November Update! (From my Patreon)

Hi, everyone!

Oh good, its November already. *queue panic over the inevitable passage of time*

Now, I apologize for this being slightly late, I really have no excuse other than "I just didn't do it."

October was incredibly busy. I didn't mention it in the October update, but I requested information from the college that I was interested in attending at the end of September. I spent the first 2 weeks of October talking to an enrollment advisor, and then I applied and was accepted. So, I will be starting an Exploratory Social and Behavioral Sciences program in the spring. *endless screaming in excitement and fear*

I also finished reteaching myself chemistry and started brushing up on my math skills. Its not technically necessary because of how the math placement exam is administered, but I would feel more comfortable taking it if I know that I have a better understanding of the material, most of which I haven't done in years.

After it became apparent that my new glasses prescription wasn't correct, I went back to the eye doctor and had a recheck done. With any luck, my new-new lenses will be in at the beginning of this week and they will be better than my current ones. It would be good if I could read without the double vision and pain.

I also did some stuff for my shop, mainly filing my doing business as statement and buying supplies and all that.

And I got a flu shot for the first time in at least 6 years. Hopefully that'll make me less nervous about going places this winter.

So, what's happening this month?

Well, the main thing is an appointment with my academic advisor on the 12th. Its a phone appointment, which sucks because I'm not very good at talking on the phone and remembering things, but my dad is supposed to be there with me to help with that.

I do still have other things to work on. I need to apply for a sellers permit (the application is mostly done, I'm just having trouble with a few parts), I need to price and photograph my stuff, I need to continue the math review (I'm hoping to take the placement exam on the 22nd), and I need to continue working on socializing more and learning how to do things under pressure.

So, that's my upcoming month. I hope that everyone's doing okay with the change in seasons and all that.

Love always,

Sam

Defiance

Let me start off this blog post by saying that I am terrified. All of the time.

If you read my monthly updates then you'll know that I'm currently in the process of applying to college and opening an Etsy store. And that the prospect of doing either of those things is terrifying.

Objectively speaking, the applying to college part is easier because its less work. All I have to do is fill out my information, have my transcript sent to the college, and pick the program that I want to be enrolled in. But its still terrifying.

I have spent most of my life running away from things that scare me. When I made handmade valentines for my class in 5th grade, I was scared of how the other students would react, so I pretended to be sick and had my mom give them out instead. When I got put in the advanced class in 6th grade and was suddenly being challenged in school for the first time in my life, I wanted to leave the class. When I started having panic attacks and migraines and was made generally miserable by school in the following years, I left. When my teacher meetings for my online high school included other kids and one of them made a comment that embarrassed me, I begged my teacher to let me do one-on-one meetings. When I made another attempt at therapy in 2017 and started having panic attacks more frequently again, I stopped going. Every time I'm even slightly anxious, or upset, or inconvenienced, I start daydreaming to avoid the emotion. I could point to pretty much every single event in my life that frightened or scared me in some way and explain how I ran away (or tried to run away) from that situation.

I am very good at running away. Even if running away means doing things that, while well-intentioned, end up essentially ruining my life. I got as isolated as I've been the past few years by gradually withdrawing more and more into an ever shrinking safe bubble every time something happened that scared me or made me anxious. And it sucks.

The fight or flight response is ingrained into our brains. Its a survival technique that's been passed down for millennia. Except now, instead of protecting me from a wild animal, it tries to get me to give up on things and run away when they feel scary or overwhelming--regardless of whether there's an actual threat or not.

And I happen to be VERY good at the flight response (My fight response has also been getting triggered more and more frequently over the past 2 years or so, but that's a topic for another post). For some reason or another, probably the fact that I give into what the flight response tells me to do so often, my flight response is very active and its very good at getting me to do what it says I need to do in order to keep myself safe.

My point is that my life, up until very recently, has been consumed by a pattern of getting scared and running away, giving up on things that I want to and that are important to do, and retreating further into my shell.

When I started using acceptance and commitment therapy about a year ago, I started really recognizing this harmful pattern and the effect that it was having on my life. The whole point of acceptance and commitment therapy is to feel whatever it is you're feeling, and do what you want to anyways. I can't change my thoughts. I can't logic or will my way out of my anxiety. If I could, I would have been cured years ago. What I can do is change what I do with my hands and feet. I can change my response to the anxiety.

That's what I've been working on for months, and its something that I'll likely be working on for the rest of my life.

So how does this tie in to me feeling terrified all of the time?

I've made multiple attempts before to get my life back on track. To set goals and work hard to achieve them. And pretty much every time, I've felt scared and overwhelmed and uncertain, and I've given up those goals and retreated back into my shell.

Going to college and opening an Etsy store are both things that have been in the works for years. I put off doing both of them for a while, partially because I was scared and partially because I wasn't in the correct mental state to be able to handle something as stressful and as time consuming as that. Earlier this year I made the decision to really start working toward doing both of those things. I started writing down questions to ask an admissions counselor and brushing up on school subjects that I'm not the best at. I started building up a stock of crocheted items and doing things like finding the proper business licenses and all of that for my store.

Doing this is stressful. Beyond stressful. It takes all of my courage and then some to look at my to do list of items that need to get done to move me toward those goals and to actually do those things. It is a constant battle for me to not fall back into my usual pattern of cutting and running when things get stressful. Every single day, usually multiple times each day, I have to commit to my goals and take steps to achieve them, even when my anxiety and the flight response are screaming at me that I need to drop everything that I'm trying to do and never, ever try again because I'm going to fail and everyone will hate me and its better to just give up now.

And that is the center of it. Every step that I take, no matter how small, is an act of defiance against my anxiety and the habitual patterns that have kept me stuck for most of my entire life. Every time I tell a friend or a family member about my plans, I am defying the anxiety that tells me to keep quiet so that less people know if I fail. Every time I send off some other piece of paperwork or buy some more supplies, I am defying the anxiety that tells me that the further in I get, the harder it will be to cut and run, and the more costly it will be to do so.

I have already made it so much farther than I ever have before. I have spent months preparing for these things. Following my old patterns, I would have cut and run after a week. Maybe a month if I was lucky. But I've been seriously considering and working toward these goals for probably around 6 months now. And it has been an agonizing process and will likely get even more so in the coming months. But I have thought it through, which is more than I can say for most of my other decisions regarding stressful things. Generally, if I can't get the stressful thing completely done or out of my hands within, say, an hour, it just never happens. So I have already far exceeded my previous experiences.

Who knows? Maybe I will end up running away from the stress. Maybe it will be too much and I'll retreat back into my shell for a few years until the feelings become unbearable again and I have to do something about them. That would suck. But even if that does end up happening, I need to remember to be proud of myself for all that I accomplished anyways. I have accomplished so much over the past 6 months and that deserves all of the celebration in the world. Because I felt that terror. And I continually defied my anxiety and the old habitual patterns that kept me stuck and did what I really wanted to do anyways.

Love always,
Sam

Ways to support me:
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October Update! (From my Patreon)

Hi, everyone!

First of all, my apologies for not posting an update last month. I was stressed at the beginning of the month about my DMV appointment, and then I immediately caught a cold, and I put off writing the update long enough that I just decided to skip it.

So, things that have been happening the last 2 months.

The two big things are that I went to the eye doctor mid August and finally got my prescription updated and I made it to my September 5th appointment at the DMV to get my ID. I'd been putting both of them off for about a year and a half, so they really are huge accomplishments. The DMV appointment was even more impressive because I managed to do it even though I came down with a cold literally the day of the appointment and I felt like I was trying to swallow broken glass.

Other things that I've been doing including continuing to teach myself chemistry (I'm almost done), crocheting and working on prepping to open my store (the current estimate is sometime after the new year), and trying to connect with my friends and socialize more.

All in all, its been a pretty eventful 2 months.

As for things going this coming month, I have a few pretty big tasks.

First of all, I started doing habit reversal training on the 23rd for my maladaptive daydreaming. I'm working in conjunction with a research team, and its super stressful but I'm very excited.

Now that I have my ID, I can get started on filing all of the necessary paperwork to get my shop open. First up is the doing business as statement, which I'll send off to the county clerk's office as soon as I get some checks so that I can pay the fee. While I'm waiting for that to be filed, I have other stuff to do to get my shop ready to open, including figuring out pricing, buying all of the supplies that I need, and starting to photograph the items.

My other main task is to finish teaching myself chemistry. I had been hoping to finish in September, but I didn't manage to do it because of having to take a break while I was sick. I've got 2 more sections left, so I should be able to finish with a fair amount of time left over. Once I'm done with chemistry, I need to take some math and English proficiency tests so that I can figure out what I need to study before I'm ready to take placement exams for college.

The only other thing that I know I'm going to be working on this month is tapering down one of my anxiety medications. Its the same one I started tapering earlier this year. As side effects go, they really aren't that bad, but I'm getting fed up with the restlessness that I get from taking it and I'm ready and willing to taper it down, so I'm going to do that as well. I definitely won't be done by the end of the month, but hopefully will be before the end of the year.

Those are the main things going on this month. It's going to be a lot of work, and its quite stressful, but I finally feel like I'm doing something with my life, and that's worth the stress.

I think its worth adding that once I get my shop up and running (again, probably after the new year), I think that I'll start posting behind the scenes stuff from that on here, which will hopefully give me some more content that people might want to see.

I hope everyone has a very good and spooky month.

Love always,

Sam

August Update! (From my Patreon)

*screaming in horror because there are only 5 month left this year*

Alright, now that I've got that out of the way, onto the update.

My July was pretty uneventful. I didn't manage to get to my DMV appointment, which sucks, but I have another set for September 5th and I'm really hoping that I make it to that one.

I spent most of the month taking chemistry notes and crocheting. I think I actually understand most of the chemistry stuff that I've gone through so far. I finished one big crochet project, and some other smaller ones as well. I didn't make a whole lot of progress with exposure therapy, which sucks, but I'm not moving backward, so that's something to celebrate. I've been dealing with a recurrence of my daily headaches since the end of winter, and they're still not abating. Which is not good because spending a good portion of every day in a pain-induced haze is not fun nor good for productivity.

As for things going on this upcoming month, its likely to be a fairly uneventful month as well, since I don't have my ID yet and thus cannot open my etsy store. I'm going to keep reteaching myself chemistry, working on exposure therapy, and crocheting. I don't know for sure but I think that I'm going to try to create a trigger warning list for at least 1 book. Maybe one of the other ones that I read for school but that I didn't create a list for because they don't read them anymore. Right now, as in this weekend, I'm organizing and cleaning the house as a surprise birthday present for my mom, who is out of town until Sunday evening.

And I still need to figure out what kind of content I want to put here. Or if doing this is even worth it, since my audience is very small and I clearly don't have interesting enough content.

Love always,

Sam Ways to support me: Patreon Paypal

July Update! (From my Patreon)

Hi, everyone! This new update is going to begin as usual: with me expressing my amazement at how much of the year is gone already. Literally its halfway over. How is it halfway over? Yesterday was January. And January was a million years ago. Its really amazing how weird our perception of time is.

June was fairly busy for me, though I think that I did a better job of balancing my life so I didn't end up nearly as overwhelmed as in pervious months.

I got to the first appointment that I had scheduled, which is good because now I don't have to go in for another year. Sugar had her ACL surgery and she's recovering nicely. I've been reteaching myself chemistry and I think that I'm actually understanding it this time. And I took a nice break this last week. It was supposed to be a 2 day break, but I got unfocused and into a reading and Netflix marathon, so I haven't really done much recently. But that's okay. I've been pushing myself very hard over the past few months and I deserved that break.

As for things coming up this month, this month is likely to be fairly busy as well. I need to keep crocheting things, since I haven't been doing much of that recently. I have an appointment on the 11th at the DMV to get my ID. I'm hoping that I'll make it to that one, but as a failsafe, I also scheduled an appointment in September in case I miss this one. I'm going to keep reteaching myself chemistry and hopefully move on to other subjects within a few months. I'm also planning on signing up for the maladaptive daydreaming treatment program that was just put out.

I still haven't figured out what content I want to put here, so I apologize for being more silent than I should be. I'm still open to suggestions if anyone has them.

Love always,

Sam Ways to support me: Patreon Paypal

Exposure Therapy -- Week 13

Hi, everyone! In my last post I promised that I would write an update on how my exposure therapy is going after I went to the first appointment that I was preparing for. That was last Tuesday, and in typical Sam fashion, I have been procrastinating writing the update since then. However, I set aside some time today to write it and I'm doing my best to follow through.

A little summary of what I'd been doing up until my previous update (10 weeks ago) and my motivations for committing to exposure therapy: At the end of March I found out that in order to get one of my (very essential) prescriptions refilled, I needed to go in for an actual appointment instead of just a telemedicine appointment, which is what I've been doing for my other meds. I very quickly started putting together an exposure therapy plan based on acceptance and commitment therapy. Up until my last update I had been mostly doing sentence exposures for my fears of germs and social situations and watching dashcam videos of car rides and listening to a subliminal audio to work on my horrible motion sickness.

Looking back at what I wrote then, so much has changed in the past 10 weeks.

3 days after the update, I began doing actual car ride exposures. It took me a bit, and a lot of schedule shifting, to figure out when was the best time to do them, but I now get up earlier in the morning so my dad can take me for an exposure before he goes to work (I don't have a drivers license, so I can't do them by myself). These exposures were very difficult at first, and they sometimes still are. However, I am making quite a bit of progress. it would be nice to make progress faster, but I'm still miles ahead (literally) than I was before I started the exposures. Yesterday I made it as far from the house as I ever have during these exposures. About 7 miles out, all the way to the DMV, which is the site of my next scheduled appointment. It can be very frustrating at times when some days I'm able to do a lot more and go a lot farther than others, so this entire process is a lesson in self-forgiveness and understanding that progress is not linear.

I did begin doing other real life exposures as well, though I don't do them quite as much as the car ride ones. They're mostly just things in my everyday life that I would normally avoid, like using a fork that has a stain on it, or not sanitizing my hands before taking some of my meds. I still have to deal with the intrusive thoughts about germs and such, and it would be nice if I didn't, but I don't see that happening, so I'm doing my best to expose myself to situations that cause the intrusive thoughts so that I can learn to keep going even with them, without overwhelming myself so much that I can't function. I'll continue to work on this, but the real test will be when cold season begins next fall.

Onto the appointment. I was understandably very anxious beforehand. My digestive system was freaking out and I felt like I was going to pass out and I kept lashing out at my family from stress (having stress-triggered anger issues is fun). However, I stuck with it, albeit after taking a Vistaril to dampen some of the anxiety, and I made it to the appointment. I conversed with 4 different people, not including my dad, who took me to the appointment, I managed to get all of my points across, and I even used a public bathroom. By the end of the appointment, I'd calmed down enough (likely from relief at getting the appointment done with and from the Vistaril) that we actually stopped at the store on the way home, which is something that I'd only done twice before during the exposure therapy.

It took me a while to recover. I spent most of the rest of Tuesday watching movies, reading fanfiction, and doing whatever I wanted. I skipped the car ride exposure on Wednesday morning to give myself some more time to recover. Even with that, the exposures over the past week have been fairly difficult. Whenever I go through something stressful it unbalances my nervous system and it can take a very long time for it to get back to normal. Fortunately, it seems like things are leveling off now.

Overall, I've made a lot of progress in the 13 weeks since I started exposure therapy. I've been communicating with others more, doing more, balancing my life better. I'm even working on setting some stuff up so that I can watch movies with a friend of mine who lives far away. My progress is especially something to celebrate given that I managed to do all of it while dealing with a recurrence of my chronic headaches, which I get every day and that make functioning near impossible.

As I mentioned earlier, my next appointment is at the DMV on July 11th. I never went down there to get my ID when I turned 18, and I need it in order to do some other life stuff that I've been working on. At this point, I'm not sure if I'll be ready, since its in like 2 1/2 weeks and I'm expecting it to be more stressful than my last appointment (not the least of which because having my ID is going to open up my life to other things that I can and want to do but that are stressful), but it'll be like a month and a half after that before the next available appointment, so I'll probably force myself to go just because I don't feel like waiting that long.

I don't know when I'll post my next exposure therapy update. Perhaps once I've made a bit more progress I'll write a post that goes into detail explaining the things that I've been doing for exposure therapy, how I feel/felt about them, and maybe include links or examples.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about the exposure therapy that you'd like me to answer, feel free to leave them in the comments section and I'll get to them as soon as possible.


Love always,
Sam

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Journal Series: Fear of Not Being in Control

Hi, everyone! My apologies for the long wait in between original posts, I've had a very busy few months. Anyways, this has been in my drafts since partway through April, and I decided that it was high time that I actually finished and published it. It's another part in the Journal Series, this time on the fear of not being in control.

Here is the journal entry from April 22, 2019, that this post is based on: "I’m still doing the real life car exposures, and I should really move up to actually going places in the car rather than just sitting in it with it off, but I’m having trouble giving up the control that I have thus far had in my exposures and my life in general. Because I don’t have a drivers license, in order to do the exposures I have to have someone else drive me around, which means that I am ultimately at the whims of them. I can’t just stop and have everything suddenly be over like I can with exposures that I do at home. And if I freak out, I will have an audience. A sympathetic audience but an audience nonetheless. I’m giving myself until Thursday night to decide whether I want to keep my appointment for April 30^th or if I want to reschedule it to a later date. In order to know for sure whether I’ll feel comfortable doing the appointment, I should really have driven around at least a few times before I make my decision. Its Monday, so I need to get a move on it. But I’m still having trouble dealing with giving up the control that I generally desperately cling to. "

For as long as I remember, I've always wanted--needed--to be in control. Likely stemming from my generally anxious disposition, the compulsive need to be in control has just gotten worse and worse as I've gotten older. The events leading up to and since my isolation began have been largely due to my need to control everything. I couldn't control other people's actions, so I stopped being around other people. I couldn't control my body's responses to stress, so I removed myself from as many stressful situations as I possibly could. I didn't go to doctors appointments. I didn't hang out with friends. I didn't do anything that made it so I couldn't control 95% of what was happening.

I think that that is why I was drawn to daydreaming so much. It might not always feel like it, but I control my daydreams 100%. And as someone who fears being not in control as much as I do, that is very appealing. After all, why bother dealing with the unpredictability of life when you can constantly daydream of a different life, a different world, and one that you control completely?

As you can see from the excerpt from my journal, I came across this fear once again when I began doing exposures. Now, I'm not going to go in detail here about all of the exposures that I've done since this journal entry (note to self: you really need to post another exposure therapy update) because that isn't the focus of this post.

As I explained, I have done absolutely everything in my power to be as in control of my life as possible over the past 5 years. That meant isolating myself almost completely and daydreaming whenever I was feeling out of control in my real life. And back when I first started doing the car ride exposures, I really struggled with the idea of being at the whim of whoever was driving, since I don't have a drivers license so I'm unable to do the exposures by myself. Not that I don't trust my parents (the people who would be helping me with the exposures), but I've clung so desperately to any level of control I could for pretty much my entire life that the idea of not being in control was... incredibly unpleasant.

I did manage to sit with my fear and start doing the exposures, which was a giant step in and of itself. It was a bit touch and go at first as I was getting used to everything, especially since my dad did do what I feared would happen once and didn't consult me before taking a different route than I thought we were going to.

After that happened, I was a bit hesitant to continue the exposures, but I assertively communicated to my dad that what he did wasn't okay and that even though I knew he didn't do it to hurt me, it still broke down some of the trust that I was putting in him when doing those exposures. Luckily, he understood and apologized, and since then he has done a pretty good job of always asking me where I want to go and sticking to it.

The bottom line is this: The fear of not being in control is pervasive. Pretty much everyone feels it to some degree. And its easy and understandable to want to cling to control as much as you can. But take it from someone who did that to about the highest degree possible--its no way to live your life. Wanting to be in control is okay but removing unpredictable parts from your life and allowing your fear of not being in control to, well, control you--isn't.

I've learned a lot in the almost 2 months since I started doing those specific exposures. But the main thing is that while the unpredictability of life is scary, removing that unpredictability isn't healthy. There are always going to unpredictable aspects in your life--even if you do what I did. And by not allowing yourself to experience those things and to feel the way that you feel, you're damaging your ability to deal with them.


Love always,
Sam

Ways to support me:
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P.S. I did end up rescheduling that appointment, its on the 18th of this month (June). I'll post an update on my exposure therapy progress after that appointment, so probably in about 2 weeks.