Tag Archives: postaday

What the heart wants, the head can’t have

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One of my supervisors, Dena, reminds me so much of the me before I became so broken by PTSD. She even has my old body style, as she can rock A-line dresses. I look at her wistfully as she bounces into my office cube to ask me a question with that girl-next door charm of hers.

Meanwhile, the A-line dresses I have no longer fit me very well, and I seriously doubt that I exude much charm these days. While Dena confidently glides around the office, I sit in my cube with a cardigan wrapped around me as I twitch with anxiety.

Today I struggled with intense headaches, and I am not sure if they were caused by yesterday’s neurofeedback. Interestingly, I didn’t have a lot of anxiety and triggers today. Those were traded in for headaches, unbeknownst to me until they took over my head in pain.

I wanted to cook today, but I was too tired and in too much pain to do so. So, with a refrigerator full of food to cook, I picked up a sub to eat instead. Ugh, what a waste.

I miss doing investigations in my last job. The work was so fun that it didn’t feel like work. Today I found myself holding my head in pain as I struggled to edit a voluminous policy document. I have a good job, but it’s not the job my heart wants. My heart wants to go back to human resources doing employee misconduct investigations, but my head isn’t ready to do that work again. The heart gets impatient with this predicament. It didn’t help that I received a canvass letter for a promotional position doing the kind of work I used to do. With a heavy, heavy heart here’s the reply I sent in:

Yep, I declined being considered for the position. It was in my own agency, and the secretary in human resources only sits four office cubes down from me. Before I could change my mind I filled it out, and rushed it over to her desk. I even made myself rush back to my desk so that I would have less chance of changing the form.

I have to hang on with the off chance that I may get to do what I love again some day. If that’s not the case, I would rather not know because I don’t know if I can bear that knowledge.

Neurofeedback

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Today was the first day of neurofeedback with Doc, the psychiatrist. I actually walked in feeling relatively calm. Though I did not sleep well, I was able to go to the gym this morning, so I felt alright. In fact, I felt the best I had felt in at least a couple of weeks.

Doc sat me in front of a laptop, and started putting some goop on my ears and head for the sensors that would send feedback from my brain to the computer. There were a variety of programs on the screen, and Doc chose Spectral Mirror, whatever the hell that means. He told me to focus on the screen the entire time. Various colors would appear on the screen at certain intervals. I believe the intervals have to do with my brainwaves.

At the start of the neurofeedback session Doc just blurted, “Wow, I’ve never seen numbers this high. Yes, you have PTSD in spades!” It’s a good thing I’m patient with the old guy because I didn’t exactly appreciate hearing that in that moment, especially with the fervor in which he exclaimed it.

It was a bit weird how Doc knew when my mind was beginning to drift during the session. I would start to think about work, and there were even a few times when I started to get triggered. I got twitchy a few times. When my mind would drift he would tell me to put my focus back on the screen. Weird. Kinda like he was an interloper in my brain. There was a moment when I was fighting the urge to get under the table.

The neurofeedback session took 30 minutes. As soon as I was done he told me that my brain took to it very nicely as my “number” came down to a 5. I asked him what was ideal, and he said that ideally it should be under a 7. I asked him what it was when I started, and he said it was a 45, and he had never seen such a high number.

Doc then asked me if I was feeling nervous when I came in, and I said no. In fact, I arrived feeling the most calm I had felt in many days. Then he asked how I felt now that the session was over. and that’s when I realized that I felt even better. I actually felt calm. Perhaps, I’ve been so anxious for so long that I didn’t even know what calm felt like … Doc thought that could very well be the case. I will be back on Thursday for another session.

Award acceptance!

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I am blessed and honored with receiving the Very Inspiring Blogger Award from Elyn at Letters to dom, as well as the blog pensées sans frontières.

Here are seven things about myself:

  1. Chihuahua dogs are my favs. My grandmother raised chihuahuas, and I thought all kids got their first dog from their grandma. Unfortunately, in adulthood, I’ve developed a dog allergy, so I’m getting allergy shots so that I can get a chihuahua soon.
  2. I am very accident prone. This is why I don’t ski, snowboard or do anything remotely daring as a sport. I create enough mishaps just going through everyday life!
  3. I have a very loud laugh that is also easily identifiable. People know I’m laughing from rooms away!
  4. Libraries and bookstores are favorite hangout places of mine.
  5. I am a tea snob. No coffee for me!
  6. There is no explanation for my love affair with Ireland. I don’t have a drop of Irish blood in me. In fact, I’m Mexican. I can’t get enough of the music, the tea, the food, the geography, learning Irish history. My soul is strangely, but beautifully Irish.
  7. I love rain and snow. I think it comes from a childhood in the desert.

This is hard, as I’ve only been blogging since July 9th. Though these two bloggers below have already received this award, I still want to mention them because they have great talent and heart. Also, Bourbon at Crazy in the Coconut was the very first blogger to follow me! I especially love her for that! And WeeGee at How Do You Eat An Elephant just makes me laugh.

Crazy in the Coconut

How Do You Eat An Elephant?

The nominations:

My nominations are three bloggers that I started following recently. All three blogs are different, but very special. Please check them out.

Curly Miri

Discovering Serenity

defying ptsd

The rules:

  1. Display the award logo somewhere on the blog
  2. Link back to the blog of the person who nominated you.
  3. State 7 things about yourself
  4. Nominate up to 15 other bloggers for the award and provide links to their blogs
  5. Notify those bloggers that they have been nominated and of the award’s requirements

Thank you everyone for all the support thus far. This is a great community of writers. I learn so much every day from all of you.

Much love,

Beatriz