Meltdown

Yikes. The last few days have been a bit strange. I've been hypersensitive and reacting to everything with rage or tears - everything is a threat to my well-being! I get this occasionally when I'm overloaded. I've been getting a bit dissociative - just blanking out and feeling like I'm floating just slightly out of my body, observing but not participating in my experience. It's a bit mental, but it can make life bearable at times. I think having taken on the Amygdala Retraining Technique I have loaded myself up with expectations. I'd given up before. Now there's this. But it's quite demanding - lots of things to do, and especially one thing to do up to hundreds of times a day -100, 200 or 300 Ashok says. FUCKING HELL!

I've been on board because it all makes sense to my scientist brain. There is a rational basis for the explanation of fibromyalgia and a rational basis for the ART. But then he introduces stuff like "alternate nostril breathing" - deep breathing but alternately closing of the nostrils. And I'm sorry but this just seems like bullshit to me. It is not accompanied by the kind of well thought out and well presented facts that the first part of the program is. It's just a "powerful" technique. Powerful? What the fuck does that mean? What does it do? And why does it do it? Given that the answers to these two questions are available to the first part of the program it seems fair to expect answers.

I must also say that Ashok overplays his one peer reviewed journal article in 2002 (8 years ago) - it was in "Medical Hypotheses" not in the Lancet or Nature. There is a reason why you've never heard of this journal before - it is obscure. It appears that there has been no subsequent research on his technique, so the idea is hardly causing a medical revolution (it means that no one has been impressed enough by his hypothesis to set up a trial and test it). I don't doubt that research would be favourable and that the understanding of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia would be confirmed. I even think that the hypothesis will shed light on many forms of anxiety and depression - I clues into my own insights and into what people like Joe Griffin of the Human Givens Institute are saying. But only the uneducated are going to be impressed by what he calls his "medical paper".

One of the good things to come out of my ruminations in the last few days has been a realisation. I do stuff around the house. I do it with the expectation that others will appreciate what I do and like me for it. This is a mistake I've made before (to my cost). People I live with, some of them anyway, don't give a shit about me or what I do. They don't even notice that I clean up after them, or make an extra effort to make the house look nice. I can't always be good company, but I do more than my fair share. But if I'm doing it so they will like me (and hopefully not reject me) and they are even aware, then I'm knocking myself out for no good reason. They don't care. They don't even know it's an issue. So why am I putting myself through this?

Honeymoon is over

Well that didn't take long. I've had a very difficult couple of days - swamped by disturbing thoughts and images and feeling ill equipped to deal with them. Swinging from rage to weeping. I came a bit unhinged at times. What set me off? Someone took two bites out of a slice of bread and then left it on the cutting board beside the loaf. I just went nuts - fucking slobs!!!! etc. But it did me more harm than good. I definitely need to turn the volume knob down, to be much less prone to these overreactions. It was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, but I live with slobs and I need to find better ways of coping. Maybe I should take up smoking pot again? I never bothered about a bit of mess in those days... [joke].

I see very clearly how ART is supposed to work, but getting on top is going to be difficult. I find myself doing the technique so often it's exhausting. My negative thoughts are largely NOT about my body and symptoms, but about frightening experiences past and (imagined) future.

I'm trying to read Joseph LeDoux's book The Emotional Brain. There is a long (I mean at least 5 chapters) introduction to the history of research into the neuro-anatomy of emotion which is dull at times. Hopefully we'll get onto his research into fear soon. There are two main points from the first 5 chapters. Firstly that the contents of the consciousness are largely the result of unconscious processes about which we mostly can't be conscious. We make up stories to explain how we feel based on previous experience etc. We can be completely wrong about the reason we feel as we do.

Secondly the idea that there is an 'emotional centre' in the brain is probably wrong. Specifically LeDoux demonstrates that the so-called Limbic System as defined by previous researchers (and still a feature of neuroscience texts being published today) doesn't really exist, or do what they say it does. An aspect of LeDoux's thinking is that different emotions are produced by different parts of the brain. Fear, and especially fearful memories, for instance are associated with the amygdala and it's interactions with other brain systems. This is the fact that Ashok exploits in the ART.

Anyway I'm fed up with the slobs and I starting looking into council housing and found that as a non-citizen I have to go the extra mile to prove I qualify. So I can't register online but must take my passport in. Registration takes 8 weeks to be processed (why does everything take so fucking long in this country!). Then the system has changed and one has to keep an eye on the listings and put in bids for desirable places. 3 bids per bidding cycle. So now I have to decide whether the slobs are bad enough for me to tangle with the bureaucracy and red-tape and all the stress that brings.

Have you tried...

Earlier I wrote that I hate getting medical advice from ordinary people. Any sentence (let aone conversation) where the opening gambit is "have you tried..." is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. Not interested. Actually I've noticed that very few people can take in the complexity of my illness. They tend to latch onto one symptom and ask about that. For the first 3 years people would ask about my hands.

"How are your hands?"

"My hands are fine. I've never had a problem with my hands. What hurts are my elbows, upper-arms, shoulders, my back, my neck, and more recently my hips, and thigh muscles."

"Oh...."

Then the next time I see them.... "How're your hands?"

The other thing that people can relate to is sleep. I've often in an advanced stage of sleep deprivation and struggle to know which way is up. So then I'll get:

"Sleep OK?"

"No."

"Oh."

"Sleep OK?"

"No."

"Oh."

etc for weeks on end...

I stopped joining my housemates for breakfast years ago. (besides they eat loudly which disgusts me)

I know it comes from concern but somehow concern for me gets tangled up in their own views of the situation. They'll ask my about a headache I had 3 days ago.

"Head OK?".

"What?"

"You had a headache..."

"Yes, on Monday I had a headache, it's Wednesday now. You saw me yesterday and I apparently did not have a headache then either."

"Oh".

It's like somehow humans lose the ability to communicate effectively with me because I'm in pain. They focus on the pain that they can relate to, and forget to relate to me as a person. Or something. Fucked if I know really, but it's frustrating. I know I'm grumpy and that doesn't help. So what is wrong with me?

Pain in the tendons around my elbows, the ends of my deltoid muscles and all of the muscles/tendons around my shoulders and shoulder blades. Pain in my mid, upper back and neck. Pain in my jaws. All of my muscles are quick to fatigue and slow to recover.

When I say pain it varies. It can be burning with aching (as now), or just a dull ache, or a deep unsettling ache as if in my bones. It can be sharp frightening pain as bad as any I've felt.

Frequent headaches. Migraine. Insomnia - trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep, early waking. Un-refreshing sleep. Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS). General fatigue. [I also have problems with my teeth, psoriasis, I'm obese - sounds attractive doesn't it?].

I have trouble concentrating and remembering things (I used to be clever). I am constantly anxious, sometimes to the point of paranoia and panic attacks. I experience repeated bouts of clinical depression with suicidal thoughts (I took an overdose in 1999). I'm given to bouts of (mostly internal) rage.

Along with all of this my marriage ended. I lost my job. I'm stranded on benefits in a foreign country. I'm unable to do things like play a guitar (after 25 years of it being one of my main interests). I've had many diagnoses such as: Major Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, Fibromyalgia. Many people want to label me with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - again it seems to be what they've heard of - and they're like people who's only tool is a hammer: everything starts to look like a nail. Though Mr Gupta acknowledges that the two conditions are different (there's no suggestion of a viral trigger for FM as far as I know) there may well be a similarity in the underlying causes - i.e. a badly trained amygdala.

My last girlfriend left me because I apparently complained all the time. But the cow was forever asking me what I was thinking about or feeling - every five minutes like a five year old "what are you thinking about?". I think about pain, I feel pain. That's about it really. She kept asking, I kept telling the truth. I'm glad she's gone.

I started off today thinking I would list the treatments I'd tried (other than recreational drugs and alcohol in my youth which didn't really work either). I trained in the sciences so I don't have that much time for the airy-fairy stuff - I have tried a few alternative treatments and they have one advantage over drugs. No side effects. However they have had no effect what-so-ever. To date I've tried:

Antidepressant drugs, anti-anxiety drugs, anti-seizure drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs (now I'm a bit anti drugs). TENS, exercise (swimming, yes), stretching, heat packs, hot baths (with and without bath salts), hydrotherapy. Homoeopathy, acupuncture, kinesiology, vitamins, massage, deep tissue massage, shiatsu, osteopathy, active release techniques (McTimoney chiropractic). As a Buddhist I have been engaged in meditation, mantra recitation, prayer etc. In the last 10 years I've had 6 years of intensive psychotherapy - the Karuna Institute, psychosynthesis, body psychotherapy (disaster!). I started but could not finish a mindfulness based stress reduction course (the techniques activated my RLS and just made me worse, a lot worse).

At times some or all of these provided some short term relief. Nothing has made any long term difference.

Now I'm doing Tai Chi and the Gupta Amygdala Retraining Program (ARP). The Tai Chi is very helpful - grounding. Helping me with body awareness without sending me into the twitching hell of RLS, and without demanding the gut wrenching (for me) introspection of meditation. Getting onto the ARP has made me aware of some things. Firstly the grief of the last 4 years is massive and I'm not over it. I'm also terrified of getting a little bit better and then being thrust out of the system only to fall over and go through it all again. I had given up all hope of being well. It's so stirring to think I might get well - I swing from exhilaration to despondency. Big plans, to realising that nothing has helped in the past - or at least nothing has made a permanent difference. I've got slowly worse over my adult life. I'm operating at about 25% of what I might at the moment in my own estimation. It's very early days. I suppose deep down I do want to be well, but I'm terrified (really fucking terrified) of failing again. I was just coming to accept my situation - I'd stopped struggling so much, and was calmer. But now it's all up in the air again and I feel very anxious about it.

Food

My housemates - mostly middle aged bachelors - are a reasonably cultured bunch. Most of us have a university education. They're always popping off to the theatre, to a dance performance or an arty film (where good photography outranks horrendous plots). They like Ted Hughes and Shamus Heaney. Indeed, not so long ago we were discussing our favourite 19th century novels (I had to wrack my brain to come up with a 19th century novel, but realised I've read the collected works of H.G. Wells some of which were written before the turn). They tend to scoff at popular music and Hollywood films. Get the picture? Not really snobs, but...

For all this sophistication the buggers have not educated their pallets. They poo-poo B movies and Big Brother, but would eat chips and beans, and fried egg sandwiches everyday if they could. We're all veggie, so no bacon butties. They serve up an unremitting diet of stodgy curries - often a potato curry with white rice which is about 95% carbs. One guy fries almost everything in an inch of oil and what isn't fried is smothered in an inch of mayonnaise, or covered in piles of cheese - and then everything is lathered with pickle. Another will carefully steam vegetables (using a different pot/steamer for each kind and thereby using every pot in the house) only to pour cooking oil on them "to make them tasty". I'm presently living with the worst cook I've ever lived with (and I've lived in many different set ups and many different people - over 30 houses, and about 100 people). I don't know what he does sometimes: often the food is undercooked (crunchy spuds), but usually it's just awful looking and tasteless. He himself has been known to wolf down plain pasta with nothing on it. He has no concept of what a balanced diet consists of. Ugh. I've started avoiding his cooking day whenever I can. Once a month is about as much as I can stand. I find it depressing and I've put on a lot of weight. Must write about my own eating habits some time.

The contrast between the attitude to food and the taste sense, compared with sight and hearing is astounding. I won't even get into smell - another pet hate! Maybe I should write about why I live communally at some point?

Since I'm doing the Gupta program I'm keeping track of my negative thoughts, and I have to say a lot of them revolve around this. Since I've recently stopped having psychotherapy I have a bit more money which I'm spending on olives, falafels, humous and sushi. Oh, and it's peach season, so lots of yummy peaches.

Amygdala Retraining

So, I've started the Gupta program and I thought I could use the blog to keep track of it.

I find it all very emotional. Basically I had given up. I thought the rest of my life would just be pain, upset, disability, or at best severely limited by these. Never working again, always dependent on benefits, stranded in the UK for lack of money and an inability to handle the stress of moving after 8 years living here. There is so much of value that I've lost. I was understandably despondent about this. To hear someone give a rational explanation for the condition, and then a rational approach to treating it is like a dam giving way. I've wept more than once watching the DVD. But it is very early days.