I can’t cope

Perhaps it's something you could talk about with your psych tomorrow @Captain24?

Or maybe trying a little bit of self care and a little bit of doing some things that feel productive?

Anyway I see you're feeling like bed is the safest place for you tonight so I hope sleep comes quickly and I'll catch you later

I’ll talk to her and see if we can come up with something. @Ru-bee. I’m really lost and hurting. It’s really painful. I’m just a big failure and just want to give up on everything. Yes that’s what I mean. It’s hard to not. I am in bed so that should make me safe. The back door is shut so whatever scared Jett can’t get in. He is till barking though. But both of them are now safe from whatever it was.

Jett is still stressed @MissGremlin. He won’t stop barking. It really scared him.

Im hoping that I can get to sleep. I hope you can get some too.

Im thinking of you

@Captain24 oh poor Jett, lots of cuddles and reassurance and hopefully he settles soon.

Thankyou sweet, fingers crossed we can both get some sleep.

I’m going to sleep. Good night and thanks. Tomorrow is a new day.

@MissGremlin @Ru-bee

@Captain24 night night sweetheart, sleep well ❤️

Beach time with dogs, friend and family sounds ideal 🥰. I assume Kaiko gets to come also? She is a cutie 😍. Glad you mentioned the breed because i would have asked as I am not familiar with them lol! But i think i have seen pics of that dog breed before (eg cards with various dog breeds, etc). Mine are a rare breed also, although knowledge of the breed is increasing due to some tictok accounts lol.

Hopefully the vet can prescribe some anti-anxiety medication, or i know there are some dog treats that are meant to help calm too.

... is there a motion-sickness medication for dogs i wonder??

Do you only get the floor because that is all the dogs let you have? Or is this a human imposing this rule?

I am a creature of habit when it comes to dining chairs too, but not a "no one else can sit there" person - just a habit and i can sit elsewhere if someone else is already there. 😊 but i definitely know a few families where seats are very much "set" places and so if i'm visiting someone new I will always ask where i should sit -- i reckon 60% of the time or more there is some "reserved" seats for specific person(s) 😋.

Its nice that you also get my humour 😋. Sometimes i just see things a bit differently to others. Another "classic" story of me from my mum and sister... they were talking about poodles being intelligent dogs. I piped up that they are "like dolphins!" It made perfect sense to me -- they both are animals with a high intelligence. I must not have verbalised this though and they were both laughing so hard because they didnt understand why i said "poodles are like dolphins". My mum had to pull over off the road because she was laughing too hard! I didnt understand what was so funny. Once they could breath again (from laughing) they asked how/why they are similar, and of course i explained the link via intelligence and they understood then. But still that story and phrase of "poodles are like dolphins" went down as a (happy) classic memory. Im not sure how old i was... i dont recall which city i lived in at the time. But i was either around 8-10 or maybe 12?

There is almost always a logic in my connrctions - but i tend to "skip a few steps" in my brain and verbalise the end place without the links in between! Over time i have learned to catch myself and back up to explain it step by step. 😅.

However having a brain that sees these connections even if they are multi-step connections has made me very good as an analyst and problem-solver 😋.

Thats really interesting that you went in for adhd assessment and they also picked up on the autism 😊. That's a really good pdoc assessor by the sound of it. I have heard it is very common to have both, "audhd" as some say for shorthand.

Did it make a lot of sense of past experiences when you found out that you are adhd and autistic?

Realising i have a number of autistic traits helps me feel that its OK to be that way, even though its different from people around me. And at times also helps me think about how to manage the situation in that i can learn about what would be recommend for someone with autism too. 😊

Good news - the person i met up with today did get a new role in a different team! So she is no longer my boss! Which means we can meet up occasionally as there are not any concerns about conflicts/mixing between friendship and manager-employee situations 😊. (My workplace doesnt restrict this, but it is a wise general rule given its not a small country town environment lol).

Aw, I'm sorry that you weren't supported enough by the study provider to help you with learning/practicing the referencing and researching ☹️. That is disappointing of them. I am lucky that i learned about it in high school, so whilst i had to learn different types of referencing styles at different unis, i already had the concept if them. That would have been really hard. And with MH flaring up too added to it.

Do you still have an interest in it? If so would you consider trying it again if you health was in a good place and you knew you had supports to help you with the academic-practice things like referencing, researching, grammar, etc?

30+-ish years of.episode MH challenges without help/support? Wow! That must have been very difficult I imagine?

I'm only a little bit older than that myself (another one of those weird mind-connections lol 🤭) - thats a really long time to shoulder it all alone!

I'm sorry the comm MH service wasnt great for you - i hope it was better than nothing at that time? (I.e. didnt do damage)

I'm glad you have a really good psych now 😊🥰. Sometimes i feel a bit sorry for my counsellor because of our conversation topics can be very difficult for people to hear and know - which is why i cant share them here. But somehow even when she is really concerned she is still able to trust me and never over-reacts 🥰. She did know what she was in for before we had any sessions though - i was very upfront about needing someone who can sit with that type of discussion topics. But sometimes i still feel sorry for her as a compassionate thing because i also know its not easy to hear how things are for me sometimes, and also know there isnt a quick or guaranteed fix for it.

I hope your appointment with her tomorrow goes "as well as possible" and maybe even isnt as hard as expected. Sometimes in the past i have found things like writing down what i want to say and handing it over instead to help with really difficult things. I wonder what, if anything, might make it abit easier for you?

(Sorry if someone has already said this! I havent read the latter posts yet!)

I'm not sure whether its OK to ask what type of surgery, and what is happening in your body since that shouldnt be.

I'm trying to remember if it was you or someone else in the past talking about HRT challenges post-op?

This is the end of the post now, except for the below topic. So if you want to stop reading here that is a-ok to do so. 😊 kept it to be the bottom to make it easier to opt in/out since im on my phone so i cant do a box instead to toggle open/closed.

TW - body weight (positive, healthy)

I am very healthy in how i am improving my physical health. It should also help with the physical pain if i slowly continue to get closer to "more ideal" ranges. And ive found a really easy way to get the nutrition i need as well as not have to be exhausted by cooking things that i dont dislike. 😊. And it also seems my blood sugars are happy with it too (i am insulin resistant) the other day when tested. Its an all-round win and i am adopting it as a longterm strategy for now.because it ticks all the boxes currently 😊. I could continue in my current pattern for a few years and it would still be healthy to do so. I always tell my gp about these types of changes in case they have concerns with anything that i'm not aware of (eg adjusting medication or longterm impacts). Slow and steady.

Yes Keiko comes too. Mum takes her everywhere. Even when the go to appointments that are 2 hours away. Mum goes in and dad sits with Keiko. @AlwaysMyself. If it’s going to be really hot or really cold I take her. She spends the day here with my two and loves it.

Pix takes care of sick medication at the highest dose for her size. But we still have to make regular stops or she doesn’t make it. She can’t make an hour in the car without medication. When she was a puppy she couldn’t get from my house to mums without being sick. It was less than a 10 minute drive!

It’s a human rule. They have their spots and the rest of the chairs are covered it stuff. They are hoarders. Dad lays a food a double seater lounge and does sit up so I can fit. But it still has newspapers from 2 weeks ago on it anyway. When we go on holidays, there is a large table and they have their spots. It fits 8 people but still always sit in the same spot. I’d always ask if I ever went anywhere but I don’t go anywhere or ever get invited big I really don’t have many friends anyway. I have my best friend that I can’t even remember the last time I seen her and a friend that I go to lunch with a couple of times a year and then my friend from hospital that lives about 3 hours away. I don’t go and visit her though as she is in Sydney and I don’t like it. I’m totally a country girl.

Do you have adhd? That is really random but funny. I get why they were laughing so hard. Especially coming out of a kids mouth! I still don’t think I’d connect it.

Ot did totally make sense. I can see it so much throughout my life. I actually grieved when I got the diagnosis. I still do occasionally. What would my life have been like if it was picked up? What could I have done? Who could I have been? Where could I be now? The same with my depression. I kept it hidden too. It started in my senior years at high school but was never picked up. I always knew something was wrong but no one listened to me. They would give me anti-depressants and I’d just go on my way with no follow up. Then the AD’s worked quickly and I was always overly happy and energetic. I’d go off them and the cycle would repeat. It took for me to really hit rock bottom before someone at work told me to call EAP. I called and said I wanted to see someone in person. I told that counsellor what I was going through she said I needed to see a doctor immediately. I went to the medical centre at 8:30 in the morning to get an appointment and my doctor wasn’t in. I had to see someone new. I told her what was happening and she actually listened. I was in there for 45 minutes. She referred me to comm health. That’s when things got really serious. I was diagnosed with bipolar and it all went from there. Medication and changes and constant appetite with my case manager. I continued to see the counsellor through EAP into comm health decided I needed a psychologist. I found one and always dreaded my appointments with her. I never felt comfortable telling her anything and she didn’t understand bipolar. The second time I went to hospital I noticed that all the facilitators were really kind and caring and would listen and guide me on the short talks we had. I made a connection with one of them and she would spend a little time with me. They aren’t suppose to. I told my Pdoc in there that after I made an attempt that she told me I was stupi and selfish. My Pdoc said I had to fire her straight away and that she would be checking. That left me with out a psych. The head psych at the hospital talked to me about it and said she didn’t have the capacity to take me on but she knew someone that did. It turned out that it was the psych I had made the connection with! So it all worked out so well. My psych is awesome and we connect really well.

I can’t write it down and handover as my appointments are all Telehealth. She lid 4 hours away at the hospital. I have written things down and the past and read them out though.

Comm health did do some damage that I didn’t realise until I was out of it. I’m glad you have a counsellor that listens, it’s hard to know what is ok to say and what is not. I have always been extremely open with my psych but she is a psych. She doesn’t know much about my past as it has never come up but she knows about my childhood.

Thay is awesome that her work environment has improved for her and that it is so much easier to be friends rather than the work dynamic.

The course was all online so that makes it so much harder. I didn’t have the psychical support. I’m not really tech savvy and I’m a long way behind with the whole computer study stuff. I would love to do the course and I’d love to be a peer worker but I guess it’s just not meant to be.

I had polyps in my uterus. They had to be surgically removed, 99% of polyps come back clear, that there is no suspicious creeps in them. Anyway, the had to scrap the walls of my uterus and put in an IUD to stop regrowth. There is hormones in the IUD which react with bipolar!!! That has been interesting. So after the surgery the is some blood loss for a week or two. Mine continued with constant period pain. I had a phone appointment with the gyno and that wasn’t normal so he put me on different hormone tablets to stop it. However they cause severe depression. The blood loss did stop though so it was a double edged sword. I stopped taking the hormone tablets and the constant blood loss started again. It’s been 2 weeks since I have been off them and I have had any loss for a couple of days. My polyps came back with cells in them. So I have to have the surgery again in May and see if the cells have regrown. If they have I the have to have a hysterectomy as it could be cancer. So I have all this going on too!

It’s ok to talk about when it’s healthy! I applaud anyone that can do it that way. It is much better for you and your health to be looking after yourself and for all your blood levels. Being in an ideal weight range is also good for so many things and well done for getting yourself on track. That is something you should be proud of. I struggle with the healthy ways as it’s so hard to cook for one. I eat the same meal for a couple of days, which is fine but I hate cooking and it’s so hard to just buy small enough amounts of ingredients for one person. I am making another frittata today for work tomorrow though. Plus I’m cooking a stir fry for dinner. So I have dinners for the next few nights too.

I was just really open and honest with my psych. I told her everything. Everything I’ve been thinking, everything I’ve considered. I am safe

I feel like I have let her down and she is concerned. I told her if it was doable I would have booked into hospital. It’s just not achievable though.

She is contacting my GP as she thinks I need a lot more support right now. Maybe he will get me an appointment. I can’t ring up and get one as they are all booked out for the next 6 weeks.

I feel really open and exposed. I’m regretting being so honest. I’m scared.

I was just writing this to say how my appointment went. I just thought people wanted to know.

Sorry but I was just sharing.

@Captain24 I'm really proud of you for being open and honest and I hope you can get more support sweet.

I'm just at my doctors waiting for my appointment. But know that I'm sitting with you sweetheart, sending you hugs ❤️.