is what twelve is talking about and thematically it makes sense, he is also talking about moral injury in what he did during the Time War, not what was done to him.

The fandom has done this for a while. choose the one big thing and make everything based on that one traumatic event. Previously we said that everything doctors 9-13 experience was only about the Time War, and now we make everything The Doctor ever did about Timeless Child experiments. As someone who works with complex and developmental trauma, it is true that yes the earliest experiences do shape everything but the later traumas and life influence behaviours, thoughts and will have huge emotional weight.

This understanding of layered trauma allows us to best understand The Doctor.

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scretladyspider · 4 years

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Do you have any tips on how to stop dissociating? It's gotten to the point that for every two days, I lose roughly twelve hours of time. It's kind of driving me insane? I'm always in a state of dissociation nowadays and no matter what I do, it constantly bites me in the butt. Also how are you? I hope you're doing well!

Stopping it altogether isn’t something I’m particularly good at. But I’ll tell you what’s helping me right now. I am far from perfect at these things. They take continued practice and effort, and they aren’t easy. But they help a little. And that adds up, I think.

Be gentle with yourself.

I think that’s most important, and probably most difficult. We’re going through something unprecedented in our lives. Reading about things like a plague and living through it are totally different things.

With everything on standstill, our brains don’t really know what to do. Dissociating isn’t an uncommon reaction to extreme stress or trauma; you are not alone in experiencing it, or in it getting worse.

So the real question then is how do you be gentle with yourself in a way that helps you with dissociation?

Figure out your limits and stick within them.

This is different for everyone. For me, it meant muting everything related to COVID that I can on Twitter and only watching the news at the end of the day. Why? Because if I watch it at the beginning of the day, my brain just zaps out and I’m stuck in a dissociated, executive dysfunction depression fog that just lasts for hours. It can go on for the whole day.

Once I started muting things that I do care about but just can’t read an excessive amount about without shutting down. This is a limit within my self-care I have to stick within. It’s one of many, and they are personal to me - just as yours would be personal to you.

It means you need to figure out what sets things off - if anything in particular does. You might be surprised by what you find. If you notice something is bothering you, write it down. Take note. Try and distance yourself from it, if you can, at least a little.

Find ways to connect with people.

A virtual connection is still a connection. It isn’t quite the same, but it is something.

Virtual movie nights are good. You can call someone, or get a chat going, where you hit play at the same time on Netflix or Hulu. There’s a chrome extension called Netflix Party where you can screen share and watch a movie with a party. There’s a YouTuber who does a video series called “Bad Movies and a Beat” who posts a link to her Netflix parties when she watches bad movies. She puts on makeup while reacting to or doing commentary on a bad movie. It’s pretty funny - here’s a link to her playlist.

The best ways to connect are going to be more than typing or sending videos. Those are good, but, it’s good also to find people to call and video chat live with. Something where you’re interacting with that person in real-time. Zoom and Skype can be good platforms for this (though if you’re on Zoom I’d recommend using a VPN, and their privacy policies are a bit sketch).

Do you have a pet? If not, can you adopt? I have two cats and they greatly help me stay connected. I don’t necessarily speak to a person every day, but I can talk to my cats, and that does help. A person’s bond with their pet can be very special, and shelters are still looking to give pets new homes, even in these times.

Find good distractions.

What is something you enjoy laughing at? What is a TV show or YouTube channel you find funny? Laughter, even if you aren’t laughing out loud, can help. Dissociation feeds on the attention we give it. While it can be vital to talk about it, it is also essential to make sure it doesn’t take over your entire day, if you can help it. It can still be going on without it taking over every thought. This takes practice. I was getting better at it before everything happened, but, well... I feel like I’m starting over.

This brings me to my next thing - resources for dissociation help.

Swarmy G, or A Coach Called Life - A YouTuber and DPRD expert who has recovered himself. What I like about Swarmy’s videos is he doesn’t talk down to you for experiencing it, or say that it’s just anxiety - he understands that dissociation and anxiety are linked, but are not the same thing. He also sends out emails about different things that dissociation can cause struggles with and advice on how to handle it. I’ve found his stuff very helpful.

DP Diaries - A YouTuber in the U.K. who has DPRD himself and vlogs about what works for him, what doesn’t, and his experiences. It helps me feel less alone. His most recent vlog is about dealing with DPRD during the pandemic.

Here is a vlog about what helped on YouTuber when she was struggling with severe depersonalization.

There are a lot more on YouTube out there, but those are some starters.

If you can, it may be good to look into online or remote counseling. There are some therapists doing virtual counseling right now and there are also services like BetterHelp (though I do not have personal experience with them, I hear they aren’t bad).

I hope this helps, at least a little. I don’t know when things will be okay again. We’re going to have to take some deep breaths and practice patience and safe social distancing. One thing I do know is you aren’t at all alone in experiencing this. I hope you’re okay, and that this helps at least a little.

#answers #dissociation #depersonalization #derealization #I hope it helps

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illuminatingfear · 7 years

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brain talk (cw: meds, experiences with executive dysfunction / mental illness)

So... I have these mental blocks. They come up and suffocate me. I have a black & white mind; very one-track and it’s one-or-the-other. If I want to work on art, then it’s “why aren’t you working on <something else?>” and then I get... nothing done. If I want to order food (on the rare occassion I have money lmao) it can be either “splurge and get all the things you like” or “don’t eat at all.” There really is no in-between for me for almost all of my decisions. And if I am stuck on this mental block... I am stuck. I cannot get anything done; I end up standing in place or sitting in place for hours, my brain in deadlock. I know I can do things; I have the ability to Do! Things™! I have so many Things™ I want to do...

but right now, I have nothing to show for it. This mental block hits me whenever I Need To Do Something when there is at least one other thing I want/need to do on the backlog. I just... freeze. I panic. My brain shuts off and goes into dissociation mode for hours. When I “come out” of it, I realize that time has passed without me being productive and I feel horrible, endlessly guilty, and angry at myself for not being able to do anything! I need to DO something. Why can’t I DO anything! Therapist I went to at school suggested this is how my OCD is manifesting in my adult years, since I had it in equally debilitating ways as a child (imagine my surprise when I find out have rituals that take 3 hours to do correctly aren’t... “normal”?? but parents were/are uneducated, poor, and don’t believe in mental health, so they just told me to “stop doing weird things, why are you doing weird things?”) This is new territory for me... I have to really think about all of my mental blocks that have become so completely normal for me... and I definitely need a therapist to help figure this out. Now that I have the self-awareness that This Is A Thing, Probably OCD Again, I want to figure out what’s... what’s actually going on and how to cope.

I’ve come so far with my other disorders. I came to terms with being a several-time sexual assault and rape survivor. I am more and more sensitive and aware of my PTSD and respect the severity of my triggers. I know how to deal with my panic disorder and depression and BPD. I’ve just started (in March) taking meds for my ADHD, which I also finally got tested for and confirmed, so that’s another thing off my chest. I’m learning things about myself more and more, and I’m feel better and better about the closing gap of brain-uncertainties! I know so much now. I know that w.ee.d helps my PTSD more than any other thing; it helps tremendously. it also helps for focus (certain strains), and BPD meltdowns... again, tremendously. I know that, now, on the proper dosage of adderall, my depression minimizes and I feel honestly very good and... propelled forward; it gets me motivated to be productive when that motivation just isn’t there otherwise, or is normally drowned-out by bad thoughts. Now ...I need to figure out this mental block and how to get around it. I have quite a few. One involves moving/getting anything done in the mornings when there’s a roommate. This also extends to getting work/anything done when someone else is in the room with me. I just... can’t, and I get frustrated. Another block is about Doing Anything While There’s Something Else I Also Have To Do. School brought this up daily, because yes, you have many obligations! And you need to learn how to budget your time! But what if... My Brain Cannot Handle More Than One Thing And Gets Overwhelmed?? Then when I have 5 things to do, I can’t do ANY. I just sit and dissociate, and when I start thinking of one of the tasks to get into the mindset to start it, I freak out and panic because “what about the other things? you’re not getting those done!” and I just... hit that wall and stare off for hours. Another block is about logistics of situations, which might also be linked with ADHD... I have ideas but no idea how to set them into motion logistically, and then I freeze and run into a block where I Can’t Make Any Progress Until I Figure This One Thing Out And I’m Obsessed With This One Problem But I Can’t Move On Because I Just Don’t Know The Answer!!!™ -- Anecdote about this kind of block: I remember as a freshman in high school, we had this weird group project that frustrated me to the point of tears, but I couldn’t articulate why. It had nothing to do with English class, even though it was IN English class, and we had to... arrange some couple’s wedding reception? It was “fake” but there was an actual phone number to call to set things up? With real people on the end? And also we had to call in fake-orders to a flower shop... to real people... about a fake thing?? Why?? We also had to pick out all these little details, but I just was STUCK at the “why? are these real people? Is this something we’re organizing? Why call these real shops? Why???” and could not get anything done for my group because I just did not understand how EVERYONE ELSE got the assignment like it made sense... but it just made no sense to me and it seemed pointless and I was so frustrated?? But I couldn’t move on and be productive... I was just stuck. So... yeah. I’m trying to document these so that they’re real to me and I can articulate them better when I’m at a doctor who will give a shit (lol whoops where are those). If anyone read through this and said “wow I’m the same way!” about the mental blocks... please talk to me! I feel very alone and I don’t know what this is!!

#mental block #ocd #meds talk #personal #BPD #depression #ADHD #panic disorder #executive dysfunction

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