Overview Styled Update
Okay, nice time for an update...
I met with my psychiatrist again a week ago Tuesday. As I've noted, I had been taking 20 mg per day of Fluoxetine before that, and last week he adjusted the prescription schedule a little, so now I'm taking 40 mg per day twice a week, and still 20 mg per day for the other days. In another week, I switch to 40 mg three times a week (and 20 mg otherwise), then I meet with him again and we see how things are going then.
I met with my good ol' therapist today (Tuesday) for our now once a month meeting. The last time I met with her was on January 9th, right before I started with any medication. She was able to notice a difference right away, before I even started going through my litany of my current status and various little things I've noticed. She even quantified it for me, on two scales. First, on a 0-10 scale, if 0 is "highly anxious" and 10 is "no anxiety at all, a.k.a. God level," then last month I was at about a 2-3, and this month I'm at about a 4-5. "Being able to hold a job" level is at about 6-7... I asked. Likewise, she said that my affect (accent on the first syllable, "af") is brighter now... I think that means something along the lines of my mood or outlook, or perhaps the "brightness of my aura," once could day. On that scale, I went from 1-2 last month to about a 5 now.
So, yeah... there are definitely some positive changes. Cross-referencing my subconscious, the psychiatrist's perspective, and my therapist's perspective today, everything seems to be saying the same thing-- namely that I'll probably be doing rather well about a month from now, maybe two months. So, that's good. I have to admit, patience is one thing that I've struggled with a lot; I've never been too good with "down time." So it's comforting to be in a situation now where I don't need to analyze my deep inner emotions and spiritual core extensively to make the next step-- I just need to keep taking my medication and continue keeping track of how things are going. It's kind of weird to be able to relax like this, especially given that my financial situation with the condo is, technically, about as bad, if not worse, than it's ever been. But yeah... I'm working on getting a home equity line of credit, and failing that coming through by the 13th or 14th, I can cash a check to take out a high interest loan that'll cover me for a couple months.
I finished reading The Disappearance of the Universe on the 2nd. I would describe it as a spirituality book for people who are looking for a book that's better than most spirituality books out there. I've read tons of spirituality books over the past five years or so, and this is one of the rare ones that I actually feel was still really able to help me progress even further. I also read most of the latest David Icke book, checking out copies in a couple different bookstores over the course of a number of visits over the past few weeks or so. His overall level of understanding of reality is excellent (and I've seen quite a few well-developed perspectives of reality) though the first couple chapters or so fall into the "crazy conspiracy theory" genre and would likely turn many people away... which is really a shame, considering how incredible the book gets by the time he starts talking about DNA and RNA, and mentioning The Holographic Universe, which is probably still my favorite book of all time. Anyway, yeah... this reading has really helped me fine tune my spiritual perspectives even more over the past couple months or so, mainly consolidating things and focusing them better. Forgiveness is huge for me now... that's probably about half a step past my usual in-depth analysis of my emotions and my psyche, and that's the step where spirituality progression really makes a practical difference.
For example, I've made great strides over the past couple months towards forgiving George W. Bush and his administration... seeing them more as people playing key roles in "the game." Sure, they're often "the bad guys," but I'm not really emotionally attached to their actions any more... it's more like a movie to me than it was before, and I'm much more at peace with the goings on of the world than I had been. I'm realizing more and more that the real problem is more along the lines of "I'm upset" than "so-and-so is causing my world to suck, and is causing me to be upset." Physiologically speaking, being upset is a brain chemistry thing for me. Given that I can medicate that, it's therefore a choice. So I'm pursuing happiness, and pursuing it directly... and almost nothing aside from my brain chemistry is really having all that much of a negative impact on me any more, which totally rocks. It's great to have periods of time here and there now when I'm just... happy. That happened a week ago Saturday, then it happened at least for a little while on this past Friday and this past Sunday. The great thing about being happy in those instances is that it's a baseline, and everything else plays into it... the circumstances of my day become happy occurrences because I'm happy myself. It all starts inside. Granted, I can't totally abstract it out into the spiritual and transcend chemistry entirely, but at least I can work reasonably with that limitation.
I've also started playing through one of my old Playstation games again, this one called Alundra. Someone mentioned it on a top 100 games list and I got really excited about it right then... I knew I wanted to play through it again, and that was even before it came up in the actual list. This is progress for me, because I usually tend to look at videogames in a slightly obsessive "play through and beat games I haven't beaten yet" dynamic... that's part of what's led me to beating over 250 videogames over the years. But yeah, some games are just really a lot of fun, and are worth playing through again. I'm still working on Zelda for Wii as well, basically dividing time between these two games over the past couple days now. Alundra's an afternoon/early evening game, and Zelda is more of an "after midnight but before bed" game.
The biggest problem I have at this point, aside from the financial issues in general, is dealing with my parents and their perspective of me. They're really not very good at understanding that psychiatry is more of an art than a science. Hence, I got into an argument when I was visiting on Saturday night, since they're wondering why I'm not making efforts to go back to work yet, given that I started with the medication a number of weeks ago now. I'm starting to see where at least part of my impatience and lack of ability to do well with "down time" comes from, if they've been breathing down my back, so to speak, like this for my whole life. They also have this weird idea that it's difficult to adjust one's schedule when one starts a new job, so they think I should try going to bed earlier now. I'm not sure how one explains to them that it really isn't that difficult at all for me to shift my schedule-- when I started my last job, I went from getting up at 1 pm to getting up before 8 am in a day or two, and was totally shifted into my new dynamic by Wednesday of my first work week. (Heck, and I was even working on editing some novel pages together for my writing group over those couple days as well, and I still pulled it all off well enough.) They don't seem to understand that one has to have motivation in order to take action in any given direction. It's basically an extenstion one of Newton's three laws-- a body at rest remains at rest unless a force acts on it. Bedtimes and schedules are very similar. If there's no reason for me to do something, I don't do it. "Caring what other people think" doesn't really faze me a great deal here.
I met with my psychiatrist again a week ago Tuesday. As I've noted, I had been taking 20 mg per day of Fluoxetine before that, and last week he adjusted the prescription schedule a little, so now I'm taking 40 mg per day twice a week, and still 20 mg per day for the other days. In another week, I switch to 40 mg three times a week (and 20 mg otherwise), then I meet with him again and we see how things are going then.
I met with my good ol' therapist today (Tuesday) for our now once a month meeting. The last time I met with her was on January 9th, right before I started with any medication. She was able to notice a difference right away, before I even started going through my litany of my current status and various little things I've noticed. She even quantified it for me, on two scales. First, on a 0-10 scale, if 0 is "highly anxious" and 10 is "no anxiety at all, a.k.a. God level," then last month I was at about a 2-3, and this month I'm at about a 4-5. "Being able to hold a job" level is at about 6-7... I asked. Likewise, she said that my affect (accent on the first syllable, "af") is brighter now... I think that means something along the lines of my mood or outlook, or perhaps the "brightness of my aura," once could day. On that scale, I went from 1-2 last month to about a 5 now.
So, yeah... there are definitely some positive changes. Cross-referencing my subconscious, the psychiatrist's perspective, and my therapist's perspective today, everything seems to be saying the same thing-- namely that I'll probably be doing rather well about a month from now, maybe two months. So, that's good. I have to admit, patience is one thing that I've struggled with a lot; I've never been too good with "down time." So it's comforting to be in a situation now where I don't need to analyze my deep inner emotions and spiritual core extensively to make the next step-- I just need to keep taking my medication and continue keeping track of how things are going. It's kind of weird to be able to relax like this, especially given that my financial situation with the condo is, technically, about as bad, if not worse, than it's ever been. But yeah... I'm working on getting a home equity line of credit, and failing that coming through by the 13th or 14th, I can cash a check to take out a high interest loan that'll cover me for a couple months.
I finished reading The Disappearance of the Universe on the 2nd. I would describe it as a spirituality book for people who are looking for a book that's better than most spirituality books out there. I've read tons of spirituality books over the past five years or so, and this is one of the rare ones that I actually feel was still really able to help me progress even further. I also read most of the latest David Icke book, checking out copies in a couple different bookstores over the course of a number of visits over the past few weeks or so. His overall level of understanding of reality is excellent (and I've seen quite a few well-developed perspectives of reality) though the first couple chapters or so fall into the "crazy conspiracy theory" genre and would likely turn many people away... which is really a shame, considering how incredible the book gets by the time he starts talking about DNA and RNA, and mentioning The Holographic Universe, which is probably still my favorite book of all time. Anyway, yeah... this reading has really helped me fine tune my spiritual perspectives even more over the past couple months or so, mainly consolidating things and focusing them better. Forgiveness is huge for me now... that's probably about half a step past my usual in-depth analysis of my emotions and my psyche, and that's the step where spirituality progression really makes a practical difference.
For example, I've made great strides over the past couple months towards forgiving George W. Bush and his administration... seeing them more as people playing key roles in "the game." Sure, they're often "the bad guys," but I'm not really emotionally attached to their actions any more... it's more like a movie to me than it was before, and I'm much more at peace with the goings on of the world than I had been. I'm realizing more and more that the real problem is more along the lines of "I'm upset" than "so-and-so is causing my world to suck, and is causing me to be upset." Physiologically speaking, being upset is a brain chemistry thing for me. Given that I can medicate that, it's therefore a choice. So I'm pursuing happiness, and pursuing it directly... and almost nothing aside from my brain chemistry is really having all that much of a negative impact on me any more, which totally rocks. It's great to have periods of time here and there now when I'm just... happy. That happened a week ago Saturday, then it happened at least for a little while on this past Friday and this past Sunday. The great thing about being happy in those instances is that it's a baseline, and everything else plays into it... the circumstances of my day become happy occurrences because I'm happy myself. It all starts inside. Granted, I can't totally abstract it out into the spiritual and transcend chemistry entirely, but at least I can work reasonably with that limitation.
I've also started playing through one of my old Playstation games again, this one called Alundra. Someone mentioned it on a top 100 games list and I got really excited about it right then... I knew I wanted to play through it again, and that was even before it came up in the actual list. This is progress for me, because I usually tend to look at videogames in a slightly obsessive "play through and beat games I haven't beaten yet" dynamic... that's part of what's led me to beating over 250 videogames over the years. But yeah, some games are just really a lot of fun, and are worth playing through again. I'm still working on Zelda for Wii as well, basically dividing time between these two games over the past couple days now. Alundra's an afternoon/early evening game, and Zelda is more of an "after midnight but before bed" game.
The biggest problem I have at this point, aside from the financial issues in general, is dealing with my parents and their perspective of me. They're really not very good at understanding that psychiatry is more of an art than a science. Hence, I got into an argument when I was visiting on Saturday night, since they're wondering why I'm not making efforts to go back to work yet, given that I started with the medication a number of weeks ago now. I'm starting to see where at least part of my impatience and lack of ability to do well with "down time" comes from, if they've been breathing down my back, so to speak, like this for my whole life. They also have this weird idea that it's difficult to adjust one's schedule when one starts a new job, so they think I should try going to bed earlier now. I'm not sure how one explains to them that it really isn't that difficult at all for me to shift my schedule-- when I started my last job, I went from getting up at 1 pm to getting up before 8 am in a day or two, and was totally shifted into my new dynamic by Wednesday of my first work week. (Heck, and I was even working on editing some novel pages together for my writing group over those couple days as well, and I still pulled it all off well enough.) They don't seem to understand that one has to have motivation in order to take action in any given direction. It's basically an extenstion one of Newton's three laws-- a body at rest remains at rest unless a force acts on it. Bedtimes and schedules are very similar. If there's no reason for me to do something, I don't do it. "Caring what other people think" doesn't really faze me a great deal here.