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Wednesday feels a little blah
Jan. 15th, 2025 11:00 pmI walked with M.
A. was feeling really itchy this morning, so I gave her a quarter tab of dramamine, on the theory that we were about to get in the car, and her anxiety really peaks as we are headed out to the car, and the itching is almost certainly related to that, so it could be a case of covert vestibular stuff being suppressed and oozing out as other symptoms. It seemed to help. It’s unlikely to hurt, anyway.
We discussed this idea in therapy, and I accidentally called it damamine, so that’s what I’m calling it from now on. Spelling it damnamine, probably.
R. and I went out to dinner at West Village Tavern.
We talked to the therapist about things I’ve been thinking about anxiety, and that OCD diagnosis I forgot about, and how to figure out when to pursue medication and things of that nature.
Afterwards, I kept thinking, you know, the whole escalator phobia turned out to be a parallel lines problem. If talking about it doesn’t do more than mitigate, I feel like a lot of medications just pursue a different form of suppression. I kind of want to pursue this covert/suppressed/unmet physical need idea. What if a lot of somatization was some kind of zany covert physical issue, that manifested as a seemingly unrelated physical symptom, that defied understanding as a medical problem with that physical symptom, and was then treated as a psychological problem, as somatization? I told the therapist about my whole sneezing when I really need to defecate weirdness, because it has a lot of the structure of what I’m fumbling around in the dark trying to figure out.
My relatives who don’t leave the house aren’t straight up afraid, like, agoraphobia. But every time something appealing happens outside the house that they are willing to try to leave the house to go do, their symptoms spike. So they _want_ to leave, but they have physical symptoms that spike when they try to leave. Obviously, somatization, right? But what does that really mean? Usually, if you leave the house it involves getting in a car. What if covert vestibular crap was a the root of some of this? What is the effort of masking, of appearing neurotypical, was so exhausting, that the prospect of having to do that — even if not conscious — just mentally preparing your list in your head of all the dos and don’ts and so forth, just wiped people out in a way that manifested physically?
If THAT is what’s going on, treating them for anxiety, or dampening the symptoms, isn’t going to work well or for long. They need to stop doing all those dos and quit worrying about all those don’ts and the Outside the House has got to become much more accommodating. Otherwise, why leave?
A. was feeling really itchy this morning, so I gave her a quarter tab of dramamine, on the theory that we were about to get in the car, and her anxiety really peaks as we are headed out to the car, and the itching is almost certainly related to that, so it could be a case of covert vestibular stuff being suppressed and oozing out as other symptoms. It seemed to help. It’s unlikely to hurt, anyway.
We discussed this idea in therapy, and I accidentally called it damamine, so that’s what I’m calling it from now on. Spelling it damnamine, probably.
R. and I went out to dinner at West Village Tavern.
We talked to the therapist about things I’ve been thinking about anxiety, and that OCD diagnosis I forgot about, and how to figure out when to pursue medication and things of that nature.
Afterwards, I kept thinking, you know, the whole escalator phobia turned out to be a parallel lines problem. If talking about it doesn’t do more than mitigate, I feel like a lot of medications just pursue a different form of suppression. I kind of want to pursue this covert/suppressed/unmet physical need idea. What if a lot of somatization was some kind of zany covert physical issue, that manifested as a seemingly unrelated physical symptom, that defied understanding as a medical problem with that physical symptom, and was then treated as a psychological problem, as somatization? I told the therapist about my whole sneezing when I really need to defecate weirdness, because it has a lot of the structure of what I’m fumbling around in the dark trying to figure out.
My relatives who don’t leave the house aren’t straight up afraid, like, agoraphobia. But every time something appealing happens outside the house that they are willing to try to leave the house to go do, their symptoms spike. So they _want_ to leave, but they have physical symptoms that spike when they try to leave. Obviously, somatization, right? But what does that really mean? Usually, if you leave the house it involves getting in a car. What if covert vestibular crap was a the root of some of this? What is the effort of masking, of appearing neurotypical, was so exhausting, that the prospect of having to do that — even if not conscious — just mentally preparing your list in your head of all the dos and don’ts and so forth, just wiped people out in a way that manifested physically?
If THAT is what’s going on, treating them for anxiety, or dampening the symptoms, isn’t going to work well or for long. They need to stop doing all those dos and quit worrying about all those don’ts and the Outside the House has got to become much more accommodating. Otherwise, why leave?