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Nov. 16th, 2008 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizabethI am skipping dance class tomorrow AM and going in to the counseling center and saying, "I know you have a psychiatrist on staff, let me talk to her. NOW." Clearly 10 mg of lexapro is NOT ENOUGH. I just want to be able to concentrate, you know? I can't think. And if I cannot think, I cannot function, since my life, you know, revolves around absorbing and synthesizing information. I did the unable-to-function thing already: IT SUCKED. This is not a matter of will — "sit down and focus, just work harder" — and me telling myself to try more is not helping. I'm letting myself off the hook, I just don't know what to do to make it better other than what I'm already doing, which is not enough. I have a fucking full-spectrum light box, I have a regular sleep routine, I eat well, I exercise, I take my meds absolutely faithfully, and my brain is still broken. This is: not okay. At all.
This is not as bad as last time, when I not only couldn't do work, I had the dangling ball of misery in my chest all the time. This time, I can't work, but when I'm not miserable with frustration over not being able to work, I'm okay. Ergo, this is a subset of my dysthymia, and not the whole fucking disorder slamming back down on my head. I'm not being crazy about the dysthymia, I guess — I can separate me from the disorder more now, I know that my inability to concentrate is a fuckup of my brain chemistry, and not a condemnation of me as a person. Which is, you know, good. Also, I am able to say that I'm having problems with X, where X is concentrating, because I'm aware of the difference between inability to concentrate and actual...thingy. It's not that I don't want to do the work, I guess — I know the knowledge is inside my brain, I know that I know how to construct an argument, I just can't get to it. Although that was one of that bad things about last time, too, when I was kept saying, I know I can do this, I just apparently *can't* do this anymore. There's less desperation about it this time around, maybe? This too shall pass. I just want it to pass faster.
This is not as bad as last time, when I not only couldn't do work, I had the dangling ball of misery in my chest all the time. This time, I can't work, but when I'm not miserable with frustration over not being able to work, I'm okay. Ergo, this is a subset of my dysthymia, and not the whole fucking disorder slamming back down on my head. I'm not being crazy about the dysthymia, I guess — I can separate me from the disorder more now, I know that my inability to concentrate is a fuckup of my brain chemistry, and not a condemnation of me as a person. Which is, you know, good. Also, I am able to say that I'm having problems with X, where X is concentrating, because I'm aware of the difference between inability to concentrate and actual...thingy. It's not that I don't want to do the work, I guess — I know the knowledge is inside my brain, I know that I know how to construct an argument, I just can't get to it. Although that was one of that bad things about last time, too, when I was kept saying, I know I can do this, I just apparently *can't* do this anymore. There's less desperation about it this time around, maybe? This too shall pass. I just want it to pass faster.
Reposted from IJ, 16 March 2009
