I'm feeling too sick today to even watch shows or play idle games, and when that happens, I end up on Mastodon too much, which isn't helpful. #DarkSojourn #Recovery2023
#Recovery2023
Filter is also on the fritz these days.
Filter. The ability to test all combinations of how what I'm saying might be taken to avoid unintentional insult.
Probably some more but that took all my spoons and now I'm really in for it.
For most of these, I can usually compensate by overworking one or more of the other functions to make up for it. Probably what's happening now it's that they're most all of them depleted and this coping strategy isn't enough. I'm probably still knee deep in #burnout, which sucks because it's time to get going again.
I was supposed to be all fired up and recharged today from my "vacation," but with social events and surprise scheduling phone calls, Christmas was less of a vacation than I get in any given weekend.
So I guess I'm taking another day "off" in terms of pay, but still not resting because people still need stuff from me.
Not nearly as bad as October, but the burnout from the rest of the year hasn't had time to heal.
I feel less "tired" (for most values of tired), but my brain is missing a few pieces necessary for executive function and feeling sane. Willpower, or the will to do that which I do not wish to do, is also at an all time low and has not been restored after all these weeks. My typically unshakable ability to string long thoughts together into words in microblog format has also been malfunctioning for some weeks, and now my filters are suffering, too.
I’m doing really well on my goal of dancing every night. I don’t always do it, and sometimes I dance in the day instead. It feels good enough that I tend to look forward to it. It’s been especially fun since I got my cat to join on pretenses of playing with the streamer. That’s mostly fun but then she puts a crimp in my style when she grabs the ribbon and won’t let go.
My goal is simple: Hit shuffle on my dance playlist of curated tracks that make me want to move. Then dance until I don’t feel like it anymore. At first that was one song. Tonight I danced four and a half.
Many benefits: Funness, exercise, gets my blood flowing during the stale part of the night. And now, bonding with my cat (who lately has been suffering unbearable jealousy that we’re letting the outside cats in from the cold.) I underestimated the effects of euphoria, and while it still isn’t the same as dancing at a rave or club, I can sometimes trick myself into believing I’m there.
Yay I was able to read a whole huge long Atlantic article!
One realllllly interesting point: As sleep deprived and anxious as I've been for two weeks, some of my usual symptoms have been noticeably absent. Only mild IBS without much pain, no myalgia at all, and fatigue? Not the outright active fatigue I usually associate with MECFS. Like, tired yes. Beyond tired, certainly. But more like "I desperately need more sleep" kind of tired, not "My muscles feel weak and I'm pushing my body against a wall to walk" kind of tired.
And now today, when I woke up from the best night's sleep I've gotten in 10 days, oddly... these symptoms are back at medium levels.
No idea what it means. Just a datapoint.
Oh one last thing I almost forgot: I worked a "full" week this week! My 10-hour (9.75) weekly goal of billed hours. Work is super important to me and it hurts so much when I can't meet my expectations.
2/2
Personal update:
So week before last, I was in post-burnout crisis and my son helped take over care for my mom and I have been off the hook for two weeks now. Last week, instead of getting good rest, I was in no-sleep hell, uncontrollably anxious. I focused all my efforts on figuring out how to be calm, and it was a lot of effort. Lots of meditating and breathing and supplements and other measures when it seemed like it wasn't working.
I've now had several days of decent sleep. Not perfect, but getting enough rest each night (according to my Garmin body battery score) to get me through the next day. I'm finally feeling like I've got spaciousness to work thru my backlog of personal to-do's, slowly, paced, measured, not pushing myself to exhaustion every day. This is wonderful. We've got aging care services lined up to help 18hrs a month, so unless mom's health takes a further nosedive, we're set for a bit.
1/
I was honestly doing more to work towards my dreams during the deepest PTSDest times of my #DarkSojourn than I’ve done this year. #Recovery2023
(I’d been anxious all day and my body battery was super low. Need to have energy so I don’t get sick again after or during the gauntlet this week. Did everything I knew to relax. Day meditation. Kava tea. Propranolol. Breathing. Muscle scans. Laid down to sleep early at 9pm. Guided sleep hypnosis with a focus on resolving anxiety. Nice and relaxed.
I then proceeded to wake up every 5-15 minutes from minor sensory annoyances all the way up till 2am. Got up several times to take melatonin (2x, 5mg) and snack. Am over it. Self-care is a joke. Yes, I have a bad attitude. It’s easier this way.)
Fuck #Recovery2023
I'm grateful to this Garmin watch because I would have no way to measure my calmness and sleep quality without it. I can't go based on how I feel, because sometimes I'm feeling stressed when it says I'm calm, or I'm feeling calm when it says I'm freaking the fuck out. I wake up feeling tired no matter what my body battery score is and no matter how well I slept. To the point where I wondered if it was even accurate, but it does match up with my overall experience, so it's accurate enough. I can see what works (guided meditations, sustained periods of breathwork) and what doesn't (wishing I were more calm, willing it to happen, only 3 breaths). I can see which meditations work better than others, and all kinds of semi-scientific processes. I highly recommend a good health watch and feel incredibly blessed to have this technology. (Garmin Vivoactive 4s.) Even so, it has taken an act of will to take calmness seriously.
4/4
I am so, so grateful to get those 2-3 hours a day of work where I feel I'm on top of it and doing a good job. Able to flow. Not dragging myself through every single minute. Not easy, but easier, and fulfilling. Everything is so much better when my work feels fulfilling, and a lot of things have to align for that to happen.
Now I'm adding responsibilities back into my schedule, and I'm worried about maintaining calm when I've got to do stressful things. It's hard enough staying calm when I'm just sitting in bed.
In just over a week, I'll be driving my mom 2 hours away for surgery with staying overnight 2 nights, and then maybe she'll need care after that, and I'm trying to get myself as healthy as possible for that. And then I'd like to come out the other side as functional as I am now. This level of functionality now is sustainable, barely, but my life will stay together if I can maintain this level of health and balance.
3/
A lot of this has involved becoming comfortable with the feeling of sleepiness, because when my watch says I'm at my calmest, I'm usually feeling sleepy. That's a feeling I've avoided through stimulating recreational habits for many, many years.
I think I tooted on here about my difficulties functioning for a few days as my brain fog increased the calmer I got. I suspected it was stress hormone detox, and I seem to have been right.
I might be seeing some better results now. I'm still tired, and it's still incredibly difficult to stay calm, or get calm again after a stressful day, which itself can take at least another day. It's a LOT of work, and it's not very fun. But my IBS and fibro symptoms have improved somewhat, and that deep "I can't even move" fatigue has passed. I'm finally enjoying work again and feel like I have a handle on it for the first time since the July burnout.
2/
I haven't done a personal update in awhile.
In part because my media habits have been changing since I started focusing on Calmness.
My Garmin watch gives me amazing biofeedback which I'm taking advantage of. It has a body battery score, and I realized about two weeks ago that maybe running myself down to 5 (out of 100, the lowest point) every day might be bad, and that I might have some hope of healing if I concentrated on going to sleep with the highest score possible. I've also focused on getting good sleep so that number starts as high as possible each day.
And all this means teaching my stress-fueled body how to calm the fuck down. This is extremely not easy because I like adrenaline and cortisol thank you very much.
But I'd already done the groundwork of setting boundaries and carving out time, so now it's about self-restraint. Keeping my brain quiet when all I want to do is constantly think and write about thoughts is really difficult.
1/
Since I was already at a minimum operation level in terms of productivity, my biggest and hardest adjustment was on self-restraint during my downtimes, during which I was aggressively cycling through heavy mental activity in chat, on mastodon, in idle games, and in general online. I had to drop a lot of bad habits that felt good but had me spinning and stressed. My brain broke and I was struggling to form sentences over the weekend and early this week. Terror that I wouldn’t get that back because I am a writer professionally!!
So now I’ve got to stick with the program.
My Garmin has a body battery feature and I finally figured out last weekend that maybe it’s bad to drop to the lowest possible value each day (5). I’ve been saving myself some energy at the end of every day this week. (I surely didn’t FEEL that energy on those days!)
This is where I was saying a couple days ago that I think my body was adjusting to trying to be functional without peaking my stress levels constantly. Because until today, I felt like absolute garbage all week in spite of maintaining calm most of the day. Look at last weekend. Total crash revealed in data.
I am really happy about my day so far. It's been a long time since I've been really happy about my day.
I was tired, but not too tired to do the needful. Work went well and I felt productive. (I almost clocked out after the first half-hour but it was safe to push through and my brain woke up.) The cleaner I arranged is making my house feel fresh and bright. It smells good in here. I've got enough energy left over for my phone therapy session in a half hour, then I can relax for the day. I'm having a little hope that at least partial recovery from my last major burnout may be possible!
I still need to focus on calmness and being functional without hyping myself up or getting anxious. I still need to focus on pacing and not outdoing my resources.
I'm still exhausted but also today there is something I haven't felt since the Big Crash in July... excitement-energy... clarity about the things around me and the ability to imagine that I might be able to get to some things I want to do rather than just scraping by.
This is the danger moment. I need to be very extra careful to hem that excitement in. I need to keep the "NO" light on, because my cells and bones still feel fragile and tired. I am making slow progress on some things and it needs to stay slow. But maybe there is hope for expansiveness if I stay the course on remaining calm and pacing myself.
I've been incredibly focused on staying calm for half a week, using my watch as a guide, and prioritizing calming activities, meditation, analog, over digital obsessions, quieting my cacophonic mind.
And my reward? I've been experiencing even further cognitive decline and fatigue. I'm back to thinking through mud.
To avoid getting discouraged, I'm promoting the theory that my body and mind aren't used to operating on such low adrenal levels, and that after some time of feeling worse, I'll adjust, and things will start improving.
The struggle is the point. I can't stop struggling, because then what?
Sometime in 2015 I curled in on myself and just… forgot to unclench. Re-learning how to do that now.
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