Venting thread that still excludes eddy (2)

[Imralu]

I got my hand burned when I was checking if an oven was on.

I am an idiot.

So ... was it on?

[jal]

I got my hand burned when I was checking if an oven was on.
I am an idiot.

So ... was it on?

It would be weird to have your hand burned on an oven that's off :).

EDIT: Of course, not if it's just off.


JAL

[Travis B.]

My mood had been getting better - at least as of earlier yesterday evening, it got worse again later yesterday evening and today - but my hallucinations are acting up continuously regardless of it all. (My therapist could tell I was hallucinating because I was frequently looking off at the hallucinations, which were distracting me, instead of at her.) Also, my psych thinks I am getting auditory hallucinations, due to my tendency to hear speech as being scrambled and unintelligible every so often (which came up because this happened right when I was in her office talking with her).

[Vijay]

I just kind of thought what I have is normal - not like "everyone has it" normal but like it's normal for me with my personality flaws and depression and psychological issues. I kind of thought anxiety was this big Other Thing that other people have but I don't. I've only gone as far as to admit that I have "social anxiety", which I defined as something very different from people who have Anxiety. I talked to a friend of mine in Australia and she was like "Wait ... you didn't know you had anxiety?? It's kind of obvious. Like, you avoid kitchens, are afraid of driving, swimming, sex, and sometimes you're a prisoner in your room ..." I just always thought I'm just an idiot.

Some of this is true of me as well, and some of it is the exact opposite of my experience. I thought everyone really did have the same anxiety I had or worse because I didn't really realize anxiety disorders existed until just a few years ago when I started making online friends. I made friends with this one guy who had depression because I couldn't tell whether anyone else was helping him through it and decided to try myself instead, but he also asked about how I was feeling. When I told him, he asked whether I might have an anxiety-related disorder of some kind. I didn't find this question offensive, just unexpected because no one had ever asked me that before.

I smile a lot, so people don't necessarily suspect that I might have an anxiety-related disorder. I also used to think I was just an idiot for not being able to do various things that most people apparently did all the time without any problem. Now, I've come to realize that some things about myself that I thought other people would find weird are actually pretty normal and vice versa, and even the supposedly weirder aspects of myself are not that hard to explain. Thinking about it all now, I'm starting to realize that the only people who gave a shit about me were also people who were putting way too much pressure on me, which made me feel anxious.

[Imralu]

I got my hand burned when I was checking if an oven was on.
I am an idiot.

So ... was it on?

It would be weird to have your hand burned on an oven that's off .

EDIT: Of course, not if it's just off.

I was being facetious, but also kind of pointing out that it is actually one way to get an answer.

[Pole, the]

I was being facetious, but also kind of pointing out that it is actually one way to get an answer.

Wow. You've just made me realize I should have posted it in the Contradictory Feelings Thread.

[Imralu]

Re. Auditory hallucinations and hearing:

I often struggle with hearing but I've had my hearing tested and it's fine, even quite good in a lot of ways (I can still hear the echolocation of some kinds of bats). It's like I struggle with assigning speech sounds to a particular language and words so I've wondered if it's an auditory processing disorder, however mild. I don't really remember this when I was younger and monolingual and I wonder if maybe it has something to do with having other languages in my head and basically having a bigger database of words in my head to search through. I'm not fluent in more than a couple of languages but I know bits and pieces of a lot, like I guess most people here do, so I'd be curious if anyone else has this. It's kind of frustrating sometimes when I'm out somewhere with a group of friends with a lot of background noise and I need to concentrate really hard to follow the conversation and I often end up giving up and sitting there resigned ... and if I miss something, no one seems to notice me struggling to catch up, even if I'm going "hey, hey, hey, what?" A couple of times when I've suddenly been asked a question when I have no idea what's going on, I've just kind of passive aggressively started signing in a way kind of saying "yep, I may as well be deaf right now and if you guys would learn sign language that would make things a whole lot easier" but I usually just stop caring and start playing with my phone or something. I think this is part of the reason why I like the company of Deaf people. I miss a lot of what's going on because of linguistic incompetence but Deaf people are generally pretty good at making sure people aren't left out when they can't follow, or at the very least, don't make them feel like it's their fault because most of them have grown up with a lifetime of being left out of family discussions and being palmed off with "Eh, don't worry, it's not important" or "I'll tell you later."

Some arguments that speak against it being a linguistic thing are, however, that I struggle a lot more when speech is coming through tinny speakers with a much narrower bandwidth. Phones are hard and so are announcements that come through speakers in ceilings. With phone conversations, I don't have too much of a problem with friends, but talking to strangers, I need to take the phone call somewhere silent. The more nervous I am and the more important it is, the less I understand (or the less I trust what my brain thinks it's hearing) and consequently, I kind of panic when my phone rings. If I see it's a friend, I can work up the courage to answer quickly enough but if it's an unknown number or someone I don't want to talk to (like my dad) I stare at my phone in horror till it stops ringing. I think I struggle less with friends because I know how they speak so that takes some of the load off, and also anxiety is lower - I can ask them to repeat without falling into the "Why can't I fucking hear" spiral.

There's this weird thing, however, where I've sometimes been out with friends in a noisy bar with lots of people talking and someone will say "Oh, I love this song" or start singing along with something and I can often only really say that there is music faintly audible in the background but not what it is.

Also, if I'm listening to someone or watching a movie and there's a sudden loud noise for the duration of one word, I won't only miss that word but several words before and after it, which is quite odd, and if there are a lot of interruptions I basically can't understand anything. What I hate is when someone gets me to listen to something to tell them what's being said because it's in a language I understand better ... but they're not completely silent for the whole duration of my listening. It kind of feels like it takes me a while to start or stop listening so if they go "this bit" in the middle of it, the bit they want me to hear is precisely the bit that I don't hear,

And all of that being said, sometimes when I'm incredibly tired and have been awake for a horribly long time, I do actually have auditory hallucinations. It's usually like someone calling out my name. The first time I noticed it was when I was a teenager, finishing an assignment for school that I had only started the night before it was due. Because I had no door and the wall didn't go to the ceiling, light and sound travelled freely through the house and my mum would often angrily shout "go to bed" from her sleeping chair in the lounge room if something was keeping her awake (often waking me up if I was not the cause of it) ... and on this night, I was sure she had said that, or maybe just called out my name, I can't remember anymore, but in any case it suddenly occurred to me that she was in Sydney, 1000km away. I can identify these kinds of auditory hallucinations these days because they don't reverberate and I can't play them back through the auditory loop in my head, or not in the same way as real sounds. I have had exploding head syndrome (auditory sleep starts) a handful of times in my life and it's similar - if I think about it afterwards, the way it reverberates or doesn't reverberate in my head is not like a real sound. (Far more often, I get visual sleep starts, like a blinding flash of light just on the point of falling asleep. I haven't had it so much lately but I've had times where it's been a couple of times a week. I used to think it was lightning and look out the window, and if it was really bright, my head would jump straight to nuclear bomb. When nothing came, no storm, no shockwave, I decided it must have been car headlights coming in my window suddenly, but once I moved to Berlin and had a room with a roller shutter that makes my room pitch black, and it kept happening, I realised it must be a brain thing.)

And while my parents were here and for about a week afterwards, I could distinctly hear them talking whenever I was in a crowd with a murmur of voices - bickering with each other and saying the kinds of things they do actually say. It was really upsetting and scary because no amount of concentrating could dissolve it back into the voices speaking German or Spanish or Turkish that it must have been. For a while, I felt like my parents were still in Berlin and they kind of ruined everything by being here, and then I had my breakthrough/breakdown. The fact that I was actually hallucinating their voices was really weird and tells me that I was under a lot of psychological stress at the time.

[Pole, the]

I often struggle with hearing but I've had my hearing tested and it's fine, even quite good in a lot of ways (I can still hear the echolocation of some kinds of bats). It's like I struggle with assigning speech sounds to a particular language and words so I've wondered if it's an auditory processing disorder, however mild. I don't really remember this when I was younger and monolingual and I wonder if maybe it has something to do with having other languages in my head and basically having a bigger database of words in my head to search through. I'm not fluent in more than a couple of languages but I know bits and pieces of a lot, like I guess most people here do, so I'd be curious if anyone else has this.

Hmm.

Regarding me, I am sometimes under impression I have troubles with understanding spoken language more often than others. Most often I just wait for the other person to repeat what they have said (sometimes I suspect what they could mean but I want to be sure anyway).
When I was a small child I went for ten days to a hospital because of ear inflammation. I used to ascribe instances of me mishearing things to that fact. (Although I don't know if there is a connection, or even if these kinds of problems are caused by the auditory system, or in any case real problems. On the other hand, when last year I returned to Poland after several months in Finland I tarted to adcribe that to me not hearing Polish for quite a time.)

Even though I know the language, most English songs are gibberish to me. Over the years, my ability to understand spoken English has improved (first, by having been taught by Poles speaking fluent English in class; now, by watching several Youtube videos every day), sung English is often impenetrable to me unless I concentrate very hard. (But then again, I probably have a similar problem with some Polish songs.)

It's kind of frustrating sometimes when I'm out somewhere with a group of friends with a lot of background noise and I need to concentrate really hard to follow the conversation and I often end up giving up and sitting there resigned ... and if I miss something, no one seems to notice me struggling to catch up, even if I'm going "hey, hey, hey, what?"

Going to loud places and then trying to talk, sucks. Also, whispering sucks. The “telephone” game sucks as well. I have never had any fun from that.
On the other hand, I don't have such troubles with phones or announcements. (I do, however, have a certain level of anxiety when talking to strangers via phone, e.g. when ordering a pizza or calling to an office asking a question.)

And all of that being said, sometimes when I'm incredibly tired and have been awake for a horribly long time, I do actually have auditory hallucinations.

I experience something vaguely similar. Sometimes, when I am going to bed after a (not necessarily) tiring day, I fall into some kind of a “shallow” dreaming state, when I hear a background noise of some people talking, and only then I fall into a full sleep. When I first realized I am having auditory dreams I thought it kinda makes sense and that I'm seemingly more sensitive to sounds than images. This state, however, can be easily interrupted by a random thought (e.g. “I better switch off the light”), so I have considered it a form of sleeping.
(Which has become a bit problematic for me in the recent months. I go to bed, I fall shallowly asleep, then it gradually turns into a deeper dream, then I realize that I dream about my grandmother and that she died last year, then I wake up, frustrated.)

I don't know if it counts as a visual hallucination, but since last summer I have been also experiencing some “glimpses” of things than happened months earlier. What makes them different from normal memories is that (1) they have a very strong and specific visual component (most things I remember as images are shaky and inaccurate) and (2) they are uncontrolled and effortless (usually it takes me an effort to remember something specific).
I had several “glimpses” of being in Finland (in particular, a memory of me going to a bedroom in a house I'd been in for three or four days — quite unusual to remember such specific details from such a short stay, if you ask me). When the academic year started and I moved to a new room in a new dormitory, I had several glimpses of being in the old dormitory (the rooms have the same design but the corridors are very different, so a few times while opening the door, I “saw” the old corridor just before the new one appeared to me).

[Travis B.]

The auditory hallucinations you (Imralu) get while being tired are probably hypnagogic hallucinations, which are perfectly normal. I used to get them too, even though they since have gone away.

There are some weird aspects of my failing to understand English. First, it primarily occurs at work and with my psychiatrist, but not at home or with my therapist. While I do have trouble hearing often, it feels different from people speaking too quietly - when people speak too quietly I generally simply cannot hear them or it, well, sounds like they are being too quiet, but when I simply cannot understand English I can hear how loud they are speaking and it sounds loud enough that I should understand them... it just does not form English speech sounds I can understand, and it will happen suddenly in the middle of them speaking perfectly loudly, as if my ability to understand English just suddenly failed. I do not believe my psychiatrist's view that this is an auditory hallucination, since nothing is being added to what I hear, unlike with my hypnagogic hallucinations, but rather my ability to understand English has failed.

[jal]

Imralu, about all of the things you mention re not being able to understand speech are things I struggle with as well (and my reaction to that is often similar, like gazing away), the difference being I've been diagnosed with severe hearing problems: I don't hear (or usually perceive) sounds over 1700Hz, which means I have only 10% hearing and 50% hearing of speech sounds, which typically means that unless I'm in a quiet room with good accoustics (not too much echoing for example) and only one person's talking and I can see that persons mouth and that person is talking in my general direction, I can't understand a thing. Also, context is everything, as it knowing which language is spoken. I.e. words in isolation are almost always ununderstandable (especially when they contain lots of voiceless consonants, which I can basically only hear a residue of, as their main frequencies are 2000Hz+), and if someone suddenly uses an English word while talking Dutch, I get completely confused.

What I also notice is that my brain needs a lot of energy processing language, so much so that a) I get headaches if it needs to do it for a too long time and b) my memory suffers immensly: it's like all processing power is diverted to understanding the speech sounds, but making sense of them let alone storing them is far more difficult than it used to be.

So your hearing problems could all be psychological problems, or just aging, or something innate (e.g. autism is linked with difficulties in filtering speech sounds from noisy environments), but I would certainly go to a hearing care shop ("Hörgeräteakustiker") to have your hearing measured (or first perhaps, go to a physician to check if its not an earwax problem) to get your hearing checked.

As for auditory hallucinations when you're tired, I think that's pretty normal.


JAL

[Salmoneus]

I often struggle with hearing but I've had my hearing tested and it's fine, even quite good in a lot of ways (I can still hear the echolocation of some kinds of bats). It's like I struggle with assigning speech sounds to a particular language and words so I've wondered if it's an auditory processing disorder, however mild...

Some arguments that speak against it being a linguistic thing are, however, that I struggle a lot more when speech is coming through tinny speakers with a much narrower bandwidth. Phones are hard and so are announcements that come through speakers in ceilings. With phone conversations, I don't have too much of a problem with friends, but talking to strangers, I need to take the phone call somewhere silent.

This is just one idea, but have you ever analysed your line of sight during face-to-face conversations?

I too have slightly dodgy hearing when it comes to conversations, and in particular I really hate phones. I don't keep missing what people say on phones, but I have to concentrate hard, which gives me less time to think of replies, and even then I still have to say 'sorry?' a fair few times if the line is bad.

However, I think that a big part of that is that when I'm talking to somebody I instinctively (and unconsciously) look at their mouth. As a result, I've unconsciously learned to supplement hearing with lip-reading to some extent. So in a situation where that doesn't work - over phones, or in busy environments where there are visual distractions or multiple speakers, or where I'm trying really hard to maintain a reasonable level of eye-contact - I effectively lose part of the data I use to work out what people are saying. I probably have good enough hearing to make do without it, but because I'm used to relying on it, I notice it being missing - as I say, I don't necessarily fail to hear them, but feel I have to work a lot harder at it and I do have lapses. Although in recent times I've been trying to address this and feel that I've improved.
[it may also be why I get more infuriated when audio and video are slightly out of sync than many people do...]

Anyway, apparently watching the mouths of people who are talking is a classic symptom of Aspergers. [I don't have Aspergers, in a clinical sense, but I'm probably more in that direction by far than the average person, and I probably would have been diagnosed when I was a child, if the situation had arisen]. So it occurs to me that maybe that might be relevant to people on this forum, since many of us are, as it were, 'Aspergers-type', if not clinically so.

No idea if this is applicable to you, but thought I'd suggest it. It had never occured to me before somebody mentioned it to me...

There's this weird thing, however, where I've sometimes been out with friends in a noisy bar with lots of people talking and someone will say "Oh, I love this song" or start singing along with something and I can often only really say that there is music faintly audible in the background but not what it is.

Here, however, I'm the opposite. I can identify which symphony is being played before other people have even noticed that there's any music. Sometimes, unfortunately, it's imaginary music - I'm clearly so good at reassembling small sound cues into music in my head that sometimes it works even when the original sounds were just a coincidence. And of course once you start thinking "is that [play tune in head]", it's hard not to hear the tune...

And all of that being said, sometimes when I'm incredibly tired and have been awake for a horribly long time, I do actually have auditory hallucinations.

Everyone does. Or everyone would if they were awake for a horribly long time. And if you're awake longer you'll have full-blown auditory and visual hallucinations, then delusions and mood changes, then paralysis, then death. In the very small table of things that are actually physically necessary, sleep is probably #3: you die of lack of sleep later than you would die of lack of oxygen, and probably later than you would die of lack of water, but long before you would die of lack of food. Going without sleep puts you much closer to death than you probably realise, and all sorts of weird physical and mental things can start happening. The good news is that it's almost impossible to actually die of lack of sleep, in much the same way it's almost impossible to die of lack of oxygen without external factors (it's almost impossible to hold your breath fatally): at some point, the body just takes over and insists on sleep. [even insomniacs who say they don't sleep do, now and then - otherwise they'd be dead. There are only a handful of extremely rare medical conditions that actually prevent sleep completely]
...well that was a macabre tangent, sorry!
But anyway, the point was: everybody's mind breaks down when they stay awake too long, it's not just you.

And more generally, when you're on the verge of sleep, which you are when you're extremely tired and sleep-deprived, the borders blur and the mind can become odd. On topic, I have auditory semi-hallucinations sometimes, when about to fall asleep. They're "semi-" because they're quite distinguishable from actual hearing, unless I'm right on the edge of sleep, but they're far more vivid and real and out of my control than normal 'imagining' or 'remembering'. They tend to happen if I've been at a party, or sometimes if I've had a long conversation with someone I haven't talked to in ages: I get just little snippets that go away when I focus on them, like someone trying to get my attention, in the voice of the people I've been talking to. What it is is the brain busily filing away all these sound clips in the appropriate files before they're lost.
I've also sometimes had kinaesthetic semi-hallucinations of the same kind. I don't get them now, but probably because I'm not in the appropriate situations. But the night after being on an extreme theme park ride, or a stormy boat crossing, or in a couple of cases just on a swing for a long time (a friend of mine had a swing-seat in their garden, so there was lots of swinging back and forth while mildly drunk...), I get these demi-hallucinatory 'memories' of the feel of the motion.
Never had it with vision, though.

Except, of course, when I'm actually asleep. Then I hallucinate extensively.

(Far more often, I get visual sleep starts, like a blinding flash of light just on the point of falling asleep. I haven't had it so much lately but I've had times where it's been a couple of times a week. I used to think it was lightning and look out the window, and if it was really bright, my head would jump straight to nuclear bomb. When nothing came, no storm, no shockwave, I decided it must have been car headlights coming in my window suddenly, but once I moved to Berlin and had a room with a roller shutter that makes my room pitch black, and it kept happening, I realised it must be a brain thing.)

It probably is a brain thing. However, I've had two non-brain-things that this reminds me of:
- I used to have a blindingly bright flashing light in my room; eventually I worked out that it was the tiny little blink of a smoke detector, reflecting off all the surfaces in the room. I sleep in a completely dark room, so the slightest flash of light can seem blinding.

- I also used to have a different sort of bright flashing light at night - usually localised in one place, but sometimes bigger. This is a common optical effect. It can be caused by overstraining the eyes before sleeping - reading books too long, or without enough light - or by looking at a bright computer screen in a room that's too dark. Now I try to make sure I use my computer in sufficient light, and to not sit too close to the screen, and I don't get the flashing anymore.

[hwhatting]

@Imralu: I second Jal's advice to get your hearing checked - at least part of what you experience may be physical. I'm wearing hearing aids myself for a couple of years now and they make life much easier.

[Imralu]

I've already had my hearing checked by an audiologist, as I think I mentioned, and everything was fine. That was a few years ago, in Australia, but these difficulties had already been around for quite a while, so while it's possible that my hearing has gotten worse since then, I'm pretty sure I'm dealing with something other than just hearing loss.

My ex, early on in our relationship, invented this rule for me that he wouldn't repeat something more than once for me. He claimed he didn't have to with anyone else, It really pissed me off - like, do you think I'm not doing my best? I used to get really passive aggressive and be like "Well, if you're not going to tell me, it must have been completely unimportant and maybe you should save your mumbling for important things." One day I heard him repeat something for his mother multiple times and when he got off the phone I was holding up the same number of fingers as he had repeated a sentence for her. That, and in the end when I made him accidentally admit that he didn't always listen to me made him stop refusing to repeat things for me. He was the one who encouraged me to have a hearing test and was a bit miffed that it was all in the normal range.

It's really hard on this bloody iPad to select text, copy, paste, delete etc. (you know, trivial things) and not much easier to actually type, but there's a lot of stuff about hallucinations etc, that I want to reply to just because it's interesting.

Travis: Yeah, if you don't hear anything added, I don't see how that could be defined as a hallucination. The end effect may seem the same to an external observer - you briefly didn't understand something - but from your description it sounds more like there's a temporary disruption in your processing of language. In the first couple of weeks of being on my current antidepressants, I occasionally stuttered, which I have never done in my life. Even now, I stutter occasionally when I get a bit flustered which is weird. I haven't seen it listed as a side effect of this medication. Maybe it's just that it makes me more anxious and that causes the stuttering. In any case, language processing is a hugely complicated thing that brains do, so if there seems to be nothing wrong with your hearing and no hallucination, then it's obviously a processing malfunction. The fact that it occurs with certain people and not others (if that's not just coincidence) means it could be stress related? My ability to speak German is different with different people too. I'm not sure what my point is except brains are weird.

Sal: Yeah, I generally look at eyes, if not down or away. When I'm struggling to understand I do sometimes consciously decide to look at the mouth because, in theory, that should lighten the load but I've never noticed it making it much easier - I'm worse than average at lipreading, so, yeah, the phone thing isn't just down to lack of vision. I often look away from people when they're talking, depending on my mood, and that seems to be little different from looking at someone's face. Now that I think of it, I've always liked to have the TV quite loud to be able to understand ... like, it has to drown everything else out.

I liked the macabre tangent about sleep. It's really interesting. The kinaesthetic hallucinations are something I know well from going on rides as a kid and then re-experiencing the feelings while lying in bed, or after spending the day jumping on a friend's trampoline. I quite liked that because they were pleasant feelings (I suppose falling is not pleasant but in the context of a trampoline or a ride, it is). I never really thought it was to do with falling asleep but more just that my body was still and at rest and this feeling wouldn't be drowned out by the general movement of my hyperactive child body. In recent times, the only such things I've had were after I had a bit of a bedroom adventure. After part one of the adventure, I felt something suddenly while I was sitting at work and it was kind of funny and cool - it was weird, but it was also a reminder of something going on in my life that I felt happy about. After part two of the adventure, in which I had cried on this fellow for the second time and started to feel horrible and torn about the whole thing, I kept getting random flashes of it as I was falling asleep and it didn't feel cool at all. It felt horrible, like I was all vulnerable and relaxed in my bed and suddenly part of acts that I didn't want to be involved in and it weirdly felt like an attack, even though it had all been completely consensual. Here we are back on my issues with sexuality. In any case, that got me questioning whether I really want to do any of those things at all, and even though it was something I wanted to do at the time, I had instrumentalised sexuality and seen it as a necessary step in getting someone to love me ... and, even though we hadn't done very much, I only recognised afterwards how awful it made me feel. I've seen the flash from sleeping in a room with a fire alarm (I'm trying to remember where) ... it's noticeable but it's not as bright as what I get. I realised at some point, that it's so bright it ought to hurt my eyes if it were real, or at least I should open my eyes and find them not quite ready for the dark. And I don't know if I get the overstrained eyes thing or not. Sometimes when I close my eyes to go to sleep, it's like there's a strobe light ... and I have noticed that caffeine is the main cause, but yeah, staring at screens all the time probably isn't also good. In any case, the visual sleep starts are a single bright flash and don't occur as soon as I close my eyes but at the point of sliding into sleep, like when hypn(agog)ic jerks occur.

Pole, the: I'm terrible at hearing song lyrics too. Weirdly enough, I find it way easier to hear words in German songs than in English. That might partly be an attention thing because I always want to improve my German, but really, I know the lyrics of more songs in German than in English. The words seem somehow more noticeable to me, more clearly pronounced. There are songs that Everyone knows the words to in English ... except for me. And I know about those sudden intrusive thoughts. Mine can be about things I forgot to do, or they can be various apocalypse scenarios. My brain is a fun place. Sorry about your grandma! And the glimpses thing you mentioned is interesting. I can't think if I've had something similar, but the longer I live, the more I realise how everyone's memory works a bit differently, and brains in general, in fact. The things that you assume would be the same for everyone are not (I've learnt not everyone has a constant feeling of where they think the compass directions must be) and the things that you assume make you completely weird are shared by a lot of people.

[jal]

I've already had my hearing checked by an audiologist, as I think I mentioned, and everything was fine. That was a few years ago, in Australia, but these difficulties had already been around for quite a while, so while it's possible that my hearing has gotten worse since then, I'm pretty sure I'm dealing with something other than just hearing loss.

Tht is possible of course, but e.g. earwax can build up pretty quickly (few months), so if it's such a benign problem, it wouldn't hurt having it checked.


JAL

[Imralu]

I've already had my hearing checked by an audiologist, as I think I mentioned, and everything was fine. That was a few years ago, in Australia, but these difficulties had already been around for quite a while, so while it's possible that my hearing has gotten worse since then, I'm pretty sure I'm dealing with something other than just hearing loss.

Tht is possible of course, but e.g. earwax can build up pretty quickly (few months), so if it's such a benign problem, it wouldn't hurt having it checked.

Well, there's the other little issue of only having travel insurance. I know I've got wax problems in my left ear - for about the last month I've heard crackling noises when I yawn or swallow.

[jal]

Well, there's the other little issue of only having travel insurance. I know I've got wax problems in my left ear - for about the last month I've heard crackling noises when I yawn or swallow.

Ah, yeah, that little issue :).


JAL

[Travis B.]

Fucking hell. While my mood is fine, I keep on having pronounced visual hallucinations non-stop except sometimes when I first wake up in the morning. It has been like this since last Thursday. While the quetiapine is probably contributing to the hallucinations, they were quite pronounced when I started it, and then died back considerably, and when they have gotten worse again has not corresponded to when the quetiapine has been increased, and I a long time ago had similar visual hallucinations without the quetiapine at all, implying that the quetiapine is only one component, and increasing the quetiapine does not make it worse. Also, I have been able to have normal mood at all since last May only when on quetiapine, and increasing the quetiapine has tamped down my paranoia considerably, implying that it probably is a good idea to stay on it - especially since antidepressants either do nothing for me or make me cycle, hard - and if I switch meds, who is to say what I switch to will work, or that quetiapine will work again if I switch back to it afterwards. Still, psychotic symptoms suck, and I wish I did not have to put up with something that made me hallucinate at all in the first place.

[finlay]

hangover

one or other of us last night talked the other into getting the big size beers, which i'm sure are more than a pint. it's the same price as the medium size beer but crap quality so no wonder i end up with a horrible headache all day. it's now almost 7pm and i'm almost starting to feel human again blaah

[jal]

After a week, I still can't fucking use my right foot, and in fact though the swelling is getting better, the foot hurts more than it did a few days ago. It also looks fucking hillareous with all the colours...


JAL

[Travis B.]

Okay, I was more psychotic than usual last night - I was getting thoughts that Facebook - the website itself - was threatening me, and I have some of such thoughts remaining today.

[Travis B.]

After a week, I still can't fucking use my right foot, and in fact though the swelling is getting better, the foot hurts more than it did a few days ago. It also looks fucking hillareous with all the colours...

That's great...

[jal]

That's great...

Yeah. Doesn't compare to Facebook threats, but yeah...


JAL

[Imralu]

You don't need to compare your vents to others', Jal. Vent thread knows no degree. Also, out of everyone, you have been the most consistent and supportive and responsive to other people's vents. As one of the most prolific venters, just wanted you to know you're appreciated. Painful unusable feet suck, please let it be known - although ... colours are pretty and surely more "interesting" to look at than a boring, healthy foot! (Silver lining, lol!)

Travis, I don't know how helpful this is to you, but from my admittedly limited knowledge of you, I really do get the impression that you're absolutely winning at observing yourself and identifying which thoughts correspond to reality and which are mental illness/drug effects and seriously, that's an incredibly valuable skill that the majority of people don't have (admittedly most won't need it, but many do and don't have it and they simply believe everything their brain tells them). I'm sure it probably doesn't make things any easier or more pleasant to experience, but to me it kind of makes me think that it's really unlikely that you'll ever get lost in mental illness. Maybe I'm projecting, because losing the battle with my brain, "getting lost", has been a big fear of mine for a long time, but if that is a fear of yours too, I hope you can see that you're pretty well armed. Hope that made sense and wasn't annoying or offensive.

And Finlay, thanks for making me stop missing alcohol. I've been feeling weirdly nostalgic about it lately. Are you still in Edinburgh or have you gone back to Japan?

[Travis B.]

Nah, I'd take being threatened by Facebook over not being able to use one of my feet. It's unpleasant, and worrisome, but really I can at least walk practically that way.

[Travis B.]

Travis, I don't know how helpful this is to you, but from my admittedly limited knowledge of you, I really do get the impression that you're absolutely winning at observing yourself and identifying which thoughts correspond to reality and which are mental illness/drug effects and seriously, that's an incredibly valuable skill that the majority of people don't have (admittedly most won't need it, but many do and don't have it and they simply believe everything their brain tells them). I'm sure it probably doesn't make things any easier or more pleasant to experience, but to me it kind of makes me think that it's really unlikely that you'll ever get lost in mental illness. Maybe I'm projecting, because losing the battle with my brain, "getting lost", has been a big fear of mine for a long time, but if that is a fear of yours too, I hope you can see that you're pretty well armed. Hope that made sense and wasn't annoying or offensive.

What you are referring to is insight, i.e. being aware that one's symptoms are symptoms and are not real, which I do typically have, but have not always fully had in the past. I get the opposite problem that people often don't take my symptoms seriously, as, after all, if I have insight they can't really be that bad. In particular, my psychosis is frequently seen as not that bad if I am aware that my psychotic thoughts are psychotic.

It seems to me that you have at least a decent amount of insight, and since you do not seem to me to have a psychotic illness, I would not worry about losing contact with reality. (Whereas in my case I do have psychotic symptoms, and they have seemed to have definitely gotten worse in the last few months. And while I usually have insight into them, I have not always had insight into the, including quite recently.)

And no, you were making sense and were not annoying or offensive.