Hypochondria and Paranoia

Docs appointment was... painful. I'm going back on meds for the foreseeable future. I'm "not emotionally equipped to deal with the demands of very young children in [my] current state". Fact is, when I was last off meds, my household comprised of... me. Just me. So a very different environment to be off-meds in.

And about the zzzzzip? I wasn't just paranoid, I was being a hypochondriac as well, which are both discrete symptoms of psychosis and the thing I was dreading I might have... but my Doc listened to me carefully and posed an alternative diagnosis of nothing whatsoever to do with my mental health. She thinks I've got vertigo. You know, as opposed to Schizo-Affective Disorder.

Well, I've never had vertigo before so how would I know what it was like?! Of course I leap to psychological reasons for hinky health matters, my brain has been the root cause of my difficulties since I was a teenager.

So goodbye unmedicated self. It's been fun a right pain in the ass.

Paranoia

Is that what this is?

My guts keep twisting up for no earthly reason, so it's likely stress related. And I am stressed. I'm off meds and noticing niggly little worrying things about my behaviour. I'm not just Little Miss Shouty, I bloody roar at times, for one. And that's no good for anyone. I'm also short-tempered as hell with virtually everyone and everything which has culminated in some very sad and almost sheepish looks from those I love most - and it's totally not their fault, it's all on me. I think too fast, I think too slow, I can't think at all and my fingers follow suit because I find myself typing pure gibberish if I'm not careful. I have to be careful with how I look about the place because all of a sudden, my vision "slips" with a weird kind of muffled zzzzzip sound to it. It's like the background volume gets turned down for the duration of the zip. It's quite disorienting when it happens.

I think I have developed (or maybe have always had but it's been disguised or misdiagnosed) SOMETHING else. And that SOMETHING else is some scary shit. I don't know if it's a reaction to coming off the meds like I did (I know, I know) or if this is the genuine article previously disguised by the meds. I'm tracking it for a few weeks to see if there's a pattern, to see if it calms the fuck down or what.

I'm even more worried than ever that things are going to go so horribly wrong with my personal life, that things will blow up or worse, slip and slide and drift away. Maybe both. There's just too much going on inside my head and it's suffocating the other stuff that ought to be going on but isn't. I feel bad because this isn't what they signed up for, but at the same time I can't help it, so what do I do? And then I lose track of time, of days, dates... I'm trying to be more organised but it's just showing up how disorganised I really am, it's pretty shocking.

Am I paranoid? I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat or picking up personal messages through the TV, but I have this constant chatter in my head which I've always assumed is normal, but it's got a TONE to it now, a little "well, I wasn't going to say it buuuuut..." kinda tone. You know the one. I don't even know if a running monologue IS normal, it's not like I've got access to other people's brains to try and find out. I've just assumed it's normal because it's always been there. And yes of course it tells me to do things, otherwise shit I don't want to do wouldn't get done. It also tells me it's perfectly OK to go and buy a doughnut and scoff it in the car when nobody is looking but that's a whole other story.

Got an appt with my shrink tomorrow. See what she can make of all this, or if I'm just worrying (and stressing and crying) over nothing.

Fun times.

Mental Health Stigma

Stigma Survey

1 in 4 people will at some point have a mental illness. This may be a transient illness or lifelong. This means that 1 in 4 people may also have been prejudiced against or stigmatised because of their condition. This is a sad state of affairs, however you look at it.

What can you do if you think you're a victim of stigma? My personal favourite is to remember some pithy comebacks to fire at people. This may not necessarily work with your sweet little granny who just can't process what you're going through - you may just have to nod and smile there, folks - but it should sure put others in their place.

What we can all do though is to make sure we don't contribute to the stigma ourselves. Hell, even I've contributed to it and I have plenty wrong with my mental health. I need to stop trivialising it, for a start.

If you've got a minute, please clicky on the linky (top) and do the little survey. It's completely anonymous. If it makes you think, great. If it makes you want to help others, even better.

Thx.

The Sacred Art of the BuJo

My psychiatrist suggested this, it's kinda like the geeky version of those adult colouring in books you get (which I also have, by the way, but rarely have the time for). I'm addicted already. I have an LT1917 in pretty purple, a set of 30 Staedtler Triplus Fineliners and a Pinterest board full of ideas. I've got space in my weeklies for: my dailies, a to-do list, three different trackers which then report back to master trackers, a menu and shopping list, a space for college stuff, my weekly bank report and a mini calendar so I can plan ahead. Sounds complicated but once you get your head around the concept, it's not only easy but incredibly therapeutic! I'll get some nice pics for the next blog.

Sneakily off my meds and now I cry at all the things

Xmas adverts? check
Armistice day announcement? check
Thinking about homeless kittens? check
Thinking about that kid who was called a "mutt" by his teacher, and all he wants to do is help people? check
Thinking, period. check
The opening ceremony of Blizzcon? check
Certain music which previously was no bother to me? check
Being cold? check

All of these things have made me cry in the last couple of weeks since coming off my meds.

The meds have kept me in a holding pattern, not able to experience the full gamut of emotions I'm capable of and so not allowing me to deal with them either. So I'm learning now. The therapy course I was on is really coming into play now, and I'm working really hard at managing my emotions, but jeeeez it's tough, eh! Tiring.

But when I'm high, I can really enjoy it. And when the low comes, I know that it isn't going to last forever. The general low I've been on hasn't lasted as long as I thought - I was in it for all of 18 months, I think, maybe 24. So things are looking up and looking well now.

And I'm going to start journaling like EVERYTHING in a bullet journal.

Art 'n' shit.

I've been exploring the concepts of Identity and Self (and to a lesser degree, Emotion) through art since the second year of my degree back in 2002-3. Since then, I have discovered the works of a Scottish philosopher and sceptic whose theories about the self, about personal identity and about emotion all resonate with me fantastically. David Hume was an 18th century philosopher firmly in the bundle theory camp - that is, he believed that the notion of the self over time was untenable and that what we are instead is a bundle of perceptions at any given point. His work on emotion (the Passions) comes to this conclusion - that emotions are reflective (as in, internal) impressions.

Assuming both of these ideas to be inherently true, then a stunning revelation (stunning to me, at any rate) can be made: If all we are is a collection of perceptions AND our emotions are a perception, an impression of internal reflection THEN our self at any given time can be depicted as merely a reflection of our emotional state.

Emotional states can fracture people and their personalities, however. Strength can often be found in those who fight to pull themselves together, even when they fail. The Cubists fractured images and objects and reassembled them from different viewpoints in an abstract manner to further explore and achieve a greater understanding of the subjects. The Japanese view breakage and repair as part of an object's history and story, they embrace the flawed and imperfect (Kintsugi).

This ties in with my goals as an artist: to explore and achieve a greater understanding of the Self, of Identity, of Emotion by embracing the flawed and imperfect and making it beautiful once more. I hope to take the viewer on a journey of reflection and inspire in them the desire to love themselves fully for whomever they may be...

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In addition to this I would like to raise awareness of mental health issues and in doing so reduce the stigma around talking about it. I hope to achieve this through an art and social practice series of pictures, made up from images I take and images people send me together with a brief questionnaire which I will then interpret into the title and background of the piece.