Catastrophizing.

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Credit:  imdb.com

Every time the Internet goes down, I panic and catastrophize the situation, always assuming one of the following:

  1.  Someone who hates me hacked my computer and/or sent me a virus so I can’t get Internet access.
  2. My computer is broken.
  3. My computer is broken because someone who hates me sent me a virus that destroyed my hard drive.
  4.  My computer is broken because someone hacked it and I will never be able to afford a new one.

Of course, it’s none of these things.  The Internet and my computer are both fine; last night Charter was just down for a few hours.  But of course, in my mind, it can’t ever be something minor and temporary.  It always has to be catastrophic and permanent.

The weirdness of my dreams.

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I’ve been doing a lot of Google searches about dreams to find out if anyone else knows what I’m talking about, but I haven’t seen anyone else describe this exact same thing, which makes me wonder if it’s just me, or if it’s one of those things that’s so hard to describe it’s just taken for granted as something that comes with the territory of dreams, which are weird by nature.

I’m talking about the feeling or mood that accompanies dreams, not the strangeness or illogic of the actual actions taking place.  In fact, it’s in the more mundane dreams–those that imitate real life or take place in familiar settings or situations–where the feeling is the strongest.   It’s almost impossible to describe.   Things just feel different–not in a bad or good or scary way–but just different.  It’s not that things seem flatter or the colors seem washed out  because my dreams have as much color (sometimes more so) in them as my reality and things certainly don’t appear flat or two dimensional.   It’s not that fantastical things happen either, because in most of my dreams, nothing much happens at all (if anything weird happens, it’s more likely to be of a slightly absurd or random nature than anything resembling a fantasy novel).  It’s not anything you can actually point to in the dream and say, “That’s it, right there!”   It’s a vaguely eerie mood or feeling, but it’s not really an emotion.   I always think of it as a “parallel universe” effect–things can even be the same as they are in waking reality, but you know it isn’t waking reality because it just doesn’t feel the same.   It’s as if my everyday reality were transported to another universe.   All my dreams have this same parallel-universeness about them which makes me able to distinguish them from waking reality–most of the time.

Sometimes my brain makes errors though. I’ve been a little obsessed over the past day or two with two or maybe three memories that I can’t figure out were memories of a dream or memories of a real event.   Complicating matters is the fact that I occasionally experience dissociation, especially derealization, in which waking reality takes on that same odd feeling dreams have.   When that happens there’s nothing much (other than waking up) that distinguishes “dream” from “reality” and that makes me feel a bit insane sometimes.

Rude, entitled jerk.

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First, a little background so the following screenshot makes sense. My son is part of an online community that buys and sells art to other members.  In this community, there’s a certain etiquette expected when you buy art from another member.  If you have a webpage, you are expected to link to the seller’s webpage who sold you the art.  It’s considered common courtesy and no one asks any questions.  It’s just done.

The individual who wrote this rant had bought art from another member and is ranting about why he/she is refusing to link to the artist’s site. The artist’s signature is also edited out, so the artist never gets any credit.   This individual is clearly an entitled, rude jerk.   I don’t know if this person is a narcissist , since  an isolated instance of rude, entitled behavior isn’t enough of a marker if other symptoms aren’t also present (they may just be an everyday asshole), but it certainly seems likely.  The last paragraph seems to be a projection of the jerk’s own sense of entitlement onto the artists whose work he or she has defaced.

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Monday Melody: Betterman (Pearl Jam)

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Looking over my list of Monday Melodies so far, I noticed I only included two songs from the ’90s so far, which surprises me since the ’90’s may be my favorite decade for music (It was a lot more versatile than other decades) before it all went to hell.

Although Pearl Jam was classified as “grunge” and came out of Seattle at the same time as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains in the early ’90s, some grunge purists argue that Pearl Jam isn’t really grunge at all and really owes more to classic rock than to punk or grunge.   I probably agree with that, but for me it’s not a problem, because I grew up listening to classic rock.  On my local classic rock station, you can hear Pearl Jam played along with Led Zeppelin and the Stones.   There was no one who could look crazier than Eddie Vedder on stage, but he sure could sing his butt off and there really aren’t any Pearl Jam songs I don’t like.

Betterman was released in 1994 (has it really been 22 years?!) and is one of their more well known songs.  It’s not everyone’s favorite, but I love it. I actually like its pop-rock sound.

 

Ask yourself…

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5minutes

“Doctor shopping”? Oh, PLEASE!

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Not long ago, I wrote about my housemate, a woman several years older than me who lives with chronic, unrelenting, severe pain due to a number of chronic medical conditions. I ranted about how none of the doctors will prescribe this woman any pain medicine, because of the dumb drug laws in this state, which are very strict. But IMHO, they’ve gone way too far. If you’re wealthy, of course, you can pay a doctor to give you pain medicine, but because this woman is on SSDI and gets Medicare, she doesn’t have much choice in who she can see. Now she is being accused of “doctor shopping” and is required to attend an evaluation for substance abuse before anyone can prescribe her anything. As far as I know, this woman has never been addicted to drugs! Oh, but she might *get* addicted. *eyeroll*  She might even be distributing, even though she is 60 years old, can barely walk, and doesn’t know anyone here anyway.  So I guess she’s just supposed to LIVE with the pain?  If it were me, you’d better believe I’d be “doctor shopping.”

She’s supposed to be having surgery (knee and shoulder replacement), but they keep putting it off and in the meantime, are doing NOTHING to help her.

I wouldn’t normally get involved in something like this, because under normal circumstances it would violate my boundaries (and probably hers too), but I wrote this letter of my own accord, because I am at my wit’s end and my boundaries are being violated anyway, by this woman’s constant pain I must deal with.  I will not toss her on the streets (although I could and may have to if things don’t get better or she gets much worse) but it’s very, very difficult to live with someone in severe, chronic pain who talks about nothing else, even if it’s a close relative like your mother, but this is a woman I didn’t know from Adam until last October. I don’t know how much this letter is going to help (it’s probably more useful as a rant to get things off my own chest); she probably needs to get an advocate (I know they’re out there), but I have no idea how she would go about getting one.   The behavior of the so-called “medical profession” toward people like my housemate is appalling, in my opinion. So I ranted off in this letter, which I hope you can read. You may need to click on the photos to make them large enough to read.

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One step up on the corporate ladder!

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This seemed so insignificant at first I almost forgot to post about it.

On Thursday I was summoned by my boss, who told me I’m being promoted to a semi-supervisory position. It doesn’t pay a lot more and the job isn’t really any less crappy, but it’s still recognition for being good at my crappy job, and that does feel kind of good, especially in a crappy economy in a geographic area where good jobs are scarce and almost everyone who isn’t independently wealthy is slaving away at McJobs and trying to get by on $8 an hour.

I never asked to be promoted at this job, and really don’t care that much one way or the other (what I really want to do is write and publish a book–what’s stopping me, anyway?), but I realized that this promotion really is kind of a big deal, because I’m one of those people who is rarely chosen for promotions in most jobs (in spite of almost always getting excellent performance reviews). I think I get overlooked a lot because I never projected much confidence and always tended to be a pushover in work situations and fade into the woodwork. I think therapy is making me act more self confident or something, and this is a small testament to to that.  I also noticed people seem to like me more than they used to, or maybe it’s just that I’m less hypervigilant now and don’t keep imagining that everyone hates me.

Re-mother’s day gift.

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I’ve always liked to buy small gifts for myself when I can afford to (usually something natural like rocks or plants). Because I’m reparenting myself (with the help of my therapist and God), I decided to treat myself to a Mother’s Day gift. I bought some wind chimes, a few summer outfits from Goodwill (don’t knock it — you can’t beat the prices and I can always find something perfect), and this ridiculously adorable “string of pearls” plant (Senecio rowleyanus, a succulent vine that grows in Southwestern Africa) hanging from a tiny clay pot and surrounded by a copper wire in a heart shape:

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Isn’t it cute?

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My tuxedo cat, Sheldon, reminding me he wants to be the center of attention.

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Fine, Sheldon. Are you happy now?

Just Saying ~ May 6th

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So true.

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We don’t need a malignant narcissist in the White House.

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Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’ — Ted Cruz

I’m talking about The Donald, of course. Most politicians have a narcissistic style or narcissistic traits, but we have probably never had a president with fullblown NPD. Author and narcissism expert Sam Vaknin has watched over 600 hours of footage of Trump and pegs him as a malignant narcissist. I believe him. Yikes!

Former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz had a few words about Trump too. He was enraged when Trump accused Cruz’s father of being involved in JFK’s assassination, and exploded to the press. Here is the transcript of that, and an accompanying video of Cruz’s entire rant.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/03/cruz_explodes_pathological_liar_trump_a_narcissist_at_a_level_i_dont_think_this_country_has_ever_seen.html