Doing Things
When I started applying for jobs, it was broadly because I've been feeling bored in the house, with nothing to do, and I felt vaguely ready to face up to holding don a job without losing my mind.
Initially, things went well on the job front. Although it was stressful, I felt I could cope and someone was being positive. Things were going well. However, then things started to get a little too stressful, and I started to retreat a little from life. I thought that it wouldn't matter that I did, as the job application thing was happening and nothing would come of it quickly.
Then I found out that I'd missed calls and I suddenly panicked. It fel like things were slipping away from me. I couldn't control the pace at which the job application was going and therefore I couldn't control the level of stress I was under and that scared me. I also felt that I was repeating mistakes I'd made in the past, by applying for things and then screwing up the follow-up.
My response to this is really strange, but it's what I kept doing at Birmingham and also happened during the Islington Work Placement, so it's useful that I did it now as I can understand it and not do it again. My reaction was to increase the level of stress I was under until I was panicking ever worse by doing things. I develop a compulsive urge that I have to Do Things in order not to think, so that it becomes obsessive. When I'm Doing Things, I don't have to think about why I'm stressed or why I'm upset or whatever. It seems to be some very broken form of coping mechanism, because the net result is that the Doing Things only makes me more stressed and more upset. I also can't sleep unless I'm exhausted or relax, because both of these involve not Doing Things. As a result, I'm in a feedback cycle that's heading for a very nasty nervous breakdown.
All of this was really easy to see when I recased my computer. I didn't back up my data as I have done for other computers I've dealth with, so I had the added stress of potentially losing all my data. Stress also seems to block my thirst and hunger mechanisms so I don't have to eat or drink (they are not Doing Things, so they are bad) and it increases my pain threshold so I don't notice pain so much (which explains why I did my knees in on this computer, but not my parents' computer).
I also got into a flaming row with my father because a cable I needed to access the internet and install drivers wasn't working because he'd moved it and disconnected it. It was simple to download the files for the wifi onto a USB harddrive on another computer and transfer them across, but only after I'd had a flaming row with my father because clearly he moved the cable just to spite me and got in the way of the shortest distance for me to Do Things. *shakes head in bemusement*
Anyway, I'm trying to slow down now and stop Doing Things and go back to being bored. This will hopefully break the cycle and force my brain to confront whatever is causing the obsessive behaviour and get out of this rut, because it's not doing me any good and I pretty much hate it. Watever it is, it will be messy, painful, good for me and, always, inevitably related to gender.
Initially, things went well on the job front. Although it was stressful, I felt I could cope and someone was being positive. Things were going well. However, then things started to get a little too stressful, and I started to retreat a little from life. I thought that it wouldn't matter that I did, as the job application thing was happening and nothing would come of it quickly.
Then I found out that I'd missed calls and I suddenly panicked. It fel like things were slipping away from me. I couldn't control the pace at which the job application was going and therefore I couldn't control the level of stress I was under and that scared me. I also felt that I was repeating mistakes I'd made in the past, by applying for things and then screwing up the follow-up.
My response to this is really strange, but it's what I kept doing at Birmingham and also happened during the Islington Work Placement, so it's useful that I did it now as I can understand it and not do it again. My reaction was to increase the level of stress I was under until I was panicking ever worse by doing things. I develop a compulsive urge that I have to Do Things in order not to think, so that it becomes obsessive. When I'm Doing Things, I don't have to think about why I'm stressed or why I'm upset or whatever. It seems to be some very broken form of coping mechanism, because the net result is that the Doing Things only makes me more stressed and more upset. I also can't sleep unless I'm exhausted or relax, because both of these involve not Doing Things. As a result, I'm in a feedback cycle that's heading for a very nasty nervous breakdown.
All of this was really easy to see when I recased my computer. I didn't back up my data as I have done for other computers I've dealth with, so I had the added stress of potentially losing all my data. Stress also seems to block my thirst and hunger mechanisms so I don't have to eat or drink (they are not Doing Things, so they are bad) and it increases my pain threshold so I don't notice pain so much (which explains why I did my knees in on this computer, but not my parents' computer).
I also got into a flaming row with my father because a cable I needed to access the internet and install drivers wasn't working because he'd moved it and disconnected it. It was simple to download the files for the wifi onto a USB harddrive on another computer and transfer them across, but only after I'd had a flaming row with my father because clearly he moved the cable just to spite me and got in the way of the shortest distance for me to Do Things. *shakes head in bemusement*
Anyway, I'm trying to slow down now and stop Doing Things and go back to being bored. This will hopefully break the cycle and force my brain to confront whatever is causing the obsessive behaviour and get out of this rut, because it's not doing me any good and I pretty much hate it. Watever it is, it will be messy, painful, good for me and, always, inevitably related to gender.