Looking at my recent psycho expenses and adding them up, I realize that if I dumped my meds, my monthlyh psychiatrist checkup, my weekly EMDR session, and my twice-weekly NFB sessions, I could spend one week a month in a luxury resort hotel.
If this all turns out to be a huge failure, I think I’ll do that instead of jumping into a lake and/or cult!
I love and hate early mornings.
It’s a beautiful time of day even in ugly places. The light of the first hour or so paints things nicely. And when I’m up very early I have a feeling of excitement and possibility. The day stretches ahead to infinity! Anything can happen! The coffee tastes good, I like other people, things are tingly and effervescent. At the same time, things are calm, there’s no anxiety, and the quiet is beautifully relaxing.
Unfortunately, I’m almost always dog-tired too. Even if I went to bed and to sleep in time to have a nice 8 hours of sleep, 5 am is a big cup of exhausted. The exhaustion and the calm elation balance neatly and I feel as though I stayed up all night. I will almost always require a nap by about 10 am, or be fighting sleep the rest of the day otherwise. When I had to get up early to take a crosstown bus to a day job, I would hit a wall at about 10:30 and not come out of it until afternoon coffee at 2 pm or so.
I have a couple of dawn images that always come up when I think about mornings. The first is from childhood. We had a 28 foot sailboat and would go to Catalina Island (26 miles off the coast here) for trips in the summer. We’d moor at Hen Rock Cove. In the very early morning, I’d go up topside. The water in the cove was nearly flat, with the tiniest waves rolling in from the fogged-over sea. The only sounds were the creaking of the boat and a few bird cries, maybe a very distant sound of some other boat running a motor. If I looked down into the clear cold water I might see a bright orange Garibaldi fish. Time just completely stopped. Until it was time to have cereal out of the cool little boxes, or toast made on a stove!
The second one is from college. When I first started doing radio shows on KLA, they were the least favored shift, 3-6 am. I’d play my favorite records to 1.5 people and then stagger home just as the rest of school was waking up for their 8 am classes. UCLA is a particularly pretty campus at dawn, with all that rosy brick lighting up and trees everywhere, and lots of cobbly pathways. A bit dazed with sleep deprivation, I’d toddle back to the dormitory and eat Captain Crunch and scrambled eggs while the PA played shitty Top 40 and everyone else was hurrying to get something in their faces before class. Then I’d go up to the 7th floor where I lived and sit in the lounge for a while watching the sun hit Bel Air and the tennis courts. I was so tired, but it was a little magic time.
I hope that this brain work I’m doing offers the opportunity to wake up earlier and enjoy it more. That’s supposed to be one of the goals, and it would be great to see more dawns, and feel less down-the-bone exhausted while doing so. One good result of NFB so far is that I feel that “morning calm” more often, when I can just look at what’s in front of me and sit, and not need to be reading-talking-typing-driving-thinking-zooming all the time.
Scientific American Mind: Train Your Brain
Mental exercises with neurofeedback may ease symptoms of attention-deficit disorder, epilepsy and depression–and even boost cognition in healthy brains.
Johari, positives. Nohari? Negatives. Here’s mine. Has the potential to be useful in a different way. Funny how much easier it is to pick up things that are WRONG with oneself. I wish it had “pestiferous” or “smelly”.
The “johari window” mostly has complimentary or at least non-pejorative adjectives in it. This is good because people are more likely to be honest if they don’t have to avoid bad adjectives (capricious, drunk, totaly retarted) and partly because it’s less likely to cause fist fights.
Unsurprisingly the person with the least complimentary set of adjectives chose a pseudonym.
At the Ralphs tonight someone had brought an entire binder of coupons. It went on and on and on. There was only one checker. Coupons Galore was a large round young woman with a blonde ponytail, accompanied by a short round young woman and a large goofy guy with hair all over the place. They looked like they were on their way to an Insane Clown Posse show or just to get arrested. But she was a coupon nut. The poor checker was starting to lose his cool, and the line was stacking up. The guy behind me cracked “Coupons are illegal after midnight”. It went on and on. A few minutes later the dark-haired woman shot me an angry look and mumbled at me. “Eh?” I said. “It’s just COUPONS. What’s funny?” I said “I have no problem with coupons.” “Well what’s so FUNNY?” The guy behind me said “Coupons are funny.” She made him repeat it twice and then said “WELL WE COME IN HERE AFTER MIDNIGHT BECAUSE WE FIGURE NO ONE’S HERE.” She was looking at me for some reason, and I recalled now that she was glaring at me in the aisles earlier too. And now she was getting all street, yo, and throwing some Angry Mexican Girl vibe. “If you don’t give me any attitude I won’t give you any, how’s that?” I asked cheerfully.
Then another checker arrived and we all went to him. The end.
In the horrible mall down by where Bave and Dethya live, the one that looks like the Sherman Oaks Gallery turned into a half-solved Lament Configuration, there is an “italian” restaurant called, no joke, VER-SA-CHEE.
I love sitting at the bar at D’s chatting with Michelle. She’s so great.
I like this idea even though it’s a THING on the LIVEJOURNAL that everyone is doing.
So you pick adjectives that describe the person and then the person sees what adjectives others pick. The idea is that you get some clue which things about your personal self assessment make sense to others and vice versa.
honk.
I keep most of my psychologically related stuff on the brain filter now, but here are some recent factoids of interest that have come up from my own situation.
One theory for the effect of NFB is that it replicates the twilight states of the brain, the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states of going to and coming from sleep. The theory is that the brain does a lot of “figuring out” emotional issues and trauma in those states, and that inducing or prolonging them is helpful.
Digestive health has way, way more effect on mental health that many people realize. An ounce of Metamucil is worth a ton of neurochemical intervention.
Mindfulness is hard. Oh, you knew that, though.
New filter for my writing about my neuropsychiatric adventures. Entry is by poll with one answer. Enter only if you’re interested and you feel you can handle it. If you see this after more than a week or so you should probably contact me directly because I won’t necessarily check it after that.
Note to local friends: Some of you have expressed frustration because I talk about this stuff on the Internet but not in person. I generally feel uncomfortable bringing up my issues in conversation, both because it feels egotistical and because I don’t think it will be acceptable, and there isn’t anyone in my life right now that I can call up on the phone and say “My brain hurts, can we talk”. I’m comfortable with other people bringing their stuff to me, no problem, but I can’t do that easily myself.
I’m doing this because 1) I need to write about this 2) I don’t feel comfortable talking about it in person with hardly anyone 3) I need a relatively safe place to write and 4) I’m attempting to stop freaking out people who don’t need or want to deal with someone else’s crazy.
I will do my best to keep my serious problems out of this space other than on this filter.
Comments disabled, poll results hidden. Contact me privately if there’s some technical or personal problem with this.
I offer a general apology for my behavior, which has been erratic and damaging to others lately.
Physical changes in my brain and associated emotional distress have at least temporarily warped my personality. My current view of the world is so obviously distorted that I can’t say definitively what is going on. Some of you have had similar experiences and may understand what I mean, but you don’t have to; you can just say I’m nuts, and that’ll do.
I’ve been an egotist, a professional patient, and needy to the point of requiring unavailable levels of reassurance. I’ve been quick to anger and easily triggered into huge floods of emotion by things that other people have found trivial. Much of my behavior only made sense in a context I can’t expect anyone else to share.
No one is required to accept my public or private apologies, or to put up with me at all for that matter. I’ve been angry, demanding, suspicious, deeply depressed, irrational, and completely terrified for a long time now, beyond the capacity of most reasonable people to accept. For a shorter time I’ve been open about those things here, which in retrospect was a terrible mistake on many levels. I would not fault anyone for writing me off, as painful as that might be.
Some of you have been privately critical of me, in the best sense, without damning but without finessing the point. It wasn’t easy to hear some of those things, but harsh truth was better than easy. That’s seriously the most valuable thing any friend has given me, ever.
It’s not assured that I’ll survive this experience at all, much less that I’ll emerge as someone you’ll want to know. Wish me luck even if you’re wishing me goodbye.
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