Exhaustion

I'm so sleepy lately. I've made it into the university campus this week for three days, which is in some ways amazing considering how sleepy I am.

Monday - I had to pull over on the way in because I was my eyes were getting very heavy on the road. 

Tuesday - I was driving to my gym from uni at the end of the day and had a micro sleep on the road, luckily my tire scraping along the gutter was enough to wake me up.

Wednesday (Today) - I tried to get public transport into uni because I'm so tired, and because I have a meeting in the city tonight. I drove down to my local train station, the commuter car park was full, I drove around all the surrounding streets for about 10 minutes, no parking there either. I ended up having to drive all the way into uni again otherwise I wouldn't get here in time to make it to a meeting I want to go to in person. 

The thing is I'm not sleeping any more or less than I have been for ages, I am just overall exhausted. The past few nights I've been getting 7-8 hours of sleep each night, and not even waking up during the early hours for a change. I'm physically breaking again., which leads to increased symptoms of depression and anxiety of course.

The past few days haven't been too bad. Saturday night I had a mini-date with my partner and that went really well. It made me feel really good. The next day I did a wildlife party, and it was great to be with the animals again. I wasn't sleepy on this day, even with all of the driving, it was a good day. 

Anyway, back to today. All the emotional turmoil that has been plaguing me since July last year is resurfacing again. Just when I thought I was getting through it (yet again) it is back. These emotions physically make my chest/heart feel heavy. I should probably get back to journaling more regularly. When I'm having good days I generally don't feel like journaling, I always seem to leave it for when I feel crappy. Maybe that's not the best method.

As for my PhD, I still don't really know what I'm doing, not having met with my supervisor in several weeks probably doesn't help, but parts of me really doesnt want to either. Still working through my image analysis and planning for a field trip next month.  I am really looking forward to having time off. If it ever gets approved...

First Group DBT - I expressed myself

Today was the first group Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT). 

Arrived about 10 - 15 min late, but that's okay. I made it. I'm still really tired and by the morning tea break around 11:20 I had to go and get another caffeine hit. 

Overall, I Think it went pretty good though. There was only about six of us, with two facilitators. 

We did the 'two truths and one lie' icebreaker. Here's mine:

1. I've been bitten by a crocodile

2. I've been bitten by a shark

3. I've been stung by a sting ray

Do any of you readers know the lie?

______________________________________________________

During this first group session I was already triggered by something. Now I don't usually get offended much, but when I do I usually ruminate and let it fester inside. After debating with myself for a little while whilst everyone was talking about WISE mind, I decided to speak up. It was quite challenging, and part of me still thinks its a stupid thing to get worked up about, but I knew expressing myself would make me feel better, so I did. 

Expressing myself more is one of my therapy goals, and being in a "safe space" I decided to give it ago. As I predicted it made me feel better afterwards. It was really hard when I was saying it out loud to the group though, I could tell I was having a hard time even getting the words out. In the beginning of the session we talked about being respectful and such but also using "I" statements. So that's what I did, I used the term "I". For example, I feel upset by this statement. Rather than saying I don't like what this person said.

I'm still having some negative thoughts about myself though. Things like"you shouldn't get so worked up about something so trivial" and then making fun of myself in a cruel way for feeling that way. I know I should feel proud for speaking up and expressing myself, in a way I do, but it's very hard after so long of not doing so. Maybe I should do another WISE mind ;)

Right now I'm in the library (It's much nicer there than my campus' library, more windows, feels nice and open and light). I've loaded up my image analysis software, but again it doesn't seem to be working properly, which is quite frustrating. Perhaps I should let it update when it asks next time, or even it just won't work without being connected by an Ethernet cable. At least I tried? 

Unplanned time off

After a great weekend out herping (searching for amphibians and reptiles) I was absolutely exhausted on Monday. I did not end up driving into campus as it would probably not be the safest for me to be driving for an hour or so. I did some image analysis at home, but the access to the remote system wasn't working very well so I couldn't do much from home. I also kept falling asleep at the computer.

Accepting that I need a day of rest after a weekend with humans, driving for several hours by myself, and just doing any activity is still not easy for me. I want to be able to do more still. A weekend doing something for myself (in this case a herping trip with a society) was great for my mental health, but I am still left completely physically broken afterwards. It is so frustrating. I wish doing things for myself actually recharged my batteries rather than also ran them down. But I guess I'm not in the best place as of late and even these things drain me more than I would like. 

My mental health must really be in a state when even the things that make me mentally feel better are wearing me this thin. My physical health is certainly not blameless though. This increased migraine severity in my mid thirties is certainly a real douze. 

Oh but don't worry my dear readers, the struggles of my life do not end there. My mother tested positive for covid last night, and as someone of high risk we were advised to go to the emergency department at hospital. So we ended up at hospital around 1 am. We saw the nurse and the doctor, all looked good so far, but bloods were taken just to check, that would be an hour before we got the results for that. Almost 2 hours later I asked what was happening, and whilst the bloods were normal, they could not dispense the anti-viral medication until 7-7.30 am. We were finally able to leave the hospital around 8 am. Now as messed up as my sleep and body already were this was the final straw. Around 3.30 am at the hospital I emailed my supervisor requesting sick leave. Even if Mum's covid is manageable and I don't contract it from her, there was no way I could see myself being able to work this week.

Anyway we got home had something to eat and I went to bed somewhere between 9 and 10 am. I may have been in bed for about 10 hours but I only got about 7 - 8 hours sleep, I woke up several times and I also had a massive headache (the chairs at hospital probably aided with this). I eventually give up on sleeping and trying to rest in bed and get up, the massive headache continues. I take something for it but only generic painkillers not migraine meds. It's decreased the pain a little bit but I can feel it's all still there, its just been pushed back a little bit for now. 

It's 11 pm now. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm sick of being in bed and asleep, I want to do stuff, anything, but I also need to have some sort of diurnal schedule as I start my group DBT on Thursday and assuming I don't get covid, I need to get to that in person, it starts at 10 am.

So there we have it, between my own mental and physical health problems with the addition of my a family members health and my carer responsibilities, I have decided to take another week off. Although doing an official request is still confusing to me since my candidature time is still being eaten up when I'm on sick leave - I guess it's for record keeping purposes. 

I can't really concentrate on writing anymore.

Here's a little reminder..

Absence of negative emotions ≠ happiness

The absence of negative feelings does not equal happiness.

That statement is something I need to remember. It's completely logical, but often forgotten. remember, when you are bored or indifferent you are neither experiencing a negative nor positive emotion. 

I've been listening to The Psychology of Depression and Anxiety - Dr Scott Eilers. That's where this reminder came from, but also some other things I picked up on whilst listening to an episode on happiness. 

He talks about how our life experience is all internal, and everything outside is just stimuli. I absolutely love this. He further goes into how it's all about how we translate or interpret said stimuli that give us our life experience. An example he uses is if you're in another country and everyone speaks a language you don't understand. That stimulus means nothing to you unless you can translate it. Sometimes when we have health problems (mental or physical) our translator doesn't work - it just doesn't get the message through to us or it distorts the message so we are not receiving what the message is in reality. 

Anyway, I started listening to this episode for a second time to reinforce some of this stuff. I've listened to quite a bit of his stuff these past few months, and I highly recommend it. It compliments any other therapy you might be receiving too. He also posts it as YouTube videos if you prefer a visual (see below).

Mid-(PhD)-Life Crisis

I've worked it all out, I'm going through a mid-PhD-life crisis! 

It all makes sense, my thoughts, emotions, and sense of identity have all gone haywire. I'm spending money and going on trips more than usual - I bought a coffee machine, and I've booked flights to go to Adelaide and to Brisbane in the next few months. I'm questioning so many things in my personal life. However, what's interesting is that I'm not questioning doing my PhD. For a mid-PhD-life crisis, doing the PhD is the only thing I'm certain of! 

When you think about what I'm currently doing in my PhD though, it's stuff that I'm either good at (fieldwork), or just monotonous tasks (ie, image analysis). When I'm up to the statistics and writing parts then I will be going completely crazy with super anxiety. Perhaps right now I am redirecting my PhD anxiety and channeling it all into a personal life crisis. Procrastinating with personal life problems?

Just a short post, for now, have some memes...

Ps. I also purchased a silver sequin top online last night... and I'm thinking of going blonde again....

Hello depression

Well, I made it to uni today, not until after 12 pm, but I made it. 

On the drive in today I made the realisation that my main problem at the moment is depression. Not so much anxiety, as is often the case, but the depression part of me has flared up again. Hurrah!

I'm currently at my desk, slowly doing some image analysis, but staying focused is quite hard. It's a simple job, just tedious, but I am just feeling sad, my sadness is barely controllable. I'm trying to distract myself by doing my work, that I REALLY need to do, but I'm physically feeling a heaviness in my chest, and when I stop to breathe I can feel the tears beginning to well up inside. I am barely holding it together, and it is an absolute pain. I just want to be able to do my work!

I have a meeting in less than 2 hours to discuss some lab equipment, how thrilling... It's one of the main reasons I'm actually on campus today. But then If I stayed at home I would feel even worse, and I doubt I would even be acknowledging my emotions. At least I'm out of the house, and trying to get some work done, I'm making an effort. The problem is, I'm always making an effort, and it's absolutely exhausting! 

I took some Rizotriptan last night, my constant headache was getting worse, and I thought I should try and knock it out before it got too severe. I think it did the trick. Less pain today, just the normal amount, lol. Yes, I have to laugh, it's a coping mechanism.

Anyway, I've pretty much finished one analysis in this past hour, time for a food break before the meeting I guess. 

Unpaid sabbaticals

I have a lot coming up in the next few months. I've applied for a leave of absence for April-June, no word yet but I am already planning as if it has been accepted. I'm calling it an unpaid sabbatical.

Before then I would like to get in another field trip and start on some new measurements and finish up some of the previous ones. I did some practice runs with two of my species that grow in the Blue Mountains and it looks like I will need to do all of the measurements immediately in the field, and that they will take a few hours! I'm hoping to create some stomatal closure curves, assuming my species don't fuse their stomata shut as soon as I harvest a branch. 

I got Chat GPT to summarise what I'm looking at in layman's terms because I am lazy and forget most people don't know what stomata are:

"A stomatal closure curve is a graph that shows how plant leaf openings, called stomata, respond to changes in water availability. It demonstrates how tightly the stomata close at different levels of water supply. Stomatal conductance, which measures how gases pass through the stomata, decreases as the stomata close in response to lower water availability, reflected in the curve. This curve helps researchers understand how plants regulate water loss through transpiration under varying environmental conditions."

Prior to my break I am also hoping to get to Adelaide to finally see The Dark Room live. I started following Robbotron on Twitch during covid. He and a few other people really helped me and kept me going during that time, and the communities were also great and oh-so wholesome, but not in a sickening way, in a totally awesome way that I could relate to. Here are a few other important communities I was a part of: RandomBritishDude, MitchBruzzese, RustyQuill (specifically Mike and Anil), and an honorable mention to Monkeeeyboi whom I found through RandomBritishDude. If you know these people or clicked on the hyperlinks you may have noticed they are all UK citizens, except for Mitch who is an Aussie. Robbotron is also Aussie, but resides in the UK.  As you might have guessed I was living my best life as a nocturnal during lockdown :)

Anyway, I will also be starting a 10-week DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) program, that will conclude about halfway through my sabbatical. My uni counselor got me on to it and is part of organising it. She has been bringing it up for a little while now, and my psychologist has mentioned it and group therapies a couple of times too. So when she offered me a spot in the program, I pretty much jumped on it. I am a bit nervous of course, group therapy - "what the hell? I hate humans", but I am also excited and hoping it will help me to function better. 

I will not only be taking a sabbatical from my PhD though, but also my psychologist. We discussed it today, it came up naturally and we were both kind of on the same page (or close enough). Since I'm doing this course and will be receiving support from it I should focus on that, and then soon after that ends my psychologist is going overseas for a bit. So essentially we won't see each other for about 6 months. This saddens me as I enjoy talking with them, however, talking to them today it looks like we have been having similar thoughts about things and that a break could benefit us. When we do meet up again we will reassess the situation and see if I will even need their continued support or if the counsellors through uni will be enough. 

So overall these next few months could turn out to be quite interesting and potentially life-changing? It's scary but exciting. I'm just so confused about some things, and unhappy or apathetic about others. I'm really hoping for a bit more clarity on things and to be able to acknowledge and express myself better. Yes, I'm doing this all to better my life, but it could also lead to big challenging changes in my life. These changes are going to affect those around me, and that's what scares me most,  upsetting other people.  

To end on a different note (purposeful pun) recently Sheldon Riley's Eurovison song "Not the same" has really resonated with me and made me feel stronger. I could always somewhat relate, and of course, I love his voice, but only recently has it really gone deep for me. I just love Eurovision so much, I get to discover so many new styles of music and artists and get all the feels! Here is their performance at the Eurovision finals, enjoy!