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So, a keyword to recent Sami Management (both by me, taking care of myself, and people who love me, filling in the gaps around my mental-illness-derived impairment) has been "overstimulation".
It's possibly the weirdest, because it's mostly just a giant conceptual shift. I used to get distressed in ways I couldn't explain or identify, and that would lead to me breaking down. Now, at least sometimes, I can identify it as overstimulation, explained by being ADHD and off my meds (as I am every evening), remedied by reducing stimulus, finding a quieter, calmer environment.
Oh, other factors play into it of course - I'm more likely to hit "overstimulated" if I'm sleep deprived, if I've had a stressful day, etc - but it can be a terrible relief to be able to say: This is overstimulation. Everything else is fine, this does not need to feed into depression and anxiety to cause giant total breakdown.
Last night - after a couple of stressful days and way too little sleep - it was, by late night, sufficiently ohgodstimulation that I had to take my dogtags off. Anyone who's seen me in, oh, the last couple of years will know I never take my dogtags off, but the chain on my skin, the sound whenever I moved, OH GOD GET IT OFF GET IT OFF, basically.
However, after removing all unnecessary sensory stimuli (including wearing headphones just to block out the sound of cars going by), I played Civ4 with the sound off till I felt better, and all is fine now.
If I ever say to you: "It's not you, it me - I need to go be alone somewhere," I mean exactly that.
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