Cutting the fat - week 2

Week 2

Loss – 1.5 kg.

Yes, I am aware that this was a very long week.

Unfortunately due to a nasty case of the flu I was out of action for a few weeks, and I wanted to save the updates until after I’d managed a full week of being able to eat and exercise properly.

This is a good loss, but I’m not sure how my being sick factors in here.  My diet wasn’t perfect this week, but it was better, so who knows.  We’ll just have to see how I go next week.

Getting back into the exercise after such a break was also a challenge.  They say muscles have memory but that sure doesn’t seem to apply to me.  I’ve taken a few weeks off, and it’s like starting at square one again!  I couldn’t even do a single push-up.  It was like a terribly sad scene from the Biggest Loser, a fatty in her tights and singlet lying spent on the ground after doing half a sit up, with out the benefit of a super hot personal trainer yelling “C’mon Voyager, don’t be beaching yourself now!”

In this exercise routine I devised for myself I did allow for situations like this – somewhat – and I took them.  I really wanted to stick to it though; otherwise I’ll just keep doing less and less until I give up.  That I did – gave myself one day off this week, but otherwise I got through.  I had to take a lot of breaks, so it was slow going, but I feel better for it, and will try and go harder next week.

I’ll be aiming for another half kilo next week.  Can I do it?  Of course.  Will I do it?  Errr…

Well, keep thinking positive thoughts,

Voyager

I experience the C in OCD

I’m aware that I haven’t talked at all about my OCD on this blog yet.   The main reason for this is that I really don’t have the words to explain it.  The things I feel compelled to do might seem mundane but to me, these intrusive images, compulsions and the feelings of anxiety if I can’t carry them out are very upsetting.  I feel the less I talk about it, the less I think about it, the better.  This is important for my diagnosis, mind you.   People with OCD are aware of the unreasonable nature of their thoughts and actions, separating this from being just another feature of Asperger syndrome.

So within this just-ignore-it-and-it-might-go-away tactic I live by, not acknowledging my compulsions means that I do indulge them with in reason to settle the violence in my head. Usually this doesn’t cause me too much grief.

Then this morning I lost my tape measure.

Allow me to elaborate…I have many compulsions, one of which is to measure my waist.  I might do this between five to fifteen times a day, when I get up, when I’ve been to the toilet, after my conditioning regime, before and after I eat…basically, any time I feel (unrealistically) that I’ve done something that may make a difference to my waistline.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning I opened my bedside drawer to find…no tape measure.  I sat there, confused.  I measured myself last night, didn’t I?  Then what?  Did I throw it on my desk…no.  In my underwear drawer…no.   Or did it disappear into the black hole under my bed?

My reasonable self was telling me to get on with business so I started to tidy my room, hoping it will show up.  But one tidy room and no tape measure later, I came to the conclusion that I will have to do without it for the foreseeable future.  A bizarre but not unfamiliar uneasiness is growing in my mind, but I had assignments that had to get done somehow.

In the end, I didn’t accomplish a lot that day.   I can’t even talk about the things that were going through my head but let me assure you they weren’t pleasant. I couldn’t concentrate on my studies.  Every time I sat down and opened my books, I would spring up five minutes later and start pacing.  I did a lot of pacing.  My roommate noted that I looked ‘wired’ and offered me a beer.  I burst into tears, first because I couldn’t measure its effects, then at myself for having such a moronic thought.

I found my tape measure cleaning out my craft shelf that night and silenced my thoughts by measuring up a storm.  I can’t describe the cleansing feeling this had on my head – suddenly I was thinking clearly and logically again. I laughed with my roommate about my emotional blowout that day, which I blamed on ‘womens troubles.’ (I’m not kidding – he totally bought it too!)  It’s ridiculous that I continue to let these compulsions control me, I know.  Unfortunately with OCD, as I said before, knowing this is part of the problem – not the solution.

Voyager

How I realised my worst nightmare

I have a confession to make.  I am now in my mid twenties and I never meet anyone’s eyes.  It does cause me trouble but not always in an obvious way.   Now I know it’s an obvious tag that there is something very wrong with me!  But to do it is unpleasant for me, so I’ve put it in the too-hard basket for now, even if it is necessary

A little while back I went for a short exchange to Japan to study at a private college.  I know I’m awkward but I didn’t worry too much – as a foreign exchange student it’s a given that I’m not going to fit in, I reasoned.  Japanese people, even young people tend to be polite and hospitable no matter what they think of you anyway.

My story starts in a culture education cooking class.  I was paired with an energetic girl named Kei and her four friends, who was happy to chatter away about her weekend escapades as she showed me how to prepare Japanese omelette.  My Japanese is sketchy at best, but being flattered by the genuine friendliness this girl was showing, I did my best to act attentive, with a well timed “ah, sou!”  and a technique I call ‘flickering.’

“Flickering” is how I attempt to convince people I’m actually looking at them, and it works best when you are doing something else while talking to someone, as Kei and I were.  To ‘flicker’ you keep your eyes on the task at hand, or straight ahead.  Then every so often, you ‘flick’ your eyes up, hitting the person’s face for a millisecond.  It says to them, “I’m listening to you, really, but I want to concentrate on my omelette/homework/knitting as well.”  If you’re not doing anything, you just look like you’re thinking really hard.

After a few flickers, Kei suddenly went quiet.  I flickered again, for a bit longer to see what was wrong with the girl and she went berserk.  She began jumping up and down, screaming “I don’t believe it!  They’re BLUE!!!”

Kei’s friends demanded to know what the problem was, and she began talking very fast – I only got the words “blue eyes…she actually has…can you believe it?”

You’d better believe it.  These girls had never seen someone with naturally blue eyes before.

They couldn’t be convinced without some solid proof, naturally.  So Kei grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around to face these six hazel lasers ready to bore into my retina.

What was I feeling right then?  Somewhere at the intersection between molestation street and white hot metal avenue.  Six faces.  Screaming, laughing, emoting more than I usually see in a whole year.  It was too much.  I wanted to avert my eyes but that would raise more questions I don’t have the Japanese vocab to answer

But we weren’t done.  The rest of the class – including some other Australian students – were a little confused as to what made Kei’s table lose the plot and me half hyperventilate, half laugh like a 14 year old boy at a lingerie football match.  Somehow word got out that they had an ‘aoi’ on their hands, so the other 24 students in the class had to see it for them selves.  I was forced into a chair, with no option than to allow myself to be visually gang banged by these kids.

After a few minutes of this violation, the teacher managed to get everyone back on task – after taking a few close up pictures of yours truly on their phones to prove their discovery to their friends. I returned to my omelette despite wanting to plunge my brain into a bucket full of ice, while an exhausted Kei explained to me that she had seen pictures of models with blue eyes, but assumed that they were just contacts.  Blue eyes were considered to be a rare genetic anomaly.

It wasn’t all bad in the end.  I made some new friends, even if they were hoping I had some blue eyed male friends I could set them up with.  Plus I was told that the close up pictures of my wide, petrified periwinkle eye on people’s phones caused quite the sensation over dinner tables in this smallish Japanese community.

There are some situations in which eye contact is unavoidable.  So I started wondering if I couldn’t test my limits a little.  Maybe I should start flickering for a bit longer.  After all, if there’s one thing this incident has taught me, it’s that I never know when I might need it.

Useful links

Slowly, ever so slowly this blog comes together.

I've started adding links with some useful information on the right.  It's looking awfully scant at the moment, but I'll add more links if I find some good ones.  So far we have:

http://www.anxietyaustralia.com.au/ A support site covering a variety of anxiety disorders, including panic, social phobia and PTSD.

http://www.aspia.org.au/ Resources for those in a relationship with someone with an autistic spectrum disorder

http://www.autism-help.org/ Info for parents of an Autistic child

http://www.autismspectrum.org.au/ Home of the Aspect organisation.  Lots info for people with ASDs, their families, friends, educators and health professionals, support groups, fundraisers, conferences and social events.

http://www.beyondblue.org.au// Beyondblue is a mental health awareness organisation.  Has info about support systems available for those living with mental illness in Australia.

http://www.livewire.org.au/ An online community for people under 21 for people living with chronic physical and mental health issues.  Also has support sites for family members.

http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome Personally I'm not a fan of self help, but if you don't want to pay $200 a session with a psychologist for Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) then this program is for you. Can be done wherever you have a computer. 

http://www.wrongplanet.net/ Thought of as a community for people with ASDs but all 'neurodiverse' people (Tourettes, Bipolar, Schizophrenics etc) can find something here.  Plenty of resourses and people prepared to share their live lessons.

http://www.ybblue.com.au/ Sister site of BeyondBlue.  Provides mental health awareness for school age children.

Now, Voyager!

Realising you need to change is often a harsh awakening, but that's just momentary.  Enforcing the change is often a long, uphill process.

Welcome to the journey of defeating the dog.  I realised I needed to change last year.  I have four defined conditions - anxiety/panic disorder, asperger syndrome, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.  As a result, the first 20 odd years of my life have been a tumultuous tale of confusion, discouragement and unhappiness.  As far as mental distress goes, I got pretty far.  Several doctors, psychologists and hospital stays later, I found myself exhausted with life.

After my last discharge from hospital however, exhaustion gave way to movtivation, finally.  I was motivated by the fact that quite frankly, I was a loser.  I was in my twenties but I was not living like a mature adult.  My hospital stays had left me a bitter, angry person more than willing to take this anger out on the innocent bystander for the slightest offence.  I was fat and my memory was shot to shit so I couldn't work or concentrate on my studies.  I had to live at home with my family who were resentful of me for all my disability, illness and money wasted on medical bills had put them through (their words, not mine.)

I could have put up with this. I could have drifted through life, uneducated, unemployed, proved my family, the kids at school and the self rightous hospital staff right.  But as Oprah Winfrey said, success is the best revenge.  So I started trying to life like an adult.  I returned to uni, moved out of home and joined a few sports clubs to get fit and get out of the house.

This is just the beginning though.  Depression and anxiety don't magically go away when you leave hospital or come off your meds.  OCD isn't gone when you learn to control it.  Asperger syndrome never stops sabotaging you, never!  My journey will have many parts.  I need to get a job when my studies are over, make friends and keep the friends I have happy.  I have to navigate a world that I don't understand and am afraid off when all I really want is to hide in my room watching anime for all eternity.  But the responsible adult does not do this.

I'm going to try.  It will be difficult but I've got no choice.  So journey on - whether you are neurotypical or also 'unique-minded' the world doesn't stop just because you do.

Voyager