Happy New Year to you all! How has your new year been to you so far? Mine has been not great, but we're only two weeks in so there's still all to play for.
Over Christmas and New Year I was trying out some migraine-preventative medication for some ongoing dizziness I've been having since autumn of 2021. It didn't work, but what it did do was lead to a recurrence of my panic attack disorder from over 10 years ago. That wasn't fun. The meds didn't cause the panic attacks (I don't think) but they might have caused the heart palpitations which I worried about a lot and which worry did lead to the panic attacks. Or maybe the heart palpitations were caused by my worry alone. Either way, it wasn't super pleasant, and the medication wasn't even working for my dizziness, so my doctor and I are working to take me off it now.
As a mental health segue, I mentioned in my last couple of posts that I was seeking therapy. I didn't mention that I was seeking therapy because I was diagnosed with a personality disorder. That was wild! My flavour of personality disorder is OCPD or Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. I had always wondered if a) I wasn't as neurotypical as I originally thought and b) if actually I had some other OCD-type traits outside of the full-blown OCD I had at the same time I had my panic attack disorder over 10 years ago. Turns out I was right on both counts! But it took until 2023 to find out what the name for it was.
OCPD is very common in the population but hardly anyone knows about it. One of the main reasons is that a symptom of the disorder is to not realise that you have a disorder. When I read the list of symptoms and recognised several in myself, my main thought was: yes I probably have that, but I'm fine though, I'm coping. It's only been through several months of introspection that I've realised that while I may have been coping, I wasn't really thriving. I wasn't really enjoying myself. I just thought everyone lived with this level of background anxiety and stress.
So I'm doing therapy, I'm on the road to recovery to banish the anxiety and the stress and recalibrate my work-fun balance away from work and towards fun. It's going to take a while (the thing with personality disorders is that they involve your whole personality). But I'll get there. So that's going to be my 2024, I reckon!
If you here, you, are reading this, do yourself a favour and look up OCPD, look at the list of symptoms and consider if it might be you. And if you think it's you and you think you are fine as you are? Go seek help anyway. Go on. Do it. You should do it. Everything could be so much more relaxing than it is right now. It could be so much better. Have questions? Ask me. I'm not an expert but there's so little info out there, especially first-person accounts of the disorder, that I want to help if I can.
Wow. So, I meant to write just a paragraph and I got a bit distracted. Dealing with this has been my life since August, so there were words ready to come out. I'll write more at some point. For now what I wanted to do was share my Christmas presents with you.
A whole slew of cards!
Food gifts. Not pictured: the homemade chocolate chip and seed flapjacks that I got from my cousin after I took this photo. Delicious! We have here: chocolate biscuits and the tiniest frying pan in the world from my parents (it makes one egg look big); delicious candy from Mariya, including some very very posh lollipops; and a Gudetama cookbook from Mariya! I received the cookbook on a day when my mental health wasn't great and it was so nice to see Gudetama telling me that it's ok if I feel tired and fed-up, I can eat delicious food anyway!
Clothing and homewares from my parents. Those are reed diffusers in winter scents, and there's only one torch in the pack because it was a joint gift and the other one went to my Mum. The picture of a suitcase came from my parents. I had asked for a new suitcase but we went and bought one after Christmas so this was an IOU.
Bathroom gifts. The very cute face masks and face wash came from Mariya, and the Jo Malone gift set is from Asia (I've never used Jo Malone scents before but they're very nice; I might be a convert). The towels are from my parents. I have realised that as I am about to enter middle age I need to up my guest towel game, so what better than nice white towels for guests to use (for up to two guests and no more).
Finally, books. Tolkien books! "The Fall of Númenor" was a complete surprise from my parents. I didn't even know this book existed! Watching "The Rings of Power" TV series has made me yearn for more of the Second Age so this book will be great. The Beowulf translation is a gift to myself. I went to the Fantasy exhibition at the British Library, which was really enjoyable. This book was in the giftshop and I couldn't pass it up. I have never read Beowulf and what better than a translation by Tolkien?
I hope you had a lovely Christmas. Here's to 2024 as a year of healing. (Healing and Beowulf.)