Stress Factor

There is a wise man on the internet, who has the courage to be brutally honest about himself, and I respect him. Recently, he mentioned something about stress. And that struck a chord with me.

He said, in his very long vlog, "I enjoy stress, because when I'm stressed it's like the breaking point. The make or break of it all, and that pressure makes me get stuff done. When I'm stressed, I get stuff done. I even like exams, over not having exams because of the adrenaline rush you get from them, and I got withdrawals after exams were over. There's something about stress, when there's a problem to be solved and you're under a time limit, it causes stress; then you succeed and there's something satisfactory about it all, and it makes you feel good.
But I'm just starting to realise why stress may not be good for me."

He mentioned this and it made something aware in myself. Because, like him, I revel in stress. I love the pressure, and I put it on myself, because in the end, I get stuff done. But also like him, I am recently under a lot of stress, and I now realise why people say stress is bad for you.
Too much stress, puts you under too much pressure. I have practice exams next week, I have the most intense production I have ever done and it's going on right now, I have had 5 other courses on top of the drama one, and I have also had the added pressure off looking after myself during the winter months. All of which have failed miserably.
As I write this, I am stuck at home, in bed sick, away from my courses, not allowed to participate in extra drama stuff except for the production and no revision going on.

Stress is something I quite like. I like it so much that when I have almost too much of it, it's gotten to a point where I no longer recognise stress, but instead just file it under 'not important' and I consciously don't actually see that I have stress going on. My body does, and I get very oily skin and pimples etc, but apart from that I never know.
So yeah. Stress, a varying factor in my life that had recently become too much and probably not helping my depression or anything, because emotionally, as you know, I am pretty much beaten down on that front. I am also pretty much beaten down now on the stress front. Gimme a few days and I should be back to the not-so-bad-I-can-deal-now type of person, because the production (my MAJOR stressor for the past few months) will be over and done with. On that note, it doesn't help that I'm sick, and the lead. It's causing me to do really shitty vocal work, and that doesn't help anybody, least of all myself out. So yeah... added stress...YAY!! (Not).

I don't know. I think I'm just rambling, now. I'll probably visit this at a later date to a point.

Stressed-out-sick-and-vocally-impaired-human-being ( :D )
Samantha

Appropriate Quotes #2

Another day I'm not sure what to write. It's getting harder. It's not a bad thing.
So more quotes. I found a few more that are particularly good. Here they are.

Appropriate Quotes #2

Haruki Murakami

 

 

Veronica Roth

 

 

Libba Bray

 

 

Paul Monette

 

 

Stressed-and-sick-human-being

Samantha

Destruction Wrought By Feeling

I don't know what it is recently, whether it be my admitting I need help and seeing a councillor for the first time....ever, or just overdramatized and emotional TV programs and movies, or stress and pressure but every single little thing makes me cry, makes me want to break down into tears and forget the world. It threatens to destroy me. And I hate it. I never cry. I have a good cry about the world in general probably twice a year, but I am the most organised and together person I know.
I never cry, I never have overemotional moments and yet, because of something I don't yet understand, I feel emotional all the time.

I don't know what it is, whether it's the depression, or stress, or something else but I just want it to stop. This feels like it's against everything I've become. I've become an emotionless person, numb to the world. I have the odd flash of feeling, be it love, or sadness or sometimes even happiness and laughter. But for as long as I can remember in recent times, apart from sadness, loneliness and pain, I've felt nothing else.
And suddenly I feel everything. Everything I've tried so hard to put away, to stop myself from feeling because it's been easier for me to move on and forget. I have had to put away the girl who cares, who feels things and is happy, to be the girl who pretends to be happy, because I have to forget some things that happened in my past, and so this was the way I did it.

But due to that, due to something switching off inside of me, I lost everything I was, and became the girl who pretends to be happy, who amuses herself by working so hard and putting pressure on herself because she doesn't get things right. By becoming the perfectionist that barely ever laughs, I put away everything I wanted to forget. But whatever I switched off, got switched back on for some unknown reason.
Now I feel like my world is crumbling around me, and that I'm blind, lost in a sea of emotion that I haven't dealt with for over 2 years. I haven't dealt with serious emotion since July 2010, I switched off then. I've been numb for nearly 3 years.

Everything is not what I want it to be, I'm crying out for help but nobody seems to hear. I'm trapped inside myself, inside the well of emotions and I'm drowning inside myself. I can't make sense, and I feel like I know the reason I turned it off, I turned my feelings off because it was easier. I didn't want to have to deal with it anymore, I didn't want to have to deal with my life. I ran away. But I ran too far and came circling back. A Mobius strip of my own making. A life that I feel unsure about. I wish I could make it all go away, I wish I could just turn it off again, go back to being numb.
It's easier than having to deal with thoughts and feelings. They feel wrong after so long away (Ah the irony). I break down at least twice a week when I'm on my own and there is nothing I can do about it except wait until the tears stop falling and I am able to regain what little shreds I have left. I wish somebody could help me, I wish somebody could tell me what to do. I'm screaming, crying for help and yet not a sound passes my lips, because the mask, this disguise is still in place, and it won't come down. I can't make it come down anymore. I used to use it to help me, now it keeps me trapped where I can't be helped. No matter now loud I scream, not matter how much I drown, nobody will throw me a line to save me, because nobody can hear me in here..............................

Future Career Prospects Worry

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Rehearsals are getting the better of me. This is being written far too late to be comfortable and expect that the coherency of this post may be highly debatable. And it'll be short.

A thing that I personally have been struggling with recently is my future. Picturing where I want to be in 5 or 10 years.  A high school drama teacher or a school councillor are the two that spring to mind with the degree that's in motion.

But to be either, especially the second one, you need to be relatively easygoing, with your head screwed on right, and quite level headed. And that worries me. With no actual progress in my own councilling in regards my depression (dysthymia) I'm starting to wonder whether I've made the right career choice. To support students in particular, you need to be grounded and present. Instead I am often hiding, pretending. How can I support students in their own life and work, tell them how to deal with their problems, if I can't even do that myself. It's a problem that I worry about a little, and hope I'm not be only one hoping that their depression will not cause them to have to limit where they go in life. And knowing that people out there do do that, just makes it worse.

Questioning-her-future-prospects
Samantha

Can You Remember? - Writing #2

Three days not two. I'm slacking, I know.
Actually, no I'm not. I am two weeks away from probably the biggest production I have ever done, in a shitty blue room, shoestring budget and cheesecloth costumes, and I've never felt so tired. After two days hard-core practicing, I'm shattered, physically and mentally. So I'll give you writing I've done a while ago, during a dark spell, rather than a really badly put together post. Have a look at this, tell me what you think?
Quotes next post I suspect, and then I should be okay for a few days. Over the next two weeks, the posts won't be fantastic, ground breaking posts like I usually do, they'll be makeshift a little bit. Sorry, but it's the stress.


Can You Remember?


Darkness...

Closing in...
Feelings getting worse...
Remembering what was done...
Losing my sense of control...

Can you remember how you hurt me?
Broke my heart?
Shattered into thousands of pieces,
All of which were daggers of your lying words,
Piercing into me, bleeding me out?
I saw the blood from my heart,
Bleeding on the ballroom floor,
A spectacle just to watch as I died.

Can you remember how you hurt me?
Took my happiness?
Lost my mind to you,
Never flet so betrayed in my life,
To watch you kill the man I love.
Took my life in your hands,
And squeezed the breath out of it,
Choked what remained of me.
 
Can you remember how you hurt me?
Killed my soul?
Loss and heartbreak override,
Sanity is questionable,
Depression took over.
I watched you are you ripped what little I had,
Made me hate what I loved,
Threw me into the blackness.

Can you remember the live in which you made me love?
Made me hate?
Made the anger overflow and bleed out all the pain between you and me?
Those lives were the times you went and destroyed me.

Physically-and-emotionally-drained-and-exhausted-human-being

Samantha.

A Clarification - Depression VS Dysthymia

On a forum I go on recently this was posted by a good sir.

"There have been a few people who have been told that are not depressed because they don't show signs of Major Depressive Disorder. However this is not the only form of depression there is an entire spectrum ranging from Psychotic Depression to Psychotic Mania. These are, to my understanding, the extreme ends of the spectrum and are often readily apparent and diagnosable. There are however spectrum disorders much closer to what is called "stable" and among these is Dysthymia. And what I have observed is that lots of people have posted describing symptoms of Dysthymia and asking if they are depressed only to be told that they are fine, as anyone with depression can speak to be told you are fine when you aren't is an awful feeling and it is my hope that this post can help address some of those issues.

"Dysthymia is what was formerly called depressive personality and is a chronic disorder that persists for multiple years it is characterized by the following symptoms "low energy and drive, low self-esteem, and a low capacity for pleasure in everyday life. Mild degrees of dysthymia may result in people withdrawing from stress and avoiding opportunities for failure. In more severe cases of dysthymia, people may even withdraw from daily activities and isolate from society. They will usually find little pleasure in usual activities and pastimes."

"Because Dysthymia manifests itself as a long term permanently lower state, and typically lacks major depressive episodes it can go untreated and undiagnosed for years. Dysthymia can often seem like it is nothing at all since it can seem like everyone has the some problem of apathy and general malaise. For myself the Dysthymia was so long term and prevalent that I truly thought that that was how everybody felt, and I didn't realize that other people weren't always fighting to be positive.
If someone reads this and thinks they may have Dysthymia I urge them to contact a psychiatrist and just talk to them, they are trained to help you and they won't judge you. Proper treatment can make all the difference in the world."

I was told by my councillor recently I suffered from Dysthymia and I suppose it fits me better than depression does. However it all comes under the umbrella heading of Depression and if you turn around to someone and say, "Hey, I suffer from Dysthymia." You'll probably just get a 'WTF?' look in return. Whereas if you say "Hey, I suffer from depression." People will understand you better. So from here on I will post under the heading of depression but just know that it's just Dysthymia I suffer from. Very similar, but quite different. But people who suffer across the spectrum can all use the same solutions and relate to each other, just a different depths.

Relieved-she-found-words-to-clear-it-up
Samantha.

A Recent Problem

I am so swamped with everything I am under recently, that's why this post is a bit late. But it's long. And I apologise for that, I got into the telling of this story, needed to put it somewhere. That place was here.

I do theatre as a subject and about a month ago we started on an assessment standard which involved putting on a full scale production. This really excited me, and production was that of The Trojan Women also performed under the name The Women Of Troy.
The characters really excited me, and the fact that it was mainly a woman cast was even better.
Now I'm pretty easy when it comes to characters. I don't really care often. I'll have my favourites, sure, but wherever the director sees me best is where I will often go, no questions asked. My favourite character was the Mad Prophetess Princess, Cassandra, but the director instead cast me as the lead, Hecuba, Queen of Troy.

Everybody was congratulating me and everything and saying how lucky I was to have the part. But inside, I felt the stress and pressure. Lead role, particularly lead female in a mostly female play is a huge responsibility.
We are now two weeks away from opening night. I am just as freaked as I was then. The amount of stress on me is doubling. The amount of lines I have had to learn and have perfected by this coming Thurs is really stressing me out. I have an entire A4 page of monologue to still learn and perfect by Thursday, as well as all the blocking, choreography and musical humming to learn for the background. All my cues are up in the air and I am really stressing. And this was after confiding in the director and telling her my problems. After telling her I was stressing over the number of lines. After the lines being cut down immensely to start with. I still have the most in the entire play.

On top of all that stress, the first rehearsals of the production, and even now, I am being told to do better, that what I'm doing in the production, how I am saying things isn't connected enough and I can do better and I should do better and if I don't do better my grade will suffer and I may fail. Okay, so she didn't say I may fail, but that's how my brain has interpreted it after all this stress, as well as all other assessments and course work I am currently doing and things that are due.

Another stresser of the play is the actual emotions and themes of the play.
The Trojan Women is a play about the women of Troy, the day after Troy fell. Everybody knows the story of the Trojan horse and Helen of Troy right? How Helen ran away from her husband to be with a Trojan prince and the war that followed was supposedly all caused by the gods. How the Greek sent 10,000 men in a 1000 ships and laid siege to the city of Troy with 3000 people, at the max population time for 10 years. And how they finally won the war through clever trickery and took Helen home from where she had been held prisoner for all those years?
Well, that's the glamorised version. The real version is told in the play. How Helen chose to stay in Troy after the Trojan prince she married was killed. How much suffering was caused for her, the most beautiful woman in the world. How many men were sent to their deaths for her, and how much was put on the line for one man's pride.
 "It is the day after the falling of Troy. The sun is rising on the burnt ruins of the city as Hecuba, Queen of Troy and other women must rise from their hiding places and hear of their fate. Their fates are already sealed by the Grecian generals who are drawing lots as to whom they will get and take home. Every woman, every child still living will be chosen and separated from their friends, their family, and wrenched from their homeland to serve the men that killed their people.
Hecuba has watched as her city has fallen. As her people were slaughtered. She watched as her husband, and sons, were butchered in front of her. She watches as her priestess daughter is taken by the Grecian King to be a concubine. She watches as her people are allotted to the men that killed their families. She hears the cries of her women, pleading for help, but she can do nothing. She watches as her 5 year old grandson is ripped from his mothers arm and flung from the topmost towers to destroy the royal male bloodline of Troy, lest he seek revenge. She watches as the woman responsible plays her seductress act, and tries to le and bullshit her way out of her own death. She argues against Helen's story, tries to reveal her as a fraud, to turn her husband against her, to get her killed as price for the live of so many Trojan's slaughtered. She watches as Helen gets off scot free. She watches are his body is returned and she must bury him to let him seek peace in the afterlife. She watches as they set fire to the ruins of her city. And she walks the path to her slavery and the rest of her life."

As you can tell it's really heavy stuff. I have to feel all of this. I have to empathise with the characters, use my own emotional memory to affect me when playing this character. Don't get me wrong, I can dredge up the emotions needed, and play them very well if I can say so myself. The only thing I can't do is put them back in the safe of memories I keep locked away very easily. So I bring myself down to play this part very well, and then when the class is over, I'm supposed to not feel those things and focus on something else. And with my depression, it's damn near impossible. So I am stuck with this darkness and pain and sadness, all at once, and can't put them away. The only thing I can do is slip deeper. And when I'm having a good day, a pretty normal day, it doesn't last long. I'm forced by my course to slip into depression. My director knows I feel this way, but there's nothing she can do. It's all supposed to be acting. Acting means I fake it, but I can't for this play. I'm doing more acting in my everyday life acting normal than I am faking the emotions of the play.

When society and your coursework, when the thing leading you to your future is making you slip into depression in the name of 'good, realistic acting' what can you do to save yourself. What can you do to make yourself feel better, to put away those emotions? I am seriously searching for the answer, as I know that it will just get worse the closer the show dates are.

A-little-bit-ranty-but-necessary-and-a-little-apologetic-at-best
Samantha

Creative Darkness?

Last post I touched on, (very briefly) the fact that when I am down, I am more creative. In many cases, of unique and amazing talent (not saying I have any of that, I'm just talking about others) the creators of amazing pieces were depressed. Many famous people in the past, artists, writers and even some musicians are depressed. One particular person that springs into my head is Edgar Allen Poe. He wrote some really dark stuff, and yes he wasn't happiest person all the time.

When I am down, depressed, in my 'dark' place, I am more creative. I'm not sure why this is, I have one main theory though.
When I am down, I am not hiding. I am not behind a mask, I am not trying to control my emotions by not slipping down into the darkness. I am not trying to hide from anything. When I am that dark that I have a muse, I don't feel pain or anything.
Now the really weird thing about this theory is it goes against my one about the layers of the darkness.

You see I told you that when I go through the sadness, then the pain and then the deepest darkness, I feel empty, and numb. No emotions. But it appears that if I go into it with a strong enough emotion to start with, if I can hang on to the pain as I pass through it, or the sadness or anger that sent me there in the first place, I can usually get my muse working enough to write something.
However there is a major side effect of this. I'm usually down or angry or hurting to go there in the first place, so my writing isn't happy happy. It's rarely ever happy happy. Mostly it's death, insanity, pain, loss, heartbreak, suicide, all that jazz. My drawings are similar, although often both forms of my expression tend to be a little more abstract.

And finally, the really bad see-saw effect is this:
I have no muse when I am happy. I cannot write a love poem, or a story about a girl who got her dreams in the end because I never have a muse for those emotions. The girl would end up dead after cutting her own wrists in the snow, and the love poem would turn out to be heartbreak and loss. So I tend to walk a balancing act between being as normal as I can be, and being creative. To be creative I have to force myself downwards, into a downwards spiral that turns into a fall to the deepest depths of my despair. I'm honestly not kidding. The darker I am, the worse off my mind is, the better I am at being creative. So this leads to the chicken-egg moment of "Am I depressed because that makes me creative? Or am I creative because I am depressed?" I tend to think of it as a little of both.
I walk a balancing act between darkness and light, creative and bland works.

And don't you just love when you have to destroy yourself to create?

Suddenly-not-as-good-as-she-was
Samantha.

To Darkness - Writing #1

Recently I wasn't in a good place, after talking to a friend funnily enough. But enough of that. My muse returned to me, as it often does. I am more creative when I am depressed and down than normal, but this causes my writings and drawings to be somewhat darker than I'd like. But I get quite descriptive. I'll go into that another day. What I wanted to show you guys today was a short story/descriptive piece I wrote. I'd like feedback on it, because I am thinking of entering it in a local competition. Just let me know.

Not-so-average-human-being
Samantha.

To Darkness

 

In an empty room, in a dark old house, there’s a light. One light, illuminating the corner of the room. One girl sits in the corner; up against the walls with their wallpaper fading and peeling; on the floor with the creaky floorboards. Above her head sits a shelf, adorned with children’s toys. Remnants of another life the girl used to live. A picture on the wall opposite wall, of an older lady, long since dead.

The girl on the floor doesn’t move. She hadn’t moved for a long time now. Dressed in her white jumper, navy skirt and stockings, she looks like she’s just come from school. Her arms are wrapped tightly around herself, her legs up and her head down, blond hair obscuring her face.

No sound comes from the corner and silence reigns, but a single tear slips from a bright blue eye, down an exposed white-pale cheek. That single tear betraying the fact that the girl is alive, and does feel; Betraying the fact that she is frozen in terror, paralysed by a fear that haunts her, invades her mind and changes her. It’s called the darkness, the void, and slowly it kills you.

The light in the room seems to dim as a tendril of darkness starts reaching out towards her. Slithering across the floor and crawling up the wall it comes, leading other darkness tendrils to move. Something moves in the darkness and scampers out the door with a hiss as the murmuring begins.

The murmuring continues, quiet but menacing, but the girl doesn’t move or make a sound. The tendrils creep closer and the closer they get, the darker they become, the more solid they appear, forming into monsters. Monsters to create nightmares.

Slowly the girl raises her head in trepidation, half suspecting, half hoping that she’s been lying to herself, but the look of terror on her face says otherwise.

 

All at once the tendrils pounce, all so quickly and a piercing scream erupts from the girl’s throat, as she tried to fight the tendrils away to no avail. They wrap themselves around her wrists and ankles, keeping her still. They wrap themselves over her mouth, keeping her silent. Slowly tendrils inch their way across her body, over her eyes, around and in her ears, and down her throat; but their touch is gentle, like a lover seeing their partner after a long separation. The girl tried to fight, but gets nowhere as the tendrils around her neck start to strangle her. Slowly she is smother by darkness as even her own sight goes black.

 

In an empty room, in a dark house, the light has gone. In the room remains a girl, lying on the floor, motionless. She has blond hair, turning black and the remains of a torn white jumper, no longer white but turning black. The girl doesn’t move or make a sound. A strangled breath comes from the girl’s throat and her eyes flicker open, to reveal the inky blackness of death.

Mine And My Friends Depression

Dealing with depression is one thing, but also dealing with friends who have depression at the same time can really be harmful.
As I think I've said earlier I have a friend who also suffers from depression. This is both a good and bad thing. The good thing about it is when one of us is slipping down, or needs cheering up, the other one will know pretty much what to say to try and help them, and that can be helpful.

But the flipside of that is that if one of us is down, and the other is happy, that can lead to detrimental effects on either person. If the happy person is staying happy, it can make the down person feel even worse for not being happy as if the happy friend is telling the down friend that "I'm happy and I have depression, why can't you be?"
Or maybe that's just me.
It means the person who is down can stop fighting, and get dragged down deeper.
Also if the difference is moods is that great it can also bring the happy person down. I find that when I'm down, I listen to down music. And it makes me feel not as bad. But if I do that and my friend is happy, it brings them down because they are listening to the same bad music, especially if we are hanging out together. It can cause one of us to be dragged down to the place that they've fought their way out of.

My version of depression seems to be a perpetual low mood, whereas my friend has the huge moodswings. So that often means that I'm doing alright for a normal day, and he goes down. This ends up dragging me down furter than I would normally like to go. And then he rebounds back a little up to where I was, leaving my stuck in the place I fought so hard to get out of.

So both a good and bad thing. This is jut me and my friends, I find that dealing with depression is a really difficult thing sometimes. Overall though it has it's good points but I know that overall, it's bad, and ends up dragging people down in the long run. But sometimes being dragged down in the long run doesn't matter if A) you have those little moments of happiness and B) if you have somebody who feels as bad, as down and as dark as you do that will go through it with you. Sometimes it doesn't matter how bad it feels in the long run. Sometimes you only think of now.

Average-but-not-normal-human-being
Samantha.

Duty/Routine Motivations

A duty is really the only things that keeps me going in the dark times. That and routine, but they tend to blur a bit.
If I feel I have a duty to someone, it acts as a sort of motivation. If I have told somebody that I will do something for them, but have no motivation due to my being in a dark place, the sense of duty will kick in and give me the motivation to do that thing for the person, but no more.

Routine works sort of like that. I feel that I have to get up, have my breakfast and then leave the house at 8.13 or thereabouts. I feel like I have to get through the day, answering peoples questions and generally doing what I have to do work wise, until I can come home. Most of the routine is done on autopilot, especially when I'm down. It's the mask metaphor again. I get this routine done by the masked me, while inside I'm not paying any attention or doing anything to help.

A sense of duty is hard to break. I know somebody who has tried and failed to try and break his sense of duty, just as an experiment and he failed. I haven't been able to do it. A sense of duty is a little bit due to the way you were brought up, but another part deep rooted in us from society and evolution.
I'll bet the scientists never thought that would happen? (A joke? An attempted joke? Stop Sam. You can't joke. :D )

Duty is the one thing that keeps me going when I have no motivation left. It is my duty to do these things, for people and for myself because if I don't, somebody may suspect something is wrong, or because I've promised to do this. It enables me to do things when in actual point of fact, I don't want to do anything. In saying that, it is sometimes hard to classify something as 'duty' when it's mainly for myself, or the other person says "It's unimportant, no rush." I tend to lose my motivation and have to fight for it a little.
Routine is part of that, it's part of my duty to myself to do these things, to let myself be viewed as 'normal' so I do them. It's also part of the disguise. Part of the mask, the end up trapping me inside sometimes.

If I knew somebody was reading this blog, it would become my duty to post here everyday, or every two days. It's my duty to myself, but if somebody else reads this, I'd like to know. :)

Mostly-functional-human-being
Samantha.