pms/phd doldrums
Sunday 10 December 2006 | 2 cookies in the jar
And as a result, have spent much of the weekend sleeping. It’s a temporary solution whose practice I’ve acquired from the Brujo, and remarkably it also often proves an extended solution as well, because after some napping all the things which seemed Insupportable are often, well, just not. And then I’ve been doctoring myself with the usual array of snake-oil remedies, which may help at best and don’t do a bleeding thing at worst: herbal supplement Oöna (nothing to do with Mrs. Chaplin); the new Liddell homeopathic spray (the alcohol in which I may be allergic to); and Ecco Bella’s rose-perfumed Health by Chocolate (”designed to help women of all ages obtain a restored frame of mind while satisfying cravings”! 
it’s dairy-free, 55% cocoa mass, and has extra stuff like chaste tree berry, flaxseed, soy powder, rose essential oil, cranberry seed oil, and something scary-sounding called “fructooligosaccharides”). The progesterone yam creams which help others do bugger-all for me; and Alvita’s delicious if strictly placebo Polynesian PMS Rescue Remetea is no longer available. Fortunately naps are always in supply; and they’re free!
The PhD applications rise up before me like giant gleaming white G5s, demanding money and mental clarity and immediate attention, all in astonishingly short supply. Faithless readers know that after a year and a half of thrashing and denying, I finally applied for disability; on Wednesday I received my denial (which thoughtfully enclosed two brochures on the appeal process). And because Everyone Knows that 2 out of 3 people are denied on the first round, I’m girding my emotional loins to appeal—but why, when the DBT’s had three clients approved painlessly this year, should it be me? sais pas, it just is—and in spite of knowing full well that it’s not personal, my immediate 
thought upon the telltale slender envelope’s opening was, You’re an idiot. Just that swift and simple. Followed by a lot more of the same, you lazy-ass freeloader weevil weevil weevil. I’ve been so mercifully free of weevil onslaughts since EMSAM that I was startled with the celerity of this one. It reminded me of the “friends” I made my first year in Britain, who were often quite nasty about my being on scholarship, and occasionally applying for further support—they called it “sponging off other people instead of working a proper job.” In retrospect I’m not sure what they thought I should have done, since my student visa didn’t allow me to work during term-time (though I did both summers); never mind. So, I’m a carbuncle on the face of society. So, what’s new. So, now what. Besides which, SSDI may be the only way I’ll ever see a penny of my own lifetime’s Social Security withholdings, since they’re all being drained out to pay my dad’s retirement at present. Now to figure out what part of mentally interesting they didn’t understand and make it plainer, fighting estrogen plummet and its concomitant brain-drain to do so.
Bone-deep exhaustion and being easily daunted are fairly characteristic features of PMS for me; also reading old journals/listening to old demos/Trying to Figure Out What Went Wrong. It all seems very reasonable at the time, this excavation and Figuring Out, but such behaviors have been repeatedly demonstrated to be unhelpful, and my need for them 
mysteriously vanishes when I get more sleep. There’s also the overpowering carb cravings, a tendency to burst into tears on hearing music (this one has been mine since 14 or 15, usually met with my mother’s sharp-tongued disapproval and Victorian accusations of being “hysterical”) and a general feeling of heavy dismay and what the Brujo calls, nothinggoodcanhappen.com.
In The Bipolar Handbook, which came out earlier this year, Wes Burgess, MD, relates something interesting he’s observed:
In most women, premenstrual symptoms are limited to a day or two before the start of menses. However, many women with bipolar disorder experience physical and emotional symptoms, as well as breakthrough bipolar symptoms, for as many as two weeks per month. As one of my patients put it: “PMS is half my life.” This may improve with the medical treatment needed to control bipolar disorder or additional steps may have to be taken. […] Lithium salt, which is both a mood stabilizer and a diuretic, was listed in older medical literature as a treatment for PMS. I have cared for many women taking lithium as a treatment for bipolar disorder, but many of them still had premenstrual problems.
Then, too, psychiatrist Valerie Davis Raskin, MD, author of 1997’s slightly dated but nonetheless helpful When Words Are Not Enough, offers (in her book’s appendix) an explanation of “reproductive kindling”:
I believe that hormones affect mood much like ragweed affects allergy sufferers. The hormone shifts are like ragweed in August: present in the environment, but a problem only for vulnerable individuals. This explain why blood tests for hormone imbalances are not useful; the problem is in the brain’s response, not how much is in the bloodstream. It also explains why if you have suffered any reproductive-related mood disorder (such as depression due to birth-control pills [check!] or postpartum depression) you are far more likely to experience a similar mood disturbance during other hormonal transitions. Sensitivity to hormone-induced mood changes has been called kindling. The model of reproductive hormonal kindling proposes that some women’s brains are prone to depressed mood during major hormonal shifts. Then, having had one bout of hormonal depression renders the individual even more vulnerable to an increasingly mild threshold of hormone changes. It’s as if the brain “learns” to become depressed when it is exposed to repeated hormonal fluctuations, much like a fire is rekindled more easily when a few embers remain.
This “kindling” hypothesis also explains, among other phenomena, why PMS is worst for women in their mid-thirties and older, and not as bad in younger women. It’s behaviorist enough to make even the DBT happy, though she’d probably add some social factors influencing the entire biosocial package (e.g., mothers who snap at one for being teary and emotional?).
Oddly, I’ve written this entire entry with my inner Editor poised over my shoulder, rolling her eyes at nearly every sentence. Her presence may be a production of flagging estrogen, or a manifestation brought about by the fact that I have a dinner engagement tonight which will include her real-life counterpart, who’s actually not critical of late and perhaps better described as uninterested. I’ve been working very hard, since Texas, studying the little group of people I affectionately call my rogues’ gallery, actual people I encountered between 2000-2005, trying to understand why I’ve internalized their half-dozen personalities so profoundly and what, as the Sponsor would say, gifts they offer, buried amidst the eye-rolling, air breaks, disgust, contempt, criticism, judgment and often only a quietly blistering indifference. It should go without saying but probably doesn’t that none of these people did anything wrong. What’s compelling to me about them is the way I swallowed entire portions of their shtick, their spin without question or amendation; and what now is the best way to disgorge these unwanted guests, as I once did the Republican, in order to go on living happily. Happily. With as many naps as necessary.
2 cookies in the jar
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What’s compelling to me about them is the way I swallowed entire portions of their shtick, their spin without question or amendation; and what now is the best way to disgorge these unwanted guests… in order to go on living. Happily. With as many naps as necessary.
Yes.
Dear Un: These are not matters on which I have one flickering scintilla of authority with which to opine. However, one of the better coxwains at WSU used to swear by the ameliorative effects of a joint and a slug of Jack Daniels. R