Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Assault on my senses....

Today, light and sound feel like torture devices.

At the office my boss comes bounding in, and everytime he pops in my office, would FLIP the light on. It felt like he was bounding in and I was right behind the door and he was whacking me in the face with it, over and over. Rebounding from the stun would take a few seconds, during which he was firing questions at me that I wouldn't have had answers to, even if I wasn't feeling assaulted. All in all, it was a rough situation for my overstimulated ADHD brain.

All day long I have been needing to hide from light as sound. Most days I notice something in the realm of light of sound that is just "too much" for me. Today is an extreme day.

Tonight, the kids are back at the house and strangely, their brand of usual mayhem and sound doesn't typically bother me. There were a couple of moments where I needed to manage my environment though, for the sake of sanity.

One was when my step-daughter and I were working on a craft project. I was very distressed because the overhead light was just too much. I thought about asking her if she would mmind my switching the lighting options...but instead just prayed that she would not object, and just changed them.

I flipped a smaller light "on" and she said "oh, that's better" and I flipped the overhead light off and she said...she said "ohhhh, that's much better". I guess lil' ADHD girl and big ADHD girl were in agreement, and I was relieved.

Later, I almost pinched a nutty on Sonny Rollins because he was asking me to listen to a Youtube video with sound, and I just couldn't do it right then...the sound was making me SO uncomfortable, and I needed to sit suddenly.

I explained to him (or tried) that I was just over my limit and that if he saved whatever it was on my computer desktop I would come back to it later.

And just now...the cat is grabbing me and pushing at me...arggggghhhh....

But the lights are off and the sounds in the room are quiet at least...thank goodness...it's been a rough day!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

This was supposed to be an improvement...

...sometimes digging for gold brings nothing but misery.

Many good things have come from embarking on my personal mental health journey last year. But it's hard work even when the outcome is good. And today...today I just can't help thinking about how my journey toward greater mental health indirectly provokes change in my relationships with other people...who are not so mentally healthy...and then it just...it just...

Oh I'm sure you can see where this is going. Despite my best attempts at sanity these days, dysfunction comes knocking on my door. All I can do is keep the little tapes of my therapist playing in my mind as I confront each assailant.

And I do...but I'm tired.