Tag: brain

no swimswim witem ol meme pool

Two recent topics (list of high school cliques and defining the internet/watercooler news story) resulted in another phenomenon. Certain topics present the nearly irresistable urge to respond personally with an opinion or experience, even if that’s not the original intent of the discussion.

In these cases: The mention of teenager social cliques caused almost everyone to deliver their personal clique membership experience: claiming one, resisting them, etc. This accidentally proved my point about the power of that experience well into adulthood. The discussion of bloggable watercooler news stories got a lot of responses opining about the particular story that sparked my interest. In short, a watercooler was formed.

In both cases the general wasn’t nearly as attractive as the opportunity to share the personal and specific.

I think I hit the “talk about the weather” organ again. I wonder where that thing is? I’m sure as hell not “above” it; mention the weather and I’ll discuss it at length, and I’ll bet I’d do the same on the other topics if I hadn’t been the one with the less magnetic general questions.

So the next question is; what is the list of those topics? My first guess is that a lot of things about food, sex, and sleep would cause a similar response.

you know that some day I’ll walk out of here again

It has come to my attention that I need a vacation. Alone. In the desert or up the Central Coast. I usually do this twice a year and it’s one of the things that keeps me from completing my transformation into Howard Beale.

It doesn’t have to be long or cost a lot of money. A long weekend, two overnights in a cheap motel, and a digestible series of patty melts will do if the scenery is okay. That’s great news, because I’m completely broke, too.

The Fix My Damn Brain project ate everything for a year, starting with my time. Neurofeedback, which ends at least temporarily on Tuesday, will have lasted almost 11 months straight with no breaks, twice a week with some extra days. Forty-seven weeks! No leaving town or taking time off. Plus shrink lady once a week and doctor once a month. Plus doing enough of my job that I didn’t get fired. I’m a little surprised thisl happened at all.

And it ate all my money too. In theory I’m getting reimbursed for some of this stuff at least, but out of pocket for the period since NFB start includes

Neurofeedback: $8930 <- !!!!!
Shrink: $6815 <- !!!
Drugs: $2200 (est) <- !

Oh hey look, it's almost $18,000. No wonder I'm in the hole. Must defeat ADD and get that paperwork done. If I can get even half of that back…

Neurofeedback update: Done. (Kinda.)

Most of what I write about my head is private, but sometimes there are things worth sharing with the larger world.

Monday will be my last neurofeedback session.

I have been doing NFB twice a week without a missed appointment for any reason since last October 12, almost a year. There have been no vacations, and no exceptions of any kind.

When I say “last session” the meaning is both conditional and hopeful. The strategy my practitioner uses is to continue until the client either gets significant symptom relief or can no longer tolerate the treatment. I’m in that second category.

In that case, the treatment is stopped for two months or so to let the side effects, which have been the dominant experience, fade out. At this point the benefits — whatever they may be — can be assessed. There’s a range of results from “Thanks, I feel better, bye!” through “Some things have improved and I would like to improve other things that are still bugging me” to “I feel somewhat better but we need to keep going with this.”

I’m apprehensive about this for obvious reasons. What’s going to be there when the bandages are removed? However there’s not a damned thing I can do about it other than try to relax and maintain a hopeful attitude. In any case I’ll be delighted to be done with the stress and side effects, which are very debilitating.

Apparently many NFB practitioners deny that there are painful effects. Based on my own experience that’s a huge mistake, and I would urge anyone going into serious therapeutic neurofeedback to carefully consider how bad a long period of aggravated and newly induced mental illness might be. I’ve not enjoyed the last year at all, and my career and some relationships have been permanently affected.

It’s entirely worth it to me if the result is good enough, since my alternatives were not looking very good. If you’re dealing with the neuropsychiatric results of a head injury, if you have disabling ADD-like symptoms that do not budge with other approaches, or if you have emotional problems that are life-threateningly severe and inexplicably resistant to conventional medical and psychotherapeutic treatment, then neurofeedback may be worth investigating. If your life is worth living despite your issues, this may not be for you.

I hope to report some good result by the end of the year.

dare to look me in the eye

This LJ name was my third or fourth pick. My favorite nicknames were taken. I’d always liked this song. It’s catchy and fun to sing, and I loved Townshend’s self-deprecating irony. I also had good memories of covers by some of my musical heroes. The Minutemen played it at the last gig of theirs I saw, in July ’85, and I remember another great 80s performance by Richard Thompson, where he did “Pinball Wizard” for a laugh mostly and then this one for serious.

I didn’t realize how perfectly I’d chosen. I’m this guy, all right. From earliest childhood I was expected to be someone else. In fact, I was told I was someone else, and not given the option of living otherwise. And like the guy in the song I was always angry as hell about it. That impostor consciousness and anger about it have haunted my relations with other people my whole life.

Eerily, the song came out in 1966, when I was not yet two years old. It was a radio hit just as I was being introduced to the insane double bind of my childhood: be someone else, or be a failure. The way it all lines up is almost too good.

There was only one way for me to keep my pride and my sense of self growing up, and that was to sabotage my parents’ master plan for my life. As soon as I moved out and went to college, I was on a suicide mission to destroy every possibility of real adult success for myself. Mission: accomplished. I am now entirely authentic, and no one can say I am my family’s creature.

I’ve been trying to undo that victory for a long, long time now without much success. Anything but failure still feels fake. Pete, you had it down from day one. It’s like you were there.

cuts are for lyrics

oh hey great

Car accident: dumb. Car accident in parking lot at 3 mph: super dumb. Car accident at 3 mph in psychotherapist’s parking lot, partlally due to side effects of therapy: dumb enough to be funny. Said accident being with therapist’s own parked car: COMEDY GOLD.

Price to fix just her car: $1200. And then I get to fix mine. Hey, this shit ain’t funny now.

I’ve had a lot of mean in me lately and I ain’t proud.

Fortunately most of it is theoretical and occurs as military exercises rather than actual attacks. But my snark is at a near all-time high.

Example. My brother is in town, and we were talking about scammers and beggars. I related the story of one local addict, the kind of guy who goes from looking pretty much okay because his family has cleaned him up, through increasingly scruffy, to Gone For A While. He has a hunted look and that near-permanent sunburn of the person who has been outside not by choice. Sometimes he just bums cigs, but he usually does the “out of gas” scam, which is a script I have not seen vary in multiple cities and decades:

“Hey, I feel really dumb, can I ask you a question here? I was at a [bachelor party,picnic,church] and didn’t pay attention and I ran out of gas! I have to get back to [suburb about 20 miles away where no poor people live] tonight and I don’t have my wallet on my. So dumb. Do you have a couple bucks?”

The last time our local guy did this my answer was “This is the third variation on that lie you have told just to me. Did you know that?” He looked surprised and said “Sorry! No, I didn’t.” and left. So that was kind of snarky and unnecessarily mean, since the poor fucker is a drug addict and kind of doomed. I got my button pushed by the lie and was nasty.

My brother told me in response that he’d been taken in by a young woman who worked this scam at the college where he works. There had been some kind of kampus kop alert about scammers so he reported his misadventure to the cops in case it was someone they were looking for, etc etc. The young policewoman who took the report mocked him to no end, basically calling in the other cops to say hey look at the dumb professor who fell for the scam haw haw haw, on and on. He was pretty upset. My response was that he should have replied:

“That’s funny all right. Here’s an even better joke. Did you hear the one about the girl who was so dumb she barely made it out of high school and ended up a third-rate rentacop working for the smart people? It’s FUCKING HILARIOUS!”

I think I shocked my brother. I certainly shocked myself! Maybe I need to take up punching clowns or something.

B Ø N K

Going from a half dose of two antidepressants to no dose of any antidepressant is a ride. And by “ride” I mean “rusty Tilt-A-Swing-A-Clank-A-Whirl operated by carnies at the County Fair.”

I woke up at 3:30 pm today feeling hung over. The day went slowly for three hours while caffeine and my last remaining head pill (Adderall) took effect and I got some minor stuff done and dorked. I showered, felt better, and needed to go for groceries; my brother was arriving for a visit for a few days and a full larder was a necessity.

Then I went to Trader Joes to get food. As I was checking out my stuff I got the sweats, blurry vision, stomach upset, headache, and total exhaustion. It was like a sugar low plus jet lag plus the flu, all at once.

I made it home, stuffed the freezer and fridge things in their place, and told my brother and mom that there was easy food there for them to eat. I then drank a liter of Orangina and ate some yogurt and collapsed.

There’s a Dead Man’s Party in my hippocampus and you’re all invited!