I have been ridiculously bad at blogging regularly recently (and yes, I’m aware that recently is pretty much over the last year or so!) and I’m really sorry about that. It’s been a combination of feeling rubbish, not motivated or focussed and not really having anything interesting other than running to write about, but I’m also aware that all of that is just excuses and the real reason is that I’ve been avoiding actually thinking about anything other than any given day (or usually hour) at a time and haven’t wanted to acknowledge properly what’s been going on in my head which doesn’t even make proper sense anyway. But I’ve got a million things I should really be trying to focus on and blogging is a good way of trying to make sense of it and having some sort of accountability so I’m going to make a massive effort to stick to blogging more regularly again…
Don’t want to go into too much detail about the last few months and it’s basically an extension of topics I’ve blogged about a lot before anyway. Short version: obsessions and moods got a lot more intense last summer and into autumn (see previous post Obsessions for more about that) and it started to spiral, and I had no idea how to manage it. At the same time, I was being assessed by the community mental health team in the area I’d moved to but was told (again) that I couldn’t access services because of autism. I got really frustrated and asked why I was taking high doses of psychotropic medications if it was a neurological issue and the psychiatrist said that she could see my point. So I stopped taking medication completely which I *think* was the right decision (horrible side effects and not worth any minor benefits mood-wise) but since then, the bitch in my head has got worse and more aggressive and the obsessions were so intense that I needed to find another way to manage it.
One of the side effects to antipsychotics had been weight gain and I lost a bit of weight when I stopped taking them which definitely helped to feel more in control, and since then my periods have stopped which has meant that the obsessions are much, much less intense and more manageable. Just as a disclaimer because I know I don’t usually go into detail about specific thoughts or behaviours in case it triggers anyone- I am not at a massively low weight and I don’t plan to be; the weight loss was genuinely a way to manage obsessions which had got to a completely unmanageable level of intensity and I really didn’t know how else to manage it. I don’t want a full-on ED relapse which is the main reason I’m back to blogging again and will go into more detail about that in another blog post once I’ve got my head around what I’m actually trying to say!
Last week, a friend made me aware that I really need to learn to manage the ED side of things before it gets out of control which is making me feel really, really scared because I’ve never actually addressed it properly before apart from trying to get out of being inpatient and have found functional ways of basically maintaining it without actually trying to change too much and any attempts I have made haven’t lasted longer than a few weeks but the real difference this time is that she seems to think I can actually change and she does genuinely seem to believe that. Which maybe doesn’t sound like much but after years of people saying I’m “not ready”, have a “chronic” eating disorder, it would be “too difficult to make changes” because of autism, I’m too “entrenched” or whatever other ways medical professionals put it, it’s very, very weird to hear someone say that they genuinely think I can do it. Especially since it’s someone I trust absolutely- she’s very direct and honest, and I don’t think she’d just say it. Feels really weird but it’s also made me feel more positive and interested to try to actually change properly than I think I’ve ever really felt, and that’s weird and scary in itself! Still trying to process it but will write another, more focussed blog post soon.
Thoughts from an Iridescent Starfish 