Isabeau wrote:

 Isabeau wrote:

The hugs are very much appreciated!
Like a bug meeting windshield, mortality has also said "hello."
I've ignored my own care while taking care of someone else.
Suddenly I've looked up into a mirror and now see an old woman — Vulnerable. Lonely. Brave on Mon, Wed & Fri. A curled up infant on Tues, Thurs and Sundays. 
Saturdays are a wild west. I may stay up til 9... 

 Isabeau wrote:

 Isabeau wrote:

Everyone's journey is different. I lost my Mom when I was in my 30s, she in her 60s. That was intense. Losing my Dad at the age of 92 seemed natural if not easy.  Let 2024 go for a while. 

 Isabeau wrote: 

 Isabeau wrote:

 Isabeau wrote:

My mother said becoming an orphan changes your worldview (she was out of college, married, had a child when her mother died).

There are still times when I am, like, "I WANT MY MOMMY!"

Isabeau wrote:
Very sorry for your loss! Still, it is something the majority of us will have to go through, sooner or later.
Practicing non-attachment. Hard stuff. Always unwelcome. Always a pain.

As for the whole world going dipshit, we're all in it. Most of the people are against war, while the governments are openly preparing for it. All in the name of democracy? - Fuck me!

I'm realizing that losing the second parent is very intense. You've lost your safety net, your go-to as a 'kid.'  Or in my lucky case, also a good friend.
Its been 3 weeks since I've lost Mum. I didn't want to allow the grief, because I was afraid of it becoming overwhelming.
Picking up her ashes and DCs this week has made it real on yet another level. Waves of good memories come and go now. As do the tears.

2024.
An election year with a Presidential candidate in court instead of campaigning.
The year I am no longer a caregiver ... and no longer someone's kid.
The year we wonder how much longer will the climate survive
as the world catapults itself into war.

I don't care what the Aliens say. We're brave lil mo fo's ain't we?

Many mental-health conditions have bodily triggers

Psychiatrists are at long last starting to connect the dots

https://www.economist.com/scie...

A key moment came in 2007, when work at the University of Pennsylvania showed that 100 patients with rapidly progressing psychiatric symptoms or cognitive impairments actually had an autoimmune disease. Their bodies were creating antibodies against key receptors in nerve cells known as nmda receptors. These lead to brain swelling and can trigger a range of symptoms including paranoia, hallucinations and aggression.

Dr Lennox says a shift in medical thinking is needed to appreciate the damage the immune system can do to the brain. The “million dollar question”, she says, is whether these conditions are treatable. She is now running trials to find out more. Work on patients with immune-driven psychosis suggests that a range of strategies including removing antibodies and taking immunotherapy drugs or steroids can be effective treatments.

Another important discovery is that metabolic disturbances can also affect mental health. The brain is an energy-hungry organ, and metabolic alterations related to energy pathways have been implicated in a diverse range of conditions, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis, eating disorders and major depressive disorder. At Stanford University there is a metabolic psychiatry clinic where patients are treated with diet and lifestyle changes, along with medication. One active area of research at the clinic is the potential benefits of the ketogenic diet, in which carbohydrate intake is limited. This diet forces the body to burn fat for energy, thereby creating chemicals known as ketones which can act as a fuel source for the brain when glucose is in limited supply.

Kirk Nylen, head of neuroscience for Baszucki Group, an American charity that funds brain research, says 13 trials are under way worldwide looking at the effects of metabolic therapies on serious mental illness. Preliminary results have shown a “large group of people responding in an incredibly meaningful way. These are people that have failed drugs, talk therapy, trans-cranial stimulation and maybe electroconvulsive-shock therapy.” He says that he keeps meeting psychiatrists who have come to the metabolic field because of patients whose low-carb diets were followed by huge improvements in mood. Results from randomised controlled trials are expected in the next year or so.

All such developments are promising. But many of the field’s problems could be resolved by relaxing the distinctions that exist today between neurology, which studies and treats physical, structural and functional disorders of the brain, and psychiatry, which deals with mental, emotional and behavioural disorders.

And... so what now?!

Interesting story from a sociopath (behind a paywall so cut and paste)

Whenever I ask my mother if she remembers the time in second grade when I stabbed a kid in the head with a pencil, her answer is the same: “Vaguely.”

And I believe her. So much about my early childhood is vague. Some things I remember with absolute clarity. Like the smell of the trees at Redwood National Park and our house on the hill near downtown San Francisco. God, I loved that house. Other things aren’t so clear, like the first time I sneaked into my neighbor’s house when they weren’t home.

I started stealing before I could talk. At least, I think I did. By the time I was six or seven I had an entire box full of things I’d stolen in my closet. Somewhere in the archives of People magazine there is a photo of Ringo Starr holding me as a toddler. We’re standing in his backyard—not far from Los Angeles, where my father was an executive in the music business—and I am literally stealing the glasses off his face. I was not the first child to ever play with a grown-up’s glasses. But based on the spectacles currently perched on my bookshelf, I’m pretty sure I was the only one to swipe a pair from a Beatle.

To be clear: I wasn’t a kleptomaniac. A kleptomaniac is a person with a persistent and irresistible urge to take things that don’t belong to them. I suffered from a different type of urge, a compulsion brought about by the discomfort of apathy, the nearly indescribable absence of common social emotions like shame and empathy.

I didn’t understand any of this back then. All I knew was that I didn’t feel things the way other kids did. I didn’t feel guilt when I lied. I didn’t feel compassion when classmates got hurt on the playground. For the most part, I felt nothing, and I didn’t like the way that “nothing” felt. So I did things to replace the nothingness with…something.

This impulse felt like an unrelenting pressure that expanded to permeate my entire self. The longer I tried to ignore it, the worse it got. My muscles would tense, my stomach would knot. Tighter. Tighter. It was claustrophobic, like being trapped inside my brain. Trapped inside a void.

Stealing wasn’t something I necessarily wanted to do. It just happened to be the easiest way to stop the tension. The first time I made this connection was in first grade, sitting behind a girl named Clancy. The pressure had been building for days. Without knowing exactly why, I was overcome with frustration and had the urge to do something violent.

I wanted to stand up and flip over my desk. I imagined running to the heavy steel door that opened to the playground and slamming my fingers in its hinges. For a minute I thought I might actually do it. But then I saw Clancy’s barrette. She had two in her hair, pink bows on either side. The one on the left had slipped down. Take it, my thoughts commanded, and you’ll feel better.

I liked Clancy and I didn’t want to steal from her. But I wanted my brain to stop pulsing, and some part of me knew it would help. So, carefully, I reached forward and unclipped the bow. Once it was in my hand, I felt better, as if some air had been released from an overinflated balloon. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t care. I’d found a solution. It was a relief.

These early acts of deviance are encoded in my mind like GPS coordinates plotting a course toward awareness. Even now, I can recall where I got most of the things that didn’t belong to me as a child. But I can’t explain the locket with the “L” inscribed on it.

“Patric, you absolutely must tell me where you got this,” my mother said the day she found it in my room. We were standing next to my bed. One of the pillow shams was crooked against the headboard and I was consumed with the urge to straighten it. “Look at me,” she said, grabbing my shoulders. “Somewhere out there a person is missing this locket. They are missing it right now and they’re so sad they can’t find it. Think about how sad that person must be.”

I shut my eyes and tried to imagine what the locket owner was feeling, but I couldn’t. I felt nothing. When I opened my eyes and looked into hers, I knew my mother could tell.

“Sweetheart, listen to me,” she said, kneeling. “Taking something that doesn’t belong to you is stealing. And stealing is very, very bad.”

Again, nothing.

Mom paused, not sure what to do next. She took a deep breath and asked, “Have you done this before?”

I nodded and pointed to the closet. Together we went through the box. I explained what everything was and where it had come from. Once the box was empty, she stood and said we were going to return every item to its rightful owner, which was fine with me. I didn’t fear consequences and I didn’t suffer remorse, two more things I’d already figured out weren’t “normal.” Returning the stuff actually served my purpose. The box was full, and emptying it would give me a fresh space to store things I had yet to steal.

“Why did you take these things?” Mom asked me.

I thought of the pressure in my head and the sense that I needed to do bad things sometimes. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Well… Are you sorry?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. I was sorry. But I was sorry I had to steal to stop fantasizing about violence, not because I had hurt anyone.

Empathy, like remorse, never came naturally to me. I was raised in the Baptist church. I knew we were supposed to feel bad about committing sins. My teachers talked about “honor systems” and something called “shame,” which I understood intellectually, but it wasn’t something I felt. My inability to grasp core emotional skills made the process of making and keeping friends somewhat of a challenge. It wasn’t that I was mean or anything. I was simply different.

Now that I’m an adult, I can tell you why I behaved this way. I can point to research examining the relationship between anxiety and apathy, and how stress associated with inner conflict is believed to subconsciously compel people to behave destructively. I believe that my urge to act out was most likely my brain’s way of trying to jolt itself into some semblance of “normal.” But none of this information was easy to find. I had to hunt for it. I am still hunting.

For more than a century, society has deemed sociopathy untreatable and unredeemable. The afflicted have been maligned and shunned by mental health professionals who either don’t understand or choose to ignore the fact that sociopathy—like many personality disorders—exists on a spectrum.

After years of study, intensive therapy and earning a Ph.D. in psychology, I can say that sociopaths aren’t “bad” or “evil” or “crazy.” We simply have a harder time with feelings. We act out to fill a void. When I understood this about myself, I was able to control it.

It is a tragic misconception that all sociopaths are doomed to hopeless, loveless lives. The truth is that I share a personality type with millions of others, many of whom have good jobs, close-knit families and real friends. We represent a truth that’s hard to believe: There’s nothing inherently immoral about having limited access to emotion. I offer my story because I know I’m not alone.

Patric Gagne is a writer, former therapist and advocate for people suffering from sociopathic, psychopathic and antisocial personality disorders. This essay is adapted from her book, “Sociopath: A Memoir,” which will be published April 2 by Simon & Schuster.

and help is here...maybe

Scientists Now Know Why Psychedelics Conquer Depression Even Without a High

ByShelly FanJune 6, 2023

Everyone is raving about hallucinogens as the future of antidepressants.

LSD (better known as acid), psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms), and the “spirit molecule” DMT are all being tested in clinical trials as fast-acting antidepressants.

And I mean fast: when carefully administered by a doctor, they can uplift mood in just one session, with the results lasting for months. Meanwhile, traditional antidepressants such as Prozac often take weeks to see any improvement—if they work at all.

But tripping all day is hardly a practical solution. Unlike Prozac, hallucinogens need to be carefully administered in a doctor’s office, under supervision, and in a comfortable setting for best therapeutic results. It’s a tough sale for busy individuals.

Then there’s the elephant in the room: psychedelics are still classified as Schedule I drugs at the federal level, meaning that similar to heroin, their possession and consumption is illegal.

What if we could strip the trip out of psychedelics, but leave their mood-boosting magic?

This week, a new study in Nature Neuroscience suggests it’s possible. Led by Dr. Eero Castrén, a long-time champion of psychedelic research for mental health, the Finnish team dug deep into the molecular machinery that either lifts mood or gives you a trippy head rush.

 Manbird wrote:

*Hugs* to you MB.

 Manbird wrote:


I feel you.

 Manbird wrote:

Thus the word 'depressed.' It really IS like a physical weight on one's spirit.  Hope you get relief soon. 

 Manbird wrote:

 Manbird wrote: 

This depression literally makes me sick to my stomach and gives an awful feeling in my chest. 
It feels like a 20 pound weight hanging there.