malfunction

Here's a little peek inside the head of a person who has a (albeit situational and temporary) mental disturbance.
Full of too many symbols and analogies.
~~~~~~~~~~


Seeee...something's just not quite right here.

It's some sort of anxiety thing. I am in fight or flight mode. I have that heart pounding, head popping, rush of adrenaline, normally reserved for defending the fort or running for the hills.

Except that there is nothing in my immediate sphere of existence to kill or outrun.

*sigh*
Sadly, this is not a new feeling to me. Since the accident, I've had this tweaky little phenomenon happening periodically at the unlikliest of moments. I deal with it just fine. I'm into the immersion method when it comes to dealing with my emotions...all of them... whether they are what you might call "good", "bad", otherwise. I'm actually entertained and charmed to no end playing with being as present as possible with my emotional states. I liken it to being a human tuning fork. But when it comes to humming along with the fight or flight thing, things are not so good. A little off key and little too much buzzing and vibrating, I think.

It can also be a little bit like immersing myself in an anxiety bath. Waiting for it to pass has proven to be a really bad thing if I let it go on for too long. More than a few days, and my floating begins to becoming a sinking...right into a deep pool of depression.

So when I get anxious, plan is....
keep moving.

See, I can usually take the hyper, "arm the battle stations!" feeling and do something useful with it. Like wash a few dishes or knit a few rows. Anxiety for me also sometimes feels like I have a cannon that is loaded and ready to fire, even though there is nothing to shoot at. What I try to do is make a conversion to having it pointed at something. Like a pile of laundry. Harness that energy, dammit!


But that's not what is happening this go round. The new twist for me this past week is that my freaky state is accompanied by a "deer in the headlights" sort of feeling. And I get to where I can't do ANYTHING. Completely Frozen. Motionless. On the outside. With a tiny little internal tornado of panic spinning around on the inside. THAT is a new feeling for me. And it feels icky. And I don't like it.

Seriously. It's like that immersion pool has a deep, silent, riptide floating underneath my otherwise lovely little floaty boat of panic in the sunshine. It's like it ripples to the surface and spins the boat around a few times and paddling is just no use. Just gotta kinda hang out. Which I'm not very good at. And then when the current lets go, I'm disoriented, and I have to figure out which way the damn boat is pointed because now I can't tell which direction I'm facing.


Good news, I guess, is that I've finally figured out what the force is that is flowing down there.
It's The Undercurrent O'Lawsuit.
Situational.
And temporary.

So long as you count a several year long event to be a situation that is temporary, I guess.



I'm blogging about this because one of the things that really helped me this week was TheMIG relating that he had felt that deer-headlights-tornado-thing when he bought his first house.

Hearing that helped me feel like less of a nutcase. It was good not be alone. It was also good to be reminded that I actually have felt this way before too...when I bought my first house. I just forgot about that feeling. Kinda like how women forget the pain of childbirth in 2 seconds flat. Okay, maybe 2 minutes flat.

But I survived buying the house. And I'll survive this.

No one is attacking the fort.

Even though there is something about feeling this strange that feels completely isolating, in some panic driven sort of way.

So if there is anyone else out there with a spinning boat...hi.
You aren't alone.