I’m still feeling fairly puny today, and it comes with a bonus dose of the shakes. Well, tremors, I guess; it’s not severe, but it is slightly annoying. Add in a dose of out-of-nowhere anxiety of a low grade, and I’m not that impressed. I was slapped with a wave of dread earlier, and the only thing I can think of that could have triggered it was (ironically) opening up an article on managing anxiety. The wave itself was your generic ‘You’ve done something wrong and there will be consequences!’ Well no, I’ve not done anything brain. I’ve sat here and had a coffee. I’ve sat here and started sorting through my work pile. But that’s the problem with that kind of intrusive thought — it invites you to ruminate at length to try and figure out what you could have possibly done. And as the article suggests, that sort of thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy; one can always find something that fits into that box, and thereby justifying the intrusive thinking. Bad brain, no cookies for you!

I definitely need to keep the anxiety at bay this week, seeing how I see my psychiatrist next week. It’s so easy for me to make myself sick thinking about medical appointments, which is beyond ridiculous. I absolutely do not understand why my body and brain completely shut out my attempts to reason when it gets into that state. I do try to reason and breathe and think soothing thoughts, but it still ends up with dry heaving as I get into the car if I’m lucky (and vomiting if I’m not). Maybe it ties into some subconscious issue with the fact that I feel medical professionals are overly dismissive of me because I am not super-demonstrative screaming and drama-caterwauling to make my points? It’s definitely a piece of my psyche I need to pick apart and try to find a good logic behind; that might give me the tools to stop it from being such a painful and destructive thingie.

For now though, I’m going to take a deep breath, stretch, and try to not let my brain drag me down into the dumps. I still need to go over my notes so that I can try to get the psychiatrist to work on things besides the core bipolar… but yeah, that can definitely wait until later.

<3