Long and emotional

So I've borrowed a few people's words and images to try and show people what depression and other mental issues are like. I don't know if they've been illuminating at all, or if by this point, it's just easier to scroll by those sorts of entries.

I've been trying for a long time to tell various people how the mental shit manifests and affects me specifically, but it's not been easy - when I've tried, it does stir up the emotional side, and so I start shaking and crying and that makes it really hard to type and verbalize things.

So, what do I have? I don't really have any exact diagnosis - my last therapist suggested I have a combination of clinical depression and PTSD. Which isn't an unusual combination, and makes sense. This combination doesn't make me a special snowflake, and I don't write or link these things to be all "poor me," exactly. It's hard to articulate exactly why I do that - it feels like it's me trying to explain. I have this thing where I tend to assume if I can only explain something the right way, then the people I'm trying to explain to will see why I'm doing what I'm doing and will meet me halfway or understand better. So yeah, I guess it is to change people's behavior, but it's really not meant as the type of manipulative thing that people tend to think when you say you're trying to get people to act differently, or at least to perceive things differently.

But I'm not the only person with issues, right? I mean, in the case of my last relationship, at least two of the other people had their own past issues that meant the things I did weren't excused by my good intent, because while it may make a difference, intent isn't a magic cure-all. So if I did something because I was triggered that in turn triggers them, what does that mean? It's basically a vicious cycle.

Trigger. That word gets thrown around a lot, and sometimes it gets made fun of. I'm not active in a lot of fandom things, although I do read some fandom communities. There was a big brouhaha about people writing things that trigger a set of negative responses in people. And so these people said to the authors "Hey, that's triggering, can you give me a warning?" And that got tangled in a discussion of self-censorship and spoilers and all sorts of things. The frustrating thing is that there are so many options for what can trigger something. I mean, I'm relatively lucky. I'm not triggered by commonplace things like colors or scents - at least not often. But... if you can imagine that you were grievously, permanently injured by something purple. Because humans are creatures that create patterns and make associations, the color purple for you might be permanently linked to pain and negativity. So imagine if every time you saw purple, you felt pain. But if you say "Hey, can you not wear that purple shirt, it really bothers me," you sound like a wackjob, or at least, get told you're letting the past control you and they're sorry but purple is their favorite color so they're going to wear it anyway. It's frustrating on a lot of sides.

So I'm lucky in that regard - despite the multiple rapes, the neglect, the physical abuse, the emotional abuse - I don't have triggers like that. I have been triggered by stuff like Family Guy and 40 Year Old Virgin (they've both made jokes about "practice girls"), actions, and places, however. And for me, the intensity of the reaction can vary. There's a lot of factors that will go in to how strong the reaction can be for me. For example, the Family Guy jokes tend to be very quick. So if I'm watching that while doing something else, I might get the reaction, but not strong enough to start crying or panicking or dissociation. Or if it's surrounded by things I like or something, the reaction gets mitigated by surrounding things. But just like my reaction can be made better by what else is going on, in can be made worse. And this is where it gets kind of tricky.

A lot of the things I've linked here or tried to send to people talk about depression and mental stuff and how it's chemical changes in your brain and how those changes make your brain send out messages that affect your mood, reactions, behavior, and overall health. And that's right. But sometimes the point that gets lost is that it's not always just in the brain. I have depression and PTSD - I don't have hallucinations or paranoid delusions. This is where it gets tricky for me to explain personally, because it's so much a part of how I've functioned for so long that I don't know if I can explain it.

If you've ever watched House or Psych or Sanctuary, each of those characters has the ability to notice little offhand things that allow them to create impressions and solve problems. It's normally highlighted in the show by a bright outline and a special noise. House is a doctor, Shawn (of Psych) was trained to be a police detective, and Will (of Sanctuary) was trained in psychology and also worked with law enforcement. So that training makes it so that the extra information, those little apparently insignificant things that they notice, feeds them information that they can use. Their training will make that extra information make sense to them in a way it doesn't to people who don't have that training.

With me so far?

Now, I'm not a brilliant diagnostician or detective. But what happens to me, especially when I'm already stressed or struggling (which as most of you know is already fairly often), is that the little apparently insignificant things link up and create a scenario that makes sense to me, because of how my brain perceives them. It's one of the sucky things is that my intuitive streak is shaped by the negative events, associations, and my own brain chemistry to read things as how bad they can be for me, or how little I matter to people, etc. That then sets up sort of a feedback reaction - so sometimes, I can trigger myself by noticing something small. I'm not making things up out of nowhere, though. The other wrinkle in all this is that because I notice something, it sets up that reaction, it can also make a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because I react to it - sometimes strongly - it brings about the exact chain of events I was afraid of. This reaffirms my intuitions and fears, and sets up the path for the reaction to happen again.

So someone does or says something that in most cases, would be at worst thoughtless or insensitive. Not a big deal, right? But with me, depending on what the thing was, the nightmares I may have had, the worries I'm dealing with, whatever - that small thing sets up huge ripples, which I react to, which pushes the person to get upset or defensive so they do something else, which sets up the reaction again, etc. Until finally they say "Fuck it" and leave. Because it's too hard to watch, frustrating to deal with, clashes with their baggage, whatever.

It's sort of like when you're having a shitty day and then someone who's opinion really matters to you says something that sets you off. I sort of exist in a perpetual shitty day, to varying degrees. Sometimes I'm aware of it and I can verbalize it, but sometimes I can't. And I know that's also frustrating, because people have created their own patterns and associations to me based on what they've seen in the past from me, as well as whatever I remind them of in their own past. So if they met me during a time when the shitty days weren't shitty enough to make me react strongly to triggering things, then they sort of expect me to always react that way. Or if someone else they knew consistently reacted strongly and destructively to something, and my reaction is even remotely similar, then I set up that reaction in them.

So, I've mentioned a little bit about how my brain lets me intuit or notice certain small things and then uses that to create scenarios that may cause me to react. The actual reaction is a little harder to talk about, and does change a little bit from time to time. The worse recent reactions were probably the October before last. Now, the situation was already pretty tense. I was excited, but nervous, looking forward to something but having no idea how it'd play out, worried about only being in CA temporarily, struggling with insecurity, needing reassurance, etc. Some of that I was able to mention, but I don't think I could accurately explain how much I was struggling, especially since the other people were also excited and nervous and needing their own reassurance.

So the event happened (I'll spare details). After that event, I felt as though I was split in half. Half of me was in CA, with people I cared about, but upset with how things had turned out. The other half of me was pinned down in the dark, limbs heavy with whatever they slipped me, feeling them ram themselves into me. I really fought against showing this, and I managed to hold out until people had gone to bed. But I couldn't talk myself down, so I started pacing and ranting and yelling. I have no idea what I said. I apparently grabbed Dan's keys and left the apartment, and found myself wandering around the grocery store that was near the apartment. I had picked up sleeping pills. I was sort of back, so I went back to the apartment, intending to take the sleeping pills and sleep as long as possible, to not deal with how I was feeling. But when I went back, everyone was gathered in one room, and I wound up trying to talk about my insecurities and my fears while still pushing against the hurt and feeling filthy that was still there. To make this long entry a little shorter, it didn't work. I still felt dirty and filthy and used and selfish and not sure what to do or say and lonely and scared and isolated. So I apparently fucked up the next day as well - should have done something differently.

So I left there and came back to school. It was like October had ripped the lid off of the years of me repressing how I felt, the years of only mentioning what had happened to me in veiled contexts. Then school fell apart - it had been doing so for awhile, but my ability to compartmentalize was shattered along with the defenses. Things deteriorated - I alienated the people I loved, they got scared, frustrated, had other happier things to think about. I wanted so badly to take back that night, to make them understand. And I still do. And I can't - so that's also constantly going on in my head.

It's odd, because part of the thing with depression is that you can feel like shit even if you don't have reasons to. But when you do have reasons to, it makes everything else that much worse. It makes it next to impossible to put a positive spin on things, to show enthusiasm, to show wonder. And that drove people even further away.

So I get frustrated - with myself, mainly. But I do hurt - I wish so hard I could make the people I love understand, that someone would have said "Wait, wait, wait - this is totally different than the Balivatn I know, something has changed." And maybe that's unreasonable. I honestly at this point don't know. It's such a combination of the negative messages my own brain gives me and the negative messages that are part of everyone's day to day life to some degree, that it's hard to say that anyone can do anything. All I have to go on is my intuition. But if that's wrong again, then...

So yeah. I don't know if this makes any sense to anyone. I hope so. I wouldn't wish this shitty potpourri of regret and nightmares and sense memories of rape and shame and dirt on my worst enemy. But please, if anything makes any sense here - don't think of this as asking for pity. Even if you can't apply it to me, if you see someone like this - realize what else might be up. We're constantly surrounded by "needing meds is a sign of weakness," and "this is how you're supposed to handle things," and "be strong" and "bootstraps" and "don't worry, be happy." It doesn't help - it just adds to the feelings of frustration and inadequacy. We may not always be able to say exactly what might help us, but we really know what doesn't.