[YouTube Audio] Riding the Wave of Daydream Urges

Hi, everyone! I've mentioned previously that I have a disorder known as maladaptive daydreaming. Basically it means that I daydream so much that it interferes with my life. I belong to a forum for maladaptive daydreamers, and when I decided to record an audio to help myself sit with the feelings caused by the urge to daydream, I wanted to share it with them. The way the forum works, I can't just insert documents from my computer, so I had to put into onto YouTube. But that's okay, because it means that I can share it with all of you, and the whole world too.

A little background on the video: its based off of another acceptance and commitment therapy exercise that I've been using for my anxiety. Acceptance and commitment therapy is different from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy in that it doesn't put emphasis on trying to change your thoughts. Its all about accepting them, working with them, and continuing to move your life in a valued direction.

Here is the video:

Let me know if you have any questions about how to do the exercise, or even maladaptive daydreaming in general. The video is really just an audio with words on the screen. There is also a transcript in the description, but as I say in the video, its probably easier to do the exercise with your eyes closed (it can be difficult to focus properly with your eyes open.


Love always,
Sam

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Stress-Response Hyperstimulation

Hi, everyone! I know that I promised to try and work harder to post more frequently, and that hasn't really happened yet, but I am trying. I am, however, here to talk about something that I've been thinking about for a long time, but that just came up in the past few days again. And that thing is stress-response hyperstimulation.

There really isn't much online information about stress-response hyperstimulation. But the Anxiety Center website lists the symptoms of hypersensitive nerves and senses as:

• Your nerves are overly reactive
• You find you startle more easily
• Your senses are overly keen
• Your hearing is more sensitive
• Your skin is much more sensitive
• You are frightened more easily
• Your taste is acute; foods taste stronger than normal
• Odors are more poignant; things smell stronger than normal

Now, pretty much anyone can experience hypersensitivity. When there's a stressful event, your body goes into overdrive and it becomes more sensitive to things. As you calm down, so does the hypersensitivity. Its very similar to a panic attack in that way. In fact, hypersensitivity can actually be a symptom of a panic attack.

Stress-response hyperstimulation is different. While plain hypersensitivity is caused by an active stress response and goes away given a few minutes, hyperstimulation arises from extended periods of stress or high intensity episodes. Unlike an infrequent trigger of the stress response, your body can't quickly and properly recover from frequent or extremely intense stress episodes. This leads to your nerves being hyperreactive; constantly alert and more sensitive than normal. It takes much longer for your body to recover from this than an infrequently triggered stress response.

So how does this tie in with my experiences? I've been fairly consistently stressed out for years now. Ever so often I look stuff up and come across stress-response hyperstimulation as something that I almost definitely have. A few days ago was one of those times.

I think I've only really managed to recover from it once, back when I first left public school 5 years ago. It took months of doing almost nothing, and certainly nothing stressful, for my nervous system to calm down from its super sensitive state.

My experiences currently match stress-response hyperstimulation very well. I keep getting nerve pain without really any cause. I get what I call "allergy headaches," that I'm still trying to figure out, but that I'm pretty sure are at least affected by my sensitive nerves. I can't stand the smell of cooking food--it makes me horribly nauseous--and meat is the worst offender. I'm super sensitive to smell and taste and touch and motion. Now, some of those symptoms are at least partially explained by my migraines, but I still feel all of that even when I don't have a migraine. Bottom line: I have stress-response hyperstimulation from being excessively stressed out for an extremely long period of time.

So what can I do about it? Well, I would love to just drop everything that's stressing me out, but I can't live in a stress-free bubble, so that's not really a doable or rational thing to try. There are, however, some things that I'm going to try to do or implement in my life that will hopefully help my hypersensitivity dial back from the unbearable level that its currently at. There are a few things that I'm already doing/have done: I already do light to moderate exercise every day, I deleted most of my social media apps, I don't consume much in the way of stimulants, and I do mindfulness and deep breathing every day. Things that I'm going to try are: eliminating electronic devices as much as I can after 8pm, create electronics-free times during the day (I can't do entire days because I rely on my phone for alarms to remind me to do things like take medications and to interact with friends), I'm going to try to have more fun in my life and to laugh more often, and I'm going to try to stop using my heating pad every night. The last one may or may not make sense to most people. Basically, I used to use it for cramps so that I could sleep. Now, even though I'm on a continuous birth control and rarely get cramps, I still use it every night because the heat and the slight weight on my abdomen is soothing. However, I understand that having something with an electrical charge touching my skin for a good 9-10 hours a day is probably not good for me. Not to mention, I have discoloration on my abdomen from the minor burns I've gotten from repeated usage of the heating pad.

With any luck, all of those changes put together will help to heal my nervous system and get it back to a more healthy level of sensitivity. I'll do my best to post an update in a few months to let everyone know how its going.

Love always,
Sam

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(Source: https://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-symptoms/hypersensitivity.shtml)

March Update (from my Patreon)

Hi, everyone! It a new month, which means a new update on How Things Are Going. I can't believe we're already 2 months into 2019 (3 months? idk how that classification works since we're in the third month, but only 2 have fully passed). But the year has been off to a good start. I'm honestly blanking on what I usually talk about here, so I'm just gonna go over recent developments/accomplishments and also things that I hope to accomplish or that are happening in March, and hope that that's right.

As for things that I got done in February: I had a psychiatrist appointment, I finished crocheting a shawl, I reread the book and revised the trigger warning list for The Great Gatsby, I started tapering down one of my meds, and I emailed my last therapist to let her know that I might want to come back to therapy sometime soon. 

The psychiatrist appointment was a big thing. Appointments are always stressful for me, but getting that done means that I don't have to have another for at least 3 months. It was difficult, especially since I was trying to apply the ACT principles of not trying to reduce my anxiety or its related symptoms, but I made it through it, and I'm really proud of myself.

I wrote an entire paragraph about my shawl and how nice it is and then I inserted a picture and it deleted it. Thanks Patreon. Anyways, this is the second shawl I've done, but the first one I made with yarn that was slightly thicker than it was supposed to be, so the shawl ended up more bulky than I wanted it to be. But this second one I did with the right yarn and it turned out perfect. It took a lot of work, but it turned out really nice. Now, instead of inserting a picture, I'm going to link to a tweet that I posted after I finished the shawl that includes pictures. 

On the 26th, I reread and revised The Great Gatsby, which is good because now I only have 5 books left to revise. I'm not doing them on a schedule, because I have more important things to do and the school doesn't technically need them until the start of the fall semester, so I'm just trying to fit them in when I have time. 

After my psychiatrist appointment, we went to refill one of my meds, buspar, and discovered that there's another shortage. So, as I did once back in December, I started tapering it down so that I can hopefully get off of it completely. I'm taking a brief break from tapering any further (I currently have all of my doses at 15mg) until at least after my birthday and maybe after the other stressful thing this month that I'll talk about in a minute. 

A few days ago I finally emailed my last psychologist to let her know that I'd like to go back to therapy soon, but not yet. She quickly responded to say that I just need to let her know when I'm ready and then we'll work out a way for me to see her. This may not seem like a big deal, especially since I probably won't be ready for a few months, but its nice to know that I won't need to find a new therapist. 

Now that I'm done with the recap, I'm just realizing that its not in chronological order at all. Whoops.

On to things going in the month of March. 

As I mentioned, I'm taking a short break from tapering down my buspar, but to make it so that its not a complete waste of time, I'm going to use that time to try and get off of the allergy medication that I've been taking since April. I didn't want to try to get off of both at the same time, and I really wanted to get off of the allergy medication before allergy season starts, so now is really the best time. 

I'm trying to go in a more chronological order, so the next thing that's happening is my birthday! I turn 19 on March 9th. I'm fairly excited. We're gonna do a bit more of a celebration this year than we have been doing, and definitely more than we did last year (I got a really bad migraine on my 18th birthday and spent most of the day crying in the dark). Plus I think we're gonna finally try a cake recipe. I haven't had cake since I went low fodmap in fall 2016.

The only other set event we have going in March is that we're supposed to get new countertops on the 20th (I think). This is a big deal because we've been talking about doing it for years. Also its gonna be fairly stressful for me, what with the noise of removing our current countertops and having other people be in the house for an extended period of time while they're installing the countertops. 

Now onto goals and other things that I hope to have happen this month. 

I have a few goals for this month. One of them is to try to get off of my allergy medication, as I previously mentioned. Another is to add more content to my blogs. I've been posting fairly sporadically, and I'd like to get more content ready so that I can post more frequently. I've also started the process of going through my journal to find entries that I want to share with my therapist when I eventually see her. I'd like to continue to work on the mindfulness activities that I've been doing and dropping the tug of war rope with my worries, anxieties, and fears. My last big goal is to have my grandma come over to visit more frequently. She's getting pretty old and she has dementia, and I don't know how much longer she'll be around or how much longer she'll remember me. I'm feeling pretty guilty about not spending much time with her the last few years, and I want to make up for that by seeing her more frequently now. 

I think that's about it for things I'd like to say. Sorry it got to be so long. I actually would write more, but my fingers have started to hurt from typing. 

I hope to be back here with more content soon.

Love always, Sam

Ways to support me:

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