Grace
all we need is just a little patience
For the first time since starting medication in April, I had a couple of days of pretty intense emotional dysregulation. This is what I used to call “anxiety” and “depression” - which aren’t inaccurate terms - but the word “dysregulation” feels more specific. I don’t know if it was the combination of grieving a death, the 9/11 anniversary, my birthday, stress, or otherwise - but I spent a couple of days feeling all over the place. One second feeling sad, the next second effusively chatting about something, the next second so anxious I could scarcely catch my breath, and then plummeting into frustrated despair that left me sobbing. I honestly haven’t cried much since I started medication, which I think was due to the emotional blunting (a common side effect of Adderall). To be completely honest, the blunting felt like a vacation after the past several years. Being a little blunted felt a lot better than feeling all of the emotions, all at once, all of the time.
It was like the end of The Crow, except in my brain.
The interesting thing about this setback is that while my emotions were dysregulated, my rational mind was still functioning. I knew what was happening to me. I didn’t necessarily know exactly what triggered it, but once it was happening I knew what it was, and I knew there was no fighting it. I did something I haven’t trusted myself to do in a long time, which was to just feel the feelings. Normally I’d have run from them as fast as possible. I haven’t had good management over my emotions for several years. I have always felt things more intensely than your average bear, but over the past five or six years those emotions had the potential to become a tornado, destroying everything in its path. I felt completely out of control, and it was super frustrating since I was on other medications to try and control the depression and anxiety AND I was in therapy.
My instinct when these emotions came up was to numb them, but then my rational brain kicked in to tell me there was no way I was going to avoid these feelings, and that numbing them out was going to make them worse in the long run. I knew that it would pass eventually. It was just going to be unpleasant in the meantime. And it sucked tremendously. But I got through it.
I was fully on the struggle bus, but I actually managed to finish just about everything on my to-do list. I worked from home and got everything done that I needed to. I squeezed in a short workout. And I worked on my play. I am putting the final touches on a new draft, and I am having my first in-person developmental reading in November, after four long years without being in a rehearsal room. Cue Jessie Spano:
I did a deep read of the play last week (and decided it’s actually Not Terrible!) and marked up changes by hand, so my job now is to put them into Final Draft. Before meds, I would have “motivated” myself with the KBQ Method™️ by saying to myself “IF YOU DO NOT FINISH THIS REWRITE TODAY YOU ARE A GIANT LOSER AND THIS KIND OF SHIT IS EXACTLY WHY YOU AREN’T MORE SUCCESSFUL”, which would have perhaps gotten the job done, but more than likely I would have started organizing my sock drawer instead. Instead, I made a deal with myself: “you have to at least look at the script and open the Final Draft file, and you have to do at least 5 pages worth of the changes. If you don’t want to do it anymore, you can stop”. To my amazement, I was able to calm down and focus enough that I completed the edits on most of Act 1. Great success!
I did some yoga before bed to wind down. I fell asleep quickly, but woke up at 2 am with my brain on a Tilt A Whirl. A song was going through my head on repeat, but only one part of a song, and I could not get it to stop. It just kept going over and over and over again, which was making me nuts. I tried my usual tricks - melatonin, breathing, mantras - and when that didn’t work I turned to my true last resort: singing the entire cast recording of the musical RENT in my head in sequence until I finally fell asleep. Yes, this is a thing I do. It’s sort of like counting sheep, but more gay.
Unfortunately, all of my efforts to fall back asleep failed. I was awake on and off until 5 am, when I finally passed out for an hour and a half (that felt like five minutes) and was scared awake by my alarm. I started panicking about how I would feel at work. Nothing makes my dysregulation worse than being sleep deprived. When I got out of bed, I felt tired and jittery, but not as bad as I’d feared. I drank some water and took my medication. Once the meds kicked in, my mind felt clearer and my emotions had calmed. I had a cup of coffee and put my makeup on and got ready for work. By the time I was at the office, I felt almost back to stasis. I was tired, but I wasn’t debilitated. That is a sign of true progress.
On my lunch break, I did a meditation that focused on patience. It is difficult for me to accept setbacks sometimes. It makes me feel like I failed and like I let people down, even though most of the time the only person I let down is myself. I am learning to give myself a lot of positive self-talk (more like BITCH YOU GOT THIS than Stuart Smalley).
Now that I have a clearer head, I know that nothing so terrible actually happened. I mostly just felt shitty. I mostly just cried a lot and got frustrated with myself and momentarily with my husband. I had to ask him very specifically for what I need to communicate effectively going forward. Our brains just work a little differently. I am being patient and trying to extend as much grace as I can, and asked for grace in return while I figure all this out.
In the end, the person I have to extend the most grace to right now is myself. I am still healing. I am still learning. I am not cured. I am not perfect. I am going to screw up. In fact, I already screwed up today! And the biggest challenge - I am trying to make peace with the unknown. I have almost no control over the outcome of the things that are preoccupying me. Before I would have found this infuriating and anxiety inducing, but I am trying to see the beauty and the possibility in it. If I actually want things to change, I need to change my thinking a bit too. I can’t just assume everything will end in disaster. This shift in thinking won’t happen overnight, but I think I’ll get there. I hope so, anyway.