About a week has passed since I took my last dosage of psych meds (Detox Diary), and I’ve just noticed an interesting phenomenon. My brain seems to be reverting to an old coping mechanism from my abuse days – shut down, feel nothing. I’ve only noticed it in retrospect, as in “That was an odd reaction to that situation.” Feelings of depression or anxiety will start to overwhelm me, then all of a sudden I’ll feel nothing. After that, I become very sleepy. Then today I participated in something that “normally” would have been the sort of thing during which I’d be crying “happy” tears (or at least sniffling), yet I felt nothing…again. This blunted affect is just as disturbing as uncontrolled mania or depression. It’s unexpected, and I don’t like that. I was prepared for the extremes, I had a plan; I was not prepared for my brain bizarrely taking over.
I’ve written that last paragraph over and over, and I cannot come up with a satisfying way of stating what I’m experiencing. That’s another thing…not being able to express myself in an articulate manner. My brain is flying all over the place, too much stimuli to cope with, too many racing thoughts, too many “feels.” There, that explains it…too much brain crap leads to brain shut down (how’s that for a concise psychological explanation?).
As a matter of fact, now that I analyze it, quite a bit of my past behavior from being abused is surfacing. While I’ve always had problems with self-doubt and negative thinking, it’s been particularly overwhelming. The quantity and quality of trash talking I’ve been doing to myself is horrific. If I heard someone speaking this way to another person, I’d probably yell at them to knock it off. Everything I do is wrong, everything I say is wrong, everything I think is wrong, everything I write is wrong. I was at the point of cancelling my trip next week because I was absolutely certain my daughter and grandchildren did not want to see me. I mean, really, why would they want to spend time with a blithering idiot? I’m sure my daughter has enough stress in her life without having to deal with me for six days. Not to mention my grandsons…Greg is the fun one, not me. Ugh, see what I mean? STFU, Sheri!
In spite of all this, there’s a tiny and weak little voice trying to be heard above the din of negativity “You can do this, I know you can.”
Tagged: bipolar disorder, detox, medications-psychiatric, PTSD 
