Meditations upon the screwed-up brain
Feb. 6th, 2012 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbThe problem with screwed-up brain chemistry is the temptation to use it as an excuse.
Or rather, the constant uncertainty over what's a reasonable accommodation to make, and what's letting my screwed-up brain chemistry serve as justification for the worse angels of my nature. It doesn't help that it varies by the day. For the last few days, for example, I've had social anxiety and social fatigue so deep as to be almost crippling. This isn't fun when I have a presentation to give today, and an evening lecture to attend tomorrow: the tightness in my throat and nauseous gut and across my shoulderblades is the precursor of full-blown jittering shakes.
I haven't had the shakes for a while. Not since I was travelling in Greece. There I could breathe through them, in the knowledge that however I fucked up, I had to deal with it. And because I had to, because my options were deal or be stranded by the roadside, I could. Here, the quality of necessity is different: I could scurry back to my comfort zone. It would be the wrong choice, but the option's there. That makes carrying through all the harder.
There've been other presentations where I didn't feel like this. Other days where I rose from my sickbed to travel to another city, even, and felt reasonably confident, even slightly enthusiastic. Where it didn't feel like one more damn thing breaking me open and letting all the soft parts out. Breathe through it. Tomorrow, if the sickening sensation is still here, I can ditch the evening lecture and go get therapeutically beaten up instead.
There's only so much I can handle. I hear it's called being human. The worst part, the most self-destroying thing, is never being able to count on the amount of cope available for any given task. There are walls inside my head, some days, and some days they choke me.
I'm not saying this because I want pity, or advice, or anything else. I'm saying this because I need to remember: like my bad ankle, with its weak tendons and ligaments that sometimes takes rough ground in its stride and others gives me bright flashes of pain on the flat, my screwed-up brain chemistry is an unpredictable weakness to work around. To strengthen by exercise, yes, but also to remember the blurred line between pushing the limits of tolerance and expecting no consequences when I cross the line.
This is my life. There's no percentage in resenting it for what it is.
Or rather, the constant uncertainty over what's a reasonable accommodation to make, and what's letting my screwed-up brain chemistry serve as justification for the worse angels of my nature. It doesn't help that it varies by the day. For the last few days, for example, I've had social anxiety and social fatigue so deep as to be almost crippling. This isn't fun when I have a presentation to give today, and an evening lecture to attend tomorrow: the tightness in my throat and nauseous gut and across my shoulderblades is the precursor of full-blown jittering shakes.
I haven't had the shakes for a while. Not since I was travelling in Greece. There I could breathe through them, in the knowledge that however I fucked up, I had to deal with it. And because I had to, because my options were deal or be stranded by the roadside, I could. Here, the quality of necessity is different: I could scurry back to my comfort zone. It would be the wrong choice, but the option's there. That makes carrying through all the harder.
There've been other presentations where I didn't feel like this. Other days where I rose from my sickbed to travel to another city, even, and felt reasonably confident, even slightly enthusiastic. Where it didn't feel like one more damn thing breaking me open and letting all the soft parts out. Breathe through it. Tomorrow, if the sickening sensation is still here, I can ditch the evening lecture and go get therapeutically beaten up instead.
There's only so much I can handle. I hear it's called being human. The worst part, the most self-destroying thing, is never being able to count on the amount of cope available for any given task. There are walls inside my head, some days, and some days they choke me.
I'm not saying this because I want pity, or advice, or anything else. I'm saying this because I need to remember: like my bad ankle, with its weak tendons and ligaments that sometimes takes rough ground in its stride and others gives me bright flashes of pain on the flat, my screwed-up brain chemistry is an unpredictable weakness to work around. To strengthen by exercise, yes, but also to remember the blurred line between pushing the limits of tolerance and expecting no consequences when I cross the line.
This is my life. There's no percentage in resenting it for what it is.
