Day 4 no meds has come and went.
The strange psychotic hell of rampant anxiety is starting to bubble up in places unexpected, and i am trying to understand it.
I think the only way i can get better (and not remain stagnated) is to *feel* these weird things and make sense of them, make peace with them.
Move forward from these symptoms that exist in the scope of irrational thoughts, which I don’t know the exact origin of or, understand.
Mental illness is no joke.
I’m coming to understand that the things I am experiencing are a direct result of anxiety that I need to untangle, not a result of “withdrawal” from medication.
It’s purely psychological- to put it plainly, “it’s all in your head.” Truly.
The way I know this is because, one moment, it may feel like- I am going completely off the edge into insanity. It may “feel” that way. But then, oddly enough I can stop it. By controlling my thoughts deliberately.
This is the, base of dialectical behavior therapy- which is, how you recover.
Essentially, I may not be fucked. My brain isn’t perma-fried or broken, psychotic, insane. It just *feels* that way... when you’re being pushed to the edge of mental insanity with unchecked anxiety that exceeds the normal levels of, worrying about forgetting something important on a test or, what you would do if your house burnt down on accident one day or, the fear of flying and then plummeting to your death in a fiery blaze.
It’s... much worse than that fearful feeling. You can’t image the hell it is, but I do believe now it is possible to fix it.
Just one example, my first attempt at putting it into words- I wake up in the morning with my head swarming. As if thousands of bees of just funneled at light speed into a large brass tuba or, grazing the edges of large metal drums in a tornadic fashion. My mind is literally buzzing, like an alarm is going off but- for what reason?
And the thoughts, that exist in the confusion between waking and consciousness- it feels like waking up in a blazing fire or the middle of a category five hurricane. All of your worst fears have already *happened* in this moment, and you feel a sense of impending doom that is large than a black hole eating up your inside and engulfing your entire soul. A true sense of fatality as you slip into death from the inside out.
In these moments I am truly delusional... whether it is, that I don’t know where I am- or what year it is- and that I think something terrible is happening. You feel, if you move, or if you go outside- if you speak to anyone, it will be the wrong move and you will make everything worse somehow. And this terror and delusion takes over you, and in this insane, screaming, fog.
You have to somehow find a grip onto mental clarity for one second, enough to tell yourself, “you can make this stop. Just have to calm down.”
But the large booming thundering voice of anxiety, it has many voices, it screeches from the inside. And it tells me, not argues- but tells me- “It’s all over. You’re fucked. You can’t escape. You’re stuck here forever. There is no hope. This will never stop. This will never stop. This will, never, stop.”
And though you thoroughly believe, it will never stop. All day long it will go, for weeks it will go, and finally you will dwindle into pure madness and psychosis while you try to take your own life and wind up in a psych ward.
And you have to take a deep breath, despite all of it. And through the chaos find a calming thought, a soothing touch, whatever it takes.
To get a grip back to reality.
“How do I become normal again. I don’t like this, I don’t like this.”
It’s as if your eyes have been opened to all the most horrible things you can’t bare to see, that hurt so deeply and, terrify you so thoroughly that it’s genuinely more than enough fear and anguish for anyone to confront in their life time. And you wish to go back, to the plain ways of being, the walled off brain that exists in the state of normalcy. In America, drinking starbucks with their white iPhone, and standardized education, and white picket fence. And they don’t see it- the hell. And they don’t question it. And they’re fine. Because the blinders are on.
You want the blinders back. So you don’t have to feel and see these horrible things anymore.
“How do I become normal again. I want the walled off brain. Ignorance is bliss.... ignorance is bliss...”
and you lay there with your eyes closed gripping onto your pant legs and biting your lip, scrunching your face. Rocking back and forth. Until you can feel the tension in your body and on your face begin to loosen, and breathing becomes a little easier. The buzzing gets a little slower, lower, fading into the distance. The river of incoherent thoughts that sound like they were written by a schizophrenic begin to fade away too. And you become in touch again with sensation, your body and, reality. The room around you.
And while paranoia irrationally lingers for a while- distraction is at your finger tips on the nearest by device. So you dont’ have to feel so scared and alone. You feel as if someone is coming to kill you though no one is coming. Or that there is a demon waiting behind your shoulder. You avoid mirrors because you’re afraid if you look, you might see something frightening. The corners and the shadows, every sound- the sound of foot prints above you or the scuffing of a flip flop in the hallway outside- the distant running of water, in another apartment bath tub- it all blends together to create the perfect storm of terror, a delusional one.
“What’s that sound? Is someone coming? Is it them?” [remembers trauma]
”who is it.”
“Who is that talking.”
“Is that talking? Are they fighting? Is there a fight?”
“Or is that the sound of water?”
“Is that in my head? Am I losing it? What’s happening outside, what if something bad is happening. Should I turn on the news.”
“I really can’t tell if that’s water or voices. Voices.. no.. water- no... is it demons? I think it’s demons. It’s demons.”
“Am I awake?”
And you’re afraid to move and afraid to make noise, and afraid, too afraid to do *anything*
But I have to remain distracted, for a while, with youtube and things...
And while I watch a youtube influencer happily do their hair, and another intellectual rambling on Ted Talks
I slowly melt away and forget.... while the few crackling embers drift in- of residual anxieties and depressive thoughts.... that are particularly hard to grapple with and, can honestly make me feel suicidal sometimes if I get particularly entrenched in it.
But I cast it away like shooing a fly or spitting out a watermelon seed this time- luckily. Brush it off.
Sometimes it’s those post panic attack thoughts that send me into a coma or insulated cocoon of depression that suffocates me and which I nearly die from. Because they just plant the seed, and then the remainder of my day, my week, I go about life but it’s not the same- because those thoughts are there ruminating in the back of my head... processing over and over again like a tape.
You have no idea how many times I’ve been forced to listen to this tape playing.
As I live my life. This is my life. This is what it’s like to live with mental illness.
Talking about it here helps significantly. Gives me a sense of control.
But I think that may be one of my greatest fears is- not having, control. And that’s what my nightmare that I woke up from this time was about- just now. Confronting just how little control I had, in so many aspects of, life and, being human. And it was, scary. Like I said, I wanted the blinders back on.
But there is power in confronting and feeling that fear and then moving past it. And writing down your symptoms and realizing, they’re just, symptoms and you do have power over this. Talking about it helps break the cycle of it continuing to happen to you as well.
Like I said, this is just a DBT therapy approach to the matter. It’s proven to work so.
The more quickly I can stop one of these in it’s tracks, the better and stronger I have gotten at fighting whatever this is.
-
on another perspective, I am curious about the cause and I would like to try to understand that. Whether it’s physiological or whether it’s psychological, how it’s all working.
I think it may be in part physiological for me and I want to continue on a path of finding a way to make this better. Or is it a result of some damage like, a burnt light socket after a shock? You know?
I just want to... understand.
