Neurofeedback

All right, people, I think I've finally been participating in these shenanigans long enough to be able to explain to you, with at least some degree of clarity, what's going on over here with the neurofeedback thing.

I won't be able to get too fancy about it, which is probably best-- this stuff seems to get pretty fancy pretty quickly and leaves the laymen amongst us behind.

And let's face it, we're pretty much all laymen when it comes to complicated electro-neuroscience, amirite?

For a general overview of what neurofeedback does, I'll quote Dr. Q:

Neurofeedback is an adjunctive mental health treatment that helps optimize or fine-tune the functioning of the central nervous system. While psychotherapy addresses questions of meaning, relational patterns and skills, and facilitates grief and coping with life stressors, neurofeedback can be used to calm a nervous system that has become chronically overaroused through repeated life stressors, or to train the brain to create and sustain more focused attention. Calm, focus, and balance.

Sounds kind of like what I said last time, eh?

Dr. Q talks about how neuroscience goes beyond the understanding of the the brain within the confines of psychology and theories of personality-- it moves into the realm of the arousal model and the electrical activity of the brain: 

The arousal model goes something like this: your CNS or brain works like a brake and gas pedal at the same time. Without good brakes (overaroused), you can’t be calm. Without gas (underaroused), you can’t get going, focus, or sustain attention. There are also patterns of mixed or unstable arousal.

What we have found is that a traumatized brain (whether the trauma occurred through discrete specific events like a car accident, or more subtly throughout development as in chronic emotional abuse or neglect, e.g. a person who grows up with a mentally ill parent) tends to be overaroused. A person feels anxious often, or hypervigilant, and reacts out-of-proportion to stressful events of everyday life. This can really interrupt the functioning of an otherwise bright and capable person!**

Um. Ahem. Sound like anyone you know read know?

So in other words, in case you didn't catch that perfectly-tailored-to-kate-the-girl-who-lived final paragraph, one of the primary functions of neurofeedback is to calm an overaroused brain and restore balance and normal, calm regulated activity.

SIGN ME UP, BABY!

_____

I'll describe a baseline-setting and a typical (as I understand it, so far) neurofeedback session so you can get an idea of how this works. It's really fascinating and my inner Sherlock (and the inner Sherlocks of many I've told already) is extremely excited about all of this business because it's super geek-heavy and intellectually satisfying to sink your teeth into, and yet there's enough surreal craziness to it to make it seem a bit magical, too.

And there are pictures!

Okay, so the first thing that happens is that the doctor needs to get a baseline setting.

This means that they need to measure the current activity in your brain, as it is, so that they can compare it to normal, healthy brain activity and see where the trouble spots are.

On a typical person, this can be accomplished by applying sensors to eight different spots on the scalp and taking a EEG (electroencephalogram) measurement. An EEG measures the voltage fluctuations within the neurons of the brain.

So they hook you up to all these sensors. The sensors look like this:

That is a sensor. That is NOT, however, my hairline. Hmph. As if.     

The sites for the sensors are determined by a head chart that makes sense to the doctor, but, alas, not to me. There are a few, actually, in increasing degrees of detail and complexity, but I'll show you the simplest one, which shows prime placement settings to get good readings for general areas of the brain that will give the doc good information about the function within major brain structures:

Surprisingly, this IS my head. Dr. Q went to place the sensors and she was like, "Wait, have you done this before?"
And I was all, "What do you mean?"

So, in the first session, the doc applies sensors to the eight most primely-located spots of the ones in the chart above (F3, FZ, F4; C3, CZ, C4; and P3, PZ, and P4 among them, as I recall), to gather info from the temporal and frontal lobes where all your higher functions happen, including language, organization, and memory retention; the parietal lobe and the central crossing between the two hemispheres, where all your sensory functions take place; and the occipital lobe, where your visual processing happens.

PTSR point of interest: see those big markers at C3 and C4? My amygdala-- my Lizard Brain-- is just under those. I just learned that, just now. 

Wow. 

That explains something I'll tell you about later.

Anyway, the sensors are applied and the wires go to a router that is attached to the doc's computer.

Here's an important point: no actual electricity is zapped into me during this process.

You might have been wondering about that. You can stop.

All the sensors do is read what's going on. They do not attempt to affect anything.

In fact, they never  do. The thing about neurofeedback-- the thing about biofeedback in general-- is that all it does is provide the patient with information about the body, and the patient uses that information to make changes his or herself.

So no creepy scientist hijinks take place during this or any other post. In case that was what you were here for.

I'll let you know if it comes to that. I am not, shall we say, averse.

So there you are, hooked up. And then you sit there for a while, while the doctor's computer gathers a bunch of information from your brain. 

You can watch while it happens. It looks like so:

Voila.

It measures the voltage in three general ranges: alpha, beta, and theta waves.

I'll be able to explain more about those types of waves in the future. I don't know much about them now, and the more I look up to try to explain what I do know, the more I confuse myself. Suffice it to say that there are waves and they are squiggly and they mean something to some people and those people can tell me things when they see them, and I will tell you that stuff when I hear it.

The important bit is this: the baseline reading from my brain was compared with normal, healthy function from normal, healthy brains, and then certain conclusions were drawn and certain assertions and decisions were made based upon those conclusions.

_____

In a typical session, the doctor compares the baseline reading to normal function and prepares a treatment protocol based upon the particular needs of your particular brain. 

For example, if you show too little beta frequency in your frontal lobe, it is likely that you are having trouble with energy, focus, and getting tasks completed. You are probably experiencing a lot of stress and may be having trouble sleeping and experiencing anxiety as a result.

So the doctor will develop a protocol to work on increasing the beta frequency in your frontal lobe.

How, you might ask?

Well. Check THIS out:

While she's got your frontal lobe sensor spots hooked up to her computer so she can see what they're doing, she might set up a few "reward" and "inhibit" settings for the frequencies in that part of your brain. That means that she'll put a floor and a ceiling on the acceptable healthy frequency range that she'd like to see your brain stay within.

This is all on her computer, remember. Just a little boundary marker around where she'd like to see that squiggly line come in from the sensor.

And then she gives you a computer screen of your own to look at. 

Your computer screen isn't hooked up to any sensors. On the screen is a picture of something pleasant to look at-- I always pick flowers (my other option is "horses and butterflies," which sounds a little too 9-year-old-girl for my taste).

The picture, however, is covered by a blank screen that is divided into squares. As you sit there, relaxed, watching the screen, not doing anything deliberately (this is a completely passive process-- the more you try to "control" it with your conscious mind, the less it works), you begin to hear a steady series of BEEPs, and with each BEEP, a single square is uncovered and a bit of the picture underneath is revealed.

(I couldn't find a good picture of this to show you)

You may have guessed this already: each BEEP and square of picture is your reward for an interval of time staying within the "healthy" frequency as set by the doctor and as detected by the sensors.

The brain, being a pattern-seeking machine, instinctively interprets these BEEPs and picture-parts correctly as the rewards they are and tries to get more of them. Basically, it begins to autocorrect itself, attempting to keep the pattern going and accumulate more of the rewards.

Amazingly, as the brain does this, it begins not only to strengthen its ability to create and stay within that frequency, but the other structures of the brain begin to regulate around that healthier frequency, automatically becoming healthier themselves in the process.

_____

Amazing, right?!

I KNOW!!

So, that's what happens with a typical person.

Ha ha.

Surprise surprise: I am not that person. Turns out I have several enormous red flags of the sort that have caused Doctor Q to

1. Tell me that she would not have felt comfortable taking my case even a year ago, and would be willing to refer me to people with more experience if I preferred, but that if I didn't mind her seeking supervision on my case now, she would like to accept the challenge, and
2. Frequently look at me as if I were a delicious, juicy steak.

Migraines, PTSD, and TBI are all particular complicators of neurofeedback, and each condition calls for an extremely careful and delicate touch. 

All three together, and at the extreme levels that mine present, call for some acrobatics that, at times, defy logic and physics-- some protocols are completely at odds with each other. 

So, in order to prevent exacerbating anything or retraumatizing me or making anything worse, Dr. Q has been averse to doing anything beyond very basic calming techniques on me for these first few weeks until we are able to get the results back from a far more detailed EEG that we did this past week.

It's called the "QEEG." (Hence "Dr. Q." See what I did there?)

In this test, we did basically the same thing as the first one, except I was attached at ALL of the sensor sites: 

BINGO!

In this way, Dr. Q (and her mentor, who will be doing the deep analysis of this data) can get the deepest, most detailed reading possible on my brain, broken up into the smallest segments.

Then they'll be able to develop protocols that can target small sections at a time and keep from irritating areas that don't need it and might not be able to sustain it.

Or, at least, that's my simplistic explanation for what's going on. I'm sure there's more to it, including what else they might uncover with this more detailed test.

I know I gave you a big laundry list of things I learned about my brain after the last test, but there were some things I left out of that post just because I was a bit overwhelmed by it all and, frankly, some of it seemed like small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

Like the marker that indicated that I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and/or a major sleep disorder.

Um. Well. Duh. I guess it's hard to get too riled up over that when your anxiety and hypervigilance has your brain buzzing out of your skull every day of your life. What do they think makes me so tired and sore in the first place?

But I joke.

Actually, that one sort of washed over me in an ironic haze because those were the first things I tried talking to doctors about, way back in the 90s, way back when I first began to notice that something was wrong with me and it didn't make sense, and those were the first things that seemed to fit.

Doctors smiled condescendingly at me and sent me on my hysterical way, back then.

Today, my electricity doesn't lie.

Here's some more stuff my electricity doesn't lie about:

• My depression is still very high, despite the fact that I am on an antidepressant
• My anxiety is extremely high. High enough that it could be causing depression in its own right, and probably is
• My brain has difficulty shifting between states, meaning that I likely often find myself feeling (get this-- this is the exact word she used, I shit you not)-- "foggy"
• My brain shows signs of extreme sleep deprivation
• My brain function is very slow in the area of my TBI, which affects the function in the rest of my brain, making it function "inefficiently" as a whole
• My brain shows clear signs of extreme hyper-arousal, at a level usually seen in veterans recently returned from combat. This, of course, is my PTSR
• The level of this hyper-arousal is so extreme, in fact, that Dr. Q gently told me I am at very high risk for addiction, because people with levels of constant, relentless activity like this in their brains are typically looking for something--anything-- to calm it. 

Yep. Today, my electricity doesn't lie.

Today, my electricity is dealing up some motherfucking truth, and that motherfucking truth is that EVERY SINGLE THING I HAVE THOUGHT WAS TRUE HAS BEEN TRUE.

And more truth, I suspect, is on the way with the results of that QEEG.

One more thing before I go-- this has been a long post, I know, with a lot of information, but it's been building up and I needed to get this all out here and you know how I like to end on a bright spot and guess what? 

There is one!

One other thing I learned in that first EEG was pretty cool and I didn't get to tell you about it yet.

One thing you do a lot when you're taking these EEGs is close your eyes for a while and then open your eyes for a while. I guess it changes the way the readings come in in some important way or something.

Anyway, there's one particular area-- I forget which-- where they watch how much a certain frequency jumps when you close your eyes. Dr. Q's mentor calls a jump of 150 volts or more "The Artist's Signature." Apparently, he sees a big jump happen there in particularly bright, creative people.

Mine jumped by 280.

So high, in fact, that Dr. Q thought it was TOO high and ran it by him to double-check that it didn't mean something else entirely. I spent a couple of days in limbo, wondering if I was a creative or an axe murderer.

Turns out I needn't have worried. Said Mr. Mentor: I am an "extremely impressive" creative.

Said Dr. Q: "So... imagine, if we can get the rest of this sorted out and free all that creativity! You're going to be a force to be reckoned with!"

And I thought, you know, after all of this, I can honestly think of no better goal than that.

The Girl Who Lived: A Force To Be Reckoned With.

Oooh, oooh, and the sequel: The Girl Who Lived: A Force To Be Reckoned With 2: Electric Boogaloo!

COMING SOON TO A UNIVERSE NEAR YOU!


**Because neurofeedback is so awesome, and because too few people take advantage of it, and because Dr. Q is an excellent practitioner who deserves more business, I am going to give you her real name, which is Silvia Costales, MFT, BCN, and link you to her real website, which is here. Her office is located in Berkeley, CA, but if you are interested in neurofeedback, I strongly encourage you to look for a practitioner in your area.
  

Holy Paradigm Shift, Batman!

The last week has been...

...it's difficult to describe.

I don't think it's possible to overstate the significance of what has happened.

Or. Since very little has actually happened yet, I should say, perhaps, what is about to happen. Or what might happen. What has great potential to happen.

And yet.

So much, so astonishingly much seems to have happened already in such a short time that I already feel like I've gotten quite a bit of my money's worth.

_____

First of all, I'm being bombarded by images and ideas for where to start. There is so much to say, so many things to tell you already that I have to just pick one or two and stick with those for today.

I have this idea I want to try to describe.

This neurofeedback thing I'm doing is huge, okay? It's as huge, I think, as everything I've done leading up to this point, scope-wise. It's an enormous undertaking. It's a major thing, with life-changing revelations and life-changing impact of its own, above and beyond all the stuff I've already discovered and worked through and struggled with and written about.

It could be seen, in that way, like starting over. It would not be exaggerating, I don't think, to classify it that way.

Except:

It doesn't feel that way to me at all, because instead of starting over-- as in, re-starting from the beginning-- this feels more like taking up the thread from the other end and working back toward the middle.

Or... no. Not that.

And not like taking up from where I left off and continuing on, either. It's better than that. Bigger. More.

It's this:

I came to Dr. Oz four years ago and said "I think I might have this box, somewhere in the back of my closet, I'm not sure. I don't know what it looks like and I don't know if it's there or not but sometimes I get this feeling that it might be and I'm wondering if you could help me look."

And Dr. Oz said, "Yes. I can help you look."

And that's what we did for a while. We looked. And then, one night, we found it.

And then we slowly worked the lid off, one tiny little crack at a time. And as things started to slip out of it, Dr. Oz helped me figure out what to call them, and sometimes, to the extent that I was able, she helped me figure out what they felt like, smelt like, tasted like, sounded like. To the extent that I was able, she helped my body remember them.

Since then, at some point the lid came off the box completely and I've been sitting inside this swirling tornado of things I can't see, things I can only sometimes feel, things I've been pretty much constantly overwhelmed by and wondering when, if ever, I'd be able to make sense of. I've had this sense of myself as standing there in the middle of a giant, swirling, turbulent fog, holding an empty box, wondering how on earth I'd ever be able to get all that shit back inside it again.

I know what they're called. I know what they feel like, a bit. I know how they interact with each other. I know much more about them than I did before. But I still feel, for the most part, that I have no more control over them than I ever did.

But then, something crazy happened.

I went to Dr. Q two weeks ago on a tangentially-related mission, and said, "I have some things I need to get back into this box, but there are so many of them and it's impossible to see them all and I don't really know where to start. I'm wondering if you could help me with that."

And Dr. Q said, "Yes, I can help you put them back. All of them."

"Wait. All of them?"

"Yep, I think so," said Dr. Q.

"First," she said, "Let me show what they all look like." And she showed me their shapes and sizes, and where they were and where they belonged. 

My depression is a slow blue wave that snakes through the top of my head from left to right.

My anxiety is electric green and shivers down the sides from my crown.

My PTSD is a white, buzzing golf ball of electric lines, spinning tightly behind my left ear.

She gave them parameters. 

Perimeters.

She plucked them out of the swirling fog and contained them on a computer screen.

She gave them shapes and let me see them for the first time.

"Here they are," she said. 

"You were right. 

They are real. 

You did not imagine any of this.

They are in there. 

We can make them smaller. We can make them behave. We can fix everything that will allow itself to be fixed."

Dr. Q said, "We can take everything you've learned and everything you've gained and put it all together and make it all fit back inside the box where it belongs."

That's what it's like.

It's like a miracle.

_____

So. There's been that.

There's also been the new knowledge that I've spent the last 23 years with an undiagnosed TBI.

That has been... extremely unsettling.

Despite my relentless insistence on ending my blogposts positively, and despite the truth of last week's blog post, I was whistling in the dark when I wrote it, and things took a turn for the darker shortly thereafter.

What I have or haven't done with whatever's been going on in my brain ceases to matter, at some point. At some point, the emotional impact of the truth of it just has to have its turn.

Truth: it wasn't a mild TBI. It was moderate to severe, meaning that some of the damage sustained may well be permanent. It has been so far. I have been living with brain damage for 23 years, and I did not know it.

It may not be possible to know how serious it is or was, or how close it came to something unthinkable. It may not be possible to know how many odds I bucked in just getting on with things as if there were nothing wrong.

(It may, however, be possible to correct some of the damage through neurofeedback. Or at least some of the effects.)

But anyway, back to the truth.

If you know me well, you can probably imagine, to some extent, how difficult this is for me to get my head around.

If you know me through this blog, you know how hard a time I have with feelings. And how well-compartmentalized I am, especially when it comes to emotions having to do with the accident. I never really felt any, ever, in fact. 

I never felt loss. I never felt grief. I never felt rage. I never felt much of anything.

This week, I've felt... loss. 

Grief.

This week, I've felt, for the first time ever, that I might actually have been someone else, if that accident hadn't happened. That who I am now might not be a recognizable version of who I would have been, otherwise.

This week, I have felt, for the first time, the product of something other than my own choices, compromised though they may have been.

This week, I have wondered, for the first time, if I lost something vital that night on the highway. More vital than will, more vital than a sense of safety and immortality.

This week, I have felt the last 23 years of shame and terror at the knowledge that things felt harder than they should and I had to do them anyway but something wasn't right, it wasn't right, and I have felt vindicated and I have felt exhausted and I have felt like I have climbed to the top of a mountain with a piano on my back and I have felt that I would very much like to put it down, now, please. 

This week, I have felt like I would like this next part to begin with a 2-week nap.

This week, I have felt like I have accomplished miracles.

This week, I have felt like I might be more broken than I think.

This week, I cried for a whole day.

Well. A whole morning.

Okay, an hour.

So, more like 20 minutes of silent, slow tears and two short 3 minute bursts of weeping.

Still, A LOT!

_____

It is impossible to overstate the importance of what is happening to me right now.

It is painful. More painful than I thought possible at this stage in the game.

It is wonderful. Far more wonderful than I thought myself capable of of experiencing at any stage in any game.

Readers, I have so much to tell you about.    

A lot more coming.

Soon. 

Episode Whatever: A New Hope

I forgot to tell you last week, but I think I have mentioned it at some point here before (although I can't remember when), that I was planning to try neurofeedback.

Dr. Oz recommended it to me quite a while ago as a non-chemical treatment for anxiety. She said that her own anxiety was virtually cured by neurofeedback and she couldn't recommend it highly enough.

Since then, I've heard rave reviews about it from others, including my biofeedback doc and my GP.

As it has been a 2-night-per-week time commitment, and something I had to wait to begin once I'd reached a stable point with my antidepressants-- meaning, not during a ramp-up or ramp-down or any of the other nonsense I've been constantly involved in for the past who-knows-how-many-months-- and since it is, not to put too fine a point on it, quite expensive and it remains to be seen whether our insurance will pick up a dime of it....

Well. It's taken a while to get it all together.

And if you bought all of that, it's so cute how you think I'm, like, a real grown-up. 

It also took, you know, A PHONE CALL.

By FAR the hardest part, for me.

But anyway, it all finally got arranged, and I started this week, thinking that I was going in there to find a way to get at this anxiety, because the antidepressant isn't doing it, and I really can't face another med-switch, and I also don't think I should be planning to take benzos for the rest of my life (the heavy, long-term use of which now having been positively linked with Alzheimer's, thanks so much).

It turns out, there is A LOT that neurofeedback might be able to help me with.

Migraine. Information processing. PTSD. Attention and focus. Depression. Anxiety. And maybe most of all: sleep.

_____

I need to say right now that I am not at all ready to speak articulately about neurofeedback yet. 

To be honest, I am not even ready to speak inarticulately about it. It's very difficult to understand and explain and I have to do some reading before I can tell you about what I'm doing and what I'm learning and what is going on and what I think I might be able to do with this.

BUT.

I will tell you this: some fairly intensive preliminary scans have been done of my brain waves, and I'm going to have a very detailed one done in the next month or so, and I've already learned some things that are at once extremely validating and extremely disturbing.

• I've learned that the doctor could see, in my brain function, activity that backs up everything I've thought and written about here about my inability to focus, about my depression and migraine and my anxiety and how extreme they are (verdict: very), and also the buzzing hyper-vigilance of my triggered PTSD state and how extreme that is (quote: "at a level we usually see in combat veterans").

• I've learned more about my hyper-vigilance stuff that is frightening and also (oh, Sherlock) pretty fascinating that I will tell you about when I can explain it better. It probably deserves its own blog post anyway. Let's just say I've got lots of new topics to discuss

• I've also learned that I have clear markers for ADD. Who knew?

The other thing I learned was... well, I can't say it was a surprise, because it wasn't. I diagnosed it myself when I started writing this blog. But it was a whole other thing to hear it like this and to hear that not only was I right, but it's still there, still affecting the way my brain works:

• I learned that there is clear evidence in my brain function of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) from my car accident.

I'm not really sure what to do with that one. 

I can feel myself moving up to the idea, touching it briefly, and then backing away. Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Too much, too big, too... nope.

Before I go any further, I'll remind you that back in 1991, they didn't diagnose TBIs the way they do now. They simply didn't know what to look for. The '90s are now known as "The Decade of The Brain," because that was when neuroscience took a huge leap and they developed, among many other amazing things, the standards and guidelines for identifying, classifying, and treating TBIs.

But in '91, that hadn't happened yet.

Mine was also most likely a mild TBI, from what I've seen in my research, although my head trauma falls into the severe category and my periods of unconsciousness could indicate a moderate TBI classification. 

What all of that adds up to, to me is 1) it had a high likelihood of being misdiagnosed anyway, as mild TBIs often are, even now, and 2) under the conditions of my accident, man, did I get lucky.

Yeah, this is bringing up the accident a bit, in a way I haven't thought about it in a while.

Juicy posts coming this summer, people!

_____

Anyway. To pick up the dangling thread.

I was my usual emotionally neutral self in the doctor's office. 

(Actually, I was pretty freaking Sherlocky, because this stuff is pretty freaking cool, and there are sensors attached all over my head, and I'm watching my brain waves on a computer screen, and a really cool doctor is talking total geek-speak to me, and I'm taking notes because in my triggered state my brain sure as hell isn't recording any decent memories for me so I can tell my husband about any of this awesome stuff when I get home, so it was all sciencey and interesting and confusing and cool.)

She... "Dr. Q," we'll call her... Dr. Q told me about the TBI thing, and that my brain is operating inefficiently. It's processing information slowly. 

One of the things neurofeedback will attempt to do is fix that.

That's good. That's a good thing.

I just nodded. Because that's cool and good and interesting. 

And in the back of my mind, I thought, At some point, if there's an emotional hit from this, it might be a big one. Because that... was kind of big and devastating news, actually.

Okay, I'm talking about this. I'm talking about this a little now, I guess.

The fact that the TBI is still there, or evidence of it, or whatever it is-- I am not going to say for sure because I don't know the parameters of it yet-- is... mmmmmm.... nope, nope, nope.

Palms sweating, jaw clenching, brain trying to get me to stop writing blog and go look at Facebook for a while. Okay. Not going to talk about that part.

But: 

I know that a lot of the inefficiency is caused by everything that's going on with the PTSD, and that it is cumulative-- it hasn't always been this way. In fact, it hasn't even been the way it is now for all that long.

I don't think. It couldn't have been. 

Because, as I remind myself, I have lived a life that is at odds with my fears of imagined impairment (omg omg omg), even if there has been some (has there been?). There may have been a little. I lived that life anyway: 

I graduated magna cum laude from a prestigious university with a TBI. 

I maintained a 4.0 GPA through grad school with a TBI. 

I earned an MA and an MFA with a TBI. 

I was a college professor with a TBI.

I travelled to Europe several times with a TBI. 

I had a successful career coaching college students to success with a TBI. 

I was an excellent manager with a TBI. 

I met and married my miraculous husband with a TBI. 

I had two glorious children with a TBI.

I became a writer with a TBI.

Right. I've ended up talking about this WAY more than I expected. As you can see, I've got a lot on my mind. 

That "big emotional hit" I was anticipating? Yeah... it's appears to be arriving. 

I'm reeling over a lot of things having to do with this neurofeedback.

First: it feels a whole lot like the final piece to the puzzle.

Second: all these years, I've had so much shame over the fact that so many things have felt so much harder than it seems like they should have, and to my utter shock, I may have just been given the reason why that might actually have been true, and it is both validating and horrifying.

Third: all these years, even though I've had so much shame over the fact that so many things felt so much harder than they should have, I've pretty much done most of them anyway, and to the standard I expect of myself, and to my utter shock, I've just been given the reason why I might have thrown in the towel instead, and I can't quite get my mind around how or why I didn't.

And that's just plain validating, full stop, is what that is. And I don't really know what to do with that, either.

Or this:

Maybe I have a touch of Tenacity Disorder, after all. 

Tenacity Disorder

My friend, who I spoke about last week, is one of the most remarkably determined, perseverant people I have ever known. 

In common parlance, this is known as a "BADASS."

She told me recently that the ability to just keep going, even when you don't want to, is a gift that hiking gave her.

She started hiking when we were teenagers, and since then has hiked to the top of Mount San Gorgonio in Southern California (nearly 12,000 feet high, the tallest peak in SoCal and part of the mountain range where we grew up) five times, as well as many other significant hikes.

"Every single time, I reach a point where I think, there's no way I'm gonna make it," she said. "And that's the point where you just have to forget about the big picture, and look down and put one foot in front of the other and just keep going. And that's what gets you to the top."

Now, what I know about this particular woman is that nothing has ever kept her from getting to the top of anything she wanted to get to the top of, long before hiking came into the picture. She was born with the gift of knowing how to look down and put one foot in front of the other when that was what was called for, and she has done it despite astonishing odds and has created a remarkable life because of it.

Those kinds of folks rarely know they are those kinds of folks. They're too busy being awesome to realize they're the awesome ones everybody's trying to be like.

So when I pointed out to her that, well, hiking didn't so much give her that gift as give her a great metaphor for her really simple and powerful (not to mention effective) life-long worldview, she thought about it for a bit and had to agree.

"Tenacity disorder," she announced. "That's what I have. There's a new one for the DSM."

"Most of us would pay a pretty penny to catch that," I said. "Maybe you should learn how to bottle and sell it. You could make a fortune!"

"It's the wisdom to apply it to the right things that may be the crucial missing element," my wise friend replied, wisely. "But I could probably upcharge for that add-on."

There are certainly worse lessons to have to learn.

_____

Her point in telling me the hiking story was to say that she was wishing for that sort of metaphorical reference for someone else in her life right now who needs it. Someone who could use a visceral, muscle-memory reminder that if you just look down and put one foot in front of the other and forget the rest, you will get there. Just keep going. One step, then another, then another after that. You will get there. One step at a time, you can't help but get there. The destination will be here before you know it if you just. Keep. Walking.

It was so hopeful, this message of simple perseverance from a woman whose life is proof that such things can produce very good results indeed. So inspiring and accessible and true.

And it reminded me that it's the message I need most right now, myself. And that I even have a muscle-memory example of my own to refer to when I try to borrow some of her amazing tenacity and bring it into my own life and get things moving at a bit of a brisker pace around here.

The Effexor does not have a turbo button, as it turns out. I may have to, you know, get up off the couch on my own. :/

I've been thinking about this a lot lately anyway, as I do when plans for exercise start coming back into the mix.

Running.

And not just running.

Running a half-marathon.

It's my sister's fault. Two of my sisters' faults, actually. They got me interested in running, got me to give it a try, got me to prove to myself and the world that I could do it, and then they continued on and became running badasses and now run half marathons like they're going out of style.

And somewhere in there, I went from thinking no way in hell will I ever to holy shit what if I did?!

I've been kicking this goal around in the back of my head for a long time now, and I think it's time to break it out and get it going. Put myself back on a running plan, and get myself moving again.

In truth, running was actually what brought me to blogging, the first time around. I am not sure this blog would be what it is if it weren't for my fledgling running venture and my first 5k, and the Facebook posts and blog that sprung up around that whole thing.

It even talks about my accident a bit, and plants the seed for this work, which began a year later.

It was a pretty good read, if I do say so myself. If you want to...

you can read that blog here!

_____

So there's me for this week: trying to catch me a case of Tenacity Disorder. I'll let you know how it goes. Also trying to get started with the running. That will be a slow beginning, literally if not figuratively. I'll let you know about that, too. Even post the plan I use.

Because if I can run, anyone can. You can do it with me! We can all run a half-marathon together.

I hear there's a simple trick to making it: look down, let everything else fall away, and just put one foot in front of the other. 

Sooner or later, you can't help but get to where you going if you just keep taking all your steps in the right direction.

Talking the Talk, Walking the Walk, Migraining the Migraine

A very dear friend has been going through an extremely difficult family crisis lately, and I've been doing my best to support her and her kids through some unimaginably rough days.

I'm so glad I'm able to be here for her. 

It's a complicated situation, close to my heart in so many ways. I can empathize with it on every level. And helping her is helping me, and I am grateful for that, as well.

I'm being pushed back into a real, outside-world, adult role with this, outside of my own sphere, outside of my own head, for the first time in a long time. I was a caretaker too, once, excellent in a crisis. I know how to do this. It feels good to feel powerful, protective instincts kick in and to act on them.

And so much of what her family is going through is reminding me of things I still have to watch in myself; things I still have to work on to get where I want to go.

I'm sorry, I'm being deliberately vague because I don't want to reveal any identifying or intimate details of someone else's story. 

Suffice it to say: Stuff is happening; it is relevant; I am taking from it every lesson I can while offering all the support I can muster.

My friend deserves my best efforts, and if she happens to impart inadvertent words of wisdom along the way that can make my efforts even better, Imma take those in and put them to work, too.

_____

So... that's what I've been doing this week. This has all coincided with my monthly migraine, which has turned out to be an absolute RAGER that refuses to respond to medication; I think because I'm triggered like crazy from all the aforementioned empathizing.

So now I have that. It started Wednesday night. I had a bit of a reprieve on Thursday afternoon. But aside from that, it's been steady since then, 24/7, and it's been awful. This is day three.

Migraines that don't respond to meds always freak me out. There are few feelings more helpless than this, especially when the pain starts ratcheting up, because who knows where it will stop?

At the moment, I'm on Imitrex, excedrin, aleve, lorazepam, and effexor. And a shower. And coffee. Yesterday, I tried none of those for a while, then one at a time. None worked alone. 

So today, I tried them all at once. All together, they've finally, in the last couple of hours, brought what was about a 9 down to about a 5.

I tried high-CBD pot yesterday, too; the kind that doesn't make you feel high but just kills the pain. I think the heating element on our vaporizer is compromised, so I didn't get much, but it didn't work anyway.

But a migraine at pain level 5, with moments of 4 or even 3... THAT I can work with. That's sort of child's play for me at this point in my life. Which SUCKS, I heartily admit, but after 48 straight hours of 9, I'll fucking take it, you know?

On the non-drug front, I've tried rolling out my back on the foam roller, and having my husband massage my granite-hard shoulders and neck tendons. I've tried ice on my back and neck. I've tried correcting my posture. I've tried sleep-- even Ambien. I've tried hot water. An actual, professional massage is more likely to make the migraine worse than better, so I'll skip that, but I think I'll give Rise Bodyworks a call and see if Dr. John is around tonight for some Active Release Torture. I mean Therapy.

Only the Evil Genius can help me now.

_____

Last night I walked in on my husband telling my sister that he's been so proud of me lately during all this stuff going on with my friend, because he's been asking me every day to talk about my feelings about it, and I've been... actually stopping and talking about them.

It's a strange thing, because even as I'm doing it, even as I know what I'm saying is true-- these are my feelings, and I am feeling them-- I also still feel like I am talking about someone else. There is still a great disconnect between having the feelings and experiencing the having of the feelings and then talking about the experience of having the feelings.

But I'm doing all three, even if at least one or two of them still feel pretty artificial. There were some authentic, in-the-moment emotions the other day with my friend, and that was true, so it's happening for real, even if talking about it later doesn't feel quite the same.

PROGRESS, people. I am not an automaton! This is good, because in my darker moments I find myself terrified that my friend and her children are depending on me and all I have to offer them is this facsimile of a person that I've constructed over the years, not a real flesh-and-blood human being with actual feelings like everyone else. 

But no. I have a heart and soul that still work just fine, underneath all this Sherlockian defense. And my husband is totally pushing me to remember that, every day.

Good man, that guy.  Have I mentioned that here before?

Once or twice?

Everything Can't Be An Epiphany All The Time

I get epiphany-impatient. I am hungry for enlightenment. I want Big Change.

Unfortunately, I think the next series of Big Changes will happen through exercise.

So. That'll be coming right up, then.

Ahem.

My vicious cycle with exercise is that I have back and neck problems which have led to abdominal weakness which have led to worse back and neck problems which have led to worse abdominal weakness which has led to difficulty exercising without injuring myself which has led to a general lack of conditioning and flexibility which has led to embarrassment and shame over said lack which has led to a lot of hiding and couching which has led to back and neck problems.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Introverted me, as you might imagine, harbors an unholy dread of the group exercise class.

But then again, introverted me also harbored an unholy dread of the private training session and I managed to hold down a few months of wonderful Pilates sessions with the amazing Kiko at Rise Bodyworks (home of our favorite Active Release Therapy maniac, Dr. John Beall) last year.

But it's still excruciating-- excruciating!--  to get myself going on this, obvious benefits aside. Basically, I just don't want to be seen-- by anyone, including myself-- being flabby and awkward and uncoordinated and sweaty and fat and gross and stiff and weak and...

... all of the things I'd never, ever think about another woman if I saw her doing her best to work out despite any limitation she might have.

Right. Yeah, I know. Still. She is not me. I have much harsher standards for me.

But if I force myself out of catastrophic thinking for a minute, I have to admit that this is probably true for most people. We are worried about what others might think of us, but we are far less judgmental of them than they fear in circumstances like these.

Especially at a place like Rise, where everyone is so incredibly kind and welcoming and supportive and encouraging. It's not like a regular gym there, although many people do go there purely for the exercise. It's a therapeutic environment, so the vibe there is one of healing and growth.

I love them there. It's like a warm, hilarious little family.

:/

But group classes are scary! And I am embarrassed! And people! And all the sweaty!

:/

NO!

:/

It's excruciating! I DO NOT LIKE TO EXCRUCIATE!

:/

Then again, if I hurt myself, John is right there to pop me back into shape, I guess.

:/

My husband's employer will even reimburse us for the membership.

:/

God damn it.

:/

Motherfucker.

:/

Sometimes, these epiphanies just SUCK.