C'Mon Brain!!

Feeling off again, think the neurofeedback hope has receded (ok, slammed shut) and I am back to baseline. So in some ways it's good to have a reminder/grounder that there is work ahead and it's no switch. Instead I anticipate, more realistically, there will be gradual changes. But it gets me pondering the myriad sources of the damage they unearthed (unbrained - with tiny little shovels and pickaxes). A life time's worth of hard things that I have encountered, terrible stories, my hard drinking days in the early military (surely I did some damage there), bad diet (how much glucose does my brain need anyway?) lots more. They say the eeg is not diagnostic, it doesn't answer why, it just says "Hey, look! There is damage here. There is sub-normal activity here and here and maybe you might want to check out these areas as well". OK, now we see what we are dealing with, I asked them "So am I faking?"that always gets a laugh.

They say that CBT does encourage the same process except that it just does not work as quickly. Nonetheless,  eventually the new neurons will grow. I've been cbt-ing for many moons now, a joke's a joke. Neuro feedback is best for the most stuck, the least CBT-responsive, the most at risk. I guess.

I am feeling unmotivated (mired) this morning. I have a lot of art to make, arrange, organise for a new event that promises to be be fun and fruitful and full of networking and reconnecting possibilities. I think sometimes as I approach a deadline this rebellious factor rises up in me as a way to take power  but really I am just taking power from myself. I wonder if therein lies the true nature of procrastination. When I examine it, there is definitely an element of rebelling, of stubborn clinging to a position (even if said position is not particularly useful/healthy/helpful) until my fear of embarrassment surpasses the fear of losing power and I do the work "It's the last minute!"

Inertia. Procrastination. Outsiders call it laziness, cowardice, poor time management. Insert negative spin adjectives here. I have brain damage. Yippee except not really something to celebrate except (so many exceptions, so little time) for the validation, the ease away from the self-judgment, sort of. That is the huge gift of the eeg. So, come on brain!!! Let's get building and growing!

There is no thee

feeling bad, have been inconsistent with my effexor. Starting to crash I think. I've been so high with the promise of neuro feedback, the elusive hope, the eeg and loreta (brodman area mapping) that has finally given me the indisputable evidence that my brain has some abnormally low wattage! ha.

Akin to the xray of the broken arm, the subsequent epiphany "That's why my arm hurts.". My limbic system is hardwired in fight or flight. Hope has had me riding high. I'm gonna grow me some new neurons.

And now I feel really low, today in town it seemed everywhere I looked I saw beaten down women and I felt so angry and helpless, ghosts walking among us. So sad, heartbreaking, they were all once little, filled with promise, and instead they got beaten down, This world is so vicious, so cold.

I'm back to feeling really vulnerable all of a sudden. Really wanting to not be in this horrible place that holds nothing but hurt. There we go, the tears, I cry easily still, how can there be a god, who would believed there could be an all-powerful being - that is not doing - is this just some grand experiment, a bet somebeing has made?

I don't feel so well, I feel weakened. Too many people being hurt, and it's just getting worse.My soul would cry out to thee, but there is no thee is there?

There is no thee, and if there was, I would not place my trust in said thee because they are clearly using their omnipotence for evil.

It's us. It's just us and I fear we're all we've got and I'm pretty much out of faith in the mounting evidence of horror.

I have been rendered inert. And so have millions more, probably billions. Maybe there'll be a big asteroid.

Compassion Gets Compromised

Thoughts I thought I should write down, can't sleep, seem to be sneezing and waking my husband so up I get.
Recent comments/discussions replaying. The topic of suicide. A friend of someone dear to me is conjectured to have completed, in the face of their own loss. The dear one is mad at said dead person. I have encountered that anger (from others) many times in my experience. I wonder about its true nomenclature. Anger and grief are close allies inherent any loss. Anger is after all just a feeling, not an act. But the phrase "mad at" it's directional, a vector of feeling, and one perhaps not so kind. Anger and fear are allies as well. My own perspective is one of curiosity as well as judgment. Who knows why really a person chooses to die, I only know what draws me to this. And some of the reasons I don't take death's hand are because of how my dear ones will respond. Yet I feel such anger myself that others have the "nerve" to be "mad at" someone who has no doubt wrestled in silence with great difficulty (or calm certitude). "mad at" the "giving up". People hope against hope that someone they care for will not die but to actively seek death brings its own new subset of complex feelings. We all try to understand but when it comes to hurts of the minds our compassion gets compromised. Depression has been described to me as a rebellion against a world unbalanced by hurt and by some seen as a political act. i can see that somewhat but it's also a mind that's suffering, like a troubled other, more understood organ. Depression's capacity however is infinitely more destructive. Our minds oversee everything, our minds are in charge of absolute every function of the body so when there is trouble in the big house any other part of the body can be affected, infected. So I see it as more cancerous than cancer, more insert adjectified illness here than said illness. We do that don't we; turn nouns into verbs all the time.

Another recent discussion wrt dreams: me telling someone about a particularly scary, fanciful, bizarre night excursion. The listener started to analyse my dream, with great confidence it seemed to me, that theirs was the definitive meaning.  So my response is not to tell them any more of my dreams. I was particularly resistant to their interpretation, I hadn't asked for it yet it was not merely offered but insisted upon. A gesture of caring, of fixing. It was frustrating but I guess they were just trying to help. Someone else's version of what will fix things rarely does it because they do not have all of the pertinent info at hand, don't have access to the big picture, they are not the expert, yet off they frequently go, I know cause I do it all the time. And they have also decided I am to read a particular book and I have just need to either keep an open mind and read it, because there is always something new to learn or say no thank you. It's an odd catch, I would love to feel fixed as in, some semblance of normalcy but what does that mean, is there peace for any of us? Or just different levels of denial. But I do not wish to be someone's project. I really feel appreciative of someone who is willing to listen without then launching into fix mode, that is a rare skill.

The above notwithstanding I am worried, I am eating my feelings like crazy, stuffing whatever I can find that is foodlike into my mouth. Feeling bloated. Maybe I am very afraid about this upcoming neurofeedback stuff. That's understandable, I am human after all (despite what seems like evidence to the contrary) and like everyone else I fear the unknown, fear what I cannot control. It's kind of a leap of some magnitude. I won't say faith because that word is too loaded.

Sticking to my lines

Dreading the nice weather, more pressure to go out and do regular human being things - human doings. I see with indifference that it's so beautiful out there, flowers, new growth, lively birdsong everywhere and my dread deepens. I can't recall feeling this way, so heavily, before. The rain and cold lets me off the hook internally for my inaction, my sedentary state.

Not feeling the joy, the hope springs renewal rhetoric. I used to get so excited about Easter, for the chocolate not for the faith.

Detached, uninterested, flat. I don't care.

The effort to keep face, wondering if I'm fooling anyone. Everyone hopeful that I'm well. So I mostly stick to my lines because it is easier. People expect improvement, get frustrated when things don't change or for any reason really.

I don't care. I just thought "Because I cared too much and look what happened?" but that sounds so drama queen so false so insincere.

But I did care. too much. And I know I still do, so I clamp it down. Jed Clampettdown.

Yet another nothing new under the sun moment. It hurts to care, I wonder at my capacity for hurting. Yes, feelings hurt means I am alive. But feeling null - am I just pretty much dead inside, that's the closest, I've hit on something here. Irony, here come thy tears. I've been watching the walking dead, no stretch at all that I relate, to the dead ones.

Yet there is some small part I can hear it way down saying "but Kelly, when death comes for you  you're not going to want to go". Is this true, or will I continue to seek it, passively, hoping, like a stranger in a crowded room, it will notice me and take me under its comforting wings?

I don't know.

A hunting I will go...

Lots of stuff has gone by, happens there's lots to write about when one hasn't blogged for many moons. sadness, anger, tiredness, verification/validation of the theory that me being tired + me being more vulnerable to triggers. Being pre-menopausal (unsure how pre) my periods are non-periodic. And heavy. so much blood loss, I found myself pondering the cultural impact on this regular bloodletting on women. And health too, is menstruation also a regular detox? a regular test of our bodies ability to regenerate? Curious. Powerful stuff to contemplate. Anyhoo.
Working on socialising, reaching out remaining astounded/impressed with the resilience and intensity of my depression. Talking with friends about our inner critics (I called it our inner terrorist) wondering  how to hear it better, I was thinking that I needed to go looking for it in order to train myself to detect it. So a hunting I will go.
I am making some nice connections, taking more risks (relatively anyway) socially.
Have connected with the neuro feedback clinic and will be starting there soonish I guess, curiouser and curiouser.
Still drifting, blowing with the wind. All the while..

Peace and kindness to all those who suffer - it is where we meet.