Dream a Little Dream of Me

My last Galaxy Brain assignment was to interpret the meaning of a particular dream, which I did "in character", by way of pointing out how boring the dreams of others are, then making my answer all about me and a scary dream I used to have growing up.

😀

I also mentioned a dream study course a relative took. She told me our dreams are all about ourselves, our subconscious revealing itself in weird and wonderful ways through our dreams.

Since then, though, I've had a couple of therapy sessions to go with the medication I'm on as a result of the panic attacks I started experiencing last spring. She's young, young enough to be my daughter, so it's different than I'd imagined it would be, but what had I imagined?

Magic.

Well it's not magic, it's a process, and she's trained in it, has the skills required to help someone else make the necessary connections between brain, body, thinking, behaviour to calm an over-active flight or fight response. Oh, and freezing. We never mention freezing but it's another reaction to anxiety.

It's all very helpful, even hearing myself tell a familiar tale I remember lost details or recognize overlooked significance. Maybe a pattern. I even learned of a possible approach to the panic attacks called "radical acceptance", which just knowing is a possibility has lowered my anxiety about the next panic attack.

Typing that just reminded me of The Greatest Generation (although surely not as parents) threatening crying children with "Stop that crying before I give you something to cry about!"

Panic attacks sure gave me something to be anxious about.

😀

I found out, too, I'm not alone in needing help after the Freedom Convoy attack on downtown Ottawa last February. It's apparently quite common. I should have known. Three of my panic attacks occurred after encountering people who continue to support it. But here radical acceptance comes into play, doesn't it. There will always be people who do. Accept it. Move on.

Get off Twitter. It won't get you published and it's just another addiction. Either do the work of shopping your book around or don't but stop with the magical thinking. Lots of people write books. The reward is in the writing. Getting published is the work.

😀

Meanwhile, write another one. Find the humour in trading time and effort to make money. The stuff of life some of us find rewarding and some of us don't. At all. Except without doing it, without having done it, what would I have to write about that others can appreciate as a break from being who we're paid to be and not who we are.

My dreams?

😀

The other night I had a dream my mother got better. I went home to visit her and found she'd left the nursing home and was back in our house, healthy, younger looking. Smiling. Happy to see me but a little confused by my concern.

"I quit drinking" she laughed. "That's all it was."

Then I asked her where all her friends were.

"I haven't told them."

Well I told her they'd like to know and she should tell them because they'd been very worried about her. So she did. Then they all showed up, filling the house, and it was a party. Her best friend was there and suggested I move back home, I could drive everybody around because nobody had their licence anymore. They'd pay me to do it. I'd have a job. Then I saw my mother walking up the street with an empty glass. She said she was going for some water. I wasn't sure I believed her but she seemed so happy and confident. I wanted to make sure it all lasted so I decided, yes, I should move back home and look after her. Not even should, I wanted to. Start over at the beginning but all grown up, find fulfillment in keeping this irresponsible mother of mine on the straight and narrow.

😀

Aftershocks

 I had another panic attack yesterday evening. I think I felt it building over the course of the day but I'm not sure. By 7:30 pm though I knew it was happening so I propped myself up in bed, a cold cloth on my forehead, tried to concentrate on my breathing.

The nausea was fairly intense, coming in waves, but I felt less alienated than during other panic attacks. I wanted to lie on the bathroom floor at one point (the attacks are very tiring) and did, briefly, but decided that was falling into back into an earlier pattern, and made myself go back to bed.

Also, while lying on the bathroom floor starting to wish for the crabby hand of death to slap me off this mortal coil, I kicked my rational brain into gear, "you're not going to die of a panic attack, get a grip, let it play out, you will feel better".

My mantra for next time: This too shall pass.

My blond companion lied with me in bed, holding my hand. This too was an improvement on previous attacks when I didn't want anybody around, couldn't (wouldn't?) allow myself to be comforted.

Suffering should be borne in private? Me? Who is this person having panic attacks?

But I get anxious if I think I'm inconveniencing someone, no matter how willing they are to help. It's ironic because my neighbour, of whom I make much fun, won't be beholden to anyone no matter how much he needs the help.

(Just to be mean I make him meat pies he can't resist accepting, even gracing me once with, "it was good".)

Eventually, pill averse me said yes to a couple of gravol. Gravol hasn't been enough in the past, but I figured it was worth a try again, even though I was worried about interactions with the daily medication I've been taking, fluoxetine. I need two gravol (at least) and tried to have faith they would work.

Well of course they did and next time I'll take the gravol as soon as I start feeling nauseous.

After a while of counting breaths, I fell asleep, which I guess is the effect of the gravol.

I always have to get up in the night to pee and when I did I noticed I wasn't nauseous anymore. I also suddenly remembered as a kid having had the stomach flu and being so afraid afterward of being nauseous that my mother took me to Dr. Tiltons (an Estonian who escaped when the Soviets invaded, landing in the Sault and with an accent so strong we often had no idea what the diagnosis was). She prescribed some sort of peppermint concoction, and I insisted on taking a spoonful of it every night before bed.

But here's something, it's the anniversary of the Freedom Convoy attack on us in Ottawa last year and yesterday I'd posted on Facebook about having to avoid seeing or hearing Pierre Poilievre, which is getting harder with the House back. I was listening to CBC radio and all of a sudden there was his whiny drone assaulting my ears. In my post I joked about him making me nauseous, which I'd forgotten about until my blond companion reminded me of it this morning.

Surely hearing Pierre Poilievre's voice on the radio (I mute CBC news on television if he's in a clip from the House or elsewhere) didn't spark a panic attack a couple of hours later, but I suppose it's possible. In any case, he's not going away so I'm going to have to figure out how to avoid being exposed to him.

(I just remembered that episode of Seinfeld where Mary Hart's voice sets off seizures? in Kramer.)

(Also, today I read an interview with Erin O'Toole in which he complained about Conservative MPs having gone down internet rabbit holes, and I wondered why then he'd wanted to lead them to power.)

Anyway, I think today will be my last day (re)posting Freedom Convoy memories as they pop up on Facebook. I tend to think it's my duty to bear witness but I did it already and belabouring it isn't healthy. Time to trust in the process and let it go.

Maybe time to ditch a habit or two and establish some new routines, too. If I'm going to have panic attacks I want to at least learn from them. In the meantime, I wrote out a list of tips for dealing with anxiety, although not necessarily panic attacks, that I'll share here.

1.    2 inhales, 1 long exhale (I like this one because I have to think about it to do it).

2.    Focus on right now, the lack of need for action, and bring your attention to breathing.

3.    Exercise, preferably fresh air exercise, move your body (not possible in a panic attack for me).

4.    Eat good food (I include my baking in this now I'm on medication because I only want a small portion).

5.    Prioritize sleep (I sleep better and more than I used to because as soon as I'm even a bit tired I go to bed).

6.    Overcome catastrophizing and keep perspective (well, good luck - #7 helps with this).

7.    Make peace with the worst case scenario (this one has been good for me and came in handy last night).

8.    Use the anxiety decision tree: What's making you anxious? Can you do something about it? If so, do it. If no, distract yourself by doing something else productive. (this is a tricky one, at least, I find it hard, partly because not being pro-active enough is partly why I'm anxious, sort of a chicken/egg thing.)

If anybody has any other tips let me know.

Also, I don't think the panic attacks are menopause related, but they could be.

Calm Waters Amid Stormy Seas

Several times between my last post and this one I've been seized with the urge to blog about a topic, but after thinking it over decided against making the effort.

Is this a byproduct of anti-anxiety medication kicking in, this "on second thought" life I seem to be living now?

The other day I found myself enjoying memories of living downtown Ottawa in a one bedroom apartment, my three kids and Kasey (sheltie/beagle) coming every weekend to camp out, my new partner eventually moving in to make us a party of five. This is new, too, looking back on this part of my life as "Hey, I did that!" instead of "Oh dear, I did that...".

So 😊 instead of 😟.

It's not nothing, either, this clean living, part... 4? I've been doing, and although some people would suggest it alone is making the difference in how I feel, I believe the medication led to that, too. I'm paying attention to what I can do for my health now, instead of worrying about others, what I've done, what I might do.

Finally I get it: one day at a time, one foot in front of the other, and not AA's accept the things I cannot change, but Toni Morrison's change the things I cannot accept.

It suits me better at this stage of life. Not reactive, proactive. I've read the opposite of indecision (sometimes mistaken for procrastination, which is quite different) is impulsiveness. I can certainly identify with it, decision-making being paralyzing for me, until boom - I'm living downtown Ottawa in a one bedroom apartment.

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about not believing everything you read on the internet, and last week deciding to use a bag of frozen pineapple pieces by way of baking a pineapple upside down cake.

I've returned to baking as a pastime. I grew up with Gram's baking and want to become accomplished at it, particularly sandwich cookies of various types. I've watched Paul, one of the judges on the Great British Baking Show, delight in appreciating - so eating - good baking and aspire to get back to it myself.

Anyway, suffice it to say I followed the recipe on the internet - very carefully - and when I turned the cake out onto a plate, brown sugary buttery slime splashed all over it, the counter, the floor.

I'd basically dolloped cake batter (the cake was sublime, by the way, one of the best I've ever made) over 1/2 cup of melted butter, brown sugar, and pineapple pieces. When I checked the recipe later, yup, that's what it said, but really, I should have realized the mistake. Indeed, I did wonder at no butter actually IN the cake batter, but such a trusting soul of Chef Google am I that I forged ahead.

Fortunately I had a carton of whipping cream - expiry date in February, bought in December? - and the pineapple upside down cake was saved as a... trifle!

Also I live with a 6'/180lb man who's been known to eat gas station pepperoni sticks - by choice. Oh and a dog whose nose then tongue found any lingering bits of brown sugary buttery slime not visible to the human eye.

But here's the part where the medication meets an eating/drinking/drug disorder (even a smoking disorder at times!) - when my partner served me up a bowl of "trifle" the next day, I decided immediately, right in front of him, no sparing of feelings, eye contact made, to return 3/4 of it to the pan. So show him what a serving size for a 5'5"/100lb woman with an eating disorder should be. And I thought it was for him but then realized, "Aha!" it was for me, I am now consciously, deliberately, thoughtfully choosing to do what's best for me, which is also what I want to do, never mind externalities.

In other words, the medication is working, which I find hard to believe, the therapist suggesting it's addressing a chemical imbalance, which I find even harder to believe. But why? Why do I find it hard to believe I've been challenged by a chemical imbalance? Clearly I have been. And whether I always had it or developed it along the way, accidentally, consequentially, who cares?

What's with all the blaming anyway? It's everywhere, too. Someone must always be blamed.

Absurd. Guilt, shame, blame. Rinse, repeat.

And speaking of therapy, also guilt, shame, blame, I thought the panic attacks I was having had to do with others, particularly my mother, childhood, young adulthood, middle adulthood, but now I know they just had to do with me, an imbalance in, not the force, my force.

So now when I look back, which I'm only doing to reclaim it from guilt, shame, blame, it's not "Oh dear, I did that..." (to me, to others) - it's "Hey, I did that!" (for me, for others).

I even did that trick the other day of "I don't have to walk Bernie, I get to walk Bernie."

It's January in Ottawa.

I've reference my mother a lot, too much, and not fairly (widows can be a lot) but she always told me "You have to put yourself first" and "You can't care what other people think"

Well I didn't get it then but I get it now.

Beta blockers for the win.😀

From Freaktown To Normville

So to continue the journey I find myself on, I had an intake interview connected to the prescription my doctor gave me to deal with the baseline anxiety behind the panic attacks I've been having.

I'm relieved to say I qualify for therapy.

It was an interesting process. The person doing the interview sounded young which I find reassuring nowadays. I have three Millennials of my own and they're definitely more attuned and empathetic to the effects of life on our psyches than we tail-end Boomers.

Cripes, no sooner did "parenting" become a verb than a Boomer put "helicopter" in front of it.

(Sorry GenXers, I keep forgetting you're there.)

There's resiliency, and then there's a stubborn failure to recognize we're freaks and should avail ourselves of help from others qualified to give it so we can experience life as norms.

(For context, please see Marge Simpson in The Simpsons "Freaks Vs Norms" episode.)

Here's irony for you, I've gone for help before, but it was on behalf of others. Or so I thought. But listening to myself throw in everything I could think of during the intake interview, so desperate am I to get to the bottom of these panic attacks, was eye opening. Hard even for me not to draw a line from purging to be slim, in spite of being vomit-phobic when actually nauseous, in my teenage years, to panic attacks accompanied by nausea requiring I purge to feel better in my 60s.

Yikes, eh? I guess there's a reason I include having had an eating disorder in the story I tell about myself. And yet it only came up as a "by the way" towards the end of the interview, at which point I thought I should probably mention beer and pot use on and off over the decades.

Why? Why would a health nut like me play with the fire of known carcinogens? My father died of cancer when I was four ffs. Carcinogens have been on my wick ever since. I was critiquing the Canada Food Guide in grade school, reading diet books focussed on fibre, doing yoga, jogging, worried sick about my younger sister eating too much sugar, directing Gram to go easy on the white, double up on the brown, more vegetables, less meat, on and on and on I went.

I started making ratatouille, bran muffins (just a bit of honey for sweetener), glass of water with every bite.

Now for the first time in my life I'm on prescription medication that puts a distance, a distance I imagine normal people are born with, feel naturally, between me and everybody and everything else.

Life, as it were. A little distance between me and life. And if a lion jumps out from behind a bush and eats me, well, I suppose it's my own fault my fight or flight response didn't kick in.

But at least I won't have spent hours nauseous and lying on the bathroom floor before I'm eaten.

I won't cite specifics here but suffice it to say a recent situation that would've had my fight or flight response revved up to 11 prior-to-medication (I know this because p-t-m me keeps trying to do it) has been relegated to: "At ease, soldier, situation normal. Also, others are on it, anyway. Your job is actually done here so go have some lunch or something."

Anyway, I'm blogging about this because I realize now I had the same fear of prescription medication to treat my own mental health condition as so many other people in need of it do. Or maybe it was a blindspot. Certainly I had no trouble advocating it for others. But when it came to myself I finally had to make myself go back to the doctor and say it for me: "I need help".

Because I did and I do. Never mind everybody else right now. I have to put my own oxygen mask on first.

Who Am I?

A Facebook friend posted an interesting graphic this morning that connects to my mission to take the story I tell myself about me in a different direction. This has to do, of course, with the panic attacks I've been experiencing since last spring. Although I'm on medication now to treat what the doctor I'm lucky enough to have refers to as the "base level of anxiety", it may be a while before I can access the requisite therapy to cope with the actual attacks.

Having said that, the other night, after receiving a morning call from a sibling involving another sibling and the death of an uncle (the last of my mother's siblings, much younger, and unexpected) I started to feel the now familiar onset of symptoms. Fortunately, I'd only had a small dinner - at home - and knew there was no reason I should have to rid myself of it. So I laid down in bed with a cool cloth on my forehead and breathed my way through the (this time milder) waves of nausea. Eventually I fell asleep to have first one dream and then another that together implied I'd always had the power to get home to Kansas, so to speak.

It's funny, I think of myself as an ally to other people claiming their human and civil right to change how they identify themselves from male to female, but what kind of ally am I really if I can't do the same for myself in less essential ways?

One of my favourite stories of reinvention comes from a cousin, a doctor, whose very socially inhibited (at the time) young adult son decided on a beach holiday with his family to make himself talk to a couple of young adult women also on a beach holiday. When nothing other than a brief friendly exchange of pleasantries came of it he realized he could do it again. And again. And again. And so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.

He reinvented himself as a young man comfortable engaging socially with people he didn't know, and maybe never would beyond a friendly exchange of pleasantries, and realized it was a way of being in the world he enjoyed.

Families are terrible for pigeon-holing us and in early days I was identified as a hypochondriac, anxious, saver for a rainy day. In short, a worry wart. As time went on decision-making became fraught, and whether to do something or not do something, however innocuous, it didn't matter, I'd be paralyzed. Along the way I came across "the flip side of procrastination is impulsivity" and recognized the truth in it. I'd even had a psychologist suggest to me "it's not a good decision or a bad decision, it's just a decision" but by then I was nearing 40 and my story was firmly entrenched.

Panic attacks are powerful calls to action, though, and so I want to change the story I tell myself about me. I have fallen into a pattern and mistaken it for my identity.

I will now step outside of it and allow myself a new way of being in the world.

Welcome to 2023

I don't know about you but this is the year I'm switching it up. No more worrying about money. That's right, I tweeted to the Prime Minister that I'm going to need a guaranteed annual income in 2024. I didn't specify the amount but I assume he knows it should be at least $25K.

I googled the medication I started taking a couple of weeks ago. It's turns out to be prozac. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel (1994) immediately came to mind, of course, and so I googled it. The reviews were mixed but also uniform in that the reviewers all found it "self-absorbed" (i.e. "first world problem") and it occurred to me, well yes, we know. Or, at least, some of us know. Some others of our selves have become so absorbed we're suffocating.

That's how I think of the panic attacks I started having in the spring. I'd have a perfectly nice outing with friends only to barely make it home, the feeling of dread and nausea permeating every last cell of my body on the bus, the only cure a terrifying purging broken up by what seem like interminable stretches of time lying on the cool bathroom floor feeling alienated from everyone and everything, no comfort to be had until it's over.

There are lots of possibilities as to why this is happening, although why it's happening now is a bit of a mystery to me. Not my doctor I'm lucky enough to have, however. They're the result of anxiety, a build up of it. Meanwhile, I was so used to it I actually heard myself claim in his office, "I'm not really an anxious person". Then I immediately corrected the lie "I don't know why I just said that - I'm the most anxious person I know. I've always been anxious. About everything. I'm anxious right now you won't believe I need help and I'm going to die having a panic attack."

They're very debilitating. Even the relief after they're over is just exhaustion striped with worry about when the next one will happen.

So I'm on medication for the first time in my life. Sober as a judge (again) because it suits me best, focused on right now. Never mind tomorrow - it's not real. The same goes for the past. It's not real either, just a made up story I've been telling myself, over and over and over and over and over and over...

I'm in my sixth decade and only just now realize my brain is part of my body. Also, I'm only in my head, I'm not in yours. And for whatever reason in this first world of ours my fight or flight response is way out of whack and I need medication now to treat my hurting brain.

It's early days but I think I may be on to something already. All my life, right up until now, I've thought I had to answer to somebody, so self-absorbed I didn't realize that somebody is me. Interestingly, as soon as I realized it, I could feel my lens starting to turn. Instead of just relentlessly staring in, it took a curious look out.

Again, early days, but here's to a new year and new beginnings anyway.

Christmas? What the #$*%! Is Christmas??

 John Waters said of Christmas, "You can love Christmas, or hate it, but you can't ignore it."

Truer words. And of course John Waters loves Christmas because what's tackier than Christmas?

Right - weddings. Every time I see one of those white wedding gowns now I think of silver Christmas trees. So mean, I know, but fuck the patriarchy in the ear, ladies. The only people who should be wearing white wedding gowns nowadays are Drag Queens. And why a Drag Queen would get married NOT wearing a white wedding gown is beyond me.

Oh dear. Did I just cancel myself? Whatever. Can't care about everything. And Christmas is definitely off my list of cares. In fact, I'm so past Christmas, I thought yesterday was Christmas Eve! Not that it mattered a whit when I found out, no, the Christmas people have now taken to saying "Christmas Eve Eve" and so I got confused, not having noticed the extra "Eve".

That's right - eves are being added to Christmas.

I'm on a so far not noticeable anti-anxiety medication, although perhaps the rest of you are reading this under your beds, given the weather bombs your loved ones are traveling in - during a pandemic in which our premiers have allowed our healthcare systems to implode because - clearly - they don't work for us.

No. Shut up. You're officially canceled if you think Ford Nation works for you and not the Mob.

I mean, developers.

And why it's healthcare "systems", plural, in a country with a population less than that of California is... annoying, but I suppose makes it easier for Putin to destroy Confederation via our blatantly corrupt and glaringly compromised premiers. Oh and Liberals, New Democrats and Greens who can't be arsed even to split the vote again so they squeak in to raid our treasuries for the Mob, I mean, developers, instead of march.

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about a Facebook memory that came up this morning about a tweet from last Christmas Eve, before the latest Putin puppet took over Twitter:

"LOL... just realized I hadn't made the bread for stuffing yet! OOPS...on it!"

Here's my Facebook memory:

Saw a tweet: "LOL... just realized I hadn't made the bread for stuffing yet! OOPS...on it!" & I wanted to reply: "You may as well cancel Christmas dinner then because bread should be stale for stuffing & yours is going to be fresh out of the oven." But then I thought about those reminders that come up now on Twitter when it's a "both sides" issue (so right vs wrong as if wrong isn't wrong it's just different from right) to remember before replying that there's a person behind the screen. #christmasspirit

Yes, I know - "You're a riot, Alice". 

But seriously, if you're doing Christmas from scratch - and if you're not, why are you doing Christmas at all? - and you've pretty much blown it by being late making the bread, rip it all up and stale it in the oven before making the stuffing and maybe it won't be a complete washout for you.

Also, and it's likely too late now, but you should add the spice packet from a box of StoveTop dressing, so as to re-create the *smell* of Christmas, but at greater expense and effort, of course.

If you're going to host - host. None of this "no one will care if everything's not perfect" bullshit. YOU care. So don't screw up like maybe you did last year by neglecting to buy organic cranberries dried in orange juice for that hit of sweet (but not too sweet!) with the savoury.

Dollarama may have a few boxes of StoveTop leftover from Christmases past. Worth a run in the gas guzzler to check. Because, trust me on this, once you stop keeping up with tradition (with updates because, although lard is easier to work with for your pastry, butter improves its flavour AND goes better with your mincemeat) you're just one short slide away from forgetting it altogether.