OK, I really need to get down for a while and prop that leg up. But I’ve been avoiding it even more because I had maybe 4 hours of not great sleep earlier before pain (in that damned leg) got me up for good.

Really do not want to zonk out at 5 p.m., when that’s been enough of an issue on more sleep. But, I had better try for a while anyway, before I work on supper 😵

Not quite ready to say “fuck it, we can get delivery” and just have a nap if that wants to happen. But, it’s getting close.

I did get down, at least.

But, I’m also kind of irritated right now because I really do not feel up to dragging myself out to the store after something pressing.

(More ibuprofen, actually. Because I can maybe gimp to a store that sells that, and not an actual pharmacy when I am out of stronger behind the counter nonprescription stuff. With the leg waking me up, on top of the usual background garbage.)

And, if anything, his staying incommunicado has intensified.

I’ve mostly just not been attempting to message him, but sometimes I get desperate enough to try. Like “out of pain relief, getting woken up by pain”, yeah.

It’s hard not to feel like a selfish jerk, after finding out why he’s apparently not been keeping his phone charged. I also have (installed) actual scrupulosity issues around not wanting to inconvenience people by even asking for anything.

But, honestly? I’m having a hard enough time getting out after some basic items that this is causing me problems. These things do go multiple ways. I’m not necessarily a bad person for getting upset when I am having significant trouble getting some needs met.

He assured me before that it had nothing to do with my getting overly demanding, and that he didn’t mind stopping for things. He’s not prone to just lying or telling you what he thinks you want to hear, either. So, I’m guessing that is really not the main thing here. As much as the jerkbrain keeps insisting it must be. I don’t think it is some weird passive-aggressive number on his part. He really doesn’t seem to mind when I do manage to make “bread and cat food on the way home please!” type requests.

But, I cannot reasonably anticipate everything and also remember to ask him before he leaves in the morning. I’ve tried, and it just has not been working out well. Even if my executive function were better, you just can’t anticipate everything. It was already pretty hard to get some basic needs met, and this recent change has not helped my overall wellbeing.

Again, not looking for any type of advice. Just needing to vent some, and remind myself that needing to ask for more help doesn’t make you a terrible person who is lucky for whatever you do get. Including being tolerated at all.

I feel bad about the difficulties he seems to be having lately, but that also doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person for getting concerned about that making things harder on me. No matter how many times I got the message before that other people are dealing with Real Problems and I am making things much harder by even mentioning anything going wrong in my life.

(Also, things can be hard without anybody in particular being to blame 😧)

Yeah, some pretty PTSD-heavy stuff. No wonder I’ve been having some extra trouble coping, or even processing some things.

Taking your pet abroad if there’s no Brexit deal

Oh my, looks like DEFRA actually has some published guidance on this, since September.

Mr. C came home a while ago pretty late from another drinks after work night: sloshed, showing some worry, and talking about going ahead and getting the cats set up with EU pet passports just in case.

Guessing there was probably some more discussion that got him thinking about it more urgently tonight, but he also said tonight that this political mess has come up in every single one-on-one conversation he’s had pretty much since the referendum vote.

(The Mr. Calm Cool and Collected act kinda breaks down when he’s been drinking, that’s for sure. Sounded like he’s been a lot more worried about the somewhat near future than he’s been letting on normally, which is honestly not that much of a surprise knowing him.)

He also brought up not being sure how best to go about moving the fish. But, by golly, if anyone is urgently hauling ass for Sweden, everyone is going! He apparently felt like this was important to emphasize 😅

So yeah, while I’m pretty concerned about what might happen with this ongoing political clusterfuck, and how I might manage with some practical details as bad as my health situation has been? If he’s feeling a need to emphasize while disinhibited that Nobody In This Household Will Be Left Behind On His Watch, Dammit–explicitly extended to fish he really doesn’t take much interest in other than the fact that I care about them?

I am at least less concerned that he’s gotten quietly fed up with my bullshit to the point that he doesn’t want to live with it anymore.

(Which is totally a product of my own jerkbrain, and nothing to do with anything he has actually said or done. Just to be clear. I am a worrier, what can I say. Though both of us avoiding conflict past the point where it’s necessarily healthy–and for similar reasons AFAICT–doesn’t always help set my mind at ease. Maybe not his either.)

Taking your pet abroad if there’s no Brexit deal

smallmetal:

dumbpancakebaby:

STOP making posts that say, “If you scroll past this, you have no heart!” or, “You’re a monster if you scroll past this.” As someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, this really triggers me and harms me.

As someone else with OCD I wanna chime into say that posts like “reblog or you’ll have your worst week” or “like and reblog or your mom will die” also really trigger me and directly tie into my obsessions. If you MUST reblog them at least tag them as reblog bait! And stop tagging reblog games as reblog bait instead, tag them as reblog games!!! So people can properly blacklist what they do and don’t wanna see because those are both very different!

What people without OCD don’t understand is that even though we know it’s not real, we take those posts seriously, even the “good” ones like “Reblog money cat for money” or something can seriously fuck with our OCD. It leads to horrible panic attacks and giving into compulsions. If you wanna help us out please PLEASE tag reblog bait of all kinds.

One not-so-funny thing about that ridiculous little spill earlier. (Well, besides ending up in rather a lot of pain, which probably isn’t helping the rest.)

When I suddenly came down almost on top of him, Mr. C’s immediate impulse was to throw his arms around me. Which probably wouldn’t be a bad impulse at all, dealing with most people.

I, however, yelled at him to get his arms off me.

(Then did manage to add that I knew he was trying to help, but everything was overwhelming right then. Trouble talking or no.)

I apologized and explained more as soon as possible. He seemed reasonably OK about it. But, I did lose it and yell when I shouldn’t have.

So, now I can’t stop doing the good old Scrupulosity Shuffle. Yell at somebody you care about when you don’t have good control, and wind up triggering yourself 😱

But yeah, if it had been my mom? That would have been enough to leave her seriously pissed at me and prone to explosions for at least the rest of the day. If not longer. With the potential to turn into some very ugly scenes. (But, that’s different, whatever she did. I was the one who created the entire situation, when she was Only Trying To Help 😵)

Let’s just say that my stressed autistic person behavior and her unaddressed borderline tendencies did not always mesh well. (Which tended to turn into a problem when I was sick/in pain in general, for that extra bit of PTSD background dread for a good while now.)

Anyway, I don’t think he’s liable to respond like that. Especially understanding (and, frankly, caring) why that happened–with apologies. We’ve known each other in person for over 15 years now, and he has yet to behave that way.

A lot like with the sudden spate of meltdowns a while back, though? I can’t stop feeling like maybe I have seriously fucked up, however unintentionally, and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Besides going off into more “maybe I really am a terrible person who doesn’t care about anyone else and just keeps hurting the people around me” garbage, naturally.

Never much fun to ride out, but as usual trying to argue with it is a bigger losing proposition.

Hi Seanan, I saw your response on that post about mental health and recovery, and you said you used certain hacks to help you with OCD. I was wondering if it’s ok to ask what some of them are? It’s completely fine if you’d rather not answer, I know that it’s quite a personal thing.

seananmcguire:

Okay, so I’m going to open this with some pretty major disclaimers. Specifically:

1. I am not a therapist or a trained mental health professional of any kind. If I say something and you think “but that would cause me psychological harm if I did it,” please don’t do it. I am not responsible for your care.

2. Everyone’s OCD is different. Mine trends more toward the obsessive than the compulsive (I have both, but it’s not 50/50 for me). I was also childhood onset, which means I literally have no idea who I would be as a person if I didn’t have OCD: I have never been an adult without it. This means that while I am medicated for depression, I am not medicated for OCD, as taking it away also breaks my executive function. This is not the case for everyone, and should absolutely not be taken as me saying “OCD is fun and great and no one needs meds, ever.” OCD is not fun and great, but it’s a core part of who I am, and sadly, that means medication is not on the table for me.

Cool? Cool. Let’s go.

For me, OCD is always the monster at the end of the book, and it will eat me alive if I let it. I am a person who can work all day, from 7am to 7pm, and still have the small voice in my head going “you didn’t do enough, you didn’t do anything, no one loves you, you unproductive bitch.”* And because the world is happy to present an endless succession of tasks, it’s literally always possible for me to look around and see a dozen things that need to be done, thus proving that the voice is right, I’m a waste of both skin and space, and no one loves me. It’s doesn’t matter that this isn’t true, my anxiety is loud and inside my head, and it can win.

But! I keep a physical planner–I use the Franklin-Covey planner system–and make daily checklists, which I then, yes, check off throughout the day. If I accomplish something that wasn’t on the checklist, I add it after the fact. And tasks can be as big as “clean laundry room” or as small as “sort ten receipts.” There’s no requirement, save that a single task should be something that’s difficult to break down into smaller components. (So “pack” is one task, rather than “pack underwear,” “pack toothbrush,” etc.) Big tasks that don’t break down may have their own checklists. This means that when anxiety starts to bite, I can look at my little marching rows of checkmarks and know that it’s lying to me. Even having to cancel or move a task doesn’t usually set me off, since I don’t do that without very good cause.

If the Franklin-Covey system is too daunting or too much, and you think checklists might help you, take a look at the planners from Evil Supply Co., which are fun and simple and don’t necessarily feel like a classic planner, if classic planners give you more anxiety:

https://evilsupply.co/categories/planners/

I am picky. Very, very picky. I have food texture issues and taste issues and exclusions, and that’s before you get into my actual allergies. I don’t claim to have allergies that don’t exist, because that’s a great way to make assholes think all allergies are fake, but at the same time, I am literally unable to eat things that include foods that do not register as “food” to me. This isn’t “that I dislike”–dislike is mild–this is “that will cause me to start dry-heaving at the table, thus upsetting everyone.” But I can’t ask everyone to eat every single meal at MOD Pizza, no matter how soothing I might find that. So, with the full understanding and acceptance of my friends, I make lists of the food in an area that I’m willing to eat, and when it comes time to make choices, I’ll present that list, allowing someone else to make the final choice.

Note: I have also had to make my peace with “sometimes your friends are going to go out without you, because you can’t eat Thai food, and they want Thai food, and you don’t get to be upset about that.” I may go with them and just drink a glass of water, if it’s a group where that isn’t going to ruin someone else’s dinner. As a rule of thumb, if I’m not eating, my comfort comes after the comfort of the people who are, and I try not to break that rule.

I don’t make firm plans with people who can’t keep firm plans. I don’t assign watching currently-airing television shows to “watching with” a specific person. I don’t allow myself to set unobtainable goals. And I tell people, clearly and openly, that I have OCD; that I don’t get to use it as an excuse for being a jerk, but that it isn’t going away, and sometimes I am going to need to do something a specific way, and I can’t change it. If they then don’t want to do that thing with me, it’s okay.

It’s okay.

We’re all different; we can do this.

(*No matter how hard I work to remove gendered and ableist slurs from my own vocabulary, the voice of my anxiety continues to use them against me. Thanks, anxiety. You’re a pal.)

I’m actually pretty glad to live with someone who was apparently taught to sit (common some places!), wipe, and wash those hands afterwards.

I mean, the first part isn’t as directly relevant to personal hygiene as the other two, but it’s not nearly as likely to create other messes. Which is kinda the point.

(Nah, and that’s mild compared to pretty much the rest of the first page of search results. A much bigger affront than being asked to wash your hands.)

I do have some OCD germ stuff going on anyway–which I do recognize is connected to OCD, and not just other people being nasty (unlike my grandmother). I was also trained that just walking into a bathroom means you need to wash your hands before leaving. As was my uncle, for that matter.

Wouldn’t necessarily recommend that approach, for the sake of your hands if nothing else. But, there is some healthy middle ground there.

kelpforestdweller:

neurodiversitysci:

wellynx:

use this handy chart to help you figure out whether to keep or toss something when you’re getting ready for the annual spring cleaining

Maybe now people will understand why it takes so much time and effort to overcome my compulsive desire to keep things & awful decision making skills to get rid of things.

yeah, like, every branch in this flow chart requires like 50 complex decisions

Source: wickedkate.com