Today at work was a bit rough, ran into a bit of bad anxiety, especially when I went out and weed wacked a bit… I am not even sure I know the exact definition of anxiety. 

I never gave much thought to depression or anxiety, and while I was spending afternoons venting in my car and getting madder and madder over all the little things in life, I thought that was stress and anger, never thought depression or anxiety had anything to do with. I didn’t think I had anxiety until I had the physical symptoms…. which just one day I started having all this tightness in my chest and it lasted all day everyday… 

That was when my quest to cure my mental problems really began… in fact not long before I started to have chest tightness is when I really started to consciously try and get my stress under control. 

So, the chest tightness wouldn’t go away, and I started to think it might be from anxiety, but I wasn’t sure, but I certainly wanted to get rid of the pain, so I made an appointment at the doctor… they did an ekg or whatever because the tightness was on the left side of my chest and wanted to make sure I didn’t have a heart problem, protocol, but that didn’t show anything bad. Then, I was talking to the doctor and at first I think he was a little skeptical that I may just be after drugs or something, but when I answered his questions and told him the tightness was all day every day, his attitude seemed to change to sadness for me and wanting to help. In fact he made the first mention of doing breathing exercises to me, and I just let that go right through both ears like it was a bunch of hoopla. I figured I was getting magic pills that would make me all better all by themselves. 

So, the journey to cure my anxiety was under way… and at first I felt a little better initially, but eventually the tightness and everything came back, I thought I could just take the pills and not have to change the way I was thinking… but the way I was thinking was really the problem.  

I eventually decided I should do a little investigating online about how to fix anxiety and trying to figure out why I was having the physical symptoms. Which, I came across an interesting article that theorized that the reason you have pains from anxiety, is that your brain is trying to focus your attention on something else. So, instead of thinking your normal negative thoughts, you are focused on the phantom pain your brain is causing. It, is essentially forced mindfulness, part of mindfulness is focusing on something in the present moment, not thinking about the past or the future or anything else. Which, why you are focused on the pain, the brain is subconsciously figuring out how to deal with your problems you are having (which, I will get into it later, but I think your mind gives itself a bit of electric shock therapy: Part of what it does anyways). 

So, I embraced this concept, and started seeing results, while I was getting somewhat worse and different sensations all over my body, my thinking was getting better. It was a rough go of it, my brain might make my face numb or feel like I was having a stroke, tightness, numbness, all sorts of things all day everyday… I even went to the emergency room a couple times to make sure there was nothing wrong, but they would just tell me it was anxiety. A problem I ran into early before I didn’t understand the physical symptom side of it, is that I thought higher doses of the medicine would get rid of the physical symptoms…. Which I was wrong, it made it worse, in fact it got to the point where is felt like my own mind was going to kill me in order to get me to stop thinking negatively… It got written off as an allergic reaction, but I think it just made my mind work too hard to fix itself to fast, I think I was getting way too much seratonin… which I have a theory of why some people may die from extasy, I would argue that they might be severely depressed and when they get too much seratonin, there mind essentially kills them to try and get them to stop thinking negatively. I mean, my mind was literally choking me to get me to stop thinking bad thoughts… 

Eventually I kinda figured out what was going on and found a drug that to me, seems like an extremelly low dose ssri. I actually think the physical symptoms means your brain has plenty of seratonin, because it it trying to fix your problems. But, if you find the right dose, you can try and find the optimal to try and speed up the process but is not more than you can handle. I am prolly close to the edge with the amount I want to have. I still get the physical symptoms when my mind is trying to correct itself, and the sensations can be a little severe for my liking. My balance can even be off, or any number of different things, my brain has a whole arsenal of sensations it uses to get the reaction it wants from me. It even seems to threaten to knock me out sometimes if I don’t do what it wants. My own mind made me it’s little b*tch for quite some time (excuse my language). Still does. 

I also read a couple great books about anxiety which I will mention later (think they are the 10 Best things to treat anxiety and the Miracle of Mindfulness… or something like that). But, those books were about breathing exercises, thought stopping, mindfulness, and some other useful techniques… which have changed my world… I swear by them. They say in the book that you have to treat breathing exercises like medicine and have to stick with, and much like anti depressants, you may not start experiencing the effects for a month or so. I personally started to even have side effects from breathing within a week, it was amazing. Practicing mindfulness is also such a great thing, especially when using thought stopping at the same time. They were life changing books. 

One of the worst things… is that I thought I would get better way faster than I did. Your brainhas plasticity, but it takes years it would seem to really change, I have been at it for years and still getting better. And getting rid of the depression, negative thoughts and venting takes a long time, and you have lots and lots of setback, but you just have to stick to the program and keep getting back on the horse and fighting… it starts with such little changes… maybe at first you only feel better a half or an hour a day…. after a while you may start having a good day or two, and eventually a good week here and there and so on and so on… But it is a very hard battle and you have to fight tooth and nail to get better… But it canbe done.. I am living proof. 

But back to where I began… today while doing that stuff my brain started making feel like in a haze, at work is where I still have a lot of anxiety and depression… which anymore a lot of times my brain is getting ahead of the game… before I even think negatively at all consciously it will start using its different techniques to divert my attention. So, I had to take a little break and do some breathing and get myself relaxed. Still have problems with physical or tedious manual work. Getting closer and closer though! 

A problem I have been suffering with a bit lately, is News withdrawal. Plus, my last college semester  ended about a month ago, so I have been withdrawing a bit from not getting enough mental exercise it would seem, although I was definitely ready for a break. But, I digress, news has been the more major addiction… 

I got really submersed in the news after my second stint in the mental hospital when I felt the people on the news were starting to talk to me, I felt it was really important to people that I should be giving my opinions and ideas about what was going on in the world. Not to mention it definitely gave me something to do, filled with purpose and excitement. Well, I started watching the news any time I wasn’t asleep, at work with my short schedule, or with some friends. I was easily watching anywhere from 8-16 hours of news a day, just soaking it all in. 

That went on for a year or two anyways, and the world seemed to be in much better shape, in fact I was starting to almost get a little bored and also felt I needed a break. Which, not long after that, was when I made the bet and this whole thing switched to a whole new level. It was then, that the news was already starting to change a lot, it wasn’t just to feed me with information to make opinions, but was now used in ways to try and make me mad and want to kill myself, it was beginning to turn into fake news more and more… 

At that time, I actually moved out of my house into a little house out of town with no cable for about a year, the bet was in full swing and my life was turning miserable, but I wasn’t watching the news at that point, then my place eventually got flooded and I moved home and started watching the news again, this time, me and the people on the news started developing The perfect Capitalism Manifesto… It defintely helped to channel my mind a bit off of what was happening to me at that time. 

I kept watching the news all these years, for many reasons I won’t get into, but because at times it was used for good purposes and negative purposes, it turned more into a roller coaster ride, where I never knew what I was going to get on a given day, it may make me happy, or really pissed off. But, it became an addiction on a whole different level for that purpose, because I was bored at the same time, the roller coaster of emotions, kept me entertained in its own way, although I would have much rather just had it make me happy all the time for obvious reasons. 

Which, brings me to my next point, that a person can even become addicted to feeling like shit… I plan to write an article about this in the future… but, to briefly explain, the roller coaster of feeling like sh*t causes a wave of emotions that are very addicting even if they make you miserable, I think it is namely because people don’t learn how to manage stress well or too much new stress comes into a person’s life at once and their mind doesn’t know how to handle it, and we start to use the mental shortcut of venting, rather than letting our brains figure out how to cope with stress, we take it upon ourselves to try and fix it consciously, by yelling or screaming, getting made, maybe hurting ourselves or others, because we get some immediate gratification from it, the problem is that our brain starts to think that is the proper way to deal with the stress, so anytime anything stressful happens, your mind thinks the best way to fix the problem, is to get you to yell or do whatever to get some stress release… So, a quote I like to use is, The more you yell, the more you will have to yell.  

The more venting or yelling is your go to, you will just start yelling and venting about more and more things, and littler and littler things and you will become even more depressed and stressed. When even a little inconvenience happens you brain will do anything it’s power to make you yell to get that immediate release, your brain might start bring up all the old memories of things that made you mad, or remind you of all the reasons you should be mad. My point being, the way you trained your brain, it is not going to stop until it gets you to yell or use your venting habit. Which, the longer it goes on, the harder it is to climb your way back out, but it is possible, it takes quite some time though. 

But, for me, the news also became one of those things, that when my brain wanted me to vent, it would convince me to watch the news to find something to get mad about and yell at. Your brain will know all of your go too’s that make you mad. Like, the news would be making me mad, but I couldn’t turn it off, or if I did, I would have to turn it back on shortly after to just sit there and let it make me mad, make me feel like sh*t, get my sh*t fix for the day. But, I am getting much better, and am now at a point where even most of my venting never leaves my mouth or anything like that, I vent internally, and am starting to not feel the desire to vent much at all these days. 

Trying to just stop watching the news altogether anymore, and haven’t watched almost any the last 2 or 3 weeks, which is good, although, I think I am going through withdrawal a bit, because I no longer get those wave of emotions, whether good or bad…. think that is part of the reason I got really depressed a few days ago as well… one of the many reasons anyways… 

But, I am proud to say, I am kicking my feeling like sh*t addiction, although it has taken years anyways, no thanks to my situation. 

Some of you probably know exactly what I am talking about, or maybe this is all clicking with you right now… It may even be the reason a person picks a girlfriend or boyfriend that is bad for them… because they want the roller coaster of emotions, they want to feel like sh*t, their brain wants to yell and vent, it wants to be sad and disappointed… but that roller coaster is unhealthy and can’t be sustained very long, and the depression and stress just gets worse and worse… 

That is what has been on my mind a bit today though, and I am sure there are many more conversations and articles about things like this to come. 

Today was a pretty good, got my new chromebook for one thing, which I am excited about. I have definitely decided I will try and go all in on this journalism and blogging adventure. I think within the confines of the initiation/bet it may have promise, it may not take off until after I graduate and am technically qualified for the position… but I am going to start this now and continue doing it until then and beyond, hopefully maybe things may take off a bit sooner. As said before, I think it could be good for me therapeutically as well.

You may even say I have been a little too excited the last couple of days. My brain has found its own interesting ways of bouncing back from a deeper depression. Which a few days ago I was pretty down and depressed because of some things, namely I am still getting use to a life of more social isolation, I am definitely a social animal, that likes to be around friends and family, especially friends in some situations, cause I can act differently and more myself with them. So, I get depressed when I get bored and lonely and want to hang out with people, but nobody wants (can) hang out. Sometimes especially after I do get to hang out with a friend or friends and have a really good time, I want more of that feeling, so then when I can’t arrange another get together for a while or no one seems to want to talk, I can get very depressed. But, am gradually getting better adjusted to the lifestyle.

But, back to the over excitement, I had a brief period of time in my life when I did a little drug experimentation, and am one of the lucky ones to come out of the other end without any serious addictions or anything like that. Which of course I don’t recommend drugs, but will talk about that later. I bring that up because I had tried cocaine a handful of times, but I think I was meant to try it, because I think it helped me survive this initiation/bet. My brain I think in part from my experimentation, figured out a way to mimic the drug. When I get really really depressed, my brain starts trying to figure out anything thought or thing that will make me happy, so say in the midst of the depression I find a few happy thoughts or something that makes me laugh or gets me excited, which my brain will dig deep into its reserve to find something thing that does the trick. But, what my brain does, is it will take that happy thought or idea that makes me excited and releases a little bit of dopamine, and it will just repeat the thought or thoughts over and over and over, giving me many and many little shots of dopamine, until I end up feeling like I am in a somewhat cocaine induced state, to describe how it feels….

I am not that big of a fan of the feeling anymore, would rather just be chill 24/7, but it does pick me up out of my deep depression, but it comes at the cost of the crash at the other end of the thing, just like crashing from cocaine.  Perhaps even a bit of a withdrawal type feeling, which can them make be edgy or depressed and perhaps the whole cycle will repeat itself…. but eventually as I have gotten consistently less and less depressed I have fewer and fewer of these instances. But, I think it was very important in helping me to survive to this point, I sometimes think, there can’t be many people that have thought about killing themselves more than me that didn’t actually go through with it.

So, today has been one of those days, a little to excited for my taste, and will probably crash from it, in the next day or two, but it is better than wanting to kill myself I suppose.

I would like to go on record saying that I definitely wouldn’t recommend cocaine for treating depression, it would certainly most likely make any depressed person’s situation much worse… my mind just figured out its awn way of administering its own drug sometimes to help me out…. It is a very interesting phenomenon indeed…

But, that was my day in general today…. excited about this new blog and venture, but a little too excited I should say.

Also, I went and got a library card today, was thinking I may go there sometimes to write and check out books for a little change of atmosphere, plus there is a little coffee shop right across the way to make it all the more enticing, also worth noting the ice cream stand next to that!

Right from the beginning of my schizophrenic episodes, I didn’t want to believe that I had schizophrenia. I always felt things were being done to me, not that I had a mental disease, I felt there was logical explanations that didn’t involve mental illness. I felt it was a way for everybody to right off why everything was happening to me as part of the initiation/bet, that they were just going to say I had schizophrenia. So, I fought that title for many years, never going to a therapist or anything, figuring that if I did, it would just mess up my mind more.

I really never experienced much metacognition to begin with, didn’t spend much time wondering about how I thought. Always felt I was rather average. Eventually when I started to realize I was in this very unique position, I realized that I may be smarter than previously thought, people seemed to listen to me and really like my ideas, and a friend of mine one day even let it slip that I was very smart. Then I started to believe in myself and start using my brain, although everything still comes somewhat simple to me in end conscious result. Eventually everything really started taking off in my brain and I would follow many different paths of logic until their end result. To begin with, I had to figure out what was happening in my life without anybody directly telling me anything, I came to realize that, that in itself was a rather difficult task.

Economics was a very fun venture, with perfect capitalism coming at the near end result, I could definitely expand on it further, but the general outline is in there, a good starting point. But, it seemed that people would only have a few remarks about it or say nothing at all, I felt if there was some big problems with it, people would quickly point them out, especially considering my situation, he evil side would gladly love to put my ideas to shame to make me feel bad. Plus, naming something like perfect capitalism manifesto, using the word perfect really makes people want to try and find anything they can wrong with it, so by publishing it and waiting to hear the feedback, many other people really did the fact checking and number crunching for me, by trying to prove it wrong any way they could, they were proving it right. So, I have yet to hear any bad remarks about it, all these years later.

But, as this was all going on, and I felt we were also getting closer and closer to world peace, and the vast majority of society were starting to become enlightened and enjoying life more, with a more general sense of inner peace, I started to think, I must have autism or something, to explain this. Some people would even mention that I really had no clue how smart I actually was…

Plus as the years went on, I started having more anxiety and symptoms of autism. I have to live a very habitual life to keep things in order, if I change much of my daily routine, it doesn’t take much to start having withdrawal or mood swings. I eat the same thing at the same time for the most part, exercise the same amount everyday, same amount of coffee. If I add something or remove something over the course of the week, I will notice changes. Plus I have to eat healthy or I start getting all sorts of different sensations. My brain really has me trained to maintain an optimal level. I will talk more about this in the future.

Anyways, I felt I had high functioning autism and not schizophrenia, but my psychiatrist seemed rather adamant about me having schizophrenia, but would not confirm or deny if I had autism. Then I came across an article in psychology today that theorized that a number of savants in history most likely suffered from schizophrenia and autism, it was like the schizophrenia allowed them to think very abstractly to even the delusional extent, capable of conceiving outlandish ideas, but the autism at the same time, allowed them to apply logic to what they were thinking, and make sense of it all in a way. So it is a little like walking around tripping all time (which they think schizophrenia is caused in large part by too much dopamine), but being able to make sense of all the craziness at the same. Plus, I think my mind operates pretty fast in general, it loves following paths of logic or having problems to solve, and hates when it has nothing to do. I even noticed in my sleep, that my brain gives itself problems and puzzles to solve, but it is weird, because it is all nonsense that only makes sense within the parameters of my sleep. I have caught myself half asleep solving these logic problems and thinking so fast and then I would wake only to think, not of that made any real sense at all. My brain has made like its only language and programs to run while I sleep to get its fix it would seem.

So after I read that article, a lot of my life seemed to make sense after that in a way. To even realize the situation I was in, I didn’t need just logic, but also the ability to think in a delusional way to even fathom what was going on. Plus, it helps me come up with many new and interesting ideas.

I even told my friends the other day when we were talking about drugs a bit. I said, they are no good for me anymore, I don’t even have a beer once in a while anymore, even one occasionally will mess with my anxiety. But, in theory I am already high all the time anyways.

I was going to make a funny meme one day using a scene from the avengers when captain america asks bruce banner to get angry, and bruce says, that’s the secret, I’m always angry.

Which I thought of somebody saying to me, I think it is time for you to get high, and I say, that’s the secret, I’m high all the time…

So I have learned to finally accept the title of schizophrenic after all of these years, but I also think I have high functioning autism…

I personally believe I am a savant…

This should be an interesting journey, I think it shall be entertaining, thought provoking, and also therapeutic for myself.

I hope you join me on this little trip, through the thoughts of my mind. It is an interesting perspective indeed…