I realise I haven’t been on in over a week, so I have carved out some time this morning to pop in and reply to as much as I can. However I have very limited time, so my answers may be briefer than usual - please understand this as “time pressure” and not a lack of wanting to engage. And if I am less “crafted” in how I write something - also understand this is time pressure and if something I say (usually the way I say it!) comes across negatively please try to re-read it to see if perhaps I have just had poor wording or being direct, as I can assure you I would never post with ill-intent. This will allow me to be reply to as much as possible in my very limited time, without fear of being misinterpreted & causing someone upset from the misinterpretation. 😊 Feel free to ask follow-up questions with curious care if I have not mentioned something or something isn't clear.
@MissGremlin Just seeing now you post from when I was last on (our posts crossed paths and I didn’t see it). I’m so sorry you experienced that. 😖. Reaching out for support and it not being there or being hurtful is so much extra pain on top (from my experience) - my heart breaks for you hun, because I care. Sending care & safe love.
How did the house inspection go?
Has this week past or the one upcoming been any less busy/hectic/tiring? Sounds like a lot and stressful.
@Flutterbug9 sorry for delayed reply and messages crossing paths when I was last on; just seeing it now. Sorry to hear your lung capacity has reduced further since the last assessment had been done, but also relieved that you can still go ahead with the pain relief infusion.
I’m wondering how the change in shoulder exercises you mentioned has been going? I’m hoping of course that it is helping/improving.
I agree that seeing & picking up on incongruences is a great strength as an investigator/analyst. 😊
Wondering how you feel your nervous system is going currently - with respect to what you mentioned about easily triggered by the slightest negative things? Hoping things may have started to improve a little for you, but also understand they may not have. Sending safe loving hugs and care.
@Flutterbug9 great question about whether I default to problem-solving in other social interactions (offline) too; tagging @Blackcloud also as they may be interested in the answer also. 😊. My brain’s default - yes; however when I have visual cues (body language, facial expression, tone of voice) I can better assess what a person might be needing/wanting and thus know to withhold my thoughts/advice if that isn’t what I perceive they want at the time — or if I feel it’s OK to, I will just ask directly “would you like any advice, or just to be heard?” I don’t always get it right (or notice!) but the more serious/distressed the situation the less likely I am to misread it in-person; where as if it’s a light conversation and someone brings up a frustration in passing — I am more likely to auto-pilot to problem-solving and miss the fact they may not want that, because I’m not as attuned to their emotion at the time. However, I use a lot of pattern recognition - which means once I learn a specific person doesn’t want xxx then its easier for me to remember to never provide xxx to that person unless they explicitly ask - and over time then I start to be aware more of this and expand that behaviour-pattern more widely. (There are some downsides to this pattern-recognition too though, when social cues are missing such as online - as the cues on what a new-to-me person might want without being explicitly asked directly are missing, and there is a risk that I won’t provide the helpful advice someone might be seeking).
@Blackcloud Thank you for the update on your workshop. Sorry to hear it’s been a few weeks since you were able to go and that there are still some strain with a few other participants. I’m glad that it feels a very inclusive workshop though and a much better overall experience than mainstream ones for you. 😍. How did it pan out with the support workers and whether they could take you these past 2 Saturdays?
I’m also curious how the facilitating of the peer support group went? 😍
@Till23 Glad your trial has been going well and that you think/know you’re in the intervention arm — does that mean you believe it is helping? 😊. It's interesting that in your case you know but the researcher doesn’t know? That’s really interesting! I haven’t heard of that way around before, feels like a ‘reverse-single-blind’ lol. However I am not at all studied in different types of research-blinding, so I’m not questioning that - just find it interesting and wondering why they do that instead of a double-blind. 🤔. I'm sure there is a reason I just don’t know it.
My trial is a double-blind, only an admin-research person had the list of who is in which arm. The 2 therapists & myself do not know, but we can guess & discuss as much as we like. I think we’re pretty sure about the first dose - but won’t actually know until December when I get unblinded. Because of the nature of the active drug being a psychedelic they can’t have a complete-placebo as the alternative, but they also need a non-psychadelic as the alternative (they use a stimulant medication instead). However since I have ADHD this stimulant medication won’t give me the same experience as a non-ADHD brain 😆 - but I’d never taken one either (recent diagnosis; turned out my anti-depressants treated the then-undiagnosed ADHD), so I also don’t have a comparison point for what it would do/feel like. But I understand that for a non-ADHD brain the stimulant experience may be a little more comparable to the psychadelic by way of short-term altered perception/cognition, rather than a sharper focus & calmer brain 😆.
Being under the influence of restricted mind-altering medication the dosage days are minimum 6 hours supervision by 2 therapists. Yes, outpatient - can be done in any suitable room (whether in a hospital or private practice). The dosing days are each 3 weeks apart, but with ‘integrative psychotherapy’ (debrief next day, integration session one week after).
Hence why even I receive the non-psychadelic medication I can still receive benefit from the psychotherapy (although it does replace my normal counselling psychotherapy, so it’s more a matter of the clinician rather than increased support in my case - but many other participants may not have access to psychotherapy normally and do have increased benefit due to that extra support it has been suggested).
I feel extremely lucky with the psychiatrist-therapist I was assigned to — they don’t match them deliberately, but its such a good matching by chance in so many ways — that in itself is therapeutic too.
@Shaz51 Lovely to hear from you 🤗. I’ve been so busy with appointments and some of them also have been very stressful, and that combined has meant I have needed a lot of mental downtime (especially with the ADHD symptoms since February - I need to build in a lot of mental-calming breaks to slow my thinking down or I get too tired & overwhelmed), which has resulted in me barely being online. Many of the appointments are positive though - my GPs, the psychiatrist/therapist, the physical therapies for pain relief, some volunteer work, some social connection-building, progressing my DSP & NDIS applications, Return to Work planning… it’s just a lot of things though. But some of them are short-term additions and will hopefully reduce after the next 1-3 months.
How are you going my dear? How is hubby? Any especially memorable coffees? (Do you go to cafes often? I imagine being in a smaller regional area there is less options to “try new places” to see how coffee compares?) Do I recall you like teapots (or was that someone else?) - if so, any new ones you have seen or obtained lately? 😊
@AuntGlow Still mixed feelings post-incident with the support service; but that experience ties in well with a topic the psychiatrist was interested to explore further in our dosing & integration sessions. 😅. It's been something that has happened as a theme since childhood where I have had my needs dismissed/ignored & I “accept” that as normal and internalise it into self-reliance.
Next dosing day is next week (not this week) - and I can already feel the mixed-emotion of nervousness and curious-excitement 😅. Much less nervous than last time though - because I know what one of the options would be like now, as well as having a deeper trust with both therapists from our meetings since which have been focused on my thoughts/feelings (rather than preparation for what dosing sessions & post-dosing may be like). I feel that they are very accepting of any perspective or experience I have, and I feel less worried that if I have an extreme/intense reaction that it will be confronting or worrisome for them (I feel they are better prepared now for knowing what might come up and why) and that they would actually quite appreciate to ‘meet’ that part of me (if it happens), as a way to explore the less-moderated emotions I have at times.
I am still quite… surprised (in a very good way)… that the pdoc wants to learn from my experience and self-reflection. It’s so refreshing and lovely to hear him talk about his perspective on the value of lived-experience & peer workers, and even his reflections on how things he’s heard me say so far have given him pause for thought in his interactions with other patients since? I wonder if he is perhaps just saying that, but then he also knows that I value honesty/genuineness so highly that I don’t think he would risk saying something without meaning it due to it being a big therapeutic risk to do so for rapport with me. 🤔. So then I have to trust my instinct that he is being honest and has genuinely had those moments? That’s hard for me to believe, because I don’t feel I said anything that insightful - just “normal for me” thoughts. But either way, his comments are encouraging - and he genuinely encourages me to go into lived-experience work (whether interpersonal support, advisory, or advocacy). Do you know how many people have suggested to me in the past month that I should consider going into some type of support/advisory/advocacy role? I have lost count. It is over 10 people in the past month; and I don’t meet that many people, so it feels like >80% of people who have spoken to me about MH who have said it (friends and professionals). 😳. There are a few barriers to it, mostly finances and energy-capacity - but I can make baby-steps to exploring it (eg Cert IV training, volunteer roles that permit fluctuating capacities or adhoc involvement) — when I have time.
Did I mention to people that I passed my language assessment component for my Diploma? 😊. That was a big relief as it was very stressful due to the way the assessment was structured and neurodiverse communication differences. So that is the hardest part of the Diploma done now 😊 the rest is mostly theory or “theory in practice” assessments - but I have already had to prove that I understand the theory-in-practice (grammar) through that language assessment, so the ones I now have to do for the theory subjects will be comparatively easy (and singular topics - not every skill combined into a single practical assessment - which is why it was stressful to have to think of how to incorporate examples of every grammatical element in to the one conversation spontaneously!).
Makes me wonder that now that is out of the way (and the rest of the theory work goes so slowly and they won’t let me speed it up) whether I should enrol in the Cert IV MH Peer self-paced so that I can start doing that in any spare time I have upcoming - but then I also don’t know how much time I will or won’t have over the coming 2 months 😅. But then it could take 1-2 months to get enrolled & on-boarded with the education provider, so maybe I need to start that now so that in 2-3 months time I can start my studies at my own pace. (Especially as I don’t know whether or not I will have a job role to go into once I am ready to be able to return to work - there could be a delay of months until they find me a role - and I need something to do in that time to keep my brain stimulated.) Egh I hate all the uncertainty and unpredictability! 😂. What if I make a commitment to enrolment and then work/life gets too busy & overwhelming and I need to put it on hold?!
@Chasingsunsets @Cuddlebear tag for you if you want updates above too. Often thinking of you both too and wondering how you are.
