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boogieshoesSo recently, I’ve been doing the OCD-research thing, because, well, I’ve been hurting, physically. Not severe, can’t-stand-up pain, but a lot of muscle and joint soreness, fatigue, and the headaches which are generally constant background noise for me were being a bit more distracting than usual. I had just about decided I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia when I ran across a symptom checker that allowed me to put in all the symptoms at once. Guess what popped up?
Chronic clinical depression. Which I knew I had, but I didn’t realize could cause physical pain that wasn’t psychosomatic. It does make sense. Clinical Depression is characterized by a lower level of serotonin and/or norepinephrine in the blood. The same nerve pathways that transfer these chemicals also transfer pain signals. Guess what else that happens in this sort of depression? The patient’s brain often cannot filter these pain signals, or lower them. Basically, everything the body sends to the brain registers with the same ‘immediacy’, if not ‘intensity’. So a papercut and general muscle soreness and icepick headaches all tell the brain ‘hey, this hurts’, and the brain will say ‘yes, it does, and they’re all important problems’. So you’re basically fighting your own nature-built systems to figure out what’s really important. Experience will tell you the papercut isn’t important and the muscle fatigue might be cured with rest, but a headache isn’t always just a headache.
Worse, because of the lack of filtering and ability to ‘turn it off’, the pain signals can and often do ‘accrete’: you’re in more pain by the end of the day from the same papercut as in the morning because despite the fact that it’s healing just fine, the brain doesn’t hear ‘I’m healing, there’s less pain now’, it hears ‘There’s still X amt of pain. X amt plus Y amt from this morning equals Z amt total.’
Yeah, the papercut example is kind of ridiculous, but so is the accumulation of muscle fatigue signals. It’s also completely frustrating.
I’m used to trying to explain that depression uses up spoons, and along with my extreme introversion trait, it’s hard for me to be a lot more social than I already am, which admittedly isn’t much. Given the stigma attached to depression – ‘it’s all in your head!’ ‘just get over yourself!’ ‘just make the choice to be happy!’ are common responses – this is difficult enough.
I’m at a loss for how I’m going to explain that I’m in physical pain from a mental disorder. To tell the truth, I’m still having problems wrapping my own mind around it, even with the delightful Razor of Occam to make the case.
In other news, the older I get the more problems I appear to be having with sensory integration issues. Or maybe I’m just paying more attention.
I mentioned in a discussion this weekend with some friends that I don’t always trust what I see, despite the fact that I process visual input faster than auditory input. The reason? When I see colors, my brain tells me they should be a certain texture, or have a heat quality. You can have 2 paints of the same base and finish, painted on the exact same surface, but different colors, and my brain will tell me they should have two different textures. It’s not like I actually feel these textures, but I get this near-irresistible urge to touch the colors to make sure my brain is telling me the truth. Hello synesthesia.
My other issue is with noise. I feel noise against my skin. Most noises, everyday noises, are like getting hit with a pillow over and over again. Then there’s the noises that feel like scratches, different from the noises that feel like scritches, different from the ones that claw. Some noises feel like getting punched, and it’s not the symphony drums, you know? Occasionally, I wonder if my isolative tendencies as a child were not just a reaction to being picked on and teased, but an effort to control my environment so I didn’t feel so bruised at the end of the day. I don’t have that option now, for the most part. I really hate the fact that I work in a cubicle farm, especially one where the noises reverberate and hit me again and again and JUST DON’T STOP. There’s a reason I like being outside where it’s QUIET, and noise leaks into the landscape like water rolling downhill.
Personalities can hit me the same way. Someone being actively intense tends to feel like a buffet on the shoulder/arm. This is why I don’t like being around a lot of people, even if I like all the people on an individual basis. At some point, I can’t take being beat up by the noise and the other people around me. No one’s actually doing anything wrong, just BEING, but it still feels like being trapped on the bottom of the mosh pit.
And the whole ‘gazes have weight’ thing so common among the Asperger’s set? Let’s just say the reason I don’t put up pictures of my family is that no one likes to be sucker punched as soon as they come in the door. Yeesh.
The things I’ve described above are the things that get me down, collectively or individually. Sometimes, I just really don’t feel like fighting my own pre-programmed shit just so I can be functional. But the problem with being a responsible adult with no one to turn to is that you can’t just say, ‘You know what? I’m hiding in the sensory deprivation room. YOU handle the world today.’ You can’t do that, there’s no one there, even when you’re running a little – or a lot – ragged. You gotta get up every day and handle all the crap from other people as well as all the irritations produced by your own fucked-up brain chemistry. And you get tired. And it sucks.
And all of this is normal and wouldn’t usually upset me so much, except I’m still grousing about my own depression producing physical pain. I haven’t really wrapped my own head around it, yet. And also, I’m really irritated at my brain for doing this to me.
Because really, all I want is to not be alone in this fight. To be able to depend on someone else when I’m overloaded to say ‘you know, you need a rest, and I’ve kept this room over here just for you and your needs, and I’ll make sure no one bothers you while you take a breather.’ Because I will run myself into the ground trying to take care of everything, and then feel guilty because I can’t do everything everyone else is doing, because I don’t have the same energy levels of my mother, who makes the Energizer Bunny look calm.
My second option is finding and reading about characters who are like me – I find this highly therapeutic, to know someone out there is like me, and can be successful, even if they have bad moments. I said in my last post I strongly identified with Temperance Brennan in Bones – but where it stops is the energy levels, chronic depression, and synesthesia. Sometimes I’d give my right arm to read about a character who has these issues, where it’s not nearly bad enough to apply for disability, but it is bad enough to sap energy levels with the constant dealing; to produce quirky reactions as a response to overloading; a character who’s making his or her way through everyday life just trying to describe to himself, let alone other people, why s/he feels overloaded, bruised and battered.
I could always write with my left hand instead…
-bs, grousing
Chronic clinical depression. Which I knew I had, but I didn’t realize could cause physical pain that wasn’t psychosomatic. It does make sense. Clinical Depression is characterized by a lower level of serotonin and/or norepinephrine in the blood. The same nerve pathways that transfer these chemicals also transfer pain signals. Guess what else that happens in this sort of depression? The patient’s brain often cannot filter these pain signals, or lower them. Basically, everything the body sends to the brain registers with the same ‘immediacy’, if not ‘intensity’. So a papercut and general muscle soreness and icepick headaches all tell the brain ‘hey, this hurts’, and the brain will say ‘yes, it does, and they’re all important problems’. So you’re basically fighting your own nature-built systems to figure out what’s really important. Experience will tell you the papercut isn’t important and the muscle fatigue might be cured with rest, but a headache isn’t always just a headache.
Worse, because of the lack of filtering and ability to ‘turn it off’, the pain signals can and often do ‘accrete’: you’re in more pain by the end of the day from the same papercut as in the morning because despite the fact that it’s healing just fine, the brain doesn’t hear ‘I’m healing, there’s less pain now’, it hears ‘There’s still X amt of pain. X amt plus Y amt from this morning equals Z amt total.’
Yeah, the papercut example is kind of ridiculous, but so is the accumulation of muscle fatigue signals. It’s also completely frustrating.
I’m used to trying to explain that depression uses up spoons, and along with my extreme introversion trait, it’s hard for me to be a lot more social than I already am, which admittedly isn’t much. Given the stigma attached to depression – ‘it’s all in your head!’ ‘just get over yourself!’ ‘just make the choice to be happy!’ are common responses – this is difficult enough.
I’m at a loss for how I’m going to explain that I’m in physical pain from a mental disorder. To tell the truth, I’m still having problems wrapping my own mind around it, even with the delightful Razor of Occam to make the case.
In other news, the older I get the more problems I appear to be having with sensory integration issues. Or maybe I’m just paying more attention.
I mentioned in a discussion this weekend with some friends that I don’t always trust what I see, despite the fact that I process visual input faster than auditory input. The reason? When I see colors, my brain tells me they should be a certain texture, or have a heat quality. You can have 2 paints of the same base and finish, painted on the exact same surface, but different colors, and my brain will tell me they should have two different textures. It’s not like I actually feel these textures, but I get this near-irresistible urge to touch the colors to make sure my brain is telling me the truth. Hello synesthesia.
My other issue is with noise. I feel noise against my skin. Most noises, everyday noises, are like getting hit with a pillow over and over again. Then there’s the noises that feel like scratches, different from the noises that feel like scritches, different from the ones that claw. Some noises feel like getting punched, and it’s not the symphony drums, you know? Occasionally, I wonder if my isolative tendencies as a child were not just a reaction to being picked on and teased, but an effort to control my environment so I didn’t feel so bruised at the end of the day. I don’t have that option now, for the most part. I really hate the fact that I work in a cubicle farm, especially one where the noises reverberate and hit me again and again and JUST DON’T STOP. There’s a reason I like being outside where it’s QUIET, and noise leaks into the landscape like water rolling downhill.
Personalities can hit me the same way. Someone being actively intense tends to feel like a buffet on the shoulder/arm. This is why I don’t like being around a lot of people, even if I like all the people on an individual basis. At some point, I can’t take being beat up by the noise and the other people around me. No one’s actually doing anything wrong, just BEING, but it still feels like being trapped on the bottom of the mosh pit.
And the whole ‘gazes have weight’ thing so common among the Asperger’s set? Let’s just say the reason I don’t put up pictures of my family is that no one likes to be sucker punched as soon as they come in the door. Yeesh.
The things I’ve described above are the things that get me down, collectively or individually. Sometimes, I just really don’t feel like fighting my own pre-programmed shit just so I can be functional. But the problem with being a responsible adult with no one to turn to is that you can’t just say, ‘You know what? I’m hiding in the sensory deprivation room. YOU handle the world today.’ You can’t do that, there’s no one there, even when you’re running a little – or a lot – ragged. You gotta get up every day and handle all the crap from other people as well as all the irritations produced by your own fucked-up brain chemistry. And you get tired. And it sucks.
And all of this is normal and wouldn’t usually upset me so much, except I’m still grousing about my own depression producing physical pain. I haven’t really wrapped my own head around it, yet. And also, I’m really irritated at my brain for doing this to me.
Because really, all I want is to not be alone in this fight. To be able to depend on someone else when I’m overloaded to say ‘you know, you need a rest, and I’ve kept this room over here just for you and your needs, and I’ll make sure no one bothers you while you take a breather.’ Because I will run myself into the ground trying to take care of everything, and then feel guilty because I can’t do everything everyone else is doing, because I don’t have the same energy levels of my mother, who makes the Energizer Bunny look calm.
My second option is finding and reading about characters who are like me – I find this highly therapeutic, to know someone out there is like me, and can be successful, even if they have bad moments. I said in my last post I strongly identified with Temperance Brennan in Bones – but where it stops is the energy levels, chronic depression, and synesthesia. Sometimes I’d give my right arm to read about a character who has these issues, where it’s not nearly bad enough to apply for disability, but it is bad enough to sap energy levels with the constant dealing; to produce quirky reactions as a response to overloading; a character who’s making his or her way through everyday life just trying to describe to himself, let alone other people, why s/he feels overloaded, bruised and battered.
I could always write with my left hand instead…
-bs, grousing
