a small part of me is happy that my anxiety was vindicated, hit a snag in the Desktop work… now I don’t have it, spent a whole day working my butt off, and nothing, not yet anyway. I’m not saying it’s a lost cause, just more than I can take on, and it hurts.
Which is that hollowed out feeling. I feel like a Jack=O-Lantern, outwardly I don’t look too bad. Inside….. rot, deep and expanding rot. I keep smiling because I know the time will come soon that I can’t. I keep working because I know my capacity is waning. It feels literally like I’m missing a limb, I get phantom limb stuff where I try and go for it being there, and it isn’t. It took me all day today to get calm enough to get my old school laptop out and do some stuff on it. It’s not awful, has a descrete graphics card (one that isn’t integrated into the CPU), decent screen, as good a keyboard as you can get on a non gaming laptop….. it’s a prosthetic, one I might have to learn to live with for awhile.
My wife is being very supportive, I can’t keep secret from her how much I’m hurting, and she’s stepping up and helping. Everyone is being supportive, in ways they can. The way I need, financial and economic, that’s more than can be provided…. I thought for a minute I’d lost my hotline connection, last night I was feeling so awful I tried calling the suicide hotline and.. *Three beeps* “The person who you have dialed cannot be reached.” Like not disconnected, just not there.
Today I tried again after I found out from my case worker that same hotline was the one she was recommending people use…. and it worked… somehow. I dialed it on my phone, my life has been consistently dark so long that I keep it on my “frequently contacted” tab. Anyway, they actually had a new trick I’m wanting to try; cold baths. Well cold showers for me, I can’t abide ice baths. Apparently makes a dent in anxiety. I find that credible, I really like when it’s very cold outside and I can just sit outside and lower my body temp.
Not like that now. It’s February for pity sake and we’ve got 80 degree days. Some of my friends from further north are jealous, and I’m like; “Try living with it, not being able to get away from it, for 20 winters” Eh. I know I’m weird for how much I like the cold, or more accurately how much I hate heat.
Anyway…. not much else going on right now. I’m leaning on my other coping mechanisms, watching television on an actual television, a huge change for me (no, really). Same for video games, I’ve been playing Hitman + Astroneer on PS4, I have a few other games like Outlast, Until Dawn and Subnautica that I haven’t played in awhile, so I should be moderately occupied.
I guess it bugs me that up until this loss, it felt like I was steadily gaining ground in my life. Now, I’m in retreat, and that sucks. I’ve thought about self harm, haven’t actually done it in six months, but the temptation is much worse right now. Thankfully cold showers= pain, and that pain might just be enough, and it doesn’t leave a mark, awesome.
it’s not awesome. It’s all a huge pile of unpleasantness, but because that’s all that is available I’m disguising it as a character growth opportunity. I’ve got to recommend this to anyone who’s like “I’d love to unplug”… would you? How about if it came unexpectedly and you didn’t get to know when it would stop? Sound nice? Try it.
5 comments
Sounds like a standup comedy routine: you got the suicide prevention line on speed dial. But if it provides a line of defense then that’s awesome. I never heard of the cold shower trick, but the doc once told me that hot showers exhaust/depress the brain because the brain has to work so hard to regulate body temp (after a major head injury he prescribed that I avoid hot showers for 3 months). So I guess the opposite, cold showers, would be literally a cool down period for an overtaxed noggin. Maybe when the outside temp warms up a bit I’ll try it.
Good job on staying clear of self harm. 6 months is fucking awesome from where I’m sitting. Hell 6 hours would be impressive for me. I’m sure you know once you start, it aint so easy to stop. Anyway its great that you’re finding alternate coping tricks, I think that’s the key to getting thru this, training your mind to come up with healthier solutions instead of the destructive ones that led us here… Those sure didn’t work.
No, hot showers do not “depress” the brain. What a hot shower does is the heat causes the blood vessels to dilate. When blood vessels dilate (open up) it causes your blood pressure to drop, and blood leaves the brain. If you have a brain issue as I do, sudden drops in blood pressure is bad for the brain and prolonged hot showers are super bad.
What a cold shower does- and this goes for normal ppl without brain issues- is that it narrows the blood vessels, blood pressure increases, the cold water causes your noradrenaline levels to skyrocket and also triggers a rush of blood into your brain. That’s why a cold shower can give you a “rush.”
@heartlessviking- it’s actually recommended on a lot of alternative health sites that during your shower, we should oscillate between hot and cold. it’s supposed to be good for your immune and overall health, so yeah, you really can use a cold shower to rationalize the pain you like to feel during a cold shower.
Me personally, even though I know the health benefits, and even though I definitely like cold weather much better than hot, for some reason I’m chicken when it comes to cold showers. Can’t stand cold showers for long so I rarely do it. And when I do, the cold phase only lasts for a few seconds (when really it should last at least 60s, and then back to hot).
so what you’re supposed to do is start off with just a few seconds of cold, then back to hot, then back to cold but a few seconds longer, then back to hot, then back to cold adding a few more seconds. This is for most ppl who aren’t used to or like cold showers like me, to increase our tolerance and ability to withstand longer cold showers.
Maybe in your case you don’t want to increase your tolerance and can just go straight to a whole cold shower.
Look up Nordic ice baths. The Nordics have done this for centuries for health benefits. Not suggesting you go straight for prolonged ice baths as with everything that makes us feel “good,” the longer and colder your showers or baths, the longer and colder it will have to be for you to feel the same “hit” or rush. But until you reach that point, cold showers are good for your health. I just wish I wasn’t so chicken to last more than a few seconds on cold :/
well my comment with a link to google search is awaiting moderation but just search for “benefits of a cold shower” and it’ll come up with a ton of articles and they can explain the health benefits better than I can. man, i’m kind of jealous. you’ve got a nice go-to. i want to do cold showers but i just can’t stand the coldness of a cold shower -_-
https://www.google.com/search?q=benefits+of+a+cold+shower&oq=benefits+of+a+cold+s&aqs=chrome.0.0i433i512j69i57j0i512l8.4774j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8