My nervous system is on steroids. You don’t know how many times I have Googled that sentence. Not surprisingly, I got another highly sensitive person’s website. But still, I don’t think they quite know the extent of it. People say sensitivity is a wonderful trait, but not sensitivity to this extent. If I could make this go away I would. My nervous system detects threat in everything these days. I have been left with chronic pain radiating down to my fingers from a massage years ago. Recently I started hearing a noise which sounds a bit like an electrical hum or mosquito. I went to the doctor about it a week ago. I wish I didn’t. He poked his instrument in my ears to see if I had an ear infection and my ears have been hurting ever since. Everyone’s confused how such a benign procedure could cause lasting pain. But inserting anything into my body is a huge no I’m realising. My nervous system is totally fucked; it is like having a car alarm that goes off at the slightest touch and doesn’t stop. I have pain receptors everywhere it seems, I can’t sleep, I hear the world ten times louder than most people and am constantly in a fight, flight, freeze, flop, fawn state. My physiotherapist tells me to practice mindfulness but I think it’s a bit beyond that now. I hate being alive. I hate being in this body. I hate being in this world. I’m assaulted by noise even in my own home with dogs barking, neighbours waking me with their violently noisy electric leaf blower, hammering, and basketball game. Saturday night party heads. People are annoying as fuck. Feels like I live in a completely different world to everyone else. Today a friend from high school texted me. She told me her younger siblings have all had babies now. The last I remember of them were when they were school kids, my friend’s younger sister an obnoxious teenager who blasted Big Girls Don’t Cry by Fergie from their chunky desktop computer when I came over to visit them at their old house back in the early 2000s. People my age are starting careers, families and having babies, while I am 32 and have never had a relationship as I am always in survival mode around people and can’t let people get close to me. Feels like the world has moved on while I am stuck in this sickness amber. Trauma does emotionally freeze us at the ages it occurred. People are just wandering around with their heads in the clouds while a subset of the population suffer stuff most people couldn’t even fathom. I just want to go live on a deserted island, or even better another planet. But it’s not going to fix the pain and all the damage that’s already been done. I am depressed and distressed every day and can barely do anything. I suffer for a living. I wish I got paid to breathe. Life is like a turbulent plane ride. As I said in my last post, I have no quality of life and at this point life has become about surviving the days and trying to minimise my distress until I finally die. What is the point in living? I seem to exist just to suffer, and perhaps write a book about it, if I survive long enough for it to get published.
“Depression is
Living in a body
That fights to
Survive, with a mind
That tries to die.”
My dad has always said that full moon really knocks him about. He reports a “crash” after full moon. Apparently emergency departments are bursting on full moon. My friend and I definitely felt the recent full moon. We were both extremely depressed.
I have been journalling for a week now, and it’s painting a pretty grim picture of my life. I don’t fall asleep until sunrise and sometimes even later such as 10am. I am distressed pretty much every day and I experience deep, frequent lows where I rate my mood as 1/10 or 0/10. Depression has become normal for me. I have no quality of life and at this point life has become about surviving the days and trying to minimise my distress until I finally die. Continue reading “Full moon”
Last night I had the worst sleep. I woke up all the time, interspersed with dreams about my old psychiatrist dying and the feeling that I was dying, something that has become a common experience for me, especially when I try to sleep. I also dreamt about escaping to the countryside, as well as people my age superseding me career-wise and becoming doctors. I dreamt about a girl I used to know in high school. In my dream she had become a psychiatrist and I was helping her run some kind of retreat in the countryside for kids with mental health issues. I was no good with people, and decided I’d be better off caring for the animals on the farm. Continue reading “Excruciatingly sensitive”
I thought I’d write a quick post. Nothing particularly eventful has happened, just the same old shit. My physical and mental issues continue to wear away at me, like water eroding rock. I have a new buzzing sensation on my left ankle and the same buzzing sensation on my head which I’ve had for years now since taking Effexor. Yesterday the buzzing and my tremor were particularly bad for some reason. I still managed to upload some new badges to my etsy site which a friend designed. So it was a torturous yet productive day. I can barely do anything these days. I can’t clean up, and there is now a funky smell in my bedroom. Now that I’m not seeing my disability support worker, who used to get me out of the house twice a week, I have nothing to get up for all week. I rarely get dressed or leave the house and when I’m not sleeping I just sit at the computer. I sit on the computer all night as I procrastinate brushing my teeth and going to bed. I then take meds at sunrise so I can sleep. On Christmas at around 9am I took some diazepam and 10mg of olanzapine, the drug I have just weaned myself off from. It seemed to do the trick and I slept all day until 8:30pm. I slept through the picnic my family had planned. So I had no Christmas, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. I hate Christmas and was glad to sleep through it. Continue reading “Update: physical issues and writing from age 13”
“Imagine living with a scream inside you.
And the scream is yours.
And no one else hears it.
That is grief.
Imagine living with a scream inside you—a scream that is yours alone.
It’s loud, it’s piercing, and it reverberates through every part of your being.
And yet, no one else hears it.
Grief can make the world feel so distant.
You might be in the middle of a conversation,
but your mind is elsewhere, caught in that scream.
What does a silent scream even sound like?
What would it sound like if someone else could hear it?
Perhaps it isn’t really a scream but a feeling
with sound, one so raw, so painful, so excruciating
that there are no words to describe it,
so it becomes a sound, a noise, a vibration
that rages through our entire body, screaming,
The scream of grief.”
– Author unknown
I spent most of my day in bed lethargic. The lethargy was actually a welcome relief from the restlessness and agitation that rips apart my insides every day and especially every night. I got a text from my dad thanking me for the various adventures we’ve been on together. It sounded like he was expecting one of us to die soon.
“Dear Zoe,” he wrote. “Thankyou for all the “adventures” you have taken me on ! Thanks for Philip Island, and taking you down there – to run away from the wretched police, and the stupid psychiatrist at Chandler House. Taping my torch on the back of my car, so you could follow in your car … Thanks too for taking me to see Margaret’s place, and her “church”. Thanks for checking out Bendigo, with me, and meeting Dr Julia Bourke… Thanks for “Wet & Wild” … rafting down the Yarra at Warburton. Thanks for inviting me to that place past Sale, where you stayed (with the woman who couldn’t stop talking), where I almost lost her dog, on one of my long walks. Yep, … we have been on some great adventures together ”
I didn’t know if the stress of seeing me suffer for so long, which has led me to isolate, no longer speak and lash out at him, was driving him to suicide. I didn’t know if he senses I am slipping away and may not make it through another year, or even to the end of this year. But tears welled in my eyes when I read that text. Continue reading “Losing things, OCD and more on dissociation”
“Everything you say to me
(Takes me one step closer to the edge)
(And I’m about to break)
I need a little room to breathe
(‘Cause I’m one step closer to the edge)
(I’m about to break)”
– Linkin Park, “One Step Closer“
I don’t know if the world has got louder and more overbearing over the course of my life, or something has changed in me, making me less able to deal with it. I’m now in a constant state of overwhelm. At some point I developed hyperacusis, where a person hears the world ten times louder than most people. There is a great news report on it here. We do get to the point where we have to live our lives inside a padded room.
I tried to buy some dinner the other night as I am not able to cook anything myself. I had left my earmuffs at home, though, as I was flustered trying to get out the door before my dad came home. I attempted to go out in public without them, which was, as the hyperacusis news report described, a “landmine filled anxiety ridden trek”. I wrote the following text to my therapist:
“Fucking trains honking. Fucking cars everywhere that can beep at any moment. Fucking kids having a fucking birthday. Fucking balloons. Fucking metal wind charms attached to the fucking restaurant door which deafen you whenever it opens. Fucking dogs barking. Fucking staff calling out “no 83, no 83” while I have a break down in their fish and chip shop. Fucking people staring at me wondering what the fuck is wrong with me. I’ve fled back to my car. I think I’ll just starve.” Continue reading “Social anxiety, overwhelm, no escape”
“He was a big character, chaotic, charismatic, and fun. With a big heart. He lived a big life, too short. And now he has left us with a big hole.” James Oliver, Revi Nair’s colleague and friend
Today I found out that my old psychiatrist, Revi, has died. First I was in shock, and then I cried. I watched his eulogy online. I don’t know why. But it’s a great eulogy and helped me understand him more and what draw him to psychiatry. He wasn’t just a great psychiatrist but a wonderful human being with a huge personality who cared for all living beings, from stray cats to humans, all his life. He said some things to me I’ve longed to hear all my life: “I want to take care of you”, “something has to be done, things can’t keep going like this” (in reference to how bad my mental health was). Well they can and they will. What a horrible end to yet another shit year. I didn’t actually have that many sessions with him. I was referred back to the public system as he, like most private psychiatrists, felt I was too bad for the private system. But the public system/case management service won’t take me back. I was going to get the GP to refer me back to Revi. I don’t actually feel psychiatry (or even psychology) has a lot to offer me but he was a kind person and I feel there is a place for some aspects of psychiatry, like short term benzo use. I don’t know what I would have done yesterday if I didn’t have any diazepam. I wouldn’t wish panic attacks on my worst enemy. Well the GP gave me twenty more tablets of diazepam today. I was hoping for more, but the drug is highly regulated and he worried the system might knock me into red if he gave me a pack of fifty. Hopefully I don’t keep having more panic attacks. I slept better last night.
I can’t believe Revi is gone. Everyone loved him. His office was always so warm and welcoming. And his laugh… omg his laugh. There are not many psychiatrists like him around.
I seem to lose everyone as the year comes to an end. I remember my very first therapist who I saw for two and a half years and was like a best friend to me terminated our relationship in December. I have never managed to get back on my feet and have remained in a deep depression for a decade now. My current therapist is about to go on holidays, and I don’t know if I will ever see my NDIS worker again. He told me he wanted to cut back our sessions as he felt I was too dependent on him. He then told my parents he couldn’t handle all the distressing messages I was apparently sending him and has now gone off on stress leave.
I will need to rely more on my friends this next month. I don’t like to lean on my friends too much as I don’t want to burden them with all my stuff. I will probably spend a lot of time on my own in nature this next month, which I feel I need to do.
Yesterday my anxiety escalated into a full blown panic attack. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this level of anxiety.
I was scared shitless. I was scared of just about everyone. I was scared of my dad coming home. I was scared of sleeping. It reminded me of the time I was put on a compulsory hospital order and had police hunting me.
I ended up taking off into the bush with what diazepam I had left and a tshirt and shorts to change into. I was wearing nothing but my dressing gown over my underwear. I’m lucky I didn’t have an accident on the way there. I was dissociating, weak and barely able to feel the car pedals. I felt trapped, suffocated and furious when the traffic banked up at one point. Continue reading “Panic attack”
hsphaven 