Mental health check-in

Cheese Grits said:
So, I’m a Christian and I thought it was pretty well understood by all of us that Easter was mostly the appropriation of an existing pagan holiday in order to make new converts out of pagans. The early church did that a lot. Christmas was another. It worked pretty well. I don’t think it makes the Christian celebration of Easter any less meaningful, but clearly all of the fun stuff is pagan. It just happens to be consistent with the Christian message of re-creation and re-birth.

Back in topic, my mental health was getting pretty nasty to the point where my wife suggested that I might want to consider getting back on some anti-anxiety meds for a while. Thank god she feels comfortable telling me when I’m being an asshole. At least then I can do something about it.
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I had had a pretty good day yesterday, with a bike ride, some good thought and planning on how to handle some work stuff better, and some gratitude, and then after waking up from a nap, had a bad episode where I had a lot of anger come on me, and acted like an ass trying to explain to my wife what I was going through. :facepalm: At least that was my intent, but it feels like it came out just as a huge temper tantrum dumped all over her. No alcohol or anything, just like a wave of emotion or brain chemicals. I am on some anti-anxiety meds and have been a couple years but they didn’t touch this.

Apologized, first verbally, then later again in writing, including a plan try to identify when this is happening, (which usually I can do) and excuse myself next time. And to see if I can get a zoom appointment with my counselor. Missed last session (every two weeks we were doing as things were going well before this, like a month ago, as the session got cancelled) and that’s all I can think of to do.
 
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For me, it hits worse when I feel like I’ve lost control, i.e., agency. I had a pretty serious problem with a crappy manager a few years back, and it resulted in me feeling a lot like what you described. I was having a perpetual fight-or-flight response and I wasn’t realizing it. But at every waking moment, I felt my skin tingling like I had just been extremely startled.

A combo of meds and meditation helped control it until I could change my situation. Then, I left my job, created my own job, and started taking control over my own life. It’s all more manageable now.

EDIT: I don’t mean to be giving advice here. Just sharing my experience.

I hope you can successfully patch it up with the wife. It’s rough on spouses, I’m afraid.
 
Cheese Grits said:
For me, it hits worse when I feel like I’ve lost control, i.e., agency. I had a pretty serious problem with a crappy manager a few years back, and it resulted in me feeling a lot like what you described. I was having a perpetual fight-or-flight response and I wasn’t realizing it. But at every waking moment, I felt my skin tingling like I had just been extremely startled.

A combo of meds and meditation helped control it until I could change my situation. Then, I left my job, created my own job, and started taking control over my own life. It’s all more manageable now.

EDIT: I don’t mean to be giving advice here. Just sharing my experience.

I hope you can successfully patch it up with the wife. It’s rough on spouses, I’m afraid.
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thank you. I appreciate it. That sort of path is in line with something I should do. The counselor did some bi-lateral stimulation with these little electronic vibrating pod things I would hold in my hands, and it would get me in a place where I could do something sort of like meditation and I could process stuff. Helped me get to a place where I had processed some of my life stuff before this.

Now, of course, everything is messed up with that work related stuff and how I am going to handle it, and I feel like I have no agency again, after all that work, which is part of what has me so upset.

Thinking that maybe if I can figure out a way to do some bi lateral stuff myself (I got to where I could before, using some simple body movement like raising and lowering each heel in a tempo) and use that to get back to a place where I can center and meditate, I can defuse it, and also see more clearly that I DO have some agency. And can take some steps to change things with my crappy manager, who happens to be me. (Wry smile, trying to have some humors).

So, thanks. That actually really does help me. And my wife and I just talked so feel better there too. Was feeling out of control a bit this morning getting carried away with thoughts of damaging my family relationships.

Ok, I feel a bit weird having processed all this out loud with you all here. But it helped. So thank you.
 
I found Headspace (the app) to be good. My therapist recommended it. I have other friends using it as well.

Also, the Nike Run Club app has guided running meditations in conjunction with Headspace.
 
Lerxst said:
@sunvalleylaw did you determine your symptoms were allergies and not virus related? Hw’s your wife and family holding up?
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No, that has not been determined. They are a little worse, and I have had a little headache too, but again, that could be because my neck and upper back is stiff, or any number of reasons. Other than my wife’s positive test result, we have received no information. The health department didn’t call, no further tests that I or my kids can get are available (I suppose if we were really sick, we could go get the nose swab, but that doesn’t tell us about antibodies). The test result was Wednesday, and no call by week’s end. I guess I will try to call the state health department on Monday myself.

It would be nice to find out if the rest of us are positive, so we can focus on getting symptom free, and moving on. It would be my guess that that is the case, but no way to really know without good data, based on the vague symptoms we have had, including my wife.
 
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sunvalleylaw said:
No, that has not been determined. They are a little worse, and I have had a little headache too, but again, that could be because my neck and upper back is stiff, or any number of reasons. Other than my wife’s positive test result, we have received no information. The health department didn’t call, no further tests that I or my kids can get are available (I suppose if we were really sick, we could go get the nose swab, but that doesn’t tell us about antibodies). The test result was Wednesday, and no call by week’s end. I guess I will try to call the state health department on Monday myself.

It would be nice to find out if the rest of us are positive, so we can focus on getting symptom free, and moving on. It would be my guess that that is the case, but no way to really know without good data, based on the vague symptoms we have had, including my wife.
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If you’ve got someone in the house confirmed w/ an infection, you might want to error on the side of caution and operate on the assumption that you’re all infected until you get confirmation otherwise; in home and out. Get your groceries delivered or dropped off by a friend and get everyone into a positive ‘containment’ mode rather than crossing the what-if bridge when someone goes down with more severe symptoms. People seem to acclimate to the changes better when it’s more a test scenario than a hard necessity.
 
Lerxst said:
If you’ve got someone in the house confirmed w/ an infection, you might want to error on the side of caution and operate on the assumption that you’re all infected until you get confirmation otherwise; in home and out. Get your groceries delivered or dropped off by a friend and get everyone into a positive ‘containment’ mode rather than crossing the what-if bridge when someone goes down with more severe symptoms. People seem to acclimate to the changes better when it’s more a test scenario than a hard necessity.
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Trying to.
 
Lerxst said:
Good luck. I know how difficult it can be; we’ve trying to do the same & it’s tough to put limitations on so many things you do out of habit or don’t ever really think too much about.
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I pretty much figure we all have to treat ourselves as infected, as you say.

Problem is, as a family, we have been doing this since mid-March when we got my college kid home from Paris, and he was in quarantine for two weeks. We got this test result with my wife, which is the only health thing that has changed, other than her “head cold”. so it makes it hard for my family to be super strict about isolating further within the home, as we have all been with each other 27/7 for a month, other than my kid was pretty much stuck upstairs in his room other than meals for the first two weeks of that time. My wife has had a hard time of similarly limiting herself.
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
It’s really too bad Anne Frank didn’t have her own gym to go to. More proof these stay at home orders were created by Nazis. :wink:
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First they came for the Pilates classes, but I did not do Pilates...

Then they came for the gymnastics classes, but I was not a gymnast...

Then they came for the weightlifters, and they said “Do you even lift bro?”

Finally, they came for me.

#donttreadmillonme #stairmasterrace #1000yearplank
 
Peen Simmons said:
First they came for the Pilates classes, but I did not do Pilates...

Then they came for the gymnastics classes, but I was not a gymnast...

Then they came for the weightlifters, and they said “Do you even lift bro?”

Finally, they came for me.

#donttreadmillonme #stairmasterrace #1000yearplank
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Actually, I think we should be able to squeeze you in between the pilates and gymnastic classes. Can we pencil something in for Wednesday?

get
 
We don't celebrate Easter, but had our son over yesterday. We set up lawn chairs outside - he about six feet from the rest of us - and I grilled steaks and lamb chops, which we ate with salad, TJ's eggplant cutlets and spanikopita, all followed by a Kahlua cheesecake (which I made crustless, of course, for fewer carbs). It was sort of surreal. My wife cried after, because we couldn't hug him. He lives four miles away from us (my wife, adult daughter and I are sharing the comfort of Casa bsman for the duration) and we've only had distant views of him lately.

BTW - as mentioned before, he is convinced he had Covid-19 at least three weeks before the first "officially" recognized US case. He works (he's thrilled to still have a job) as a sales rep for a major family of west coast wineries and spends his work day visiting South SF Bay Area restaurants, bars and stores taking orders. He said he thought he had the worst flu ever in late December, and in fact was coughing so hard he was coughing up blood, and on top of that got pinkeye. He went to the doctor, who commented that he'd been seeing a lot of similar cases, noting it was a terrible flu season. Given my wife's rather extensive list of pre-existing conditions (she spent five days on a ventilator in ICU last March for a separate issue), he is terrified of her getting it, and has been keeping his distance. I would submit that this is pretty decent anecdotal evidence that at least on the west coast this was in play well before the official timeline would indicate.

Of course, since the booze industry is essential, he's still visiting stores (most of his bar/restaurant clients are closed, of course) and is hoping that he doesn't end up with some mutated variant. On an interesting note - he's had a record month in terms of sales, even without his normal set of customers. Apparently, booze sales are not suffering during this event...
 
jp_nyc said:
This is why I can’t stand libertarians. The world is full of people who are stupid to care about their own interests. We can’t just let them run around fucking things up for the rest of us.
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I'm pretty sure they were laughed out of existence when they collectively sat on their thumbs through the black lives matter protests. Literal government agents literally killing literal citizens in the literal streets, and nothing from them. Our local rep, once a libertarian in all but designation, has rebranded himself.

On topic, this week is the first I have to make a long term plan for my job--I'm a SpEd teacher and have to build the plane for the next few months while I'm flying it, while keeping in compliance with rules that are being written by several competing interests in the same manner. I've been quite stressed, and an not sure how that's going to get done while I'm still teaching homeschool kindergarten everyday.
 
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