Tag Archives: Anxiety

Triggered?

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Yeah? #MeToo.

It’s not just the Epstein files, either. Granted, that was the beginning of this round, but certainly not the end for me, at least.

The psychological issue that finally knocked my camel over was what is known as “Avoidant Personality Disorder.” It’s like Social Anxiety on crack or something. I avoid everyone and everything. Family, friends, society at large in person or on the internet. It doesn’t matter. I even avoid my husband by not doing most of the chores I’m in control of…I don’t want to be upstairs for any length of time at all. I used to hide in my closest as a child, but the basement is now my adult-size closet. Alone with my cats, hobbies, and computer, I avoid the world until I can finally handle all these feelings.

Thank the gods I have my therapist.

My time hasn’t been wasted because I’ve been absolutely obsessing over my business. It’s given me a focus, and a way to avoid the news which seems to be my major trigger. I went through all my Epstein-related anger quickly enough. It’s not an easy battle, but the first part of it was quick at least. Yes, I meant that #MeToo. Statistically 2/3 of women in the US have been raped, so I know I have plenty of company. I have a tendency to dismiss my own case because I didn’t even know there was such a thing as “date rape” when it happened. I didn’t have any idea of that for years after, and I finally had to recognize it for what it was. I managed to get through that, but I still dismiss it. I want to say I can’t possibly understand what those women went through but the truth of the matter is that I do, probably more than many and less than others. Because what they went through wasn’t just rape; it was the destruction of their innocence, and an extreme betrayal of their trust. That’s what happens when it’s someone you know. That was me.

Then the next realization hit me, that it’s not just the (and here’s where the swearing starts) FUCKING Epstein-Trump class that committed those atrocities. It was every single accomplice involved. Every single person who hid the facts, buried the investigation, and helped bring them victims. It was the Biden administration who had FOUR FUCKING YEARS to investigate without interference from them. Who COULD have stopped this all, investigated, and imprisoned. They could have prevented Trump from seizing power again. They could have prevented all the struggle and pain FOUR YEARS AGO.

That’s not saying that someone else couldn’t have stopped this before. Hell, Epstein was first found guilty and LET OFF WITH A SLAP in 2008. If those files had been exposed then NONE of this would have happened. They’d all be in jail. Jan. 6th wouldn’t have happened. 2016 wouldn’t have seen Trump’s first reign. Even if it had been a Republican in office, it would have been a normal Republican. Goddamn, I never thought I’d miss them quite so much…*sigh*

Then came the latest Iran war.

People who don’t know me don’t know my obsessions, one of which is Christianity. From being waist-deep in the Charismatic Movement through High School to my obsession with cults, I’ve been watching the lunatic fringe of Christianity for years. And I do mean years.

When I was involved in the Charismatic Movement, it was in the 80s. The Cold War. So it wasn’t just Christianity moaning and groaning about the world ending; we all thought it was a possibility. On the Secular side, most people were just worried because the rhetoric was fast and furious. The US and USSR were constantly getting in each other’s faces, supporting opposite sides in wars and waving nuclear weapons around. Movies were very post-apocalyptic. TV shows delved into Nostradamus and HIS predictions of the end-times, comparing his cryptic lettering to modern happenings.

I was absolutely positive the end was coming by 2000. I even swore never to have children because there was no way a child of mine could be more than 9 years old by the time the world ended, and that just didn’t seem fair.

I’m still watching them.

So when I heard there were red heifers smuggled into Israel, I knew what was coming. When I heard that one of them was “blemished” and used for a “practice” sacrifice, I wasn’t even remotely surprised. But I hadn’t expected for the lunatics to find a president to support them. But here we are.

See, the red heifer is necessary to sacrifice before the temple can be rebuilt. The temple that would have to be rebuilt where there is currently a Mosque. The Muslim government and population who own that Mosque would have to be eliminated by Israel before that can happen. And here we are.

The Israeli government doesn’t necessary believe any of that, and they don’t have to. Pretending to is enough to get the people in charge of our government to help them with their goal, which has always been to expand their tiny little piece of land and take every single inch of land that used to be Israel, like 4000 or so years ago. In some minds, it’s still theirs. It’s promised to them. In the minds of the Evangelicals, it’s also theirs. It has to be theirs before Christ will return. IGNORE the fact that Revelations hasn’t got a thing to do with “prophecy,” that it was referring to Rome, and that Jesus Christ, if he had been the messiah, should have eliminated Rome when he was alive. Technicalities. This is what the Evangelicals believe, and they’re rolling with it.

And when he finally gets here, all the Jews are supposed to convert or die, pretty much. So it’ll all wash out in the end. The Evangelicals will take the partnership because it’s useful at the moment, as the Israeli government will take their assistance to get what they want as well.

As much as I know better than to be afraid of anything actually happening by way of Christ returning or temples being rebuilt, I’m very practical about other disasters happening because these people are trying to bring about the end of the world. Like accidentally bringing about the end of the world with no savior coming around to make it worthwhile.

It makes me want to hide under my desk.

I never thought something like that could trigger me, but here I am. Another learning experience. 😆At 57. Yes, old dogs do learn new tricks. Between my therapy and my prescriptions, I’m keeping myself together and crawling out of it. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one with this issue, either. Given the number of people leaving the Christian church every year, there are likely an awful lot of us out there. Let me know if you’ve got that feeling, too. Find me on FB if you like, I’ll be sheepishly heading back there soon. (It’s ALWAYS really embarrassing to go back to a social group after one of my episodes; and embarrassment is one of the triggers for AVP, ain’t that great? 🤣) so I’d love to hear I’m not alone. Or give me some comments. Or likes. I could definitely use the love on this. For sure.

I’m thinking my next blog might be a little more…normal. I hope.

Thanks for being here.

 

 

Autism-Adjacent, Part Two: Hopefully a Conclusion

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I have to begin this post with an apology. I haven’t been ignoring you all, It’s been a helluva roller coaster ride with health issues around here. Enough for a completely different post…

So, now where did I leave off…? Oh, yeah. The BIG, BAD DIAGNOSIS!

To be absolutely honest, I was aware of this “condition.” I’ve known since childhood. Thing is, I also honestly thought it didn’t fit me anymore. Like I grew out of it or something.

I guess not.

I was too ashamed to admit this publicly at first. It’s just embarrassing, especially as it’s not a “real” diagnosis. If you ask me, it ought to be. It’s every bit as difficult, socially and mentally, as the two (or more) conditions its related to. Problem is that, much like autism, people who don’t have the condition would never believe it. The bullying alone is damaging enough.

Granted, there are a lot of my “side conditions” that haven’t got much at all to do with the BIG diagnosis. Then again, there are definitely some that came right from it or were indirectly a cause. Like my anxiety, for instance. I do still believe I was genetically more vulnerable to that. However, my Mom had been badly bullied as a child and so was incredibly worried about me when it started to affect me as early as Kindergarten. So, what did she do? Like anyone trying to protect a child, she helicoptered. She and the mother of a friend of mine who was also a bullying victim, started a Brownie group. She was a room mother at my school. She was constantly watching me out the kitchen window unless I was at someone else’s house. I had very strict rules as far as where I was allowed to go and when, and even in the summer we were in the house after dinner, which was at the ridiculously early hour of 4 pm. Those are just examples, of course. There was so much, much more. But in understanding her, I can’t blame her. I just focus on my own healing.

So, what on EARTH is the big, bad diagnosis?

Well, this Venn Diagram is it. Yep. I’m not Autistic. It’s not ADHD, it’s not even OCD which is another affiliated condition (although I do have many similarities with that one, too…dammit.)

No, I’m GIFTED. WTF. Seriously. This is another one of those situations where people who have no idea what this means think it’s a “good” condition. Take a look at this diagram, though. Good? No. Honestly. It’s like people who have been plagued by the dead since they were children which is also called a “gift.” If you’ve ever met someone who encountered these Spirits as children, I’d say I doubt that it’s a gift. Seems more often to be a curse to those who suffer with it. And it’s the same thing with me. If you think being a teacher’s pet is hard, imagine what the entire school knowing your “gifted” does. It ain’t no fun, I’ll tell you that.

And although I know all that having lived with it all my life, it’s something I did start beginning to believe I’d grown out of it. Everyone else in the world had somehow caught up to me, I was completely normal. I don’t know. Maybe that was my self-defense system finally kicking in. Unfortunately, one of the major differences between gifted and autism is in the realm of emotion. My emotions are…insanely intense. INSANELY. I can’t hold them in, I can’t pretend I feel differently, I’ve never had to “mask” to fake emotions but damn straight I wish I’d been able to mask to hide my emotions.

That just made the bullying worse. When a bully smells blood in the water like that, they don’t stop, they beat harder. Then, to complicate things even further, I had no understanding from my home life. I was constantly told to toughen up, it wasn’t that big a deal, fight back with words. Granted, my words are one of my strongest weapons, but have I mentioned I don’t “fight or flight?” Nope. I “freeze or fawn.” That makes it DAMN hard to think quick and fight back with words or not.

Things were briefly better for me in Junior High as I had a large group of “outcast” friends. We looked out for each other. Three of them had been in my grade school class with me. Which was, btw, for “gifted children.”

My husband and his brother were in that class with me as well. 😉

The additional complication that gifted people have, above and beyond the symptoms and the bullying, is the profound feeling of failure and depression that occurs. No matter what you do or where you are in life, you’re not up to the expectations everyone placed on you as a gifted child. My life hasn’t been easy because of that. I expected the absolutely best just like everyone else did for me. At the end of the day, however, I failed at working, I failed at finances, I failed at a business, and to add salt to the wound (womb?) we were unable to have children making me a failure at even being a woman, a very basic thing. Maybe even the most basic. On top of all the oddities and eccentricities in my behavior that put the target on my back, the expectations of myself and others caused a lot of mental anguish. But, you know, I wasn’t supposed to actually show those feelings.

If you’re wondering, yes, you can have more than one condition the answer is, “yes”. Some of you might be even more complicated than you knew. It’s kind of hard-to-find resources online about adult gifted people. There are a few books on the subject, but to be honest I haven’t read any of them yet, so I can’t honestly recommend them. When I do, I’ll be sure to share them here.

And here we are at over 1000 words again. I told you my words are my weapons! Feel free to ask me anything you want. I guess it’s out on the table for the world to see now. Therapy is very helpful for this. My self-esteem is slowly coming back, my anxiety is slowly receding, and I’m starting to understand the things that trigger me. I can’t say that I have embraced being “gifted,” as I don’t know that I feel gifted yet.

I guess that’s the next mountain to climb.

And I don’t usually say this, but “likes” and comments would be warmly welcomed. This is probably the hardest blog I’ve written yet.

~*~ Camylleon~*~

Autism-Adjacent, part One

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I believe I’ve made a few references to my mental health battles here. Maybe not much specifically, but little hints here and there. Some might have assumed these were jokes but I assure you, they’re not. 🙂 With that in mind, I figure I might want to actually explain what that journey has entailed.

I can’t believe I made it this far into my life without therapy, honestly. The first time I saw my primary care doctor, which is going on 6 or 7 years now, she immediately had the nurse drag in the EKG chart and hook me up; my heart was racing that badly. Panic attack? Likely, only I didn’t know what that was. I mean, how do you explain what that feels like to someone who has never had one? They’re all so individual or at least can be. I now know that one of my reactions is a throbbing in my lower back, and sometimes the entire world turns yellow. No one’s ever said anything about panic attacks like that to me.

I thought it was a heart attack. Kinda glad it was “only” a panic attack.

One of the many traumas in my life that I’ve had to deal with is one I’m sure many, many women will relate to. Horrible doctors that minimally don’t listen and maximally berate you, or worse. I hadn’t had a decent doctor who listened in ages at this point, aside from the doctor at that practice who had moved on and abandoned me, and I’d only seen him for about 2 years.

Needless to say, when my PCP got the test results from the EKG and I broke down in tears, she sat down to talk to me. I bawled and explained that I felt like I had some sort of medical PTSD. When I first attempted to get my neuropathy diagnosed (I was pretty sure by this point I knew what it was), the first doctor didn’t even look at my feet or send me to a specialist or anything but write me a couple of prescriptions. The second doctor had told me there was a 40% chance we’d never know what was wrong with my feet, but when I asked about a specialist, she said there wasn’t any need for that.

Right.

But finally, I found a doctor (female, of course) who was listening to me. Not only did she write me my first prescription for anxiety medication, and send me to a therapist, but she also sent me immediately to someone when I complained of menstrual issues. The absolutely WONDERFUL (female) doctor I saw for that caught the endometrial cancer and sent me to a WONDERFUL gynecological oncologist who got me in for surgery 5 days after I saw her with the diagnosis. 5 years later, I’m still clean, and I hope to stay that way.

Long way around, I’m sure, but that’s the background for how I finally got help.

As you can see, and probably know, or at least likely can understand, some of my issues were caused by direct circumstances. Attending what should have been a fairly normal, mainstream church during a particularly fervent Charismatic Movement messed me up, sure. But when combined with an authoritarian father who was really a Baptist in Episcopalian clothes and my innate need for his approval, well, it did double damage. They either refer to that as religious trauma or sometimes religious PTSD. I’ve got issues, like many people, because of bullying throughout my public-school career. Anxiety, just a touch of OCD, social anxiety to the point of avoidant personality disorder, and a little privacy issue. Just a little. Yeah, there’s event-based damage that I can track back, and have traced some of it.

But then, there seem to be issues that were just always there. I wrote on the wall inside my mom’s closet “why doesn’t anyone love me” when I was six. I remember getting stomachaches and not wanting to go to school in kindergarten. I used to hide in my closet to be alone, to the point my parents would freak out and start looking for me. Something was going on genetically, I assumed.

After a false start with a therapist who sucked, at least for me, I ended up with the person I see now who is phenomenal. Perfect for me. Grew up in the same town as I did, even knew some of the same people although she’s a few years older. Her sister was a Wiccan and into ghost hunting, so she knows what I’m talking about in the largest and most important parts of my life. Also, that same sister who unfortunately departed the mortal plane too soon, was trans. She gets my life, my point-of view. I don’t worry about judgment. Phew.

So, the time came when I had a question to ask her. I’d been on TikTok (bad idea, btw), and seen many, many, many people discussing being autistic. I’d picked up a lot, but at the same time many of those people were self-diagnosed. No judgment there, because I understand how hard it is for most people to get therapy and treatment for their mental health. Self-diagnosis is often all they’ve got.

At the same time, I wasn’t sure then, how accurate they were. I had so many “symptoms” that were similar to autism. SO FREAKING MANY!!! Hyperfixations, anyone? I’ve got my share and then some. I’ve been studying cults and religion since grade school. If you want a good genealogist, find someone with a hyperfixation, you won’t regret it. I am amazing at research. If I want to know something, I will not stop until I do. All the food I hate is because of the texture. I will not wear polyester, and you can’t make me. The feel of that is just…slimy…I’m cringing even thinking about it. And of course, there’s more.

When I brought that up to my therapist she smiled broadly, which did worry me slightly, I’ll admit. But she said, “you’re ready for your diagnosis.”

OMG, I’m over 1000 words already! Since attention spans are so small these days, I guess I’ll have to put the rest in a part two. See you there!

The Beginning

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As with most people in the US of A, I was raised in a Christian household. Not my choice.

Like so many of us in the US of A who were raised in a Christian household, it messed with my mind. More than I ever knew, honestly. At the age of 52 my primary care doctor diagnosed me with anxiety when I broke down in her office. Again. The very first time I’d seen her, three years or so prior, I’d burst into tears and had a heart rate high enough that they slapped an EKG onto me to check my heart.

That was fun.

I was surprised and relieved all at the same time. She gave me a prescription and recommended therapy. I am happy to say that all the above is covered by our health insurance, a privilege not everyone in the US of A has. I am taking FULL advantage of this as long as I possibly can. After a false start with a therapist who did not fit me at all, my second try was a winner and I’m now actually starting to put myself back together again. Its been a long, hard road. Turns out that aside from the generic, garden variety social anxiety and the super-special avoidant personality disorder that comes up now-and-then, I also am the proud owner of some lovely PTSD, straight from Christianity.

And most of the damage was self-inflicted.

My major anxiety is related to a need for approval, love, acceptance. The usual, I suppose. This includes a need for my father’s approval. My father’s father was a Baptist minister, his mom played the organ for their children’s ministry. He converted to ECUSA when he and my mother married. Sweet, I know, but he never did lose the fire-and-brimstone edge to him .Now, they’re both Catholic and things got weirder. But we’ll get there eventually.

As explained to me by my therapist, we humans start to develop our own moral system somewhere around the age of 12 or so. I smothered mine. I forced my square peg into the Christian round hole (why does that sound mildly dirty?) for years. Forcing myself to accept the good girl myth and all the restrictions that come with it. I did some serious damage to my own psyche as a result. Could I blame my parents? Sure, plenty of people do. The truth is, however, that I’m complicit in this, and I know it. I own it.

At the height of my involvement with the Church, I was an acolyte (“altar girl”), a member of Junior Daughters of the King, I assisted Sunday School teachers (until they figured out I was too young), attended youth group weekly, and Bible Discipleship once a week. Fairly often, my brothers and I would be called in to assist at the early services when other acolytes weren’t available. On the most involved week, I would be at the 7:30 am service as an acolyte, I would be working for Jr. Daughters to tend the altar between services and lay out vestments, then down into the nursery to attend to that for the 9:00 service, again, for junior daughters, then I would attend the 10:30 or 11:25 services simply because I hadn’t sat through services myself yet. After lunch, I’d be at the church plenty early for youth group, and then Wednesday nights I’d return for Bible Discipleship. And that doesn’t include classes for my Confirmation.

I was involved.

Not all of that experience was bad. There were some experiences that have stuck with me throughout the years. At the same time, the damage I did to myself, the emotional and psychological damage that was done to me by both other church attendees and my own father are things I now have to deal with. You just can’t keep up with those expectations and live under a constant fear of hell without some damage.

When I was seventeen, the dam finally broke and broke with style although I hid it well. I still hide it well. My parents, now in their 80s, have no real concept of how far from Christian theology I have strayed. Everyone else in the world knows, but not my parents. Not because I’m seeking their approval still but because I love them. My mother isn’t as strict of a Christian as my father is still, to this day, and we’re extremely close. I love them both. They are true believers, and have every right to their own beliefs. But I couldn’t live my life happily if I thought they were on their knees praying for my soul every day of their lives. I will save them the anxiety and worry that I carry, I want them to enjoy these last years on earth.

There will be time enough for them to find out when they’re no longer physical beings.

This was originally published on my soon-to-be deleted blog W.I.T. on March 26, 2023