anxiety

Managing hashimotos, sciatica, anxiety and depression while autistic.

4th November 2018 by Jax Blunt 2 Comments

When I wrote my cheery reintroduction post the other day, it felt like I ignored a pretty big elephant in the room. This is the other side of me, the bit that I don’t usually brag about.

It’s hard to know how far to go back with all of this. And this isn’t a pity party post, I’m writing about this in the hope that the information is useful to some one. It took a while to diagnose most of my conditions, and I’d love to shortcut someone else to the answers they need.

My autism was diagnosed a few years back, and the story of that is sprinkled through the blog under the autism tag. (I’ll stitch it all together in a page tomorrow.) It’s not a medical condition, but it does affect access to medical help. Doctors underestimate pain if you don’t express it in the standard way, I hate talking on the phone and our GP surgery is all phone appointments these days.

Which is partly why it took so long last year to get myself to the GP for help. I thought it was a resurgence of the depression I’ve dealt with on and off all my life, despite me doing all the right things – exercise, creative stuff, eating well, all of it.

And the doctor assumed the same, and put me on antidepressants.

I didn’t feel any better. I felt a whole lot worse. I started to develop a tremor which meant I couldn’t take photographs or draw. Then it got so my muscles would fatigue when doing normal stuff, the real crowning joy being the time I had to call Tim to meet me at the supermarket round the corner (seriously a 3 minute walk) because my arms gave up and I couldn’t carry the couple bags of shopping home.

The year before I’d been having physio for my chronic every joint problem. If it’s not one thing it’s all of them. And the physio pushed for a whole battery of blood tests and that time it was a vitamin D deficiency. So I wondered if it was that again, or side effects from the anti depressants. But the doctor suspected hyperthyroidism and did yet more blood tests.

Turned out in hypothyroid, and tested positive for antibodies, which means I have Hashimotos. ‘The silver lining,’ said the GP over the phone ‘is that you get free prescriptions for life. But you have to take thyroxine daily.’

Once I’d got that established I got a different GP to prescribe a withdrawal dose for the anti depressants, and guess what, the tremor went too.

GPs are supposed to have protocol to deal with autistic patients, to be more accessible, because we’re really bad, generally speaking, at pushing ourselves forward and getting the health care we need. Mine set up a couple appointments so I didn’t have to do the phone thing, then he stopped and now I’m back to not going in again.

And it’s November, I still can’t run (hip and back, that’s a whole other story) and I can feel myself slipping again.

I’ve got a pain clinic appointment tomorrow. I’m hoping for some answers about how to strengthen my back so that I can work towards running. I’ve started a gratitude journal, and every day it’s sunny I’m out with my camera. It helps, but I don’t know if it will be enough.

Autism, anxiety and mindfulness.

12th November 2015 by Jax Blunt 8 Comments

Thursdays are hard for me at the moment because I finally started attending an autism support group. Not a carers group, a post diagnosis group for myself, to help with aspects of living with aspergers.

For me, and indeed many people with ASD diagnosis, autism comes with a high level of anxiety, that feeds into bouts of clinical depression. Understanding myself, developing techniques to handle the anxiety I wrestle with on a daily basis are key to me. And one of the techniques we’re exploring is mindfulness.

A defence mechanism many people employ to cope with anxiety is avoidance. If I run away from this conversation/don’t go to this event/spend the day playing 2048 (see also obsessional behaviours, I may write on this another time) I won’t feel anxious. By the way, I’m not talking about a mild twinge of anxiety – did I remember to lock the door? Oh yes – I’m talking about the kind of anxiety that turns your insides into a pretzel, relocates your shoulders somewhere near your ears, feels like you’ve swallowed a rock that’s lodged in your throat and sets you sweating with racing heart. All at once. The kind of thing that you really do want to avoid.

The problem with avoidance is that all it does is put the problem off, whatever the problem happens to be. And very often, putting the problem off, increases it. Fail to deal with your bills? Red bill, followed by threatening letters, probably with extra charges. Anxiety exponentially increased. So the trick here is to learn to manage the anxiety sufficiently to be able to deal with whatever the issue at hand is. I have been failing at this for years, so any and all tips gratefully accepted.

This morning (before group) in a moment of anxiety, I turned to look out of the window, caught sight of some gorgeous blossom in the morning light, took a deep breath and calmed. Which echoed beautifully the mindfulness technique that we tried in group today, where we were each given an object and talked through looking at it.

It turns out that my photography and drawing give me a huge reservoir of mindfulness to draw on. Looking for light, being in that moment of beauty, taking a step outside myself to really see the world around me, all of this helps. Learning to look, setting aside the flight reaction, focussing on the light is a technique that I can apply at pretty much any point. You can spend a long, or as short a time as you need gazing at whatever item you choose, until your body gets over that physiological response, you’ve gathered your energy and you can have another crack at whatever it was set you off in the first place.

Recurring unmanageable anxiety was a large part of my motivation for seeking an ASD diagnosis. I hoped that understanding where it all came from might give me more successful strategies than bouncing on and off medication. (I am fully aware that medication helps many people. I don’t criticise that, if anything I’m slightly jealous. Nothing I’ve tried over the years since I was first prescribed tablets when I was about 15? has ever been particularly successful, probably at least partly because the people prescribing weren’t getting to the bottom of what causes the anxiety for me. Which is pretty much everything.)

The picture above is of a flower I found just outside the room we met in. Not perfect, bent and folded by life. Aren’t we all? The light was glorious, creating hard, almost tangible edges to the shadows. And this moment is added to my memories, to sustain me when I need it.

Today’s session felt practical and positive. It may have taken me a year to take the leap, but I’m glad I’m finally taking part in the group support.

Sunrise in a dewdrop

14th October 2015 by Jax Blunt 5 Comments

There’s a whole sunrise in that dewdrop. Worth dropping a whole load of water on my head wriggling into the bush to get the shot, right?

Definitely worth running to the beach, even if there wasn’t a whole lot going on over the sea. May have taken some artful shots of wet stones. We shall see.

And then eventually time to shower, because that was also my fastest run in a while, and recommence waiting for a call from school. Right after coffee. And maybe a quick wander through some more day 3 #theinstaretreat pics. (Loving the community Sara is building there )

***

Actually, there was washing to hang out and children to feed, and children to wrangle, and twiter to read, and anxiety building.

In the morning I wake up and the only thing on my mind is whether I can persuade myself out of the house, and whether there will be something worth taking pictures of when I get to the beach. And then I get back and there’s a few minutes with Big before she heads off to school and then today quite a lot of peace and quiet before the other children got up.

I should have used that time and peace to do stuff. But I didn’t. And partly because of that, and partly because of shouting, and mainly really because of me the anxiety starts to build and blossom and take over again.

I can banish it for a little while. I can squash it by breathing, by running, by staring at the sky, or a flower, or a bird. I can draw it into submission – art is very mindful or mindless, I’m not sure which. My hand works best when I get out of the way anyway.

But it never goes away for long, and avoiding stuff makes it worse, but I don’t know how to get the stuff under control. Don’t tell me little by little, that doesn’t work. And a huge dive in wears me out for days and puts me further behind. I’m over here paddling furiously under the water and it’s not working.

I don’t know how to do this. (Please don’t tell me how to do this. Just hear me.)

anxiety

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