The Dreamwidth Account

The kids are back in school. I wound up catching the bus back from the city which was apparently the first bus home for a lot of them. Which meant I wound up having to say "excuse me" about twelve times to get from my seat (first row past the wheelchair seating) to the front door of the bus so I could get off the bus.

As a tip to any school-kid in Perth who is wearing a huge private-school-issue backpack on public transport: TAKE YOUR FUCKING BAG OFF YOUR FUCKING BACK WHEN YOU GET ON THE FUCKING BUS, YOU LITTLE SHITS.

Seriously, if you take your bag off your back, and put it on the floor between your feet, you will be a much smaller target for people who have to dodge around you. And that way, if you have to turn in one direction or another, you will NOT be hitting some poor unassuming person who just happens to have to catch public transport home between 3pm and 5pm with your overstuffed schoolbag every single damn time you do it.

(If I wind up having to head home at the same time tomorrow - unlikely, but you never know your luck - I will probably decide to spend an extra hour or so in the city, just so I can miss the schoolies hour. Because while evening peak hour is probably No Fun Whatsoever, it's still mostly going to contain adults, who have at least learned they can put their bags on the floor from time to time. Also, most adults on the bus aren't talking nineteen to the dozen about just about everything)

Short summary: meltdown on Monday due to smoke alarms going off; panic attack on Tuesday due to social anxiety getting kicked good and hard; miseries, rampant brainweasels and depression on Wednesday and Thursday due to after-effects of Monday and Tuesday; further near-meltdown on Friday due to loud shouty encounter (not involving me, but clearly audible, and definitely something I Did Not Need at that point) in office of JobActive provider.

All of this after about three weeks of near-continuous rainy weather and cold temperatures in a house which as far as I can tell has NO insulation at all (built in approx 1920s, no serious upkeep or non-emergency maintenance since approx 1970s). Said house also has no under-cover drying facilities (in rainy weather, we dry our laundry on a rack in the main room of the house, and it takes about two to three days for things to dry out). Plus my depression has a seasonal component.

Plus of course the usual stresses of one class per day from Monday through Thursday (the tutorial on Thursdays is at 8am, which means I have to be out of the house by 7.30am in order to get there on time). Plus the additional fun this week of two appointments with various people at the JobActive provider's office on Friday, and dinner with the in-laws today. (This last would not be an imposition most weeks, but this week, it's definitely heading in that direction).

Thing is, none of these things on their own would be a problem. They became a series of problems because they were most definitely NOT on their own.

Basically, my brain has been throwing up "out of spoons" errors left, right and centre, and I am currently at the point where any kind of cooking more strenuous than making soup or putting something into the oven and letting it reheat is Entirely Too Much Work. Meanwhile the brainweasels all object to buying foodsicles from the shops (because " it's overpriced, you know how to cook that, you can't afford it, you should be able to do this" etc etc et bloody cetera) and throwing fits about me considering canned meals or packet mixes or whatever.

And for this weeks' fun anxiety-inducing thing, I also have two weeks worth of reading for university to do - the stuff I should have been doing over the past week, but haven't been able to due to brainweasels and out-of-spoons errors; and the stuff I have to do for next week, so I'm all caught up. Oh, and the weather turned cold (minimum yesterday was 2.7C) in the last couple of days.

Put simply? I don't think mind uploading, or the immanentizing of the eschaton or the storage of brains in computers or anything similar is likely to happen any time soon (or indeed within either my lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone alive at this period) because I'm mentally ill.

Stay with me, there is actually a connection between the two of these, and it isn't just "me being crazy not to believe in the chosen Rapture of the Nerds".

( Essay below the fold )

I managed to get my study all done yesterday (well, except for the textbook reading for Cultural Studies, and I'm going to see about getting that done this morning). But two of the "readings" for Cultural Studies were episodes of Dr Who ("The Beast Below" and "Planet of the Ood") and I found those ... problematic for reasons which had everything to do with the medium, and very little to do with the actual content.

I'm finding I have more and more trouble with audio-visual content these days, mostly because of those audio processing problems of mine. I have particular problems with things like spliced-together versions of things (which one of the "readings" for Engaging Media was this week - spliced together bits of various Disney movies, assembled to tell a story), because with those I don't have the rhythms of speech to help guide me along and give me cues about what the next word is. I also have problems with streaming media where the audio stream gets out of synch with the video (which is practically anything which is over 10 minutes long) because I'm tending to use mouth movements as visual cues to make sense of the audio stream, to help me pick out which bits of the noise I'm hearing are the significant bits. When those fall out of synch with the audio, I start losing the ability to understand the audio stream, and it means I wind up having to work harder to make sense of things. Subtitles help. Subtitles (preferably proper closed captioning, rather than the YouTube automatic ones) give me something to focus on in the visual domain that can make sense of the information coming out of the audio stream. When there aren't subtitles, I can either a) watch the images, and strain to make sense of the dialogue; or b) close my eyes and concentrate on the audio, in the hope of being able to make sense of that without visual data to go along with it. Plus, of course, being in the situation I'm in, any other noise around me comes in at the same damn volume (or louder) than the audio stream I'm supposed to be concentrating on, and putting in earbuds or putting on headphones just means I'm not able to actually move for the duration.

End result: dealing with streaming video input is rather stressful for me these days. There's a reason I tend to stick with games where there are subtitles, where there aren't voice tracks and so on, and it's not just because I don't have the twitch reflexes for the less accessible stuff. Doing these readings at the end of a long day... well, I wind up very tired, very stressed, and I'm still tired and stressed the following morning, because my brain just hasn't had enough time to cool down.

So I've realised I'm in the middle of a rather nasty anhedonic episode, which means I'm not particularly feeling any motivation to do anything, which means I'm not doing things unless I absolutely have to at present, because they're things I've built so solidly into my daily routines that I feel worse if I don't do them than if I do.

( Teal deer below the fold )

So yeah. Things aren't as good as they could be. But they're better than they would have been twenty years ago, so I suppose that's something...

Now, if you'll all excuse me, I'll go back to neg-stimming on Tumblr, because apparently this is my brain's preferred form of self-immolation this week.


[1] I have a two hour exclusion period on my medication for my thyroid, which means for two hours after I've taken it (and for two hours before, technically) I'm not allowed to have dairy products, calcium supplements, iron supplements or anything else which might bind to the thyroxine receptors.
[2] The end of this period is the end of the medication exclusion period, when I can technically fit in breakfast if I'm able to contemplate the idea of food.

I feel I owe everyone who's read anything I've written for the past week or so a rather profound and massive apology. Unfortunately, the best you're getting at the moment is an explanation.

( Lengthy stuff under fold )

So, apologies for the rather frequent brainos I've been having over the past week. I will try to do better, but first I need to get my brain back...

Dear Brain,

Yes, I know I've been horrible for the past couple of days. I haven't done the Right Things in the Right Order, because on top of everything else I didn't get functional early enough this morning to be able to do the dishes before the water got cut off[1]. Yes, Steve did the dishes. It wasn't because I am a Horrible Person Who Can't Do Things Right. It was because it was 8.30am, and the water was going to need to be turned off at 9, and I hadn't even started my breakfast by then, much less finished it. It wasn't in any way a critique of my ability to do the task in general, but rather a reaction to the way things were happening on this specific day.

Yes, I know there wasn't any laundry to do today. Steve did it all yesterday. Again, a reaction to one particular day, not a critique of my ability to do things ordinarily.

Yes, I decided to go shopping for groceries. Yes, the mall was noisy, and you were feeling on edge, so you decided to go straight to one overload, no waiting, and make me as cranky as all get-out. No, buying the Tim-Tams wasn't a Bad Thing to do, it was a reaction to the fact we're wanting comfort, and Tim-Tams are comfort food. Yes, I did have to spend more than $20 on fruit and vegetables, and no, this isn't going to bankrupt us. There were a lot of things which needed to be replaced (you may have noticed?) which is why this week it was a big spend. No, that isn't a critique of the fact it's been a bit over a week since we last shopped for anything. Things happen, and those things happening is not a judgement on us specifically.

Now, if you could just settle down and stop throwing a tantrum about everything under the sun, I would greatly appreciate the peace and quiet inside my skull so we can have a much-needed nap.

Sincerely,

Meg
(owner of a brain which is currently a cranky toddler)


[1] The pipes in our area are being replaced, and the water board has asked us to please shut off the water to the house between 9am and 3pm, as well as drawing any water we felt we needed before that earlier.

Dear Brain,

Yes, I know I haven't Done All The Things and it's coming up for 8am. However, I have achieved far more than I would have this time two weeks ago, where I wouldn't have even got out of bed by this time. So how about you stop nagging me about stupid stuff, and I'll stop wanting to remove you with an icepick, okay?

Sincerely (oh, so sincerely)

Meg

Well, I finished editing the short story I needed to submit for my Introduction to Writing unit, and I submitted that on Tuesday (due day was Thursday, so I'm getting in ahead of deadlines, which is a nice habit to be building). Which means my study requirements for the first semester of 2017 are now officially complete, and I'm done.

The owner of our place came out on Wednesday to measure up the kitchen for new cabinets (from Ikea), and he also cleaned out the gutters while he was here. This involved a lot of rather wobbly work on top of a ladder, but at least we now have nice clean gutters which will hopefully not overflow onto the front verandah (front of house) or the bathroom window (rear of house) in the next heavy rainfall. Now all we need is the heavy rainfall to test things. Unfortunately, it doesn't look as though we're going to get one of those any time soon. Best bet this week is possibly Wednesday, which is offering a 40% chance of about 0.4mm of rain. It's looking to be a dry winter this year.

In the wake of having finished all my study, I'm currently in a bit of a quandary about what to be doing with myself. I've wound up re-starting Villagers and Heroes (a free MMORPG) in the hopes of being able to use up a bit of the Copious Free Time I currently find myself endowed with (the problem with being on the dole is you wind up with lots of time, but not really enough money to actually do anything with it), although I'm running into my typical problem with these things - I've done the initial stages enough times to find them boring, but I can't be arsed to continue past the boredom to the point where I get to the interesting stuff. I may well start allocating myself a set number of hours of work in V&H per day, just to keep myself going through the dull bits.

Now, before anyone starts suggesting things I could be doing with myself during my downtime, can I just point out I'm a grown woman, and I'm posting these things more as an observation of how things are than a request for help. My inter-semester downtime will be lasting until the end of July, which means I have about a month and a half before I'm going to be back at uni again (classes start again on July 31). Don't panic, I think I can figure out how to entertain myself. If nothing else, there's two shelves of books waiting on their farewell re-read, and another few boxes of books in the storeroom which need to be opened and culled. I have plenty of stuff I can do. What I don't have (due to brainweasels and similar) is the impetus to do any of it. My brain is currently in mopey teenager mode at me, saying I'm boooored, there's nothing to dooooo, and when I suggest anything, it makes it very clear to me I've done the equivalent of suggesting cleaning my bedroom. Given I'm fast reaching saturation point with the inner teenager, I suspect things are going to be picking up soon-ish.

In the interests of my continuing mental health, I've had to banish a few words and phrases from my vocabulary. One of them is "should".

"Should" is a word which has disappointment built-in from the start. It's a word used to talk about ideal situations, ideal results, ideal worlds. As such, to someone like me with an anxiety disorder, it's essentially poison for the psyche. Because, you see, one of the things at the core of any anxiety disorder is this: we want the world to be perfect. Perfection implies control.

So to someone with an anxiety disorder (and this also includes the vast majority of people with depression, since the two conditions tend to be co-morbid to an astounding degree) a "should" is not a vague ideal to be used as a general directional indicator. Instead, it is a definite goal, which needs to be achieved (in order that the world be perfect). So phrases like "you should know better" or "you should be able to do better than that" or "I shouldn't need to tell you" and so on aren't just expressions of regret for one single instance - they are clear indicators that we have failed on a comprehensive level to achieve the goals set for us[1]. The world is imperfect and it's All Our Fault.

As you can guess, that kind of feeling doesn't do much for anyone's anxiety levels.

Then there's the other kind of "should" - the ones we tell ourselves, the ones which come with the invisible tag of "but I won't". "I should stay on this diet... but I won't". "I should Clean All The Things... but I won't". "I should do this disagreeable task... but I'm not gonna!". Again, not only is the world imperfect, and not only is this All Our Fault, but we're also unable to even rely on ourselves to do things. How hopeless are we?

(Something else which doesn't do much for anyone's anxiety levels).

However, banishing "should" (and its close cousin, "ought to") from your mental vocabulary is a hard thing to do at times. For a start, there's all the externally imposed "shoulds" - the expectations of parents, partners, friends, children, teachers, employers, co-workers, advertisers, marketers, manufacturers and so on. ("You should buy $PRODUCTNAME!") Plus there's all the internal ones, yelled at us by our jerk!brains on constant loop - including the ones which come up as part of the memory tapes bringing up old humiliations to dance on the stage of the Grand Olde Embarrassing Recollection to remind us of what we "should" and "shouldn't" be doing, or have done.

What's the solution to all of this? Well, the one which worked for me was basically stepping back from what I "should" be doing, and asking myself "what, realistically, can I do?" This one works particularly well for the memory tapes. Asking myself "okay, what am I able to do about this problem/issue, right here, right now?" tends to make the tapes suddenly grind to a glitching halt - because usually the answer is "nothing". I can't fix past mistakes from the present. I can make an effort to alter future behaviour, but other than that? There is literally nothing I can do.

This works well for other people's expectations of you as well. I have a lovely little icon (created by Copperbadge a while ago) which reads "Impossibility established early takes the sting out of the rest of the obstacles". If other people want you to do something, if they think you "should" be able to do it, ask yourself: "can I do this?" Are you physically, socially, mentally capable of performing the task they're asking? (This includes such things as "do I have the skills needed?", "do I have the available spare capacity?", "do I have the available spare time?" and, of course, "do I actually want to do this?"). If the answer is "yes", then perform the task. If the answer is "no", then tell them so - give reasons if the person asking is a reasonable person (unreasonable people don't deserve reasons for your answers, because unreasonable people can't or won't be reasoned with).

By bringing things back from the ideal world of "should" to the actual world of "can I, am I, do I, is this" you wind up being a lot more realistic about your own capabilities, and a lot less prone to stressing yourself out over things which are outside your own control.


[1] You'll note one of the apparent "goals" being set there is fully functional human telepathy. Nobody said the goals of a "should" were ever either realistic or achievable.