I am finally out of fight or flight. Over the last three days I have not had any of the heart racing, pulse pounding, I need to tear off my skin to protect myself nonsense that I have been living with for so long. Sometimes I will catch myself just sitting quietly on the couch, reading or answering a text and I’m like, it’s okay now. I feel safe.
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The second someone explained to me that it was a journal where you could write down all of your deepest thoughts and feelings, but it was totally public, I could not even comprehend why anyone would want this. Even as a teenager I knew this was basically an unending portal of angsty teen drama the likes of which I had never seen before.
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Similarly, in an intro to psychology class in my first year of college, I was the most introverted person in the class. I use to think my introversion was my most stable personality trait at a time when my own identity was a mystery I had no idea how to solve.
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Risperidone withdrawal readjustment is awful. I have been back on it for several weeks now, who knows exactly how long? I am still not feeling back to any kind of normal. The fight or flight is gone, thankfully, but no longer feeling like I have to defend myself from imminent attack is hardly a bar I want to set.
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After having all of these health issues for so long, I now have stomach flu. It must have picked me off like wounded gazelle because I was already having so many problems. It’s just rude, you know?
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Finally figured out what has been bugging me for a while and figured out what’s going on (probably). Basically, my vagus nerve is a lazy piece of shit and even though my sinus surgery fixed the cause of my pretty extensive vagus nerve dysfunction, it refuses to act like the last 10 years didn’t happen and just snap out of it.
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Identity is a weird thing. For the last 19 years my identity has included living with bipolar disorder. Two weeks ago I found out that this was a misdiagnosis. I am now slowly running into each and every ingrained thought pattern that doesn’t work anymore.
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As I was writing the previous blog, I had a very visceral memory of trying on wedding dresses for the first time and feeling so utterly uncomfortable in my body that I disassociated to the point where I had an out of body experience.
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I read The Good Body by Eve Ensler in college and I desperately yearned for the kind of self-acceptance it modeled. But I wasn’t there yet. But I got there eventually. As equal parts apology, acknowledgement, and wonder, I want to say a few things about my body. All of them are way overdue.
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Risperidone withdrawal (and readjustment) comes in “waves and windows.” Windows of feeling okay, waves of feeling like wet trash on a hot day. The idea is as you finish the withdrawal or readjust, that the windows become longer and longer and waves become less severe. So I’m having a good day today and I feel like a human being. Yay!
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