a Scarlet D

My mental health journey

recent posts

about

  • Post ketamine blahss.

    That’s supposed to be a combination of blahs and bliss.  Sure to catch on.  Nightmare of a week for me, switching PHPs, friend’s suicide, and ratcheting up my depression. (You can’t tell because the anxiety drowns it out.)

    Haven’t been on this side of the suicide fence before, and it’s doing my head in. So many of the emotions as predicted and fodder for my therapist. She doesn’t need to say “See? I told you so” but I can feel it when she talks.  Anger. Frustration. Helplessness. Hopelessness. Sadness. Grief. Memories. Imaginings. More same and grief.  Irony.

    My last PHP was with a nationwide chain, and they had no therapy, just education.  I’m not saying I know everything about DBT and CBT (I do) but I don’t need education I need stabilization.  So back to my home.  The hospital where I did my first PHP, all my ECT and TMS, it’s where my GP is, and it was our family emergency room as well as the birthplace of both of my kids.  Even the intake felt better.  Start the clock tomorrow.

    I have really good friends who check in on me and go out to dinner or whatever with me.  I’m very lucky to have them.  That said ..

    I’m so fucking sick of all this.

  • Sleep Wheel

    I wrote a post yesterday titled “Emotion Wheel” – it’s a device for finding a better term for how you’re feeling. The post was saying that in one week I had felt all of the negative emotions on the wheel.

    Gibberish.

    Luckily it hadn’t published properly, so you didn’t have to read it. Drama and hopelessness. Which I’m still swaddled in, I’m just trying to find a better way to express it. Today’s post used a play on the emotion wheel, but with sleep. Which I didn’t get much of last night. Odd, since I went to bed when I got home from program. I did get up later and watched “Walter Mitty” and had a sandwich though. We added it up yesterday and I eat about 10 meals per week. I thought that was great, thinking there were 14 meals per week. Bad math though. There are actually 21. So I guess that confirms the disordered eating my therapist is talking about.

    The program is okay, but it’s not like any of the other PHPs I’ve done. No 1:1 talk therapy and no group therapy. Lots of education, lots of independent study time. I remember my first PHP and it was a bunch of miserable people sitting in chairs in a circle talking about how much their lives suck. Including me. But it was where we learned about each other and our problems compared to others, and where we shared to support each other.

    I don’t know how much attention they’re paying, though. I have pretty high SI (suicidal ideation) most of the time, but nobody’ here has called me out on it. I also checked the box for “planning” which is one of the “big deal” questions (Do you have a plan? Do you have intent?) that typically elicits a strong response, with lots of direct 1:1 discussion and assurances of safety. Not a peep. (Don’t worry, it was just research about apples and arsenic. No joy there.)

    Still stuck in the loop of “depression -> can’t fix -> will always be like this -> SI -> depression” – and so on. Pretty boring by this point. It’s just where I live now, I suppose. Welcome home.

  • PHP day one

    Came home, went to bed. Likely screwed up tonight’s sleep but nowhere else felt good.

  • One of the worst.

    I realized it wasn’t hyperbole when I told my doctor that today was one of the worst days I can remember in years.  I think it was the tears welling in my eyes.  And I don’t do tears.

    A month of intensely stressful days at work on a large project that I feel partly responsible for not getting done in time. Earlier this week I could induce an anxiety attack just by thinking about work. Not about something at work but just the fact that it exists.

    When I went in for ketamine they had me sign an ROI for an organization that does a higher level of care. My therapist has been suggesting it for some time now and when I saw my GP today she even suggested a partial hospitalization. She also told me that if I did ever lose my job but I should just go check in to the hospital that same day.

    My therapist had to cancel for an illness this week and that was sad? I don’t think I know how to put it into words. During the week I feel like I’m drowning but when I’m in therapy I feel like my head is just above water enough to breathe.  But that was part of the stress too, was what her plan or thoughts for a higher level of care were going to be.

    And if I do have to do one of those programs it’s going to mean taking (unpaid) time away from work. I worry about my performance at work and after this project saying “hey boss how about just letting me take a month and a half off?”

    And it all culminated in a day of chasing that deadline and having the ups and downs of actually getting there. And then having my boss asking for status updates and I’m having to deliver bad news or better yet deliver good news that he thinks is actually bad news. It’s like a high-pitched tone that’s just going through my body, the anxiety. Not his fault. Mine for thinking I could do the job.

    And so many other different things all in the same day and all just leading me to sitting on the couch watching James Bond movies shaking, not eating, and worried pretty sick about whether or not I’m going to sleep tonight.

    Finally, I haven’t written in this blog in a very long time. It’s all been sunshine and rainbows. And the reality of the matter is last fall things started to fail again and so the last 9 months I’ve been in another major depressive episode. But I haven’t told many people because I don’t want to be a burden and I don’t want to be a complainer and I don’t want to be like this.  I’m tired of it and just want it to stop.

    And if I’m being honest one of the reasons I haven’t been writing is because I haven’t wanted my ex to know the things weren’t going well. I don’t know if it’s a pride thing or what but I guess if she’s reading it still the cat’s out of the bag.

    On a positive note I have some close friends who check up on me, share a meal or a walk with me, and listen to me droning.

    I guess I just have to “hang in there.” (Hate that phrase)

    P s. I guess I’ll probably be posting more now.

  • On this day..

    .. Three years ago tonight, I didn’t die.

    I’m not completely sure I know how I feel about this.  I was just sitting at work dropping a calendar entry, as ones does.  And I noticed the 9/11, but something in the back of my mind tripped an alarm and here I am at work not really sure what to do or how to feel.

    Yes, I’ve seen the anniversary of this 2 other years, but I was still a rotten vegetable at those times. But now I’m glad to be here.  I have a good job, friends, apartment and pretty okay car.

    But it was just three years ago, and a few other attempts after that too. I’m in such a different place, but wow, three years. An eternity and just a moment in one.  It’s really thrown me for a loop.

    I’m safe, I’m doing well, and I’ll be with great friends this evening. That’s a wonderful thing.

  • WOAH.

    Check it out, two posts in two days. Lucky you!

    My feet and legs looked like ribbons unfurling off a spool, and the curtains were paper blowing in the wind. And none of it was how it was supposed to be. – me, an hour ago.

    I knew something was wrong, going in.

    It was a typical Ketamine treatment. I was fiddling with new noise cancelling headphones.  Trying to find the right volume, and figure out where I was going to set down my phone and water bottle.  I settled eventually, but I was already starting to lose control of limbs and not completely understand my environment.  But then it was ok.  For a minute.  I’ve done this so many times now, it’s a routine.  Blood pressure taken, shot administered, music (Symphony No. 3 – Górecki) turned on, curtains turn into icebergs, I fall into the snow world of the movie Inception, and I am firmly deposited at the center of the universe, a single atom among the fabric of everything.  Easy peasy.

    But not this time.  I was still able to see myself sitting in the recliner in the clinic.  It’s like riding a rollercoaster up the big hill and discovering the lap bar doesn’t stay down. Then everything went “boxy.”  The legs turn to ribbons. Some more hallucinations happen and I start to feel like maybe I can’t breathe.  I actually called that out to myself, knowing I’ve never had that feeling while receiving treatment.  I knew that this early in the treatment I wasn’t usually aware of my body, much less thinking logically about breathing.  A short while later I’m looking at my legs, aware of my circumstances.  We’re 10 minutes into the treatment where I should be completely disconnected.  Coming back to the real world doesn’t usually happen until 45 minutes or so, when I’m coming out of it.

    It was feeling very very wrong.  Like the Ketamine hadn’t taken hold.  But also like it had.  I moved my feet, my legs.  I could feel my arms on the arms of the chair, but they were freezing cold now, like the chair was cold metal.

    Fine, I’m on a therapeutic Ketamine trip, weird stuff is going to happen.

    But still I had the sense that something had gone horribly sideways.  Not something I could put my finger on, but something not at all right.  I’m looking around and everything seems normal, but the undercurrent of “wrong-ness” is telling me maybe I shouldn’t trust how I’m feeling.  But I feel like I’m rational.  I’m trying to figure out things, use logic.  So I must be fine, right? I hear all of the activity in the room on the other side of the curtain, but I’m with it enough to remember I have noise cancelling turned on.  Ok, fine, the sounds aren’t real.  Small price to pay. I feel like I’ve come out of the treatment and it’s time to get up and leave.  But I can’t.  (Callback to my very early treatment post about feeling like I couldn’t move my legs.  It was not at all like that.) I start to think maybe I should ask for help.  But I don’t want to freak anyone out. Please don’t call an ambulance or put me in the hospital.

    After what seemed like a very long time trying to focus on my surroundings, I manage to eke out an “Um.” Happily, my two favorite nurses were working, and one of them popped around the curtain and asked if I was okay.  I was able to reply that something was wrong but I didn’t know what.  And that’s when she went into nurse mode.  I don’t know if it was time for it to automatically take a reading, or if she kicked it off, but the blood pressure machine recorded one of my personal high scores.  And then she just started to talk me down.  An ice pack happened at some point in there, probably a Vagus nerve tactic.  It was reassuring to hear her say things, but it wasn’t fixing anything. It didn’t help that I was looking at the curtain tracks in the ceiling, not remembering them at all and worrying I was in a proper hospital. I wasn’t. I was still in the clinic, safe and sound.

    That’s when I knew things really were not right at all.  Communicating was hard, language was failing me (and I was complaining about that somehow) and I struggled to explain what was wrong.  She’s seen enough people to know when something has gone not according to plan, and can deal with them, so she wasn’t setting off any alerts or really even worried at all.  But as I tried to explain myself I started to notice other things amiss.  Her face became cartoonish.  I tried drinking out of my water bottle, but my mouth was freakishly large.  Cliche’s were injecting themselves into my experience. I was in a cartoon reality and it wasn’t funny.

    I was both trying to relax and just follow the trip — and sort out reality at the same time.  Bad call.  I realized that I hadn’t actually dissociated like I usually do, that the troubles started early in the treatment. I felt like I was in some nether space between full on hippie trip and no ketamine at all.  Not like a gradient of drug strength, but like I was a piece of paper being shoved sideways into a slot.

    I was trying to explain “squinching” to the nurse – a term from the novel Inkheart in which characters are pulled out of a book into the real world, but not very well.  They end up deformed or displaying text on their skin.  That’s what it felt like.  Hard to explain normally, much less when you’re slurring your words and frustrated as all hell.

    At the 45 minute mark I was still trying to get words out properly but failing half the time.  I was also affected so much that I knew standing and walking were out of the question.  Normally the 45 minute mark is when things get boring and I come out of the trance. Not today.  I was still feeling the full strength of the therapy.

    We waited it out and eventually the medicine worked its way out of my system, and by hour’s end I was the usual sort of groggy.  And I went home. Simple as that. All better, but with a bit more respect for the power of the medicine.

    I don’t want people to think poorly of ketamine because of one very off session. It was more frustrating than terrifying. More confusing than scary. I’ve had dozens of sessions that went perfectly fine. One weird one here and there is worth it for the overall benefit the therapy provides.

  • A follow-up for you

    It’s been quite a few months. I was able to count the life changes on one hand. Each finger represented a different change, any one of which would be major. A new job. A new home. Leaving a long term relationship. A waning Major Depressive Episode. A handful of changes any one of which would cause serious stress for even a well balanced person. Six months ago I was in a horrible place, and could dream of today, but never believe it could be real.

    And here I am, on the other side. The anxiety, gone. The depression, as gone as it will ever be. (It’s always been there, it will always be there, and it will always come back to find me.) Work is hard. But in a satisfying way, challenges and trials combined with wins, learnings, and success. The new place is fitted out, comfortable and feeling like my own. My social life is slowly growing, with old friends and new helping me to fill me free time.

    There are some surprises. Apparently I am social. I prefer working in the office to working remotely (we’re hybrid) because I want the interactions. I am extroverted enough that I chat with people in the elevator, usually about their dogs. Everyone here seems to have a dog. It’s nice. I will have short conversations with clerks or wait staff or other customers in shops. It feels good to connect with other people. To communicate. In my “previous life” I would avoid contact with strangers, but now I find it amusing and fun and interesting. The apartment complex I’m in has a social engagement couple, and they host events once a month or so. I’ve met many of my neighbors at these events by speaking up and introducing myself. Making idle chit-chat that often turns into conversations.

    Tonight there was a 4th of July pre-holiday event. After work I went for a workout (another “not old me” activity), came back to my apartment and showered then watched fail videos until ten minutes after the event start time. Nobody wants to be first to an event. Although I tend to go early and the hosting couple are so warm and inviting it doesn’t feel awkward. Tonight I did my usual hellos and ended up talking to a young couple who were friends of the hosts, and had their own interesting stories to tell. Wandering a bit I tried a group that all knew one another, not a great fit. Another group I didn’t think would be welcoming but were very interesting and nice in their own way. And so on. Making new friends I may see by the mailboxes, in the (beautiful and enormous) lobby, and having a nice time.

    Near the end of the evening I was chatting with someone who pointed out that we had the same tattoo. She had one on her ankle that matched mine on my wrist. The project semicolon tat. She asked if mine was for me, which was a question I’d not been asked before. So I told her a little bit about me. And she hinted about her own journey. Which of course opened my floodgates, and I told her about so much of my journey. It was another great interaction. I asked about her journey (politely, not wanting to push for more than she was willing to share) but she did tell me quite a bit about her story. It was really great being able to trade stories and talk about where we had been, and a bit about where we were now. She said something that hinted at the fact that things were good, but still took work to maintain. I totally understand that. While I’m in a great place right now, it’s not without a crap ton of work, discipline, and using my tools to be my “most resourced self” as DBT describes. But the work is so very much worth it. Anyway, it was that hint that stuck with me. After the event was over and I was back home looking over this blog, I spent some time reflecting on where I’ve been and where I am. This came from the fact that I shared this blog with her and talked about how open I was about my whole deal.

    In looking back and reading some of my entries here and there, I’m thinking a lot about what I’ve been through, how it’s affected others, and how much those around me have supported me. I give myself credit for my progress, but I also appreciate my care team, family, and friends for their support. Be it going to to brunch with me, or making me PB&J sandwiches after my ECT sessions, or giving me pep talks when I visit far flung relatives, I don’t think anyone can truly know how much I appreciate that support. And when I talk to someone who has seen similar struggles, be it at an event or a penpal, or someone who shares their difficulties after I’ve told my story, it makes me appreciate where I am, and also appreciate where other people are, for better or for worse. Em, Pat, Ben, Brian, Scott, Peter, and everyone else – I wish I could impart some magical phrase that would make it all right.

    I didn’t have a lot of people I could reach out to. I was alone and lonely with many of my feelings. So I want to help in any way I can. To be the support I missed beyond my family and friends.

    In the end all I can do is say “I see you” and offer to help in any way possible. And to the girl I met tonight who has her own challenges, hopefully this blog will be interesting and helpful. And to all of you, please reach out to me if you have a bad day. Or a good day. Or questions. Or hard problems. Or hopes. I don’t know if I can help. The least I can do is hear you. But please.

    The usual disclaimers and not giving a shit about grammar and spelling. Mentally stable does not solve literary sloppiness.

  • Goodbye

    It’s been over 7 months since I last posted. Quite a bit has happened, most of it good.

    At some point my therapy and recovery was for me. Not for therapists or for my family. Not for friends and not for doctors. For me. It. wasn’t immediate, but it was pretty quick. And it didn’t solve everything, but it gave me hope.

    In the last three years I whittled it all down to one hobby. Planning my death. Methods, situations, reliabilities. At the worst times it gave me some hope to think it was finally going to be over. At the better times it was still a compulsion. See a bus? Figure out what it would take to get in front of it. Take some medicine, go online and see how much it would take to be lethal. I could find a way to think about suicide in any situation. I would say goodby to places. When we closed the cabin for the season I thought about how it would feel without me there.

    Eventually, in little bursts and whispers, I would have another thought. What would my life be like if I changed how I lived my life? It was a hard thought, and scary as hell. Over months and weeks the thought kept coming back. I talked to my therapists about it, I wrote about it, and I thought about it.

    Eventually my dark days would enjoy my first hobby. My less dark, eventually brighter days I would think about my second. At some point they were neck and neck. But as time went by and my thoughts about how I was living my life gave way to serious thoughts, the hobby began to be about understanding and planning that change.

    In December I turned a corner. Was it the meds? The ketamine? DBT? Therapy? After three years it all ran it’s course? But it wasn’t that simple. I think it was a combination of things. Eventually my thoughts of suicide lessened and lessened, and thoughts of hope gained strength. That hope gave me some drive and motivation. Everything built on itself and eventually I was finding myself happy at times. Hopeful for my future. I had been looking for a job since September, but those first three months I was afraid that if I got one, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Memory issues. Balance issues. Exhaustion. Lingering anxiety. It was hard.

    I threw myself into the job hunt. I still felt quite a bit like shit, but I put on a good face and worked hard. I had been on the hunt a few times after layoffs or company implosions. I knew what I was doing. I would land the odd phone interview, and even some extended interviews. But no job. I passed 100 applications posted. That sucked. 500. 700. Finally 1000 applications posted over six months. It’s a brutal market.

    And one day I got a great interview and an offer. I’m not anxious, I’m excited. I feel like I can do this job and that I will enjoy it. And I’m making other changes, some serious and others small. I wake up in the morning with more energy, and I feel more confident. Oh, I know it’s not over. This is something I am going to have to manage for the rest of my life. But I finally feel like I may have the tools and life to do that fairly successfully.

    I’ve wanted to add to this blog but was either too low or too busy. But now, dear reader, I feel the need to properly put this into storage. I may contribute to it again some day if I need to, you never know.

    I wish you all well. I hope this blog helped in some way, and I wish you hope for your future.

    Thank you, and Goodbye,

    The Scarlet D

  • Anger

    Today is my 2-year anniversary of a suicide attempt. I was going to write about that, but it’s been a quite a day, and my therapist loved this anger piece so much that I’m just posting that instead.

    When I feel anger it’s like a fire has been suddenly lit.  It simultaneously spreads from my head and my chest to envelop my whole being.  It makes me irrational.  It makes me want to direct that fire somewhere.  It can come out of my mouth, through an arm and fist, or simply through words I might not otherwise use against someone.

    I was told I can’t use my voice.  So I close my mouth and swallow the burning air.  The anger doesn’t go away.  When it dissipates it’s really just seething into me.  Flattening out the last ire I placed there so the new one can fit.  Making the pile of unreleased pain even denser.

    I was told I can’t slam doors.  I flail, not having something to slam.  It feels like I’m being tossed around the room looking for something else that’s been detached from its base and thrown to and fro like a puppet.  I end up in a chair, feeling the angry marionette strings tangle and crumple into a ball.  I will eat that ball and let the strings and wires sit in my stomach and make it hurt.

    I was told I can’t break things.  My arms want something they can smash against a wall or snap over my knee.  Instead, they push me off my chair, stand up and pace.  The movement poorly redirected finds its way back to me, and I use those ingredients and make anxiety.  The remaining anger and the anxiety make me feel like I’m in a cage, angry at the people who put me there.  Even if it’s me.

    Now I’m told to express my anger.  The “can’t”’s still apply.  My screen tells me I should go for a run.  Break something, but not the thing you want.  Sing, or dance.  But there’s no music in the anger I feel.  No control over what’s being broken, and surely no foresight to put on my running shoes.

    So now I’m pushing the anger down deep inside, but also feeling I’m not doing what I’m supposed to when the fire lights.  I’m wrong again another way.  Eventually something is likely to break.  I hope it doesn’t piss me off.

  • Ketamine Tears

    But first, a quick update..

    I’m told I’m doing better. I guess I can feel it. Makes the inside harder to deal with sometimes when the outside looks okay. Doing DBT, EMDR, Ketamine and regular therapy. VNS still zapping along. Mostly used to it, sometimes annoyed by it. Very often sounding like Saw Gerrera when it’s firing.

    Summer is summer. Not getting out enough. Wanting to, but it’s difficult. Working a little bit on recording audiobooks but haven’t done any of my own writing in a while. Created a book of short stories and it’s being published through Amazon Kindle Direct, but I’m having motivation issues getting across the very close finish line.

    The depression is always there with open arms, ready to welcome me in at any time. The anxiety has two phases. The first is general all the time anxiety. Worrying, negative self talk, some suicidal ideation still, and anxiety based on interactions with other humans. It’s constant, exhausting, and defeating. It also feeds the hopelessness. The second phase, or type, is the one that feels like you’ve been shot in the chest by a sniper. The panic radiates from there and consumes everything. It can come from an actual anxious event, like when you get pulled over for speeding. But it can also come from worrying about something in the future or contemplating your place in the universe. It’s quite overwhelming and if the other kind feeds hopelessness, this one cut right to the core and removes most hope. I have DBT tools to deal with these, and tools to try and prevent or stop them when they happen. I guess I’m getting better at that.

    I’m having a hell of a time dealing with getting better. Easing back into the uncertainty of life is hard for the reasons above. But I think there’s a bit of Stockholm syndrome with the depression. Being in the depression pit is deadening and flat but it’s a warm desperation and so familiar you don’t want to let go of it. Being peppier and brighter and doing things like smiling and laughing is great, I guess it adds to my quality of life. But it also makes me worry that everyone will forget what’s going on inside. I still want to smash pictures of me when I see them. I still know how awful I am and always will be. I’m still me. We’re working on all that as part of my PTSD in EMDR.

    So there’s an update. As always, I’m going to try harder to post here. I have some inhibition issues about the blog, and my motivation is still in the sub basement so it’s hard to do much. But maybe this time I’ll try.

    Ketamine Tears

    (for real this time.)

    A typical Ketamine sessions these days starts by getting dropped off at the clinic while wife goes shopping or working. I check in, do my PHQ and enhanced GAD inventories and wait for the technician. She comes out, takes the paperwork and we head back to the room. It used to have a great view and light, but they remodeled and now it’s a windowless room. Which isn’t bad, as it’s dim and mellow.

    I pick a chair (hospital recliner) and sit down, get my headphones paired to my phone, and she puts the blood pressure cuff on me and readies the shots. Used to be one in the arm, but there’s a shortage and the stuff they get now is once in each thigh. I’ve learned to wear shorts rather than have to drop trou. I cue up my prepared music (very often it’s Beth Gibbons and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra performing Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, the Symphony of Sorrowful song) and hit play. By the time the first shot is in, I’m already feeling it.

    The music, by the way, is very important for me. That piece is excellent because it lasts exactly as long as the session. It’s a live recording and literally the applause at the end is my signal that it’s all over. It’s slow moving, builds to crescendos, no serious brass or sharp high note type of stuff. Bonus that it’s extra dark. I’ve tried near-ambient stuff and that was okay but not great. I once used a Radiohead song slowed down something like 800 times. It was good, and fit the parameters but didn’t mesh well with me and I ended up not enjoying things as much. I tried the Disintegration Loops by the American avant-garde composer and sonic artist William Basinski. It’s a tape looped repeatedly and it decays as it’s played, so the already downtempo tune breaks down and becomes more gray noise. It was ok, but not perfect. I keep coming back to Górecki because I’m used to the flow and it matches my most frequent visual elements. Anything with a beat is problematic. Tried Jimmy Van M’s bedrock stuff and it was mellow, but the beat just didn’t work at all.

    Within minutes I completely dissociate and I’m off in my own little universe. I’ve described it before. Triangles, recursion, and the center of the universe at an atomic level. While I don’t need to, I usually close my eyes. Still need to write that piece about “Ketamine Tears” – my eyes water a bit during the hour.

    Within the hour long treatment the blood pressure cuff takes my blood pressure every 15 minutes. Sometimes I feel it, most times I don’t until the last one, as the effect of the Ketamine is lessening. Apparently for a while there was a specific point where my BP went pretty high. I think it was at the most intense part of the hour, but I’ve never had fear or anger or anything in there.

    By the 45 minute mark I’m either actively keeping my eyes closed and just watching what my brain puts in front of me while I listen to the music. It doesn’t feel the same as being “under” and there have been times where I’ve just opened my eyes at that point and picked up my phone.

    Once, I came to and found a bunch of paper towel sheets on my chest. Apparently I had tried to drink water but was wearing a mask. Also, there was the time I came out and my legs didn’t work, but I think I’ve already covered that.

    At the end of the hour and final BP reading, I’m set. I pack up my phone/earbuds/water and get ready to leave. And then I check to make sure I have everything. And then I check to make sure I have everything. Finally, then I check to make sure I have everything. Foggy doesn’t want to be forgetful. In the beginning, my wife would have me hold her shoulder as she walked me down the hall. Now I just stumble down the hall, head to the front door and my wife is waiting to pick me up.

    I’m coherent but stumbling in every way for the rest of the day. Memory, speech, walking. They all feel harder but it gets better as time goes by. I’m not tired, just dopey. Because I feel like that for the rest of the day it’s hard to tell how or if it’s helped.

    The next day I’m often brighter. I feel like my eyes are far more open, and things happen more easily. Not so much energized as bright or awake. I’ve had sessions that have broken a streak of horrible depression, just wiped it away. But I’ve also had sessions where it didn’t feel any different. As I write this, I’m on a “day after” and I feel all of that, but I’m also on a social hangover from much family and friends activity around the 4th of July holiday. (Social hangover is just that. It doesn’t mean I regret the social or it didn’t go well, usually, it just means I spent a crap ton of mental and physical energy and I’m dragging.)

    Rinse and repeat every two weeks.