Warped thinking
Apr. 20th, 2016 13:48![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillI so rarely have either anxiety or depression that when I do, it makes for a surreal experience: I know my thinking is warped, I can even identify how it's different, and yet that doesn't help very much. I can keep reminding myself that it's bad brainmeat talking, but the effort becomes exhausting, on top of just trying to stay functional.
Today I have anxiety. I made it through a round of errands, to a quiet office and to two grocery stores, but it was distinctly unpleasant. There's nothing inherently social about my anxiety: I can be just as anxious at home. But I became kind of glad that my vision is sort of blurry today, because by the time I hit TJ's I found that every piece of text I saw had taken on a peculiar and slightly sinister significance, like propaganda, or the posters in a horror film. "Chocolate bars, $1.99?!?" "QUALITY DOESN'T HAVE TO BE EXPENSIVE" "Summer Deals!!1!1" omg get me out of here.
When I got home, I unloaded the groceries and wondered what the hell I was going to do with all that food, despite 1) knowing what I was going to use the items for when I picked them up, 2) feeling lately like there's no food in the house, and 3) not having eaten breakfast despite it being 1pm. It just overwhelmed me. This is not my usual brain.
In addition, I woke up with body dysmorphia, which is a sometime thing; I don't know what the causal relationship is with anxiety, but I never get it without being anxious or stressed. I get the delusional kind, too -- it's not that I can't stop obsessing about how my eyebrows look, it's that I have the strangest feeling that my arms aren't as long as they're supposed to be, or my body is squat and blobby, or (for a brief moment in the shower this morning) I'm convinced that I'm covered in coarse black hair. I know in the moment (or at least after the initial impression) that this perception is false, but I still have to avoid mirrors, which somebody swapped out with the funhouse kind. And I get anxious that Something's Wrong, even if exactly what that is keeps changing.
It's not gender dysphoria, it's completely different. It makes me glad that I don't have to run my workshop with this substitute brainmeat -- hopefully my chemistry will have sorted itself out by tomorrow. But boy howdy, today is pretty weird, and not in a good way.
Today I have anxiety. I made it through a round of errands, to a quiet office and to two grocery stores, but it was distinctly unpleasant. There's nothing inherently social about my anxiety: I can be just as anxious at home. But I became kind of glad that my vision is sort of blurry today, because by the time I hit TJ's I found that every piece of text I saw had taken on a peculiar and slightly sinister significance, like propaganda, or the posters in a horror film. "Chocolate bars, $1.99?!?" "QUALITY DOESN'T HAVE TO BE EXPENSIVE" "Summer Deals!!1!1" omg get me out of here.
When I got home, I unloaded the groceries and wondered what the hell I was going to do with all that food, despite 1) knowing what I was going to use the items for when I picked them up, 2) feeling lately like there's no food in the house, and 3) not having eaten breakfast despite it being 1pm. It just overwhelmed me. This is not my usual brain.
In addition, I woke up with body dysmorphia, which is a sometime thing; I don't know what the causal relationship is with anxiety, but I never get it without being anxious or stressed. I get the delusional kind, too -- it's not that I can't stop obsessing about how my eyebrows look, it's that I have the strangest feeling that my arms aren't as long as they're supposed to be, or my body is squat and blobby, or (for a brief moment in the shower this morning) I'm convinced that I'm covered in coarse black hair. I know in the moment (or at least after the initial impression) that this perception is false, but I still have to avoid mirrors, which somebody swapped out with the funhouse kind. And I get anxious that Something's Wrong, even if exactly what that is keeps changing.
It's not gender dysphoria, it's completely different. It makes me glad that I don't have to run my workshop with this substitute brainmeat -- hopefully my chemistry will have sorted itself out by tomorrow. But boy howdy, today is pretty weird, and not in a good way.
