mental health

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

I’m feeling pretty under the weather today. The cold I caught shortly before Christmas has ebbed and returned at least three times now, and I’m very ready for it to just be done. I made the choice to work from home today to try to recover a bit more completely.

Despite feeling physically off, it’s been a decent week. Here are some things that I’m happy about right now:

  • On Saturday, my partner and I went with a friend to the penultimate day of the Science of Pixar exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. IT WAS SO COOL. It blows my mind that there are people in the world who can take math and science and turn it into art like that. After going to see the Pixar exhibit, we parted ways with our friend, and my partner and I went to 57th Street Books, which was absolutely delightful. It has a very rabbit warren feel to it – winding rooms of books all connected as you go deeper into the store. I got Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor (which I proceeded to devour in one sitting on Tuesday evening – it’s a short book, and very good), and we also got a puzzle and some Chicago-themed holiday cards.
  • On Monday after work I had a consultation call with a potential new therapist, and we set up our first session for a couple of weeks out. Based on our phone conversation, I’m hopeful that this will work out – it’s a bit of a trek to get to her office, but I think it will be worth it.
  • Tuesday night was the first songwriting class of the year. I’ve taken a couple of sessions off from songwriting classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music, and I was weirdly nervous going in. But of course, it’s a delightful group of people, and I’m looking forward to digging back into writing, which has fallen a bit by the wayside the past few months.

Now, fingers crossed that I can kick this cold!

Coming Out

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers! This blog post is going up late today, because I did not write it yesterday and also because I stayed home from work today to catch up on sleep and fight off the headache I woke up with.

I’m also not really sure what to write about this week. They still haven’t caught the perpetrator of the two shootings in our neighborhood that I talked about last week, so we’re still a bit on edge, trying to figure out how to navigate our neighborhood in a way that feels safe right now. Also, on a national level here in the US, things are pretty overwhelming right now. (If you’re a US citizen and haven’t checked your voter registration or haven’t registered to vote, do so now. We need everyone to show up and vote in November. Voter suppression is a serious reality in a lot of places right now, and voter rolls have been purged in some states as a part of that, so check your registration even if you know you were registered before.)

We did have the lovely experience on Monday of seeing our friend Heather Mae play a show in our neighborhood. We got to spend a while before and after the show catching up with her and hanging out, and that was great. Go check out her music if you’re not familiar with her stuff – she’s fabulous!

Yesterday was World Mental Health Day, and today is National Coming Out Day. So I think to close this blog I’m going to combine the sentiments of those two days and tell you a little bit about myself that you may or may not know:

I am queer. Queer is a label I’ve chosen because it represents so much of who I am. It describes my orientation – I’m attracted to all sorts of people of all sorts of genders. It describes my gender – I was assigned female at birth, but realized in my mid-twenties that that didn’t fit; I’m now living and presenting in such a way that I’m read as male by the world at large, but in my heart of hearts I really don’t identify with binary gender at all. Queer also describes my brain – I have Bipolar II Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, both of which I was finally diagnosed with 9 years ago, and which I’ve been medicated for ever since. A few months ago, I had to seek out a psychiatrist to get my meds adjusted – I was manic and anxious as hell for a solid month. It was miserable, and I still don’t know how I managed to get anything done during that time. Since getting my meds adjusted, I’m feeling much more capable of handling all of the anxiety that comes from life right now.

I choose to be out and proud about all of these intersections of my identity, but I can make that choice because I live with a great deal of privilege. I have safe, nurturing spaces where I can be myself. Not everyone is so lucky. If you’re struggling with whether or not to come out today, remember that your safety comes first, and that your identity is valid regardless of how public you are with it. I see you; you’re real. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. May we all work toward a world in which “coming out,” whether it’s in regard to sexuality or gender or mental health or anything else, doesn’t carry so much weight and fear with it.

Down

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

I’ll be honest with you, dear readers: I’m not feeling great. I’m currently being paid a visit by the Depression Monster. While nothing in my life is logically all that awful, there have been enough hard things lately (not to mention the dumpster fire of global issues in the news) to trigger a downswing in my Bipolar cycle.

The good news is that my recent med adjustment seems to be helping: I’m not particularly anxious. The bad news is…well, I’m depressed, and there’s no anxiety to distract from that. I have to grapple with it head-on, and I’m out of practice with that.

I know that my brain will even itself back out in the end. This current space is just a hard one to occupy, especially when the whole world feels like it’s burning.

Which, I guess, is all to say: hang in there, friends. I know I’m not the only one struggling. Hold your loved ones close and prop each other up. None of us can do this alone, but together, we’ve got a fighting chance.

Progress

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Yesterday, I finally had my psychiatric appointment to discuss adjusting my meds in an effort to better manage my anxiety. And I’m pleased to say it went well! The psychiatric nurse practitioner and I talked about my past diagnoses and mental health history. Based on that, he gave me a couple of options that we could pursue, and respected my choice between those options.

Thankfully, the first step is simple: I’m just increasing the dose of one of my meds. If I feel in six weeks or so that that’s helping, then that’s where we leave it. If I’m still feeling like I need more help, we’ll look at adding an anti-anxiety medication to the mix. I’m hopeful that this first adjustment will be sufficient, and while I feel a little silly for taking so long to pursue this, I’m mostly just glad to have a plan. I’ve also finally come down from my most recent bout of hypo-mania, so I feel like I’m in a more stable spot to work out of, which is nice.

Here’s to (hopefully) better anxiety management!

Anxious All the Time

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

My brain, at its best moments, could be described as “quirky.” Generally speaking, I know how to work with my mental quirks. I have systems in place to keep them from turning into anything more serious.

Possibly my least favorite of these quirks is the ever-present hum of anxiety in my head. I’ve frequently described mania as feeling like I have a head full of bees. They’re generally very busy, and sometimes something happens to make them particularly agitated, and they sting. That descriptor applies double for anxiety, really. Except instead of generally peaceful regular honey bees, anxiety bees are like killer bees, which will follow whatever upset them for an absurd distance compared with most other bees.

Metaphors aside, I’ve been really struggling to keep my anxiety under control lately. My usual coping mechanisms are falling short. Nothing seems to make much of a difference anymore.

This isn’t a new problem, exactly: I’ve noticed the frequency and severity of my anxiety increasing over the past couple of years. But I think we’ve finally hit critical mass for what I can reasonably manage on my own.

At the advice of my therapist, I got a referral to a psychiatrist from my doctor. I’ve been on the same doses of the same medications for about nine years; maybe it’s time for a change.

I was supposed to have an appointment today, but unfortunately, the doctor had to reschedule. Thankfully, I only have to wait a couple more weeks. I am nervous – messing around with meds can be a traumatizing process. But I’m hopeful that it’ll be worth it in the end.

Sleep Deprived

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s been a long week.

I am manic, and have been for a couple of weeks now. The first week or so was fun – I got excited about a lot of things and felt connected in ways I hadn’t in a while. The second week was not so fun. I was super anxious, and struggled to keep panic attacks at bay.

This week has also been less fun. The worst of the anxiety has waned, although it’s still buzzing beneath the surface. The bigger problem this week has been around sleep.

There have been a lot of late nights this week, for a variety of reasons. They’ve left me completely exhausted. However, when I’m finally able to lay down to sleep, my brain decides to kick it into high gear. It just. Won’t. Stop.

Rarely is it buzzing about anything of consequence. It just starts shouting about whatever random shit pops up as I’m attempting to drift off. I try to focus on breathing, but so far that hasn’t been especially successful. Even when I do sleep, I have really weird, vivid dreams that don’t leave me feeling rested; as soon as I wake up, my brain is back to running in circles.

As a result, it’s now Thursday and I feel like I’m just barely holding it together. I know this is a temporary state, and I’m talking with my therapist and doctor to see if there’s anything further I can be doing. But right now in the thick of it, I am not having a great time.

At least the weekend is almost here!

These Boots Were Made For Walking…

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It appears that spring has, at long last and after much struggle, arrived in Chicago. Trees and bushes are budding, daffodils are blooming, the sun is making more frequent appearances, and there’s even a new baby bunny in our courtyard.

Baby bun!

The somewhat warmer weather and increased presence of the sun have me wanting to be outside more. I started by going for walks around lunchtime at work. And then I decided to challenge myself a bit.

My office is a little over two miles from home, and because the nearest bus is half a mile away from either place, it takes me a good 45 minutes to get home by bus. I know from past experience that I can walk it in about an hour.

The pedometer on my watch lets me know that I rarely make the standard goal of 10,000 steps in a day. Although I am on my feet for much of the day with my standing desk, I don’t have reason to move around all that much.

So, in an effort to move more, I decided on Friday that I would walk home. And then I did the same thing on Monday, and again on Wednesday (Tuesday I stayed home from work and barely moved at all, but that’s another story). I’ve surpassed 10,000 steps by a fair margin five days this past week. And I feel pretty good about that. (Good is relative. I’ve been pretty sore, but generally am still functioning okay.)

So we’ll see how long this lasts. I know once it’s 90 degrees and humid I won’t want to be walking home anymore, but as long as the cooler, nicer weather holds, it’s a fun experiment seeing how many days in a week I can push myself to do that little bit (or, let’s be real, significant bit) of extra moving.

Sometimes Self-Care Looks Like…

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We’re less than one week from Christmas. On Saturday, my partner and I will get up at an ungodly hour of the morning and drive to Minnesota, where we’ll spend a week with family. (Incidentally, there may or may not be a blog next week, on account of the holidays.)

As 2017 draws to a close, and I find my life in a relatively stable place overall, I am allowing myself some time to more closely examine the areas of my life that have long been neglected in favor of what felt like more pressing crises.

One of those areas is anxiety management. I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, so I’m no stranger to anxiety, but with the current state of the world, I’m finding the coping mechanisms I have aren’t sufficient. I’m also noticing where my anxiety is affecting other areas of my life – how it makes me shut down around conflict, how it destroys my productivity at work, how it keeps me from enjoying social situations that didn’t used to be a problem. I had my first visit with a new therapist on Monday. Sometimes in therapy in the past I’ve had trouble articulating why I was there, and what I needed, but this new therapist was able to sort of draw that out of me and help me frame my goals for therapy more solidly than I’ve been able to in the past. I think things are going to work out well with them.

Another area that I’ve been neglecting is more physical. There are a lot of aspects of my physical health that I am not great at paying attention to, but I’ve been having particular trouble with my knees lately, as a joint issue I was diagnosed with in high school has flared up again. It’s done this occasionally over the years, but now my right knee has been swollen and stiff for a month, and my left knee is getting sore from compensating for it. Thankfully, this time when it flared up, I made an appointment with my doctor right away, who referred me to a physical therapist. I had my first PT appointment yesterday, and it was kind of miraculous how much of a difference a single, half-hour appointment made. I have instructions to do some stretching exercises every few hours during the day for the next couple of weeks, until my next appointment, and it’s encouraging to see progress on the first day.

Sometimes self-care looks like finding a new therapist, even if the process of finding a new therapist is, itself, kind of anxiety-inducing.

Sometimes self-care looks like making that doctor’s appointment that probably should have been scheduled months ago.

Sometimes self-care looks like knitting selfishly after working on a rare unselfish project for a couple of months. I knit my nephew a sweater for Christmas, and while it was fun and it looks super cute and I think he’ll like it, there’s something immensely satisfying about working on a sweater for myself with tons of cables (which is far and away my favorite type of project to work on).

The holidays are rough for a lot of people, for all sorts of reasons. My own holiday is looking like it’ll be bittersweet – I get to spend time with all sorts of people I care about, which will be lovely, but my 15-year-old dog (okay, she’s my parents’ dog, but we got her the summer I turned 14, so she’s still my dog) is not doing well, and it’s almost certain that next week I’ll be saying goodbye for the last time. I’m already sad, thinking about it, as much as I’m grateful that I will get one last chance to see her. Sometimes, for me, self-care looks like blocking out some time in my schedule to process the feelings I don’t have space for, say, at work. Which is all to say that this is a time of year where self-care is particularly important, and that self-care is going to look different for everyone.

I wish all of you the happiest holidays you can manage, and I hope you all find ways to take care of yourselves through the rough patches.

Brief Bright Spots

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It feels like it’s been a long week. In reality, I stayed home from work on Monday after waking up feeling feverish, and I’ve been spending a lot of time sleeping as I try to fight off this annoying cold that isn’t awful but just won’t leave. I’m still dealing with anxiety. But there have been some distinct bright spots in the week, so I’m going to focus on those today.

  1. We started putting up holiday decorations in our apartment. We have lights around the windows, and the (fake) tree is up. We still need to get the lights on the tree plugged in (we had to acquire another extension cord first – there’s a paucity of outlets in our apartment), and put the ornaments on, but that should happen in the next few days. I have complicated feelings about Christmas (it no longer holds particular religious significance for me, and the capitalist overtones of the secular side of the holiday are overwhelming and upsetting), but I do like the decorations, especially the lights. So that’s been fun.
  2. I found out my knee is not untreatably messed up. My right knee has been swollen and achy for a few weeks. Finally made it to the doctor last week, and while it looks like I need physical therapy (currently waiting on a referral), it doesn’t appear to be anything irreparable. So that was encouraging.
  3. I scheduled an intake appointment with a new therapist. My last therapist, who I adored, moved to Portland in September. I felt like I was doing mostly okay, but I’m recognizing that I’m still dealing with a lot of anxiety. I’m also finding, as my life in general becomes more stable, that there are areas of my psyche I have avoided dealing with in the past that are now coming to the surface, so it feels like a good time to find someone to process all of that with. I don’t know whether things will work out schedule-wise with this particular person, but I’m optimistic.
  4. I wrote a letter. I have this pen pal in Germany who I’ve been corresponding with off and on since 2013. He is a great pen pal and regularly sends me postcards, interspersed with occasional longer letters and some photographs he’s taken. I have been a horrible pen pal, and have maybe written to him once all this year. But this week, after receiving yet another postcard from him, I finally sat down and wrote him a proper letter. It reminded me that I really enjoy letter writing, when I actually sit down to do it. I am hoping to do more of this in 2018.
  5. Doug Jones beat Roy Moore for the Alabama seat in the Senate. I had not fully processed how much tension I was carrying about this until I got a text from my dad on Tuesday night announcing that Jones had won. It’s restored a little bit of my faith in our collective humanity, and has me feeling tentatively hopeful about next year’s midterm elections. I’m still disgusted that it was a close race and that the majority of white people (including the majority of white women) voted for a pedophile. In fact, 80% of voters who self-identified as white evangelical/born-again Christians voted for Moore. (Stats found at Washington Post and NBC.) White Christians, do better. Call this out. This is not just a southern problem – the whole country was complicit in electing 45. This is a white people problem, and especially a white evangelical problem. I found this opinion piece in the Washington Post really on point – worth a read.

All that to say that while things still feel pretty shaky on a global level, personally, I’m doing okay. Or if I’m not exactly okay, I’m finding ways to get there. And really, that’s about all I can ask for right now.

Anxious Days

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

I’m having an anxious week, and I don’t really know why.

It might be the regular stress of the upcoming holidays.

It might be the minor (but still stressful) drama and health issues happening with my team at work.

It might also just be my brain.

In any case, my body decided yesterday that it was a great time to develop an eye twitch. And not just one eye, but both, sporadically, all day. Obviously I’m a huge fan of this development.

There have been bright spots this week, mostly revolving around music – a songwriting classmate’s concert, meeting new musician friends, having the new song I’d talked myself out of liking go over okay in class on Tuesday. Unfortunately, all of it has been underpinned by this frantic activity in my brain.

It’s not even that I’m anxious about some specific, concrete thing. (I guess that’s why they call it Generalized Anxiety Disorder.) I just can’t get my brain to shut off.

I’m also really, really tired. These two things are probably related.

I feel like I’ve been drinking excessive amounts of coffee – I’m jittery, my eyes are twitching, I feel wired and like I’m crashing simultaneously. Only, I drink decaf coffee these days. This appears to be entirely fabricated within the confines of my brain.