A Little Bit of Wisdom

During my last appointment with my therapist we mainly discussed my achievements of the previous week. It was a comforting change from the normally anxiety-ridden discussions. Not only are anxious moments just that, but they also produce anxiety when discussing them. Therefore, it was a welcome break to spend the entire time talking about the changes I’ve made that have allowed me feel more comfortable, confident, and relaxed.

For my own personal note and for others to take note that therapy can lead to winning these seemingly small battles, which are actually large battles, here is what we covered last week: more…

I feel as though I grew up during a strange time in which things weren’t defined very clearly. There were certain ways of doing things in the past that were not often questioned due to the strictness of social pressure and then came free love, drugs, hippies, anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-establishment protesters….and then I was born. After all that. When it all started to calm down, but the lingering effects were still felt. With some people still believing in them passionately, others still fighting them as though they were as common and powerful as they had been in their time and most people just simply going back to trying to make their way through the day not really giving them much of a second thought, but living their lives differently than they would have 20, 30 or 50 years earlier nonetheless.

I know these sorts of upheavals happen throughout history and in fact, are probably happening around me right now, but I just don’t have the hindsight yet to notice them. Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling that there is an overarching sense of confusion in the world around me. We’re so stuffed with information, facts, and experiences that we don’t know what to think nor what to believe anymore.

I awoke at 4am to a typical bout of tangential thinking, unable to sleep and began a spirited conversation with the bathroom walls. When those walls became confining and hunger began to claw at my stomach, alternately pushing stomach acid up through my esophagus as it often does, I carried my tirade to the living room where I held conference with my perpetual audience. The one which never judges, unless I choose them to, never interrupts but with tiny insights and questions that press the subject along, and the one with whom I’m always able to come to an understanding in the end.

We have concluded this: more…

I woke up, for the third or fourth time, at 8am on last Wednesday (fifth day on the Citalopram) and felt pelted with exhaustion. Getting out of bed wasn’t too difficult, but once I was up, showered, dressed and performing my morning ritual of “sit on the couch until I feel awake enough to greet the world”, I was ready to sleep again. more…

Dave and I went out for our anniversary dinner last night (Tuesday) and I noticed that I was feeling pretty relaxed. I mean, granted, it’s a pretty relaxing activity, but I’ve been so wired lately, even when I’m sleeping, that it was a noticeable change. more…

On the advice of the on-call resident psychiatrist at Stanford I did not take the Citalopram Sunday night, but decided to take it in the morning instead. Somewhat against her advice, on the other hand, I split my dose in half (to 10mg), in part just to calm my fears. more…

I was feelin’ great before bed and fell asleep pretty easily with help of melatonin and likely because I was exhausted from only 6 hours of sleep the night before. I had taken the Citalopram at 10pm Saturday night. Here are the events of early Sunday morning: more…

Concerned about starting meds with possible side effects when I’ve just started a new job, I asked my psychiatrist (or rather the resident who I’ll never see again because she’s graduating) if I should wait until I was a little more settled in at work just in case the effects were bad enough that I’d have to miss work. She seemed unconcerned and reassured me that we were starting at a low dosage, I should know pretty quickly if there were any unwanted effects, and that if anything the meds could help me during the transition. If I’d like, though, I could starting taking them on Friday so I’d have the weekend to give them a go.

So here we are at day one: more…

A day after starting my new job at Yahoo! (contracting through WorkforceLogic) I got a call from Stanford Department of Psychiatry to finally schedule my appointment, which I had been told would be about two months out. Lucky for me there had been a last-minute cancellation for the next morning at 10am. Of course, I didn’t check the message until 8pm when Dave and I were out at dinner, resulting in a late night call to Stanford Psychiatry’s voicemail desperately hoping no one else had snatched up the appointment and an email to my team lead at Yahoo!, whom I had known for a little over a day at this point, to explain that I would be into work later than anticipated. more…

One of my favorite episodes of Scrubs is the one with Michael J. Fox in which he plays Dr. Kevin Casey who has OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). I wasn’t entirely sure why it had the affect on me that it did, but just that I felt it was extrememely well done. He was a dr. who was envied by many because he was an incredible surgeon and medical attending.

Throughout the episode, JD, Turk, and Dr. Cox all developed a bone to pick with him. JD because Dr. Casey had insulted his need for a mentor, Turk felt inadequate because Dr. Casey performed a surgery much faster than his previous record time, and dr. Cox was insecure because Dr. Casey was quicker with diagnoses and one-upped him as the best dr. at Sacred Heart.

In the end, JD looks for Dr. Casey to confront him and finds him washing his hands after surgery. As JD begins to speak with him JD realizes that he has been washing his hands for the past two hours. Then we see Turk and Dr. Cox both appear at the door in succession each to show realization without confronting Dr. Casey and then fading away or turning to leave. This is when JD has his characteristic inner monologue and realizes that as successful as some people seem, we all have our burdens and as hard as it is for him, “it’s not that daunting if you look around and see what other people have to deal with”.

Looking back now, I understand better why it spoke to me the way it did. more…

One of the assumptions when moving to a larger metropolitan area is that there will be more access to services. With so many people here, in and around the Bay Area, there is seemingly a service for everything (there’s an ice cream trolley outside my apartment right now!) and competition to keep those services affordable and hold them to a standard of quality.

Consider this assumption debunked! more…