a sprinkling of brain things

I came out a little over a year ago in this post with my diagnoses on my disability papers. I didn't link them to anything, but I'm doing that now. Each one will click to an explanation or article.

• 2007- Axis I clinical disorders of adjustment disorder with anxiety, axis II deferred but with narcissistic feature, axis V GAF of 60.
• 2008- depressed mood with congruent affect, Asperger's, GAF of 50.

My psychiatrist would like a harder diagnosis since I've progressed into dissociation issues with my psychologist, which I've basically lived with my entire life but never talked about. He asked for it last winter, and my psychologist said not yet because I was up and down dealing with pain med adjustment problems, and he said that could affect the testing and the diagnosis would be permanent. My psychiatrist reminded me again lately that he'd like that done, and now that I'm more evened out with the pain med situation and another successful set of physical therapy visits, I guess I'll see what my psychologist says.

There are a number of brain things sprinkled throughout my family. On my mom's side are Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, depression, Munchausen by proxy, OCD, and personality disorder. On my dad's side is a strong inclination to autism spectrum.

I am of the opinion that anyone on the planet could be diagnosed with some level of mental illness under the right (or wrong) circumstances. I knew I was having problems as far back as high school, and I walked into MMPI testing of my own volition in college and apparently passed just fine. Years later I asked my primary care doctor to refer me to a psychologist after I learned about Asperger's. Anything mentioned in between to family or friends was mentioned back as me being a hypochondriac just wanting attention, to which I replied I actually dislike attention anyway, so to purposely seek out negative attention seems a bit stretchy, especially since I'd been corporeally punished and lectured at length throughout my childhood and never got enough positive benefit from that to want to seek out more. Well, I didn't say it like that, but you know what I mean.

I have never been hauled in for evaluation. I have never caused disturbances that required interventions. I have never self harmed (typically, visibly) or harmed others (in ways that would get me caught). I was rigidly raised to obey, behave, and don't be embarrassing. I took longer than most kids to catch on, but because of that, I learned to self monitor and avoid unwitting consequences.

I have developed the opinion that beating, humiliating, and scaring children into submission is a very big mistake, but I can see how mentally ill people living in dysfunctional families manage to survive in society that way. Being raised to have too much pride to wind up in jail was a powerful motivator for me, although that was never said in so many words. I actually turned down a lucrative offer based on the fact that I'd eventually wind up in jail, because I personally detest being confined and told what to do. I didn't choose correctly on moral principle or because I might lose custody of my child over it, no, I chose correctly because I had a deterrent I didn't want to tolerate. I was smart enough to at least avoid that by walking away from the offer (which was actually a dangerous thing to do, and I knew it, but I had such a flippant attitude back then that I didn't care).

I'm old and wise now, like Gandalf. I see people all around me who are like me but toe the lines so their lives don't get stupid. They stick to rules and reasons for why they have those rules. I personally think most of the rules are rubbish because the reasons are even more rubbish, but whatever works, right? The goal is to function successfully enough to survive, not win a logic debate. It's easy to see how not toeing the line can go all bad real fast, and that implies stupidity, and many of us would rather not be caught being that stupid.

I've noticed that very few people have actual moral principles, and even when they do they betray them without an eye blink if it serves their momentary purposes. Human mental health is relatively new on the long term scale of human development, and survival traits often include the more cunning virtues, like being able to lie and cheat well, learning when to fake or steal without being caught, jumping into opportunities without sharing them, and more. Part of human intelligence is cunning, and cunning isn't necessarily emotionally healthy.

I think neurodiversity is in it's infancy, and I really hope it doesn't go through a sweeping genocide because of 'mental illness'. It's possible that some level of mental illness might actually be a positive survival trait for some people. For instance, my narcissistic attitude as a child about other people being stupid kept me from self destructing into self deprecation and the nasty consequences of self harm, corroding addictions, and suicide, as per discussion with my psychologist. It's true that some people benefit from help with tweaking brain chemicals, but it's also true that some of our greatest art, literature, and science leaps were borne in mentally ill brains.

I am not ashamed of a single one of my diagnoses. I didn't even know I was this much of a mess until I sought out help for a very real personal problem that bothered me very badly. I wanted a friend. A real friend, a friend who would accept me and respect me and care that I walk this earth and not just toy with me or use me. Real life isn't like television for most of us. Most of us feel lonely a lot more than TV says we should. Most of us don't have laugh tracks following us around like we're so cute even when we're dumb. Most of us live like facepalm cliffhangers that never get resolved because the show got cancelled.

Most of us remain undiagnosed.

Side story to make a point. @bonenado has shingles. He is dealing with a level of pain I've been living with for years. He has suddenly taken an interest in a little research, so I sent him a link with a list of shingles symptoms. I have been living with every one of those symptoms for years, minus the rash. I am not afraid of shingles. That doesn't mean I ever want them or that I would blow them off if I got them, but it means I'm a seasoned veteran with experiencing nerve pain and therefore don't feel that tingle of fear around the word shingles.

The idea of being mentally ill doesn't frighten or upset me. I have apparently been living with all of this for a very long time without knowing there were names for it. My life has gotten better and even easier since I found out about them. I was struggling so hard for years with why is it so hard for me to be nice. I really did try, and everywhere I went, one hour into whatever and I was in defcon migraine level hate and badly needing escape. Why? Once I found out it's because my senses are so easily overwhelmed and that my natural coping mechanisms are faulty, I stopped being so hard on myself. All I have to do is simply remove myself from a situation before it gets overwhelmingly ugly for me, and people all around think that I'm nice.

Learning to live with mental illnesses is like learning to live with chronic illnesses. You develop rhythms and lifestyles that help you stay balanced and learn to navigate the disruptions that upset that balance. I happen to need a lot of quiet time in order to cope well, and when that becomes impossible, I have fallback modes I can go into to focus my way through until I can reach a place of quiet. A lot of it is about preplanning for sensory overload, which triggers all kinds of personality issues when I don't stay smart about how I want my day to go.

It's not a piece of cake. I live with both mental and chronic illnesses. Sometimes it's really hard to get through life sucks, but sometimes everything goes all wrong and I'm fine with it. The most important thing about each moment is keep moving. Keep breathing, keep minecrafting, keep doing my laundry, keep checking on people I love, keep keeping. Enjoy the little things, treasure the moments, love all the nouns (people, places, and things).

I don't know if this will help anyone, but I believe honesty and transparency are becoming even more rare and precious in this super socially saturated world, and the more we just say our stuff, the more we'll not feel alone.

💟

embracing the thug life

Got a call yesterday that my psychologist is back and would I like to set up an appointment with him now that he's taking patients again?

He's back. I didn't even know he was gone. Well, I was aware he took a leave of some kind for something I can only guess might've been serious in his family maybe, but I was already 'turned loose' and didn't worry about it. We've all got stuff, right? Last thing a psychologist needs is another stalker.

Tell me he doesn't look like Tom Vize.
Keep my prosopagnosia in mind, but it kinda
tickles me because I am a big
Kathy Griffin fan from way back. 

So I'm all what the heck, YEAH, let's do this, so we wrangled over appt times, which is crazy funny now that I'm all booked up with physical therapy and nerve conduction test and on top of chiro and dang, the jetsetter life is back on again. I mean, I saw the guy way more than I saw my own dad and siblings over what, 6 years? He watched me go through my mom dying, and aside from Scott, I actually don't have a better friend, if it's even possible to call the guy that, so yeah, I wanna go see his face and shake his hand and maybe not actually give him a hug but maybe GIVE HIM A HUG. I still don't know if that kind of stuff is inappropriate, but I know it's gotta be way less creepy than giving him an eyeball hug via furtive glances. #aspienado Anyway, I could've gotten in his first day back, but it would've been late in the day against rush hour traffic and me with my brain skulking down around my ankles because I'm a morning person, so it'll be a couple of weeks.

I need some evil villain swag, including a sweet brain case to hold it all together.
Pic clicks to hilarious movie review.

I originally went in, seriously, for realz, for communication help because I was bombing so badly with a friend after flailing through a public fandom. The aspienado thing is one of the consequences of deeper investigation into how and why I continually blow up bridges. How ironic is it going to be that going back in I'll be saying, Oh, yeah, got a weird little country by Malaysia all freaked out over a love slave post...

Actually up to 609 now since yesterday.

When I first showed him Lexx he called me the fandom pimp. The guy seemed to have no clue what photoshopping, manips, and fanfics are, which really aren't my area of expertise, but he pegged me in one session about my obsession with a TV show. He didn't say this all at once that day, more like spread out over time, that I'm clearly a narcissistic exhibitionist with baditude, but I maintain that keeps me from curling up in the dark with my self destructive full blown anxiety and depression. Oh, and I've come out this last year about my alcoholism and my orientation, definitely about the depression, plus pix of my health struggles, so while he and I were on vaca from each other, I feel I've made some pretty big steps forward owning my stuff. Considering I started out on the webs as an alien and made a game out of seeing how many tens of thousands of people I could block on facebook (you can't block Mark, I tried every which way), I'm calling this progress. For someone coming from a solid conservative Christian background, I'm pretty badass. (You see what I did there, right? Just came out on religion and politics, BUT you guys already knew about the Mennonite background, so that's no big reveal, really.) I'm still a cynic. That'll probably never change.

Who doesn't love Burt Gummer

The actual challenge, for me, is saying all this stuff out loud. Making real words with my mouth and syncing them into real time thoughts in a back and forth convo flow with another real person. One of the biggest things I learned about myself in his office was that I'm easily led. I treat all convos the same way I do my surveys at Surveypalooza. I free associate right off the page so fast that whatever reasons I'm really there talking for evaporate like soda pop on an Arizona sidewalk.

Definitely click this

Another big thing I learned is that it didn't matter how #dismalfail a session felt, I got tons of thinking done at home in between sessions, and always made progress because of it. Yes, it was grindingly slow sometimes. Yes, I wanted to give up over and over and over. Yes, I facepalmed my way through most of it. BUT. You see me on the webs now. You see me thriving. You see me handling my stuff and rolling with every awkward punch life throws at me. It was hard, but so was being raised by my mom, so the least I can do is go back in and tell this guy THANK YOU. Thank you for tolerating my cynical jackassy self for so long, because so many people haven't.

Me and psyche guy irl.

I heard you

Two more days until my one year anniversary here.

click for HampsterDance

What I have learned so far-

Statcounter shows my own phone viewing from St. Louis, Kansas, and Illinois.

Blogger views don't count me when I'm on Chrome because I've got my cookie blocked, and there are around 1700 Android views that I can triangulate with other trackers to not me, so my blogger views are you guys.

Twitter is my top referrer, thanks to hashtag days, G+ is second, google search engine in U.S. fourth, google search engine in EU fifth, facebook 6-9, and buffer tenth. I had never heard of buffer, but looking it up I see it is 'the Siri of social media'. If that means scheduled posts with tweet links, yeah, that. I rarely schedule, so I'm surprised to see it made a top ten list.

Besides my G+ page, my top referring url is Pinky blog, apparently many of you keep browsing while you are here. I wish I had a little slot to serve you coffee or something. My top internally referring post is the #bencongruity of lambs, lollipops, and goth spaceships (pre-coffee), 2nd is ... (yes, that is the title), 3rd is 5 ways people push my asexuality button.

GWT (Google Web Tools) says both my top impressions and top clicks (I assume from outside sources) is 'khanlock'. I linked that to all my Khan posts in case you're interested.

Google analytics (installed two weeks ago) shows my bounce rate is 28% out of 231 sessions (that's actually really good). Between all my stat trackers and analytics, 38 countries have visited Pinky blog. This is consistent with my history in the Lexx fandom, and I know several Merlin, Sherlock, Farscape, and Stargate fans pop in and out, making my decision to step out and be a real person aggregating all my internet stuffs a good one.


Remember, stats are my #aspienado train obsession, finding web sharing algorithm flaws is my favorite game, and mocking analytics is my favorite sport. I aced 3 stat classes in 3 different college fields, and numbers mean nothing when they're skewed, inflated, and then assessed incorrectly. Analytics help companies sell click space. Us little guys jumping in is just us splashing around the shallow end of a giant corporate pool. If you're using a tracker, my advice is use at least 3 trackers, because they will all show you completely different things, and you can triangulate your data for more realistic info. The goal is to watch trending over time to see how your content is doing. You can whine about comments, but the goal as a blogger is to attract and retain readers. I learned long ago that for every one comment I get, there are thousands of views, and the fact that they're sticking around and even coming back is gold. Never use a lack or slew of comments to judge how your blog is doing. Your lurkers are your bread and butter, as it were.


That being said, I never expected this.

Or this.

Because I was content with this.

I am- mRpl, GrandFortuna, YabloVH, Bluejacky, JanikaBanks, PinkyGuerrero, GuidoSpock, aspienado, ExistentialAspie I'm everywhere, in the mists all around you.


You guys know why I'm here. Please excuse my gooey feels. I just never expected this much support on a personal blog. Some of you know how difficult a challenge it is to be honest (i.e. brazenly stupid) with personal stuff, and more because I've been taught all my life to hide everything that is wrong with me, and it seemed like there was nothing that wasn't. #aspienado But that's ok. We are all who we are.

just be your beautiful selves, ok?

I clearly misjudged my blogworthiness. Years ago I assumed Spaz would be the washout, because to me that stuff is boring and brings out my more boring side, everyone blogs about their problems, yada yada. Well, it's not only keeping pace just fine with my other stuff, but leaving everything else in the dust. You could not have told me in 2012 this would happen.

What have we learned from this? Honesty is key. Just say it. No beating around bushes, no holding back for later, just say it. Why am I saying this? Because the notion that haunts every writer is 'save some for the book'. 'Don't blog it all out.'

I could go dig it up (aspie) but I'm lazy right now (actually headache all day yesterday and fibro flare all night, thank you cold front and wild storms), one year maybe around 08 or 09 when I started really coming out about my stuff on bluejacky (before I pulled it all back into private for a couple of years) (I know, I'll stop doing this), before I dreamed I'd ever get healthy again and my brain was still super glitchy, I wrote about how all of us getting honest on our blogs would help us all solve our problems. I taunted writers who were selfish enough to hold back on really helpful stories and advice just so they could make money on it later, to a much more limited audience, when the people who needed that help the most couldn't afford to purchase to read. I still feel that way about ebooks- people who read that way must necessarily have the tech to read, which I feel limits the world audience even further, although I can see how it also enhances sales when used in combo with hard copy.

When I first set out my publishing goals, my top priority was not about making money. I based it on this- one very long night in an ER waiting room I found a book cart. I read four books out of that cart that night, books I'd never have known existed otherwise. I was very grateful for those books to help keep my mind occupied and help me pass the time. Also, when my mother lived in a nursing home for 5 years, they had a small library of donated books along one wall in the dining area for residents and visitors to borrow from. THAT is where I want my first book to wind up, sitting around in book carts and on library shelves in places that are dismal and sad and people can't help picking them up. I asked my publisher what it would take for me to get hard copy placed around the world, not just in warehousing for internet purchase, not just in ebooks, and I went ahead and contracted and paid in full to get that done. I'm still working on that first book. I'm actually working on a whole stack of books, but that first one is priority.

My writing schedule has been shot to hell several times since I set out to do this. I'm learning so much about my own temperament going through this, and my growth as a person would never have been this cool if I hadn't attempted all this juggling. I have come to realize that even if something really bad stops me altogether and that book never gets finished, I'm good with all this. I have truly enjoyed this challenge, and I hope it goes on and I do some really fun things with the rest of my life.

So I bing awake around one this morning, a phrase sticks in my mind, I'm too asleep to get up and write it down like I usually do, and even as I'm falling back asleep I'm commanding myself to REMEMBER. It's been so many years since my short term memory got blitzed. But I woke up again and remembered it, and commanded myself again to REMEMBER before I fell back asleep. I did that several times, and the first thing I thought this morning was that phrase, and all through getting up and booting up the laptop and getting my coffee, I kept repeating that phrase and telling myself REMEMBER, because I lose so many thoughts nearly as fast as I think them. I could feel this one slipping as I became more and more awake, but finally got it written down in my work area. Writing with a pen on paper would have lost it by this point, it had to be typed as quickly as possible so the entire phrase would make it out of my head- my glitchy brain is a funny thang, once the words start coming out, you either catch them as they flow, or they're just gone. Well, I caught it. And that is the very first time since 2004 that I have remembered an entire phrase and managed to keep it intact that long in my head and still get it written down. 10-14-14, ten years later.

Today is starting out kinda hard, gotta get on my stretches and make sure I work out later, need to organize the rest of my week before I take off again thinking I've got an appointment on the wrong day, gotta keep the file transfer going. Part of my publishing goal is having free reading material to support it, and dang I refuse to lose all that work. I'm thinking about ways I can make reading more '3D' with ebooks- you know, like you can click on blogs and get easter eggs. So much I want to do. But today I have to get back on the laundry before we run out of underwear.

This got way too long. Sorry about that. I'm going to walk away and forget it. You should, too.