Circles, Cycles, Spirals
I suffer from depression, anxiety, and PTSD. As many of you know, each of these disorders comes with its own collection of cycles and often blend together to create fun-filled (/sarcasm) spirals. I'd like to take some time to explore each of these cycles and how they bond to create the mother of all spirals, leading to an oubliette from which it seems impossible to escape. I would also like to explore the tools that I have developed over the past....um...15(?) years to scale the wall back into a functioning being. These are tools that I have found on my own, and have been adjusted with commentary and concern from my friends when the tools became chains.
*The Guilt Cycle
This is the easiest cycle for me to enter, and often acts as the entrance into Spiral-land. Guilt is tremendously simple for me to feel, and I have only learned how to really recognize it after some time in therapy (see The Great Stockholm Syndrome Call Out of 2013). Guilt haunts me, and for a long time, I wore it like my favorite winter coat. For a long time, I believed that I needed it. It was what kept me humble. It kept me from letting the nice things that my friends were telling me from going to my head, it was a check for my elitism, it kept me honest, it kept me "motivated." Yes, I recognize how much bullshit this actually is, but this is also my brain on medication, therapy, and in an up-swing. I might just forget this part later tonight or tomorrow or next week.
There are two ways that I start this cycle. The first is feeling guilt for not being able to help the people that I care about. I'm a self-professed Bleeding Heart. Yes. The capitals are necessary. Whether it's that I can't actually do anything to help (due to financial or spatial limitations, not actually being a problem that I can resolve, etc) or because I feel that I haven't done enough, I beat the crap out of myself for it. It's particularly bad when I can't help because of my own illnesses. Being too anxious or depressed to actually provide the support that my friends may need or their issues triggering mine makes me feel vulnerable, useless, helpless, weak -- four words that are sure to start the guilt cycle.
The second is not being able to accomplish my goals. While not attaining goals is a frustrating and terrifying thing for even the most well-adjusted person, I make an art of setting goals that are...unreasonable. I have always had a habit of planning for 30 hours in a day, 8 days in a week, and expecting to make it work. Even with my recent resolution that I will only work as an adjunct, my schedule filled quickly with social events, other academic goals, therapy, and artistic collaborations. These are usually fantastic things which lead to having a fulfilled life. For me, I need to finish them all at once. I have a history of sacrificing sleep to make time for all of the things that I want to do, then hate myself for not accomplishing them or not doing them well enough (which usually is well enough, just not by my unobtainable standards).
One of the things that I started at some amorphous time was listing. Creating lists is a brilliant technique that helps with organization and helps to indicate accomplishments. I manage to make lists of lists that I need to make. I include in my lists regularly scheduled events that I just won't forget about -- things like games that happen every week that I always attend, when I will be teaching classes, standard shifts, that sort of thing. I also include projects that are on-going and not even remotely pressing. All of these things only reinforce the guilt cycle. Which leads into...
*The Depression Cycle
The depression cycle is an amorphous, slithery thing that is always edging at my mind, even with medication and therapy. Guilt leads to self-loathing, which leads to oversleeping. It starts with a sneaking sadness, slowly coloring all of my experiences. With each event that doesn't provide the enjoyment that it usually does, with each word that I can't write for the mental blocks, with each project delayed for lack of motivation, I start having difficulty getting to sleep. Then I can't get out of bed. I start becoming numb, filtering into a sort of fog that makes it difficult to appreciate the things around me. Which I feel guilty about. Which leads to self-loathing. Which leads to the sleeping. Which leads to missing my own deadlines. Which leads to more numb. I force myself out of bed, go about my day, and it feels a great deal as the narrator of Fight Club describes insomnia -- a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.
I become anxious because I can't enjoy the company of my friends, I'm sad that I no longer feel alive when teaching, I can't write, I can't handle playing my characters, I start to feel fragile and exhausted. I try to counter the exhaustion and numbness with energy drinks, which exacerbated my anxiety and makes it more difficult to sleep, which leads to oversleeping....you get the picture, I'm sure. I suppose that I could have chosen a worse addiction, but in excess and with smoking cigarettes, I was only reinforcing the depression/anxiety cycle. And then there's....
*The Rage Cycle
I have strongly held opinions. When I'm deep in my depression cycle, the numb only seems to be countered by anxiety. I often display my anxiety through aggression. It's not necessarily intentional, but when I'm wound tightly on my best day, rage is veeeery close to the surface. Anxiety, aggression, and being opinionated lead to lashing out. Usually it's not physical, but I know how to hurt people. I have gotten very good at pushing people away, running them off, cutting them to the core. And then I realize what I did or said. And the guilt. And the anxiety. And the loathing. And more depression.
The Rage Cycle has become less common, largely because of therapy. Therapy has helped me recognize when I'm starting to fall into the Rage Cycle, recognize where the rage comes from (largely fear). The Depression Cycle has become less pronounced, and easier to snap out of. I see the spiral, change my behaviors, tell my friends. Telling my friends is huge at every stage. My support structure is fantastic and put up with my whining (....and the guilt cycle, heh), reminding me who I am, why they care, the good that I do. Don't get me wrong, they point out my flaws. Like reminding me that I'm being too hard on myself. That I'm working myself too hard. That I'm fixating on things that are bad for me. And sometimes, just vocalizing the things rolling around in my head externalizes it and allows me to be a bit more rational about it.
Listing is still an important part of my healthy life. I've very recently rearranged my listing habit to organize my tasks into categories (academic, free time, collaboration, move, etc), and prioritizing both tasks and categories. This reorganization provides structure, undermines guilt, reinforces positive scheduling, and forces me to develop a realistic understanding of how much time each task actually takes. The new listing process has also made it very easy to highlight when I fall back into my old guilt/depression/listing spiral.
None of this is really new. All of this is fundamentally linked to the Abuse Cycle and Stockholm Syndrome. And depression binds it all into a pretty bow. After 16 years of dealing with depression, terrible family screwed-upness, Stockholm Syndrome, guilt, etc, etc, etc, I developed great skills. I wouldn't have been able to handle therapy without my beloved and my friends guiding me to recognizing that feelings were reasonable and natural. I wouldn't have come to terms with the things that happened to me and my family without my sister and mother being so willing to grow with me or my friends being so willing to hear my story sooo many times. I wouldn't continue being so compliant on my medications without falling so low that my beloved wasn't comfortable broaching any topic with me when I wasn't taking them.
So, I guess the moral of the story: talk to the people that you trust (when you're ready...Gods know that I have been there...), learn your patterns, be honest with yourself, growth is hard and painful and WORTH IT. Trust me. No matter how hard it is, no matter how impossible it seems, you can get out of it. And there are people who care, you just probably can't see them through the murkiness.
The second is not being able to accomplish my goals. While not attaining goals is a frustrating and terrifying thing for even the most well-adjusted person, I make an art of setting goals that are...unreasonable. I have always had a habit of planning for 30 hours in a day, 8 days in a week, and expecting to make it work. Even with my recent resolution that I will only work as an adjunct, my schedule filled quickly with social events, other academic goals, therapy, and artistic collaborations. These are usually fantastic things which lead to having a fulfilled life. For me, I need to finish them all at once. I have a history of sacrificing sleep to make time for all of the things that I want to do, then hate myself for not accomplishing them or not doing them well enough (which usually is well enough, just not by my unobtainable standards).
One of the things that I started at some amorphous time was listing. Creating lists is a brilliant technique that helps with organization and helps to indicate accomplishments. I manage to make lists of lists that I need to make. I include in my lists regularly scheduled events that I just won't forget about -- things like games that happen every week that I always attend, when I will be teaching classes, standard shifts, that sort of thing. I also include projects that are on-going and not even remotely pressing. All of these things only reinforce the guilt cycle. Which leads into...
*The Depression Cycle
The depression cycle is an amorphous, slithery thing that is always edging at my mind, even with medication and therapy. Guilt leads to self-loathing, which leads to oversleeping. It starts with a sneaking sadness, slowly coloring all of my experiences. With each event that doesn't provide the enjoyment that it usually does, with each word that I can't write for the mental blocks, with each project delayed for lack of motivation, I start having difficulty getting to sleep. Then I can't get out of bed. I start becoming numb, filtering into a sort of fog that makes it difficult to appreciate the things around me. Which I feel guilty about. Which leads to self-loathing. Which leads to the sleeping. Which leads to missing my own deadlines. Which leads to more numb. I force myself out of bed, go about my day, and it feels a great deal as the narrator of Fight Club describes insomnia -- a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.
I become anxious because I can't enjoy the company of my friends, I'm sad that I no longer feel alive when teaching, I can't write, I can't handle playing my characters, I start to feel fragile and exhausted. I try to counter the exhaustion and numbness with energy drinks, which exacerbated my anxiety and makes it more difficult to sleep, which leads to oversleeping....you get the picture, I'm sure. I suppose that I could have chosen a worse addiction, but in excess and with smoking cigarettes, I was only reinforcing the depression/anxiety cycle. And then there's....
*The Rage Cycle
I have strongly held opinions. When I'm deep in my depression cycle, the numb only seems to be countered by anxiety. I often display my anxiety through aggression. It's not necessarily intentional, but when I'm wound tightly on my best day, rage is veeeery close to the surface. Anxiety, aggression, and being opinionated lead to lashing out. Usually it's not physical, but I know how to hurt people. I have gotten very good at pushing people away, running them off, cutting them to the core. And then I realize what I did or said. And the guilt. And the anxiety. And the loathing. And more depression.
The Rage Cycle has become less common, largely because of therapy. Therapy has helped me recognize when I'm starting to fall into the Rage Cycle, recognize where the rage comes from (largely fear). The Depression Cycle has become less pronounced, and easier to snap out of. I see the spiral, change my behaviors, tell my friends. Telling my friends is huge at every stage. My support structure is fantastic and put up with my whining (....and the guilt cycle, heh), reminding me who I am, why they care, the good that I do. Don't get me wrong, they point out my flaws. Like reminding me that I'm being too hard on myself. That I'm working myself too hard. That I'm fixating on things that are bad for me. And sometimes, just vocalizing the things rolling around in my head externalizes it and allows me to be a bit more rational about it.
Listing is still an important part of my healthy life. I've very recently rearranged my listing habit to organize my tasks into categories (academic, free time, collaboration, move, etc), and prioritizing both tasks and categories. This reorganization provides structure, undermines guilt, reinforces positive scheduling, and forces me to develop a realistic understanding of how much time each task actually takes. The new listing process has also made it very easy to highlight when I fall back into my old guilt/depression/listing spiral.
None of this is really new. All of this is fundamentally linked to the Abuse Cycle and Stockholm Syndrome. And depression binds it all into a pretty bow. After 16 years of dealing with depression, terrible family screwed-upness, Stockholm Syndrome, guilt, etc, etc, etc, I developed great skills. I wouldn't have been able to handle therapy without my beloved and my friends guiding me to recognizing that feelings were reasonable and natural. I wouldn't have come to terms with the things that happened to me and my family without my sister and mother being so willing to grow with me or my friends being so willing to hear my story sooo many times. I wouldn't continue being so compliant on my medications without falling so low that my beloved wasn't comfortable broaching any topic with me when I wasn't taking them.
So, I guess the moral of the story: talk to the people that you trust (when you're ready...Gods know that I have been there...), learn your patterns, be honest with yourself, growth is hard and painful and WORTH IT. Trust me. No matter how hard it is, no matter how impossible it seems, you can get out of it. And there are people who care, you just probably can't see them through the murkiness.
"Guilt leads to self-loathing, which leads to oversleeping. It starts with a sneaking sadness, slowly coloring all of my experiences. With each event that doesn't provide the enjoyment that it usually does, with each word that I can't write for the mental blocks, with each project delayed for lack of motivation, I start having difficulty getting to sleep. Then I can't get out of bed. I start becoming numb, filtering into a sort of fog that makes it difficult to appreciate the things around me. Which I feel guilty about. Which leads to self-loathing. Which leads to the sleeping. Which leads to missing my own deadlines. Which leads to more numb."
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing, and I'm glad to hear about the progress you've made and lessons you've learned. I've quoted the above piece because that was one aspect that clearly resonated with me.