Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2002-10-28 01:47 am
azurelunatic) wrote2002-10-28 01:47 am
Mental Breakdowns: 3 for the Price of 1
Stuff I need to trace:
Me vs. my father in regard to my dominant bitch-side
Me interpreting "Don't depend on other people" as "Shut the hell off from everybody"
Introvert, Extrovert, and why neither of those really describe me fully
Perky-face on top of depression
What relation, if any, my liking for being dominated does mean (not trying to get rid of it, just realize what's there)
Why I have a hard time trusting those close to me sometimes
Why does exclusion hurt so much?
General notes:
When I'm depressed to the point of hurting myself, harsh words at me will make me want to go as far away as possible.
Given my gentle background, "harsh" is not very sharp at all.
There's a reason I never wore tank tops when I was a teenager, and it mostly has to do with pain and suffering and pinching my shoulders and upper arms until they looked like a flock of mosquitoes had descended for lunch. The marks would last a good three days or so...
Nobody knows the inside of my head like I do. Not even![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iroshi, Darkside, or boojum. If, after the breakdown, I say that I've been improving, using the past eight years as a baseline, then I have been getting better.
You try to drag me to a shrink if I do not want to go, and I will pitch a temper tantrum that Nephew couldn't even attempt to approach. In my own sweet way, of course.
Hugging me does a lot to prove to me that I'm not cut out of the Circle. I don't take things seriously unless there's a physical manifestation of it, often, partly because I'm stubborn, partly because I still have a hard time believing in magic, partly because it's just the way I am. Earth of Air, eh? I think that was a huge part of what those two did right, to make sure I wasn't abandoned...
I walk in perky and then withdraw. Perky is my public-face, and it's exhausting to maintain. It's a mask, in other words. At home, or in Darkside's presence, masks come off.
Perky isn't always a mask.
Dead-silent can be a mask too.
Right after I've broken down is my most vulnerable, and my most thoughtful, time. Long silences, if I'm speaking, if you're trusted enough to speak to, usually mean I've got something to say, but haven't even figured out how to phrase it to myself. Interrupting the long silence with something moodbreaking or long-winded is one of the worst things to do; that shoves me back inside myself (this is one of the reasons why the Viking hasn't made the list of those trusted around me, because that's what he never-failingly does...) and if I get shoved back in right then, I will end up not dealing with whatever I need to deal with.
Fiction with "happily ever after" endings are the worst things to give me when depressed. I cannot read A Civil Campaign when depressed, even though the butterbug dinner would otherwise be ideal for driving me out of a depression.
When at the depth of the depression, the part where I'm breaking down in tears and hiding in a corner, producing helpful literature on how to deal with depression is asking me to turn all the anger that I have inside myself at myself outward, very quickly, upon the source of the would-be help. And after that? More self-loathing for having failed to govern myself. Physical manifestation of "you are not alone" is the only thing I know of that helps.
The feeling of being in a room with other people, and knowing that you are invisible, unnoticed, and if you just disappeared right now, no one would even notice, is a very scary and bad one. Makes me want to do scary things that I know will scare people around me so they'll see me, and if they don't see me, that's OK too, because then they won't stop me.
If I tell you what's going on inside my head, rather than just letting it happen, this is both an improvement on my part and an expression of trust towards you. When I leave it inside, I won't deal with it. When I tell you, even if you just sit there, nod, and hug me, I'll be dealing with it, even if you don't say a word or know what to do. This feeds back on the "Don't depend on other people" thing. When you say "don't depend on other people", this makes me want to leave it inside, even though I know that I don't deal with it when I do that, because the act of talking it out makes solutions and probable causes start spinning around inside.
Most of my problems can be traced to "Dammit, I'm lonely."
Me vs. my father in regard to my dominant bitch-side
Me interpreting "Don't depend on other people" as "Shut the hell off from everybody"
Introvert, Extrovert, and why neither of those really describe me fully
Perky-face on top of depression
What relation, if any, my liking for being dominated does mean (not trying to get rid of it, just realize what's there)
Why I have a hard time trusting those close to me sometimes
Why does exclusion hurt so much?
General notes:
When I'm depressed to the point of hurting myself, harsh words at me will make me want to go as far away as possible.
Given my gentle background, "harsh" is not very sharp at all.
There's a reason I never wore tank tops when I was a teenager, and it mostly has to do with pain and suffering and pinching my shoulders and upper arms until they looked like a flock of mosquitoes had descended for lunch. The marks would last a good three days or so...
Nobody knows the inside of my head like I do. Not even
iroshi, Darkside, or boojum. If, after the breakdown, I say that I've been improving, using the past eight years as a baseline, then I have been getting better. You try to drag me to a shrink if I do not want to go, and I will pitch a temper tantrum that Nephew couldn't even attempt to approach. In my own sweet way, of course.
Hugging me does a lot to prove to me that I'm not cut out of the Circle. I don't take things seriously unless there's a physical manifestation of it, often, partly because I'm stubborn, partly because I still have a hard time believing in magic, partly because it's just the way I am. Earth of Air, eh? I think that was a huge part of what those two did right, to make sure I wasn't abandoned...
I walk in perky and then withdraw. Perky is my public-face, and it's exhausting to maintain. It's a mask, in other words. At home, or in Darkside's presence, masks come off.
Perky isn't always a mask.
Dead-silent can be a mask too.
Right after I've broken down is my most vulnerable, and my most thoughtful, time. Long silences, if I'm speaking, if you're trusted enough to speak to, usually mean I've got something to say, but haven't even figured out how to phrase it to myself. Interrupting the long silence with something moodbreaking or long-winded is one of the worst things to do; that shoves me back inside myself (this is one of the reasons why the Viking hasn't made the list of those trusted around me, because that's what he never-failingly does...) and if I get shoved back in right then, I will end up not dealing with whatever I need to deal with.
Fiction with "happily ever after" endings are the worst things to give me when depressed. I cannot read A Civil Campaign when depressed, even though the butterbug dinner would otherwise be ideal for driving me out of a depression.
When at the depth of the depression, the part where I'm breaking down in tears and hiding in a corner, producing helpful literature on how to deal with depression is asking me to turn all the anger that I have inside myself at myself outward, very quickly, upon the source of the would-be help. And after that? More self-loathing for having failed to govern myself. Physical manifestation of "you are not alone" is the only thing I know of that helps.
The feeling of being in a room with other people, and knowing that you are invisible, unnoticed, and if you just disappeared right now, no one would even notice, is a very scary and bad one. Makes me want to do scary things that I know will scare people around me so they'll see me, and if they don't see me, that's OK too, because then they won't stop me.
If I tell you what's going on inside my head, rather than just letting it happen, this is both an improvement on my part and an expression of trust towards you. When I leave it inside, I won't deal with it. When I tell you, even if you just sit there, nod, and hug me, I'll be dealing with it, even if you don't say a word or know what to do. This feeds back on the "Don't depend on other people" thing. When you say "don't depend on other people", this makes me want to leave it inside, even though I know that I don't deal with it when I do that, because the act of talking it out makes solutions and probable causes start spinning around inside.
Most of my problems can be traced to "Dammit, I'm lonely."
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Questions like that are the reasons why I put stuff like this on LJ.
That's getting added to the list of things I need to think about.
Thank you.
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You know I'm here for you. If you ever need to talk, you know my phone #. If the LD is too much $, feel free to call me and ask me to call you back. (Ah, the benefits of a cell phone!!) Never, ever hesitate to call if you want to talk to me; I'll never mind hearing from you or feel like it's an imposition.
And the only way I would ever break a long silence is by asking pertinent questions that I think might help to coagulate your thoughts.
And good gods, no, ACC would be a *horrible* book to read when one is depressed. The best ones for me, I've found, are stories where someone claws through a difficult situation by the skin of their teeth. I find myself able to struggle up out of the muck as I watch them struggle through their own difficulties.
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"You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on."
"What do you find on the other side? When you go on?"
"Your life again. What else?"
"Is that a promise?"
"It's an inevitability. No trick. No choice. You just go on."
I find that passage...not quite comforting, but helpful. YMM very well V, of course.
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Yes, I'd say Memory's a good one.
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And yeah, Memory in general is a good book for depression. It has a *lot* of clawing and struggling to get back to Real Life. Mirror Dance is pretty good, too, except that Mark sort of comes by his real life almost by accident. He does struggle and claw, but it's against something else entirely, and his gaining his identity and life seem almost coincidental in the process, making it less helpful than Memory is.
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I should write down the number on the sheet on the wall so I wouldn't have to look it up in LJ, because it keeps getting lost from Inanna.
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