I hate starting these new medications that we’re on…we can’t tell if we’re just experiencing a lot of side effect stuff, or if there’s other stuff going on too.
We’ve been having mood swings like crazy the last couple days. But are they actually a mood swing as in a side effect of our new meds? Or were one or more of these just an exhausted meltdown like we used to have years ago? We DEFINITELY have the insomnia side effect…and these “mood swings” are nearly identical in feeling to how the exhausted meltdowns were in years past. No discernable catalyst…or else, something will go wrong, and it’ll be like “the last straw” and send us into a crying fit.
Like yesterday morning…just tired crying. No discernable trigger. Just felt stressed, tired, and unable to cope with anything. And then last night, we were a bit crabby, but otherwise doing alright. We’d taken a shower, and gotten into this huge oversized hoodie a friend of ours got us for Yule, and we were going to enjoy the drink we’d brought home with us from work…and we knocked the whole blended drink all over ourselves and floor. Sticky cold slushiness on the feet and over our cozy hoodie, a giant mess to clean up, and the loss of a treat we couldn’t afford to replace all compounded to send us in a spiral of tears.
Honestly…I really do believe these to simply be meltdowns that we’re finally to a point that we’re allowing ourselves to have again (rather than suppressing them to the end of time). Our Mom-unit would always berate us and say things like “I can’t understand you when you’re like this” and “you’re overreacting” and would often also just sigh loudly in exasperation when we would have meltdowns.
And it’s…been really hard trying to get us to feel safe enough to have them even now. We feel like we’re just causing problems. A lot of times we just need to eat, take a short nap, or simply be allowed to cry. Sometimes we like hugs and snuggles…but that’s really hard, because we also have a lot of trauma with people turning such comforts into their gross desires…or in the case of our Mom-Unit, she would use such to just further poke and prod us in order to either get us to go shut ourselves in our room, or admit that it (our meltdown) was for whatever stupid childish reason she determined, and to apologize for the outburst. {also worth noting that she would expect an apology for our outburst after we returned from our room, too…so she would ALWAYS turn it into a problem for her rather than letting us…be a neurodivergent kid. (and like…even less traumatized neurodiverse kids have meltdowns…so our meltdowns were DEFINITELY more than justified, and should have been treated differently than they were).
This actually reminds me…nope. Nevermind. Apparently I can say that we have a lot of stuff where everyone else’s mental and emotional problems in our family were supported and encouraged to be taken care of…but for ours, we were told to bottle them all up. I have a lot of thoughts as to why that might be (the most likely–and most disgusting by extension–is that our Parental-Units didn’t want us to tell on them. They didn’t want all the shit they’ve done to us to come out and “ruin them”). But I can’t go into more than that rn aside from being annoyed that siblings, and cousins, and niblings all were tested for autism and adhd and all of that, and allowed to get treatment and the help they needed…but we were left to deal with everything ourselves bc our sibling’s needs were more crucial, or important, or whatnot. Which…if they truly were just caring about their own selves, would fall right in line with everything.
I’m just tired. I want these meds to just start working already so we can maybe figure out what is us regaining the ability to have emotions, and what is just the chemicals in our brain being all out of balance and adjusting to new meds.
[…why can’t it be BOTH at the same time?]
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I mean, I suppose it really could be. But ugggghhhh.
I just hate feeling so guilty about having meltdowns. Though…I guess that’s just because of the Mom-unit, huh? She’s the voice saying that these are childish outbursts that need to be restrained. She’s the sighs of exasperation and statements of not wanting to deal with us when we have them.
Fuck.
I hate trauma.
Thank nature it’s therapy day today…and that we actually have tomorrow off too. And tomorrow is a “together day” with partner system, which will hopefully be a really good refresh for our brain.