Month: April 2025

Click?

I have been intending to post about this for several days now and here I am, finally getting to it. I referred previously to getting trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, therapy. If you had asked me how I thought it was going a few weeks ago, I would have said I thought it was helping with my anxiety symptoms, especially the hyper-alertness. Not game-changing but certainly worth pursuing. Two weeks ago, something clicked. Let me preface this by saying in the intervening time things have settled back down closer to, but still above, my previous baseline but for a few days there, my brain was working, possibly better than it ever has.

When I say something clicked, I really do mean the change was almost instantaneous. I was walking along in my usual depressive funk then, as best I can describe it, an instrument panel got plugged in. I could monitor and regulate things I hadn’t even been aware of that affected my mood. “What kinds of things?”, I hear my excited audience ask. Therein lies the problem. I’ve referenced the original Star Trek episode Spock’s Brain before, the relevant part being Dr. McCoy using the alien hair-dryer to learn how to put Spock’s brain back in and his amazement at how simple the procedure is, once he already knows how to do it1. Of course, as time goes on, the effects of the magic hair-dryer start wearing off and McCoy, mid-procedure, realizes how complex it is and that he no longer has any idea what he’s doing. Très dramatique. All this is to say, I feel like I’ve lost that level of admin access and I’m not sure how I was making it all work.

For those few days though, I felt invulnerable. I bumbled through life feeling vaguely cheerful. I had fun doing things I enjoyed2. The closest I’ve ever come to that before was the first time I started taking antidepressants3. While things have pulled back somewhat, I still feel considerably better than I have for quite some time

As long as I stay in the house, don’t go anywhere, or do anything. Baby steps, I suppose.

  1. If you prefer a more high-brow reference, you can think of this as being my Person on business from Porlock ↩︎
  2. I told my therapist I wanted to go back and revise every PHQ-9 I’d done for the last three years. I have a much better understanding of the “Little interest or pleasure in doing things” question now. ↩︎
  3. For the curious, it was sertraline and I think it was somewhere in the early 2000s? Maybe? That I’m not so sure about. ↩︎

Habitual

Insert Scumbag Steve meme here – states intention to post more frequently; disappears for a month. That is a thing that happened and I don’t really have a good explanation for why. Nothing much seemed post-worthy.

Since the last update, the major piece of news is that the extreme house cleaners came through and extremely cleaned the place. This is not to say that the place is extremely clean, but it is extremely cleaner than it was. Functional, even, which has made living somewhat less complicated.

With the theme of un-complicating things in mind, I am working on developing some self-care habits. I’m sure I have lamented previously in these e-pages about my lack of skill in the self-care department. This is, of course, the result of running myself ragged for twenty years or so while trying to behave as if I was an unlimited resource. Which is, more or less, how I ended up where I am now.

Currently I’m working on some very complex habits, like remembering to eat, take my meds, and brush my teeth. I’m hoping to move on to more advanced topics soon, so if anyone has any good tips for taking care of oneself, please feel free to share. Or don’t. Either way.