Crisis

Lately I’ve been feeling like my load is pretty heavy and I’m having trouble with every day functioning. It’s not one thing but a range of things, the latest being that Miss G was diagnosed with hEDS (hypermobile type Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) and has had to have a complete change in diet. She’s also been in a lot of pain recently due to her hEDS leading to inflamation in the growth plates in her knee and ankles causing Osgood-Slatter’s disease and Sievers disease. I already felt like between the two of us our multiple diagnoses were a lot to manage, now there is one more complete with a new dietary regime and more involved pain management.

So I’m already feeling overloaded and overwhelmed. My own mental health has been unstable for the last month or so. I can’t pin point why but I’d say the levels of stress from everything going on in my home life are probably having a cumulative effect on me. I hit crisis point two weeks ago where I left work mid morning and visited the doctor, and ended up with an increase in meds and a week off to try and get back on track. The meds made me dozy and unable to function and unfortunately the rest didn’t really help.

Over the weekend I had an argument with B (Miss G’s Dad) which wasn’t that bad as arguments between the two of us go, but I broke down in tears afterwards and couldn’t think of what to do so I turned up at my parent’s place and cried on my Dad’s shoulder for a good half an hour. And when I say cried I mean bawled my eyes out, to his bewilderment.

This week has been hard. I’ve been interrupted a lot at work, answering queries from a new staff member and another lady. Flexibility and focus are not my strong suits. There’s a lot of external noise around the office (weed eaters, birds, builders…) and my sensory issues have been really triggered. I’ve had client meetings which require me to utilise my limited range of social skills, and because so much effort goes in to masking during these meetings I find them really draining. Miss G has had Education outside the Classroom (EOTC) and this has required special planning and management on my part, plus pain management for her various joint/muscle/tendon problems. Not to mention finding the planning and organising for EOTC fortnight difficult due to my executive function problems. I also had a meeting with Support Net where the liaison person was lovely but basically pointed out what I knew – I’m not entitled to household management help as I earn “too much” (I’m not that far above the cut off) but I have significant areas of challenge, so they are not really sure how to help me. My psychologist has also resigned which is causing me anxiety, and I feel like there are no solutions left for me. That my therapy has reached the end of the road where no one knows how to help me, and I don’t know how to help me, so life is hopeless and pointless.

So I already had all this weighing on my mind today. I knew I wasn’t feeling very stable this morning as I was quite tearful driving to work for no reason that I could work out. My morning was full of meetings and interruptions and the unexpected, which was overwhelming to my already overtaxed system. Just before lunch I was ready to tell one of my bosses that I was struggling and going to take some time out and walk for a bit when I got interrupted again. At lunch I did manage a walk which made me feel a bit better, but then I came back to the office and that’s when things took a turn for the worse.

I had an argument with my older male boss about something I strongly believed was wrong. I also interpreted what he was saying as him implying I had done the work wrong, which I knew I hadn’t but I always find very triggering. He wanted to double check my work to see if there was a way to pay a client’s employee less for holiday pay, and I believed that not only had I got the correct entitlement per the law, but that it was wrong to pander to the client who wanted to pay his staff less wages because he hadn’t budgeted his income correctly.

The argument got quite heated and my boss made some comments I interpreted as derogatory. I knew I couldn’t stay at my desk once he had walked away – I was about to burst into tears and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop. I work in an open plan office and there is no where to go when that happens. I felt a strong impulse to run, to get away. So I grabbed my stuff, slammed out of the office, got in the car, and headed for the nearest open road.

I often feel better driving at open road speed with the music up loud enough I can feel it in my bones and pounding in my chest. The car I have now hasn’t really got decent speakers which is a bit frustrating but as I tend towards music with a strong bass line I can still usually feel the bass in my chest.

Tears were pouring down my face and I probably wasn’t overly safe on the road and I didn’t have any destination in mind. All I could think about was that I wanted that sensation of speed and the feeling of the music to calm me. A good half an hour drive and I was still crying so I came home thinking to try some other strategies. But once I walked in the door I went into total meltdown. I was crying so hard I was wailing, and I was sitting rocking as that was the only thing that felt vaguely comforting.

I tried so hard to think of what strategy to use and I knew I wasn’t breathing enough but I couldn’t seem to calm down enough to breathe deeply. Cold water on my face didn’t help, ice didn’t help. The tears and wailing kept coming and there was so much sorrow pouring out of me that I couldn’t think coherently. I tried to work out who would be around during work hours to answer their phone (all my close family work and don’t normally have phones on them during work hours) but then realised that I was so distressed I’d lost the ability to speak so I couldn’t ask for help. I couldn’t calm down, I couldn’t ask for help, and I was going to be alone till my daughter got home at 7pm (it was 2.30pm) and I was concerned that I would self harm or worse as I felt hopeless and impulsive.

So I got in my car and did the only thing I could think of, drove to CMH (Community Mental Health) with the intention of seeing the Crisis team. When I got to CMH reception I’d only just managed to stop crying, but the minute the receptionist spoke to me I broke down sobbing again and couldn’t stop. I couldn’t communicate what I needed but she was really good. I see her every week when I go in for my appointment and she knows I’m not normally like that so she gave me a hug (also an indication of how desperate I was, as I normally hate touching other people except Miss G) and called the Crisis Team for me, then sat with me till they came.

However…as soon as I started talking to them I wanted to run away again. The words wouldn’t come out and I couldn’t organise the thoughts and remember the right ways to describe things. I couldn’t answer any of their questions, partly because physically I couldn’t speak, and partly because they ask open ended questions like “what do you want us to do for you?”, “what were you expecting when you came in here today”? and I never know how to interpret them. I was so overwhelmed by someone talking at me, especially asking questions when I physically can’t process or answer them, that it was actually painful. All I wanted to do was get up and leave.

I tried hard to communicate with them, and eventually I managed to get enough out that the man could interpret what I had said and relay it back to me. Then the lady (who was persisting in asking me things I couldn’t answer) left to get me a coffee and he asked me some work related things, which gradually brought me back to reality. I think because I feel safe and comfortable in my accounting and business knowledge that it grounded me a little and gradually my speech returned. I was still having trouble stopping crying but at least I’d managed to calm down, breathe and start speaking a bit.

I didn’t really find what they’d said very helpful as they clearly didn’t have much knowledge of my background, circumstances or diagnoses but I could see they were trying to help and so I tried hard not to be annoyed. And it’s not like I was in a position to explain much as I was still not really able to think clearly or fast enough to be involved in conversation. I just wanted to run fast in the opposite direction and get out of there as soon as I could.

I was still crying hard as I drove home but my processing was slightly better so I decided my next step was a swim in my parent’s pool. That was a good way of cooling me off and calming my sensory system and I managed to stop crying after that. Then it was home to cuddle with my ratty and sit in the garden and try and reflect on what exactly had happened and why.

I’m mainly documenting all this for myself but I also think there is a lack of understanding in our community about why people with depression or mental health problems don’t ask for help. Today is not the first time I’ve gone into shut down when overwhelmed with emotion and been unable to explain myself. My communication issues might be more extreme than other peoples but in general it is very hard to explain how you feel when you are really down, and need to ask for help. People tend to be very well meaning but the questions that come up all the time are “why?” or “what happened?”. Sometimes there is a reason but the person may not understand or be able to communicate it, particularly in the moment, or be able to pin point the trigger. Sometimes there are down days and bad days and shit just happens. It is more important to stand beside someone and hand them tissues and be there for them than it is to interrogate them over why they feel that way. I know it’s hard to sit with a person in distress and not try to solve it for them but this is often what they need. This is what I need. This was what the receptionist at CMH did for me today, which was more valuable than anything the crisis team said to me.

Take care out there people. Ka Kite.

Self-harm can be more than cutting

Trigger warning – this post contains discussion of suicidal ideation and self harm.

I have BPD (borderline personality disorder) and have struggled with self-harm for a number of years. This is no secret, I have scars all over my arms which I make no effort to hide, and to a lesser extent on my legs and torso. I’ve also written posts about it before. What I haven’t posted about before is recovery, mainly because I felt like it was so tenuous that I might jinx myself if I said it out loud. Trying to recover from self harm is what I imagine recovering from any addiction is like, there are so many backslides and the urges are overwhelming to start with. Even when you feel like you’ve been better for a while and the urges are decreasing, something can come along and upset things and you are back at square one again.

In the last year or so I’ve done a lot of thinking about self harm. I had cut myself a bit as a teenager but not regularly or deeply. I had one particularly memorable occasion when I had a huge fight with my sisters and afterwards I was so overwhelmed by emotion that I took a box cutter and cut my arms to ribbons. But mostly as a teenager I was deep in my depression and consumed by suicidal thought and/or running around doing all the things so I didn’t have to feel anything.

I had been pondering why I had started self harming by cutting as a teen and then been able to stop, without really experiencing any of the major addiction type issues that have plagued me in the last few years. And I realised that “busyness” was the key to it all. It was a way to keep myself moving so that the bad stuff couldn’t touch me, but also a way to punish myself. The more tired I got the more I did. I was a chronic over-committer. If I was busy I would sign myself up to another thing, and then be angry at myself but do all the things anyway.

Over the years I have also used food as a way to punish myself. I have had brief flirtations with bulimia, but my main obession for a while was to eat as little food as possible. I did this for about 3 years and while I was never seriously anorexic, I was obsessed with every last calorie, writing down every last thing that went in my mouth and exercising twice or more a day to make sure I worked it all off.

I’ve always had a problem with sleep. One of my memories age 7 or 8 is of reading in the light of the hallway and hurredly putting the book down if one of my parents came to check on me. They knew I was doing it but I don’t remember getting in trouble for it. It would have been rare for me to go to sleep much before 10pm and usually was more like 11pm. Later this became a bad pattern where I would forcibly keep myself awake or not go to bed even when I was really tired. I knew I would feel awful the next day, often I felt awful at the time. But I don’t like myself very much so taking care of myself has never been high on my priority list.

Then I went from training for half marathons, to training for triathlons, to half ironman, and into training for a full ironman. Only just over a year after I did my first half ironman I did a full Ironman, despite working full time and studying for my professional exams at the same time. I had a full work load and I was grumpy all the time and I just kept forcing myself out there. It wasn’t unusual for me to get up on Sunday morning and cycle 6am – 10.30am, shower and change and study from 11am till 6pm, after a 2-3 hour run on Saturday and a 40+ hour work week, and 1-2 training sessions per day (3 squad swims, 3 runs and 2-3 cycles per week on top of my long run & ride at the weekend). Plus I often had other study or work comittments during the week. Mentally and physically it was tough but while I was out there punishing my body I could fool myself into thinking I was being healthy. In reality I was in my deep dark hole of depression and using the exercise to make myself hurt, and the busyness to ensure I didn’t have time to stop and think.

5 years later, as a full time working solo parent of a autistic 4 year old I decided it was a great idea to run a marathon. I had a flat mate who would get up to go to the gym at 6am, so my deal with her is that she would stay home until 6 and listen out in case Miss G woke up. The longer I wanted to run the earlier I had to get up as she was uncompromising about leaving for the gym at 6am. As it got closer to the marathon I would get up around 4am finish my longer runs in before 6am, though there were a few times I needed to do 30km or so and got up around 3am. I was getting no where near enough sleep and often working evenings from home as well.

I know this sounds crazy now but at the time all this made perfect sense to me. I got mad anytime anyone dared to suggest I might be doing too much because to me, I had a goal and I was just doing what I needed to do to reach it. The fact that I was harming myself in the process by exhausting myself and stretching beyond any reasonable limit didn’t even enter my head. In my mind I didn’t deserve any care or love so I was unable to show any to myself. I was unable to process how or why I would practice self care, though I knew it was a thing that other people claimed to do.

To me now, I can see the mix of autism, sensory issues, depression, BPD and deep self loathing that led to this pattern of behavior. I had a goal and a plan on how to achieve that goal and I was not able to be flexible enough to deviate from that plan or the routine I’d put in place. I’m also often single minded and can be focused on something (ie my ‘special interest’) to the extent that I can ignore almost everything else going on around me. Large volumes of physical exercise enabled me to punish myself for not being good enough, or understanding what was going on in my social life or workplace, or being able to cope with my sensory issues in the office. It also allowed me to fool myself that I was doing something to help my depression (because everyone knows regular exercise helps with depression, right?…) and simultaneously punish myself because if it wasn’t making the depression go away I wasn’t trying hard enough, pushing hard enough, going long enough.

When I had a breakdown in late 2013 my body stopped being able to run anymore, for no physical reason. I think my body was sick of my mind telling it to just keep going even though things were really bad, so it decided to stop me. My legs felt like lead and my head swam and I couldn’t breathe – and this is after years of half to full marathon distance training. I tried to stop running but I was addicted. It took a long time to break the habit of dreaming of the next run, the next race. I signed up for a number of races and then pulled out before the start when I realised that physically my body was refusing to train any more. I believe my mind was so burnt out that it shut everything down so it could recover.

Not long after finally breaking the running addiction the self harm started in earnest. Suddenly I had these feelings and I didn’t know what to do with them. I had used running as my way of burning energy and making these feelings go away, and punishing myself physically for things I felt I had done wrong. And now my go-to coping strategy was gone and I still didn’t want to feel the feelings.

I don’t actually remember the day I picked up the knife and cut myself. I do remember all three suicide attempts, and the first one which was right around that time also happens to be the most vivid in my mind. But I have no recollection of picking up the knife or why, or even which month that was.

I would like to think, 6 years later, that I have learnt enough to recognise when I’m in danger of harming myself and put my crisis strategies in place early enough. However, I’m still learning and at this stage I have not been able to go longer than 6 months without a self harm episode. I am aiming to start running again soon but with a mindful awareness of my tendency to take it to far, to push myself and punish myself. I want to use it to add to my life in a healthy way rather than as an unhealthy coping skill.

Take care out there.

Ka Kite

Executive dysfunction: Part 1

Part of my ASD diagnosis is problems with executive function. Executive function is kind of hard to define but basically it’s the cognitive processes that help us regulate, control and manage our thoughts and actions. It includes planning, working memory, attention, problem solving, verbal reasoning, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, initiation of actions and monitoring of actions. People with executive function problems often have some areas which are worse than others, and the level of competency can vary from day to day depending on sensory and cognitive load from other things.

Executive function encompasses nearly every area of our lives. Work, managing a household, socialising, parenting, self care. So having executive function problems translates into problems with the tasks of daily living.

For me executive function looks like: I know the dishes need to be done. I want to do them. I want the kitchen to be clean and I don’t mind doing the task but I have trouble with task initiation. When I manage to stop what ever else I am doing and walk into the kitchen I notice the bench has a whole lot of things that don’t belong in the kitchen and some things need to be put away. I pick up Miss G’s hair ties and bobby pins from the bench and walk to the bathroom. I remember I haven’t brushed my teeth so I do that. I look out the window and think about what we are doing today and realise I need to put sunscreen on. I open the cupboard and it’s messy. I sort a few things and can’t find the sunscreen. I go off to ask G where it is and she doesn’t know either. The two of us look for the sunscreen and she finds wet togs. I take them to the laundry and decide to put washing on. While I’m there I notice there’s cardboard that needs to go in the recycling. I take that outside and notice the grass needs mowing. I open the shed to check on the petrol for the mower and there’s some seeds we were going to put in pots. I take out the seed packets and go inside to talk to G about planting the seeds….

Several hours can go past like this and not only have I not done the dishes but I didn’t find the sunscreen (usually that means I’ll have forgotten about it and we’ll go out, only for me to remember I was looking for it and never found it and neither of us have any on), or actually get anything achieved. The bench is still messy, the bathroom cupboard is still messy, the lawns aren’t done, I didn’t check on the petrol etc etc

This is incredibly frustrating for me. I have to put so much effort into focusing on one task at a time and holding that one task upper most in my mind. Not only do I have to ignore all the other things I come across that need doing, but I either need to write them down which often creates a massive overwhelming list, or be content with them not being done. Because the minute I walk away the chances of me forgetting the next thing to do are about 85%. And putting all the things on a list makes me so overwhelmed that I have trouble planning which task to do first and I feel overloaded by how much needs to be done and how much effort that takes.

Executive dysfunction for me can also look like:
– lack of awareness of one’s surroundings (it can get cold/dark and I will not notice if I am focused on doing something)
– easily distracted
– easily bored
– starting a lot of projects but never finishing them
– difficulty stopping one task and starting another
– difficulty changing routine
– forgetting verbal instructions
– losing objects frequently
– needing things repeated frequently
– interrupting others
– impulsive behaviour
– difficulty controling emotions
– easily frustrated and overwhelmed
– difficulty with planning and problem solving
– disorganisation
– poor time management
– procrastination
(credit to Lilo the Austistic Queer for a series of tweets this list is based on)

Miss G (who also has an ASD diagnosis) has executive dysfunction as well. We have slightly different areas where we are better or worse but both of us are terrible with organisation and planning. With school stuff this might look like her leaving notices at school, or her forgetting to give me school notices, me forgetting to ask or check her bag, me receiving them and then losing them, or forgetting to fill them out, pay and or send them back with her, her forgetting to take the notice back, or give me any reminders. And that’s only school notices!

Even this morning’s post is a perfect example of my poor executive function skills. I got up early to put washing on and do housework before being picked up by a friend. I put the washing on and got in the shower. In the shower I started thinking about executive dysfunction and when I got out I looked for two facebook posts I’d seen previously about it. I sat down and started writing. The washing finished but I haven’t got up to hang it out and put the next lot in. Nor have I stopped to eat breakfast (and it’s now 2 hours since I got up). I have been hyper focusing on executive function and writing for over an hour. My friend will be here soon and I’m not ready, nor have I done any of the housework I planned to do. This is what happens to me on a regular basis.

My life is chaotic. Partly because I am a solo parent who works full time, who happens to have both a developmental diagnosis and two mental illnesses, with a child who has multiple diagnoses. Partly because I struggle with executive function as part of my ASD diagnosis which means I am often forgetful, disorganised, and struggle with daily tasks. And partly because I am one of those people who if something can go wrong it will happen to me. I just don’t seem to be able to keep a handle on everything that’s happening in my life. This makes the tasks of daily living a real challenge for me, and I live in a near constant state of overwhelm, meaning the next little thing that happens can push me into full ASD/BPD meltdown.

I have more to say on this topic but I’ve run out of coherent thought so until next time.

Ka Kite