There's a scene in Patriot Games where Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) and Admiral James Greer (James Earl Jones) are in a CIA briefing, poring over satellite photos of a particular desert campsite and discussing whether or not to blow it off the surface of the planet. I wonder what Mountain Equipment Co-op would have to say about that?
Anyway, Ryan is reluctant to approve the action to send the SAS in because he can't be 100% sure it's the site that has the particular baddies in it that the CIA is going after. Greer asks him, "Well, Jack, can you think of anything in life that is one hundred per cent certain?"
"My daughter's love," replies Ryan earnestly.
'Twas this scene - amongst many other things - on my mind as I sat down for dinner with my parents last night. For me, it's similar to sitting down with the group therapy posse on a Thursday afternoon. With group, everybody understands the demons. We're all there to talk, understand, and interact in a societal microcosm in order to 'practice' for life in the real world with 'normal' people (actually, being normal is something we all aspire to and has become a running joke for us). In addition there's often a lot of getting things off one's chest too. No time ever needs to be wasted in justifying feelings or behaviours because, more often than not, one can describe the most incredulous situations or symptoms and not have to worry about getting that look. You know the one. The look that, when received, makes you wonder whether an eppeleptic ninja crept into your bedroom while you were asleep and drew all over your face with yellow flourescent highlighter pen...and somehow you managed to miss it before leaving the house that day. It's the look often accompanied by the familiar rotating finger-point to the temple and a brief crossing of the eyes.
It's not necessarily that my parents can fully understand what it's like to be me. After all, who could, without being able to get inside my mind? I can tell you what it's like, do my best to explain, use metaphors, but - without meaning to sound pompous - you'll never know dread like I do. However, I could be nuttier than my Grandma's date & walnut cake and my folks wouldn't mind. They'd love me just the same.
It's not that other people don't. But, like in group, it's nice to know I can say pretty much whatever I want and not have to worry about being judged. And I do worry about that - about what people will think when they read the stuff on here. That said, as I mentioned to my Mum yesterday, the trouble with blogging is that it brings people in so close that, as I said to her, "You're riding the rollercoaster with me". You get to see every bump in the road, every up and down in my moods, and it's the 'down' more often than an 'up' because the meds I'm on tend to dull the senses and prevent things like ecstacy or euphoria. There is also the issue that when I'm 'talking' on here, it's impossible for the reader to know whether it's actually me they're hearing from, or one or more of my disorders.
With that in mind I'm going to make two additions to the blog. The first is something I was considering anyway, and is something I do in life and at work every day. When embarking on a project, whatever it is, it's important to know what success looks like. How will it be apparent that all objectives have been achieved? More specifically, how will I know whether I'm getting better or not?
During diagnosis, my first therapist took me through a few questionnaires designed to identify emotional disorders. Simple stuff really - a list of 20 or so questions with a 1-5 ranking. For example, one question/statement might be, "I don't enjoy pastimes as much as I used to," with five possible options ranging from "frequently feel like this" at one extreme and "rarely feel like this" at the other end of the scale (for clinical depression). There are similar ones for GAD. I'm not yet sure of the frequency - probably once per week - but I'm going to 'assess' myself with the same questionnaires each time and then use the scores to figure out whether the trend is a positive one or a negative one. It gives me an excuse to stimulate my nerd gland and construct a few line graphs in MS Excel. All I need to do is figure out how best to portray that information on here.
The other thing I'm going to start doing is reading back though my past blog entries to identify where and when particular cognitive disorders have been at work. The trouble with cognitive disorders is that, at the time, it's rarely possible to tell when you're having them i.e. being able to differentiate between a rational fear or thought and an irrational one.
Anyway, the trails are beckoning, and Thursday is therapy day so I gotta get a move on.
21 May 2009
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