At the very beginning, there was Ratopia. Then, there's ratology. In ratology, we observe whether psychotic and neurotic people could amount to something. Then came the spinal disc herniation and impingement, bringing forth the stage of physical disability. Could someone like me go anywhere or amount to anything is the question. After the official ending of the second psychotic episode lasted for five years, I am ready to move on to the next phase of Ratology- as the solutions unfold.
Something someone said reminded me that I have not posted anything here for a while...
I-20 expired again and now I have about a month and a half, as per immigration law, to get myself back to feeling alive cuz... if ain't no nothing gonna happen, such as me winning the green card lottery etc, at least... I gotta be in a state more awaken and alive than now by the time I arrive in Taiwan... 8-X
Anyways, though long story... I must have written something alike before...
To share with you here is quote from "coloring Mandalas"... some words absolutely speak for my life's experience nowadays...
"Fragmentation, confusion comes about because the pattern is beyond your compreshension."
At this point, I stop or try to stop wanting to figure out whether I have completely lost it or something strange is in the air... Too much thinking is useless since most of my thoughts are transient and don't need to be encoded in long term memories anyways-- a waste of storage space, I guess... 8-O lol
All that I can say is I have never lived my life so hard in my entire life... partially having something to do with the fact that... it takes extra amount of work to live a life when you feel so dissociated or disconnected from the rest of the world while, at times, the sense of dissociation would get so bad that you would feel even your "self" dissolve. (Don't understand what I mean? That's fine. I don't understand the majority of the things I somehow have to experience either. It makes at least the two of us.)
My past experience would tell me that this is... once again... the indication that I am overdosed again... except for... it was only about 2-3 months again when the dosage when down to 50 mg of Seroequl?!
In any case, one thing I am sure is that... I am not gonna BS you about not having this big fear about metamorphosis... as in
(Saw this bookcover @ barnes and noble and love it... Am I turning into a da bug? 8-O lol sigh)
And, the matter of the fact... perhaps... the learning that has incurred, at least in the last 3 years, more than I could bargain for above and beyond the contribution of formal school education... though I didn't ask for it. 8-O lol 8-X
For instance... there ain't no nothing more important than health.... lesson extracted through my encounters with total disability in different flavors in recent years.... And, of course, that me I used to know, if not be, for example, would not be able to understand.
Twice in a day, this topic of "can't read" came up after I logged for myself yesterday in my private journal that now I am finally regaining my ability to read again in baby steps.
So I have been saying... it is this kind of never-ending synchronicity that got me stuck in my psychotic state.
A blessing in disguise... nowadays.. I only have memory the size of an atom.... would be nicer if it were the size of peanuts.
Anyways...
The materials I can process now while at the onset of relearning to read... still relatively selective... mostly related to the maintenance of my beauty and health... such as...
How much do I believe in the things I now finally can start reading?
Well... as long as I don't have allergy... it ain't gonna do me any harm to be spraying on me myself some Aqua Rosa Italiana, I guess... 8-O lol
Well... shall I be right... my ability to read is slowly coming back.... what I might need to figure out... how to learn to use this skill without breaking myself... yet, again, apart.....
I got a million calls on my answering machine looking for "Y Chung" or "Y Chang"... Like the following....
Finally, I called them back tonight trying to figure out who the hell is calling me and what for.
So, I asked this woman who answered my phone call what kind of debts they are collecting.
She, instead, asked for the last 4 digits of my social.
I told her... "I am not gonna give you the last 4 digits of my social. That is private information."
She then asked for my birthday. "I am not gonna give you my birthday. That is private and confidential information."
Then, she gave me a wrong last 4 digits of my social and a wrong birthday. And, she told me... sorry... we got the wrong person.
Later on, I realized that... wait a minute... I do recall now that for many a time... I received these debt-collection mail for someone called "Y Chung" (not even my name) and I actually called them back to tell them that I've never had a Victoria's Secret's card and... although I ain't got nothing... me ain't got no debt either except for... oops... gotta take care of some of the bills I haven't got to....
Don't know what it might sound for you.
For me, it seems fishy and I think it is a scam.... and... speaking of... identity theft kinda thing.
Decided to cook myself some miso soup based dinner tonight... only to find out... possibly... especially smokers or those attempting to quit like me....
Miso soup and soy products might help you save your lungs...
There is something strange about my walking... above and beyond what I have mentioned so far...
Every time I walked out of them long walks... I have the feeling that I am a life time away if not many life times away from where I started... if not... also... many reincarnations away.... (and... I must have done many many a thing wrong having to reincarnate so many a time... 8-O oops...)
Then, I think to myself...
Thank God... now I have been trained to not really care what my head has to say... since, apparently, my head changes its mind almost at the speed of light... 8-O lol sigh
I tried out soaking my feet with ginger for a change Friday night since... all of a sudden, I started to have this salty sense in my mouth every time I feel cold air coming out from the bottom of my tongue.
It makes me feel warm and... forgotten already.
Yet, one lesson I learned for myself... ginger foot bath or bath might help others sleeping but it doesn't help with my sleeping... had problem falling asleep and sleep through the night.
I soaked my feet in used tea bags and tea leaves... and two drops of essential oils containing ingredients lavender and rosemary instead last night... Don't quite remember how easy it was for me to fall asleep... one thing I do know... I slept for something like a good 10 if not 11 hours...
Real lesson learned, I guess, for me... different things work for different people and we simply have to find what works for ourselves...
And, again, what really worked? Not my issues no more... as long as I sleep like a baby.
I have this gut feeling based my recent experiences... There is something about Lavender.... or maybe not...
The idea of lavender came to me last week when I found it listed in a book at Barnes and Nobles as a sleep aid kinda herb...
So... I found myself some lavender epsom salt and some tea including lavender and other, presumably, sleep enhancing herbs...
I have been sleeping like a baby since Saturday on... and knock on woods...
Then, I came up with this smart idea... maybe I should go look for some lavender hand cream for the day time so that people don't have to hear my mouth when I see things ain't right... side effects of decreased meds and nicotine....
So... today, I went searching for a lavender smell that I can sleep with and I can be awake with...
Then, I got home... out of curiosity...
Why isn't my psychotic symptoms running overboard? (No complaints)
Did some googling for some info concerning lavender etc and schizo-etc and came up with something like the following...
Apparently, there is some potential scientific basis for my feeling sedated by my lavender alike venture.... just when I think I am really going crazy due to the decreasing insight blah blah blah.... 8-O lol
At the same time, in my scenario, it doesn't matter whether it is placebo effect or not, you see, as long as it works... such as helping me get a good long night of sleep....
Still on my meds... of course... in other words, the herbal stuffs are the supplements...
The good thing about these new routines... regardless... it doesn't hurt....
In addition, part of the reason why I didn't entertain this kinda stuff was because--- up to some time last year, "having problem sleeping" was mostly a foreign concept.
Used to be, it takes the medication to help me dumb myself down to the lowest common denominator for the benefit of my mental health condition. And, I tried so hard to fight it.
If anything I have been trying to learn these past few months if not years... a dream or not... I think I am or whichever parts of me are getting pretty good at dumbing me down nowadays and I am damn happy about it... (tell you I am crazy).... although not yet expert level... and hope there is some truth in it.
Sudden decrease in smoking after I got myself so shit-faced that I spent an entire day and night worshiping the procelain God
I have never had any problem sleeping until last year... Don't I miss them golden years of precious ignorance? sigh
First, I started having problem falling asleep... Then, in my recent times, I started to wake up multiple times during the night.
Medication... medication.... much of my sleep-related blah blah blah is associated with Seroquel...
At the same time, the sudden decrease of the number of cigarettes I smoke... (2 smokes a day not instead of a pack or so) might also play a role in the sleep problem. At the same time, something tells me to stick to 2 cigarettes a day for a bit longer because "this might help the system to get back to homeostasis" - so something has me told.
Since the dosage of Seroquel is lowered again
more alert or awake during the day time
cold air overflowing through out my body and annoyingly coming out of my mouth. Extremely uncomfortable
energy overflowing with a puff or two of cigarette or walking.... as two of the remedies known to me by now
it seems like, right after the dosage get decreased, my body would get into problem again such as pain, walking problem etc. At this point in my life, since there ain't no nothing I could do about it, I just let my body do whatever it has to do as long as I am kicking... 8-O lol sigh
sleep disruption is something that has been driving me up the wall. The problem I face is that... I would keep on waking up... some nights I would wake up 5-6 times over the duration of a 7- hour or so sleep. This is pure suffering.
Since sleep problem is a known side effect of reducing Seroquel dosage and since I don't really want to get into the habit of taking sleeping pills unless necessary, I have to try out something else. Following are the things that I have been trying so far...
Drink Herbal Tea: Peppermint, Chamomile, and... after the sleeping problem got worst, I got this Yogi Tea Bedtime which contains herbs known to help sleeping and relaxation such as Valerian Root, Passion Flower, Chamomile Flower, Skullcap Leaf, St. John's Wort Leaf Flower, English Lavender Flower, Stevia Leaf
Foot soaking: I add Epsom salt and all the tea bags left from the day time into a pot of hot water and soak my feet. I started using this Rite Aid brand of Lavender Epsom salt two days ago and... wow... that wonderful smell itself gave me a buzz... 8-O lol
Body lotion: Lavender.... Lavender... Lavender... Lavender... at least upper body... at the same time, my body is getting so spoilt that... if the scent is not right, I can't sleep with it. For instance, cookie or orange/tangerine kind of smell used to work but no longer work in helping me falling asleep. Therefore, I am not gonna buy you unless I can sleep with you... my new policy with body cream... So far, I can sleep with bodyshop and Crabtree and Evelyn. (Maybe I really am a princess... sort of like... the princess and the peas?! At the same time, never in my life working so hard trying to figure out who to sleep with 8-O lol)
Make sure enough nicotine in the system before going to sleep...
I finally woke up this morning feeling that there is some improvement in my sleep... I woke up only twice before I have to get up to work as opposed to 5-6 times.
At the same time, believe it or not, the whole foot soak thing and tea thing do seem to help me feel sleepy even before taking Seroquel.
What exactly worked or happened?
At this point in my life, not my issue.
Though I do ponder at times... Am I getting crazier or not?
I had to rush home right after work... I got a date.
So I waited patiently or impatiently... for the man to show... from 6 o'clock on....
Sort of like...
Almost 9...
Where is the man I have been waiting for for all these time?
I finally decided to pick up the phone and made the call....
So I asked....
"I have been waiting the entire night... dare not go anywhere and dare not even take a shower.... where is the cable guy who is scheduled to pick up my cable box?"
"The appointment is next week."
OMG... I have been sitting here thinking I have a date with the cable guy for the entire time except for no man have me on the calendar at all?!" 8-O lol
I haven't been jotting thoughts down for a while even in my internal blog or journal.
The following words spoken by my voices captures it all... "Ratology can wait."
It ain't gonna do nobody good if I am not in a stable and healthy state.
Think this might be time for some notes:
The core assumption: alright, I am abnormal. As a result, any deliberation about whether I am crazy or not is non-sensical.
Meds: Somehow there was the feeling that I was becoming overdrugged again. It's been a week since I am on 100 mg Seroquel as opposed to 150 mg (and as opposed to 600 mg I was on last year this time). Strange enough, symptoms are like ships passing in the sea.
The main life's tasks now a days: stay 空空 (Taiwanese expression of dumb dumb I guess... 8-O lol) and do exercise, eat well and walk.
Survival principle: Some things I have been learning to practice these past few weeks if not months:
Dedramatization: Given my conditions (hallucinations, delusions), I am a certified drama queen... as a result, you want drama? Go watch TNT.
Dumb and dumber: It is actually my preferred state now to not have to think too much especially when, for me, a lot of thoughts are very useless. Moreover, somehow I am coming to believe that my biggest problem in life is that I am too good at thinking... good to the extent that I got myself thoughts intoxicated. 8-O lol sigh
KISS (Keep it simple and stupid): If I like something then I say I like it and I act on it. I love food therefore I eat. What is the need for them strange complications. (No wonder sometimes I seriously think that, I am crazy but normal people are crazier... 8-O oops... )
Don't know nothing: Just live it and I have the feeling that I can live through it. I don't need to know (e.g., why the cold running through all over the body... the extremely uncomfortable feeling of energy running through out too fast... why walking in and out... blah blah blah... til why feeling my whole body bubbling recently... sort of like a fish... 8-O lol etc). The more I try to know, the more useless thinking I engage myself in, the more efforts I make to drive myself nuts... I guess... 8-O lol
"I am not entertaining it."... or the 無聊 or 吃飽太閒 (in Taiwanese even better) principle... or the Harry Potter "ridiculous" strategy: many of the things could be it... a means towards dedramatization.
Side thoughts about them normal people.... the burden of being normal.... too much slack.... 8-O lol oops...
I have a good feeling, though, that... soon... all these will run through... As for the keeping my head and mind empty thing.... what is the point of trying to stuck more stuffs into your head if the purpose is to vacuum it? And, how on earth could I have lived my past life the extreme of a type A personality in New York City? (is she crazy? check your assumptions.)
On my way home, this thought emerge... Thank God not I am not the norm... otherwise, shall the entire world be operating under my kinda MO... we would all be but waiting to eat air or 吃空氣... 8-O lol
Therefore... you know.. it is ok to be normal.... whatever it might mean for the normal to be normal...
Got this email from someone who I have not heard of for the longest time.... telling me that she was severely ill.
The last time I spoke with her really, I was listening to her and I saw myself.
I told her.
"You might not want to believe it but you need to see a psychiatrist. I don't know your diagnosis but you are psychotic because I am one."
Like me at the onset, she did believe it and, I suspect, neither did the people she knew.
Instead of going to see a psychiatrist, she chatted with this acquaintance of her who was a school guidance counselor in training and cooked up the diagnosis of some kind of personality disorder.
Today, it is my belief that...
Coping is difficult. Granted.
At points, you falter and you get back to the cuckoo's nest. This mostly has to do with the fact that symptoms morph and they morph. In other words, simply because you are aware of the fact that you are psychotic doesn't immunize you... otherwise, I would not have gone back to the psychiatric ward for the second and third time.
And, honestly, today, I have eventually moved to a stage within which I am not even gonna entertain why so many of us have to go through similar process yet needing to find our own way home....
However, the most difficult part, in retrospective, is living with and through the onset.... especially when... you and the people you know simply can not believe that you could be one of them.... psychotic.
(Think about this... how guilty might you feel trying to even conceive the notion that... so and so is having a psychotic onset....)
After I heard from her, I felt a bit guilty because... what if I have tried harder to persuade her to see a licensed doctor instead? Would that have helped her to prevent the worsening of the symptoms?
Then, I realized that it was a nonsensical thought.
First of all, it is not like I am her family and there is anything else I could have done about it.
Second, patients need to have enough of I don't know what you might call it and knows that they need help.
Rethinking the onset...
I actually was seeing a psychiatrist and my psychiatrist actually told me point-blank... "you are delusional."
I walked out of the clinic, getting back to work... thinking... "He is part of the conspiracy."
Luckily, some time later, I eventually walked myself into ER voluntarily on that Saturday afternoon and told the people on duty.
"I need to be locked up."
So I shipped myself into the psychiatric ward for the first time because I realized that I was losing control over my ability to concentrate... 8-O (Still lack of insights I guess... Yet, enough of insight for help seeking behavior.)
So I think... ouch... ouch... ouch...
All the advances they speak of in science etc.... onsets still pop up left and right all over the globe?!
Could it be... the unavoidable--- the unavoidable.
And, how could it be? The unavoidable remains the unavoidable?!
What could help?
One thing I am pretty sure is that... since even in person communication didn't seem to help at all, this blog... What help?
One breakthrough in my coping mechanism with the symptoms (people could read my mind and I could sense their presence etc....)--> "I am not responsible for my psychotic symptoms." and "Who told your to invade my head without permission?"
Unfortunately, there is no standard interventions for my own symptoms. Some might work for a while and, all of a sudden, doesn't work. My coping so far... a constant processing of finding out the things that might work.
Taking symptoms such as people could read my mind and hear my thought thing...
You could tell yourself that... it is but your symptoms. Yet, good luck with that... if you could win it over this way, they wouldn't have been coined as pathological.
If you don't give a bag of beans about how others feel, you could simply run your mouth on and on at them "unauthorized intruders in your head." End results, other people might find it difficult to get your attention and find your head all flaky... This might be the same reason why, sometimes on the street, you hear people all of a sudden yelling at you for no good reason.
Yesterday, for instance, as I was walking down Broadway, this woman came towards me and yelled... "Keep on playing your game!!"
I went... "8-O you could see them people accessing my head without authorizations and you are actually speaking to them?" (So speak for the synergistic effect of putting two together... 8-O lol sigh)
At the same time, others might feel bad when not-so-nice thoughts would come into their head. They might feel bad that the not-so-nice thoughts might be known by other people and hurt their feelings.
This is one of my worst enemy... For the longest time, I felt bad when not so nice thoughts would emerge and might hurt the receivers' feelings.... and your know your condition is going down south when it goes from singular to plural because, when you start to feel the presence and hear the voices of many people, your head starts to reenact things like the three kingdoms... 8-O lol sigh
And this is the time when you have your meds up... like what I have to do.. with the minor inconveniences I have to face when going to bed... In addition to them symptoms who have a bad habit of showing up left and right in all forms while you let go of your cognitive control when trying to fall asleep, extremely dry mouth, the sensation of the esophagus getting all tightened up and the body jerking up and down in bed as if a life fish out of water on a chopping board....
Life used to be much easier... you pop the meds, it knocks you down and put your asleep. The worst thing could happen is for you to feel all dumb all days... none of them physical kinda stuffs... sigh
Then, the light ball went off earlier today and I realized that one way of responding to these kind of incidence is to say to myself...
"I have no control over my symptoms otherwise they will not be called pathological symptoms. In addition, my head is my head and who the hell are you to intrude my private thoughts... pathological or not. That should teach you a lesson being beaten up by my disordered thoughts left and right."
(Remember... the reason why symptoms are symptoms is because of the intrinsic bias patients have towards the disordered thinking.)
Then I thought of what that strange doctor of mine said to my over 2 years ago...
I could not understand what exactly I have to put down and, today, I bet, the doctor might have no idea either except for he simply knows that is what I have to do.
Since then, I have learned to let go of many things... although I am still not quite sure what I have to learn to let go.
The most recent thing that I learned to let go is to let go of the control over my symptoms... as mentioned in the previous part of the writing. I have to learn to let the symptoms to simply be symptoms while finding the least stressful way of reacting to them. (And, of course, it is easier to say than to do... react not...)
In addition, in my previous life, people mostly could not tell that there is anything not so normal about me... until the point of the accident when I fell free from a collapsing chair in sitting position.
From then on... till today... it is just a normal part of my life to walk abnormal and go into abnormal states. At this point, when it occurs... whether it is my limping around... sleep walking... experiencing excruciating pains migrating through my body as I take my walk ... etc... It is just the way it is so let it be. And, hopefully, if I let it run through... I will be able to walk out of it.... and luckily, I have been able to walk in and out of strange states so far....
Essentially, I am regressing back to the mean and simply need to fill the quota.... Nowadays, I am having a paradigm shift in my MO... pretending no more... trying no more to act like them people-- normal... though I still do have my boundary and though I have no idea what it really means to act normal. 8-O Somehow, something tells me that this is what it takes... I simply have to do it and get it over with.
Of course, God knows whether any of these thoughts are intuition or delusions... Everything shifts and morphs all the time... Along this line of thinking... I have given up trying to figure out how sane or insane I might be. Somehow... no need no more.... unless... insufficient cognitive capacity. In addition, the want to figure it out make you think and convoluted thinking drive you even nuttier.
In addition, this idea just came to me yesterday.... what about creative writing? 8-O
Came across the following table in a paper.... Following are the current names of psychotic symptoms. The texts in purple are the symptoms I have to cope with on a daily basis... As I was going through the list, I realize... oops... 100% hit... shxt... pretty bad... or not good.... 8-O lol sigh
Current names of symptoms
Descriptions
Acoustico-verbal hallucinations
Voices heard arguing or commenting on patient's actions.
Audible thoughts
Patient’s own thoughts heard by him/herself.
Thought broadcasting
Patient’s thought are passively diffused to other people.
Thought insertion
Other people intrude their thoughts upon the patient.
Thought withdrawal
Other people actively take patient’s thoughts in his/her mind.
Made affect and feelings
Experience of influences playing on patient’s sensations.
Somatic passivity, delusions of influence, alien control
Experience of influences playing on patient’s actions.
Delusional perception
Patient’s experience of a peculiar, intense, convincing experience not shared by other people.
It seems like every time I try to read adult kind of stuffs (I can read children's book without words well), my body and head gets into trouble and it would take forever, such as days, for me to recover.
The major task I am trying to do today and the days to come is to learn to read and to find ways to minimize its damages. 8-O
One plausible principle that might be useful is un-attention-un-deficit and one adaptive strategy I have come up with is to do something else distracting such as knitting while trying to read.
At the same time, reading is not the only thing that drives mes crazy.
It just came to my attention last week when trying to help this friend preparing her dataset to be analyzed.... my psychotic symptoms went for a field trip and my body went down south as well.
When the dasein moment of them fearful delusions emerged when I was doing coding or data analysis, I actually had to outsource my delusional beliefs to calm them dasien down so that I could push the thing through... Interestingly, after I decided to leave it to my delusional protective figure in my imaginary world to help taking care of my delusional moments of extreme fear, them dasein sort of went away leaving more manageable symptoms floating around... 8-O lol sigh
What I mean by the dasein moment... example... someone I care or not is going to die or hurt really bad... as I have described too many a time.
Some other commonly observed indicators... yawning, tearing, really deep breathing as if there is old air that needed to come out of my chest, mouth and eyes....
I don't know how them experts might classify this kind of condition.
Not my issue anyways...
Time to get back to my unknitting...
At the same time, something tells me.. incidences are but peripheral and if it were not one incidence, it would always be another....
It is just part of the process... and that is just the way it is.
I won't be stuck in this state forever... in the meanwhile, the question... How long is it going to take before I finally could grow out of this strange form of disability? I suspect... the same answer my doctor in Taiwan gave me when I asked him... "When could I walk again?"
"Depending on you."
Delusional or not? Well... at least this is a belief I can manage....
Whit
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Whit sounds like wit and according to dictionary.com, it means
a particle; bit; jot (used especially in negative phrases).
I have changed not a whit. I do...
A dream: Backpacking
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On my way back from NYC to Taipei in April, I managed to get myself an
extended layover (over 2 weeks) in Japan, landing at and exiting from the
Narita Air...
Ratprincess in Technology not lost?
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Given my sick-in-the-headness, sometimes it's hard to trust my LTM. Did
Ratprincess in Technology really exist or was it my false memory?
As I was marv...
Traces of the past
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A link I found that has been live online from the Down with Meds age.
Apparently, the past has always been there whether I knew it or not.
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