#recovery2025 — Public Fediverse posts

One problem I've had to balance lately (it's a problem I love to have) is that when I'm feeling up, I have to manage actual side effects.

When I have a good day, I tend to have insomnia. I can also tend to overextend. And I'm not sure what to do with this buzz. I get pretty fidgety and then wear myself out fast.

I expect I'll level off as this becomes more common.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

Everybody was really impressed with me on an important call today.

I can be pretty fire when I'm not super sick and exhausted all the time. I have skills and laurels now that I didn't have in my previous life when I was well.

I just need the spaciousness to use them.

I've had some spaciousness the last week.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

We put these things into boxes that keep us from seeing what they really are and how they are in competition with each other.

Therapy is many things, and one thing it is, is an ideology.

An ideology in direct competition with organized (especially authoritarian) religion, with capitalism, with fascism, even with whiteness.

Therapy has tried to be compatible with these. It has been dependent upon these and enabled these.

But the further the science pushes it to be fundamentally anti-trauma, the more therapy culture stands in direct opposition to these things.

May it be their undoing.

#Recovery2025 #AbuseCulture #TherapyCulture #decolonization #WhitenessIsACult

I'm kind of looking forward to going across the street to my family's this thanksgiving.

While pol can still be a little tense, this side of my family has done some changing, especially religiously, and we've thusfar learned to navigate pol discussions reasonably and with listening and empathy. We just haven't had enough of them yet to be exactly on the same page.

I'm actually starting to like this side of my family, and I think they like me now somewhat too. We have united on hating my mother. I have wanted to see more of them and the slog has kept me from it. I'm socially very isolated and would love to see people.

On the other hand...

Today's a really big day for me. After a steady slog and related series of burnouts for idk how long to count it (x years?), I finally think I've done enough to be settled here in a safe place at last, ready as I'll ever be for a hard winter, and am finally letting myself of the hook of pressure and keeping pace.

I just... don't want to go anywhere today.

This day specifically.

I just want one day to fuck off and do nothing.

But time is a rigid resource, and the grid of a calendar is bars on my prison.

Time to put my pants!!

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

I finally have a little excess energy to spend on fun work outside.

YES, the insulation needs to be (re)done, and YES that will be miserable to do once it freezes, and YES, there's laundry to do, etc. The backlog is still there, but it's finally getting smaller and manageable.

What's left to be done that isn't fun can wait.

Meanwhile, instead of a rest day plus two high pressure days spent on tasks I'm behind on that HAVE to be done, instead I sat around each day playing iPad until I felt antsy, then went out and did lower priority heavy labor stuff I WANTED to do.

I got some things finished, large and small, and it feels great to finally have autonomy and to do physical work on low-risk tasks that are fun and possible to complete.

My needs are simple. This is what I've wanted for so, so long, but caretaking a toxic person who quells any fun she sniffs out (including fun work) made even those simple needs impossible to fulfill. I've been away from her almost a year now, but the rest of the year was digging myself out of severe backlog and moving to a new state and new tougher lifestyle. Enough pressure to create another burnout this year and remain sick. I start to think I'm deluding myself and it's always going to be more of the same.

I can't say I'm fully ready for winter, but I'm better off than I was last winter (well ok I had insulation then, and I'm told it was an easy winter so we'll see), and I have some choice over how I spend my energy now. That feels really good.

We'll find out if not taking a full rest day this weekend will bite me when the week starts tomorrow. But right now I'm feeling physically exhausted and emotionally / mentally restored.

#Recovery2025
#DarkSojourn

We did our traditional Halloween binge last night, and while I'm not hungover this morning, my body is working hard to process all that sugar. Ugh.

It's raining hard, so I feel no pressure to work on the insulation. But there's a talk in town about extremist hate groups in the region and what to do about them, that I'd really like to go to. For the first time this year, I don't feel I'd be white-knuckling it to do a social thing with strangers, BUT it would still be hard. And I want a break from doing things that are hard.

I feel like I'm talking myself out of it, and feeling relief, which probably means I should stay home. But I also get the sense that such opportunities to network with like-minded people here won't come along often.

#Recovery2025 #IDPol

Wow, this is the first time in YEARS I feel caught up.

Sure, there's stuff to do. But no pending emergencies, and no major looming deadlines (except a work one, but that manageable on its own). I'm in a safe place and not being actively abused. I can pace comfortably now.

Now the trick is to not get myself into any new trouble.

#MECFS #Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

Yes I have Björk on my shoegaze playlist. (Billie Eilish, too.)

#music #DarkSojourn #Recovery2025 #shoegaze #somafm

Also, SomaFM doesn't seem to have a shoegaze channel? What's with that?

#music #DarkSojourn #Recovery2025 #shoegaze #somafm

Shoegaze hits different when I'm not in deep pain.

It's still really good, just different. I feel guarded against being triggered.

This stuff was possibly my #2 coping mechanism for years, second only to plant medicine. A sound louder than my pain yet gentle in its cacophony. That's shoegaze.

#music #DarkSojourn #Recovery2025 #shoegaze

(I know. I'm looking into alternatives to Spotify and have mostly just been streaming SomaFM lately. But I still haven't found another viable way to share these playlists. Curating public playlists was maybe my #3 top cope. And this one is very important to me.)

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ayOzGdaPaYSFwqCoZ6nBm

Now I just gotta get the reflectix cut into window shades, weatherize the seams, finish building the compost toilet properly, and move under the snowshed that's currently being built. Then I'll be set for winter.

(The French drain is not happening this year, so daily outside pee-bottle emptying adventures await. But I'm still better off than I was this time last year. By a long shot.)

#RVLife #OffGrid #Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

On the role of shame in autistic burnout.

https://www.dralicenicholls.com/the-role-of-shame-in-autistic-burnout/

🧵

#ActuallyAutistic #AutDHD #burnout
#Recovery2025 #MECFS #ChronicIllness

I went to bed early and slept twelve hours!!

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

September is my favorite month and it always goes too quickly. I look back at my last several Septembers and sure did make a pillow out of a sow's ear each time. Best September in a long time. I wasn't in severe pain for most of the days!

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

I know that part of my problem now is that when I get any spare energy, I tend to misuse it. I post long things here, which drains me faster than I realize. I obsessively play "harder" games on my iPad (they are not actually that hard), which is really fun because I've only been able to play easy games for so long, so self-restraint goes out the window, but they drain me. I watch more engaging shows and think really hard about them, which drains me.

The only way I got this far after the summer burnout was self-restraint on the fun things as well as the hard-work things.

So I probably need to go back to boredom as a goal again.

Not liking it, but it's the only way I prevent getting sicker, and how I heal.

"Self-denial, such a beautiful, wonderful thing." -- The Killers

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn #MECFS

I got through the gauntlet of September better off than I was when I started the thing. It required pushing at the right times, and pacing at the right times, but never letting up. I finished yesterday in flow, with many thoughts and feelings about how living with a toxic person all that time took me so long to heal from, but was, in fact, the core problem.

I woke up today in pain with brain fog and sad feels.

Back to the pushing and pacing.

Winter is still coming.

#DarkSojourn #Recovery2025 #MECFS

Then there's all the cognitive overhead of managing all that. That's a huge drain, too.

So I set that down, too.

I'm going to be letting a lot of things slide. Like, not just until I rest up enough to get back on the gauntlet. But for reals. As the new way of doing business.

If I've got food in my belly and the room is dry and warm today, then I've met my goal. Everything else is a stretch goal. If that.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

I do this with "getting stuff done" as well. I go for the hardest thing I can stand to do. Lots of reasons, ADHD executive function reasons. But with constraints like chronic illness, that means I never, ever, ever get to spend energy on the fun things, or the easy things, or the things that might improve my mood, because I flog myself over all the shitty things I still haven't gotten to. I thought I'd grown more gentle on myself in this area, and I had, but it was still the same mindset. Eat dessert last.

And I'm just so done with that. With being motivated by energy scarcity and fear of disaster.

I have what I need.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

I've always been the kind of person who saves dessert for last. Even as a kid I noticed that meant I often didn't get dessert.

But I turn 50 this week and I still do it for some reason. It's like self-denial becomes a compulsion, a thing of its own. It has its perks and conveniences, safety nets, but I take it to an unhealthy level.

This summer I've been focused on how, when my body is communicating that need to lay down, or eat, or rest, I make it about how far I can push that. And stopping. Because I had to. Because there wasn't any room left to get any sicker.

Since leaving my abuser, self-denial turned into a compulsive routine in my very long downtimes, to cycle through the games and shows, in a certain order, as long as I could, "fun" and distracting though they may be, I had to complete it and push it, regardless of how much my body screamed at me for its needs.

It was absolutely a trauma cope, as the trauma never really stopped after the abuser.

But it's not serving me well, and I don't need it anymore.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

Recovery is still going well, but it can be discouraging.

I started today with quite a bit of energy – my mornings before work can be like that. It's the first day in a very, very long time where I've felt excited about work and confident about myself as a professional. Really feeling like yeah, I can do this!

Then, as is typical lately, as soon as I clocked in, my energy levels plummeted.

At this point, I think work itself has become a trigger for me. Which makes sense, given that for years of being anxious, sick, and exhausted, I pushed myself through the pain and brain fog to produce work and clock hours.

It's upsetting to me, because this is my dream job, and this project is my dream project. I'm frustrated that I'd hoped to really enjoy every step of the way. Instead, it's been quite the opposite, mostly because I started this project the month my dad died, and mom became a stress and trauma producing machine when I was already trying to recover. Even though she's been out of the picture for many months, it's taking so long to dump the associated baggage.

To the point where I can wake up energized and excited, and instantly discharge my battery the moment I log in.

I've not been pushing through the pain and brain fog for close to a month now. I clock out as soon as I feel I can't give it my best. Which has resulted in a lot of 15 minute days (goal is 2.5 hours). I'm not going to make much money this month. Since I got myself into debt to move away from mom, it's hard, but I really need to just pay the interest on those credit cards as the cost of getting well.

But today I figured it's time to start pushing again, just a little bit. I'm well enough to do that.

After about 30 minutes I hit a wall, so I clocked out and laid down for ten minutes. That helped me get another half hour done.

I do show huge signs of improvement. I just need to shake out these triggers so I can enjoy work again.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn

If I can keep improving, I'll have lots of time and energy to myself.

I've been stuffing down the yearning to write for myself, especially creative writing, because that's been so far out of reach for so long. I can't remember the last time I worked on fiction. My mind is offering up ideas for new stories again, tentatively. And I've done what I usually do, which is to tell it I'll never get to it and to forget it. And anyway, I've got way too many stories to finish, and even more finished that I could try to sell.

But it's something to hope for. I don't like hoping for things I can't have, because deep-down I learn to never trust myself.

/🧵

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn #Journal

My major reset is a good 2+ weeks in the past.

My brain and body are working much better, though I find myself slipping back into old habits. I'm trying to be very aware of how much those habits may or may not be costing me, now that I've got a good baseline back.

Today as I start up a work week, I'm finding myself productive in some ways, and hopelessly broken in others. Yet another day of billing only 15 minutes, but I got some paperwork done and some clean-up done in the trailer. I am no longer using the whip of anxiety and pressure to keep myself going, in the hopes that I can create a new normal. I do believe it is coming, but I'm just not going to make much money this month.

Just as when I started this reset, I find myself feeling random feelings. I got to the point where that wasn't happening much in my downtime, but now that I'm trying to get back to a "normal work week," I'm having feelings again. Just, really strong sadness today. Not attached to anything. Without the anxiety and pressure to mask it, or without the pressure of having to put off any feels due to the chaos that needed ordering.

Part of me is afraid this ability to make peace for myself won't last. I still feel beholden to outside forces which have given me a reprieve but surely they will soon return. Even though I've worked very hard and suffered much to create this peace. Part of me is afraid this is just another brief rest so I can charge up for the next horrible gauntlet. I hope that isn't so. I feel like I've paid my dues.

🧵

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn #journal

And also, in the spirit of the reset, it's probably ok to just let myself feel bad and process things.

🧵

#DarkSojourn #Recovery2025

I've got a lot more to say about the state of therapy culture in the US, about all the complicated ways we're taught to lie to ourselves telling ourselves that we're safe when we're not actually, how helping professions have been coopted by the machine to just get people to cope through the uncopable to be exploited just a little longer, I've gone on that rant before and I have plenty more to say on that...

But... I should get back to the wagon, back to the reset if I can.

/🧵

#DarkSojourn #Recovery2025

So yeah, when I'm like hey, I should have gone on a data diet years ago, should have simply stopped compulsively thinking and ruminating about everything, should have paced harder, should have listened to my body and if I was feeling tired just laid down, should have forced myself to mediate daily, it's all so obvious. Because these things are working.

But really... naw, I couldn't do all that. Because I wasn't safe. Because having enough of a still mind filled my body with panic. Sure, there were times I forced myself to mediate, and I could find peace for a second, but then it was back to the battle lines. It was just coping through one thing after another. Situationally, I wasn't safe, and all the coping mechanisms — no matter how maladaptive, no matter how much they were destroying my body and keeping me from healing — were NECESSARY.

🧵

#DarkSojourn #Recovery2025

Alright, I managed to work another hour, and finished a chapter that had taken way too long. Not my 2.5-hour-per-day work goal, but much much better than last week.

Caffeine helped. I'd forgotten that I'd switched to green tea this week as part of the whole energy recovery thing, and that I'm used to working with black tea or sometimes coffee. I had a leftover latte from town a few days ago that I'd avoided drinking for the above reasons, and that got me right focused.

The video cautions against stimulants when recovering from burnout, because it masks how much energy you're using. But that doesn't mean I can't do it, just that I need to be sure to watch myself as it wears off, that I don't over-spend. I don't have any big plans for the rest of the day, so that should be easy so long as I keep myself under control.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn
#MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

I had a good workday yesterday for the first time in weeks. Was able to focus and be clear about what needed to be done, and do it with confidence.

Today I've got some energy, but having trouble maintaining it in any focused sense. This is where, I think, I often bleed off energy and end up back at zero. I'm finding myself wandering around cleaning up email, revisiting Mastodon settings, back on social media. These *will* all be good and doable things eventually, but I'm still in a fragile zone. I worked *more* yesterday, but didn't work as long as my goal is, and I run out of energy very quickly still. (I'm learning that laying down for 10 minutes can restore me really well! But I hate doing it.)

Basically, I'm losing the marvelous levels of self-restraint I had for the first near-week of this reset. That takes energy, too: willpower. I clocked in for 7 minutes, actually got a lot done in those minutes, then clocked out because I got bored and started meandering, and now I'm here.

So, it's progress, but I'm scared of losing it. Fear of failing at work is one thing keeping me from diving in to work. Work is normally restorative for me, unless I'm full of self-doubt and mental fatigue symptoms, something I've had for way too long now, and having more of that after all this work to get better will emotionally devastate me.

Anyway, back to it.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn
#MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

When I left my abuser (ten years ago!) most of these slower activities were impossible. Part of it was the usual tech craze dopamine cycles we were all caught up in. But part of it was the extreme anxiety-attack levels of anxiety I had *constantly*. These obsessive "always on" habits formed out of that.

At the time, if I was still for 5 seconds, I'd churn. I couldn't lay on my back at all because my belly felt exposed and I churned. I couldn't meditate or nap or even just watch a movie without churning. I needed constant stimulation or I couldn't stand it. It was simply pain avoidance that turned into compulsive patterns. Social media was part of that. I was aware of all of this, but helpless to do anything else.

The anxiety has been more under control for a few years, but even then, it wasn't really, because politics and living with my mom. At least then, the anxiety was associated with real things, whereas when I formed these habits, it was ghost anxiety, and really intense all the time.

So this is really the first chance I've had a stable enough situation to really start setting healthier rules for myself.

You know, that and hitting rock bottom.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn
#MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

I focused hard on the Great Reset over the weekend. Total habit change.

Rules:

1. Only allowed to do one thing at once. (No idle games while watching YouTube.)
2. Longer-form and more analog activities:
- Less Doomscrolling
- Less posting (don't post every thought!)
- Less YouTube, more TV shows and movies
3. Stop thinking!

I did that on Friday and Sunday with Super Rest Days. Did some reading (from real books, actually finished a book!), watched some shows, did some ZenTangle (it's a doodling technique), meditation, naps, walks, other things.

The first day was super hard. But by last night, I was like, hey you've done enough, you can binge YouTube while playing idle games if you want, and guess what? *I didn't want*.

Saturday, I went to the farmers market and to the grocery store because I had to. It was a little too much, but I'm just glad I was finally able to go to the market.

I've noticed that today, yes, I'm tired, but it's not pain-tired. It's normal sleepy tired, a kind of tired I'm not used to feeling the past ten years. The kind of tired that, when I say "I'm tired," and the other person says, "Oh me too, I could sure use a nap," that's the kind of tired THEY feel, while I was feeling a deeply painful kind of tired that's beyond their comprehension.

But as I go through the day, I'm starting to feel the edges of that deeper tired again. So I'm going to try to bill one hour, but stop there. I need to be billing 2.5 hours a day! But getting permanently better is more important for now.

I'm learning what not to do, but still trying to figure out what activities give me energy when I'm so deep in debt I can't do the really fun stuff (like thinking, or hiking, or partying).

I've noticed that when in doubt, laying down, with or without a nap or meditation (I usually can't really nap), works well.

#Recovery2025 #MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

A lot of this is stuff that I've secretly suspected to be a problem for awhile now, but haven't been in a good position to address it.

Willpower also takes energy. Major habit changes take energy. And many of these things are or were copes for worse things.

Getting out of my most recent toxic situation was necessary to reach this step, where I'm reducing my social media usage, disconnecting from thinking too much, and ceasing to do multiple recreational activities at once (like I'm doing now, sigh... mid-video, idle game on the iPad, posting), these are all obsessive copes, to the point that the zinging mild pain I get from overstimulating myself is a crave that I'm seeking...

But it's also what's keeping me sick. And I'm safe now, for the moment, and can cut that crap out.

#Recovery2025 #DarkSojourn
#MECFS #ActuallyAutistic #autism #burnout #ChronicIllness #AutDHD

"The way home
is always the way home,
So you can rip that map to shreds, dear."

— Snow Patrol, Life on Earth

https://open.spotify.com/track/0Cr8sOkVQqYexxiT7xRwRk

#Recovery2025 #exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma #exvie #exvangelical #spirituality

Cable management is fun where there are only three outlets and two breakers in your entire house.

Could use a few tweaks but it's better than under the seal getting leaked on. This is much better in almost every other way as well.

(The leak however has beaded along and is now dripping on the outlet itself! 😅 Wicking rags for now until I figure out how it's getting in!)

#diy #OffGrid #RVLife #TinyLiving #Recovery2025

Things are warming up, and for me, that means leaks!

Had leak in the RV last night. I discovered this by plugging in my iPhone and getting a warning that my cable is an unsupported device.

Traced it back to find water in the power strip.

I'm relieved to find my hardware found this suss and prevented electron flow!

It's the slide seal again, on the other side. But there's a roof over it now!! Probably beading along something along the side. Melting snow finds a way.

The leak is just a drip, not a flood, so I'm going to mount the power strip in a different place. Under the seal is a convenient tucked away corner, but way too risky.

All this and I'm still insanely happy to be living here. If a little worried. What new leaks will spring bring?

#OffGrid #RVLife #TinyLiving #Recovery2025

But after a certain point, there can be no productive worrying. Then the only way to let go is accept that if the solution fails, we'll worry about it then. Or we worry there is no solution... but that's simply current or future suffering, and so let's go back to not worrying about suffering. Hang on for the ride is all you can do. Stop struggling against having to struggle!

After the worry, set the plans into motion. Meanwhile, rest. The future will come, and the plans will roll forth, and when it's time to worry again, you'll know.

But meanwhile you will have rested. So when the stress comes you can easily remember that this is not forever. You are making the effort now, you knew it would be hard, you've accepted the current pain and worry, it is all going according to plan.

Tense, and release. Tense and release.
/🧵

#DarkSojourn #Recovery2025 #enlightenment #ScriptureWriting

I sure am stressed tonight. But this was the time designated for stress. I knew I'd be stressed, this is according to plan; stress during the middle of a super hard thing is normal and even healthy so long as there are times that are not super hard. This last part is important.

One coping mechanism for stress I've come across, I try to not worry about suffering itself. It's one less thing to worry about if I can accept the unpleasant sensations I'm experiencing that I don't have reasonable control over, and let go of trying to prevent suffering that cannot be prevented. This itself reduces suffering because at least I can relax over some aspects of it.

But that's not always easy to do. I can't always just will that to happen. So then I try to not worry about worrying. If I'm worried that I can't stop worrying, well that's just the same problem, isn't it? So I let myself worry if I need to.

There is a time for worry. There is a time for stress. Worry motivates us to concentrate on the problem and try out different solutions. There can be creativity in this space, like a puzzle of how to fix it. That's normal, but a new problem comes when there is (or seems to be) no acceptable solution. Or we're afraid that the solution we've planned won't work. Maybe it's good to think a little harder to come up with contengencies.

🧵
#DarkSojourn #Recovery2025 #enlightenment #ScriptureWriting