The next few posts are going to be ones that I wrote this past winter and never got around to publishing. This is a post I wrote in February and didn't publish.
I don’t know what I’m writing today. Perhaps just an update.
I’m one day away from seeing my psychiatrist and possibly getting my meds
changed. Hopefully for the better and for the cheaper.
I’ve been so anxious lately, though, I’ll definitely have to
mention that. I got a little behind on my work so for the past few work days
I’ve been anxious in the mornings to the point where my throat closes up a bit
and it’s hard to breathe. I can usually take deep breathes and breathe through
it, though. It takes a while to calm down and then I’m yawning the rest of the
day. I’m getting plenty of sleep; I’ve been going to bed regularly at 10:30pm
(then it takes about an hour to actually sleep) and then getting up around
7:30am. It’s all part of my effort to get to work on time.
So, I’ve been sleeping ok, waking up pretty well, and
getting to work mostly on time. I’ve been taking my meds and even tracking my
moods with moodtracker.com. I like that website because I can send myself
reminders to track my mood, I can track multiple times a day, and even report
mixed moods. I’m not sure if the anxiety has always been there so often or if
I’m just noticing it more now that I’ve been tracking my moods.
Anyway, so I wrote down some stuff to tell the psychiatrist
tomorrow to help him diagnose me correctly and I’m going to list them out here
to help me organize my thoughts. Shit, I forgot my notebook. Maybe I can do it
from memory?
Happening now
·
Anxiety most days; throat closing up, shallow
breaths
·
Binge eating; out of control cravings when I
feel like I just have to eat and eat NOW! Usually chocolate, cookies, donuts,
etc. I will go out to the store and buy snacks if craving is strong enough.
Definitely interfering with my weight loss efforts.
·
Peeling skin off the bottom of my feet. Sort of
like the need to eat, sometimes I feel a need to peel skin. It’s really gross,
my feet smell bad all the time and sometimes it’s difficult to walk because
I’ll keep peeling them even after they are bleeding.
·
When I leave in the morning I check that the
door is locked at least 10 times, sometimes more if I’m feeling more anxious.
·
I have very vivid dreams that can be violent and
disturbing. I have been raped in my nightmares several times.
·
Sometimes my dreams are so real that I think
they’re memories.
·
I’m often depressed; it doesn’t always last all
day. Lately I have been anxious/happy/elevated in the mornings but then down in
the afternoon and evening. It hasn’t been super bad lately (the past week).
·
I did feel ‘sped up’ when I first started
Cymbalta, but I didn’t report the symptom because I thought it was just a
really good antidepressant. Also, I liked the feeling and didn’t want it taken
away.
·
Sometimes I have a lot of projects; I make huge
lists of all the things I want to do, but then when I feel down again I don’t
do any of those things.
·
Last year, about August or something I met this
guy and slept with him on the third date, which is very unlike me. I wanted to
sleep with him on the second date and I even told him we didn’t need a condom
(but he said no because he wanted to be safe and he didn’t have any condoms).
Happened in the past
·
Extreme mood swings during college that happened
very quickly. Feeling like I can do anything to despair within a minute. And
then back again
·
Was a point when I couldn’t read anymore in
college; my eyes would just slip off the page
·
Again, in
college, outbursts of violent anger. I felt out-of-control; I hit things, threw
things, kicked things, broke things, yelled and screamed.
·
Sometimes I could get suddenly ‘rage-level’
angry at someone just because they were near me or slightly in front of me. I
yelled at my sister a lot sometimes because I felt like she was getting in my
way on purpose to block me from a conversation or keep me excluded or away from
whoever we were with, usually my mother.
·
Felt like people were purposefully excluding me
a lot of the time. I felt like people were always talking about me behind my
back or watching me.
·
Sometimes I thought there were cameras watching
me (middle school and elementary school)
·
Once, I had a hallucination that spiders were
crawling all over me when I was in bed, but I’ve always thought of that as a
one-time thing. Just a weird thing that happened between waking and sleeping.
·
There was some time where I thought I had been
in space (elementary school/middle school) but I had just dreamed it.
·
I used to think that if I didn’t worry,
something bad would happen. I was very superstitious and I felt like if I had certain
thoughts, they could make things happen.
·
Racing thoughts and ruminating thoughts so bad I
would use TV to literally and purposefully ‘stop’ my brain.
·
At one of my friend’s parties when I was younger
I was ‘the life of the party’ (elementary school)
·
Once, at a dance in high school I just went up
to a guy I didn’t know and asked him to dance. But usually, I could barely talk
to anyone.
Right now I’m thinking he’ll say ‘Bipolar with OCD, anxiety,
and Binge eating disorder’. I’ve read that Bipolar + Binge eating is really
complex and behaves differently than other Bipolar types and can even be more
severe.
Shit, that’s a lot of stuff and I don’t think it’s even all
of it. That list covers most of the things I remember that might be important
for diagnosis. Except for some things that I’m not sure I can admit to anyone.
I’m still not sure I’m going to tell him about wanting to sleep with a guy
without a condom.
I’m also a bit nervous because my psychiatrist (pdoc) is a
much older man and I’m not sure what his opinions are. I’ve had a lot of
experience with older men and how they treat me like… well, like a little child
who doesn’t know anything and doesn’t even deserve to be listened to. I’m not
sure older men even HEAR young woman like me when we speak to them. But, my
therapist is in partnership with my tdoc and he is also an older male (although
not quite as ancient). Seriously, my pdoc looks like he’s mostly in the grave
now, he’s just sitting up inside his coffin, pecking at his computer with his
pointer fingers.
