“Aw, it looks like a smile”
A few months ago in an appointment with my psychologist he was showing me the graph results of K10s I’ve done over the past three years concerning depression, anxiety, and stress. K10s are an incredibly standard part of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, so standard that my results from them were graphed in seconds. If you’ve never delved into that world I just recommend doing one for fun, because I wholeheartedly believe we’re all a bit fucked up and clarification and validation are nice. K10 is short for the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, it involves 10 questions about emotional states, each with a five-level response scale. Fun!
My psychologist always gets me to do a k10 when we’ve had what I so do not want to refer to as this but a ‘break through moment.’ Because the bones of therapy, at least for me, is simply: why are you like this, how do you function out there like this and how do you want to be. During the previously mentioned appointment I was discussing the evolution of my anxiety disorder this past year and post-trauma last year, because I’ve been an easily distressed little mate forever, but these days, the anxiety has grown to be at times so unbearable that there is ‘no way out’. In the moment, I’m just going to die like this, be it in three minutes or maybe 50 years, there just feels like relief will never be possible mid ‘attack’. So my psychologist does his psychologist thing and says, “what do you do in that situation?” and I say, “Well, I guess I just go FUCK IT, and keep going.” This makes my psychologist burst out laughing, he says he loves that. And it’s very true of how I function when my mental health it as it’s lowest, I would rather die than not keep going. I’ve been defeated plenty of times, but I’ve rarely openly admitted it. So we do a k10. He enters my results on the computer and it formulates a graph of all my previous k10s since 2015 and he spins the screen to me. Anxiety smiles at me, literally. From my pre-diagnosis to that evening, this perfect little hyperbola that starts up really high, gradually dips down to neuro-typical levels then shoots right back up. “Aw, it looks like a smile,” I said, because I was terribly sad but need to diffuse every moment with humour.
My psychologist is great because as much a he makes jokes too, which is why I get along with him so well, he diffuses these moments differently to me. Because he makes it clear that not being BETTER is not akin to failing. It’s a process, and I forget that. Further, he points out that in spite of every time my anxiety told me I’d not survive a situation, I did, I am sitting there talking about it. I also forget that. And the reason I thought about any of this is because I booked my next couple of appointments this morning and saved them in my calendar with the brain emoji, and that made me laugh a lot.
My brain. My fucking brain. This brain that without fail every November when I feel sad dwells on the ‘tears in rain/time to die’ monologue from Bladerunner. That houses my most favourite and hated aspects of myself; my intelligence and sense of humour live in my brain, along with my ‘heart’ (non-physical, emotional) that I really hope is good and worthy, but my mental illness lives there too. How I want to remove my brain so often, because sure it’s kind of the most integral organ aside from the heart (clearly organ/muscle), and jesus, if they got rid of it I would be literally nothing, but my brain so often wishes to be anything but like THIS, and sometimes that is being nothing. The brain that has made me think that everything in my life is something I pass or fail. So in effect I am failing at mental health, because I’m not better. This theory only exists because I have been better, I was doing so well and felt so good, so light and airy. Peak emotional soufflè. I mentioned to a friend last night about how I tend to feel like I have no instincts anymore, because everything before me is so intensely analysed, I don’t react, I just think, think, think. The bear has eaten me alive before I finished breaking down the flight or fight response.
At the beginning of this year I had one goal, to enjoy things. And I have, but it’s fucking November now. I have enjoyed a lot of things, and there is so much good amidst the bad of this world but why is it so hard to like myself, to relax? This year I have carried so much fear and anger that I might not ever be Soufflè Jessica again, and it terrifies me. I’m sure it drives my psychologist crazy everytime he asks what I want out of therapy and I say, “You can snap your fingers and make me how I was when I was really good, cheers.” I know it never worked like that, and I continue therapy and try to use every practise I’m taught to quell rampant anxiety. I TRY. I can never stop trying, trying to be better, to love the people I love and keep making people laugh so they can feel soufflè style happy. I know that ol Teddy Roosevelt said “comparison is the thief of joy” so I’m also going to try and be less angry about having the comparison. I guess it’s all work and remembering I am still sitting here, in spite of any number of things.
So out I have to go, saying FUCK IT, working and trying to again feel like these:
Working and trying to make that anxiety graph one day frown.