Brain Spew in Lieu of Wit

 I suppose it's fitting that I write my return post the day before Father's Day. My dad, of course, is a central figure in the creation of this blog.  For those of you just joining me on this journey, I started this project when I was in therapy. It was recommended that I start a journal, as many therapists advise. Despite my best efforts, I have never been able to maintain a personal journal. The closest I really have would be my poetry, but those are...incomplete for this purpose. So, I thought I would do better with an audience - I am a writer, after all.  This choice came with many consequences, though thankfully nothing so permanent as a lost relationship or impact on my "day" life. I do well enough of that without a public forum. I'm taking this project up with a better understanding of myself, a firmer grasp on how to discuss deeply personal experiences without being cruel to those included, and the wisdom that comes with three? five? years of hard-won grow...

I'm not entirely sure when I last did a general update, so I figured I would give you an idea of what's happening on my journey. As I've said in a few of my previous posts, I am back on Venlafaxine ER (the generic for Effexor XR). The dosage is significantly lower than I had been taking - I spent most of my adult life taking 150mg, but I'm currently on the 37.5mg dose. I have been entertaining the idea of going up to the 75mg to see if it helps my depressive episodes and nerve pain, but it's not at a critical point. As it stands, my depressive episodes are significantly shorter and less severe than they have been in my whole life. I'm able to recognize the spiraling thought patterns for what they are and have started using the tools that have been gifted to me over the years to treat myself gently. My pain levels have diminished greatly. In all honestly, my day-to-day is still between 3-5 on a 10 point pain scale, but that's a vast improvement of 5-8. My...

There are so many difficulties with mental and chronic illness, and not the least of these is how we manage them. We are inundated with advice and solutions, but a lot of it misses some of the core challenges with treatment in the first place. I want to explore some of why it's so hard to seek treatment and to keep up with it. This is not to keep people from trying medication. I want to give a voice to all of the things people who do  seek (and continue) treatment overcome. I largely focus on medications, as they're a very tangible element of treatment, but many of these also apply to therapy, exercise, and procedures (such as surgeries, hormone treatments, ect , or tms ). Do I even need help? One of the hardest parts of seeking treatment is recognizing that there might be a problem to begin with. Seeing there's a problem isn't just recognizing how symptoms are affecting you, as the ill person, or the people around you. It can be really hard to realize your ex...