Alarms and Availability

I’ve been thinking more about my morning anxiety, as it’s not an uncommon experience for my first thoughts to be worry. It was again today, though with a tighter schedule I spent less time in it.

Part of it is the trigger of my alarm. I got an alarm clock before I started kindergarten and have been responsible for getting myself up since then. I was excited when I was 5 to get a clock. It made being alone on the porch seem more bearable. And it was one of the only things I owned. But it was also a prop used by Mother to transfer her responsibilities and failures to me – it was my duty to be on time to things, as a 5-year-old, because I had a clock. As if owning a timepiece lets me control transportation or other people. Morning things in particular, since she didn’t ever get up with me, but also lots of her scheduled events. So when she would inevitably be late to things that was my problem l. There’s also the bit where letting her hear my alarm was seen as an attack, so I had to be sure to silence it as soon as possible. Ideally I would wake up ahead of time and disable it entirely. If I was still asleep I did what I could to turn it off, though it was rarely good enough to avoid punishment. And it was complicated by my lack of a bedside table ¹It just occurred to me that I kept that same alarm clock on the floor next to my bed through high school. I did eventually get a table but I used it only for a lamp on the far side of the bed, and never for the clock. I think that was in part related to not having 2 outlets on that side of the bed (and for other Mother reasons not being allowed a … Continue reading; I couldn’t reach my clock on the floor when I was young so I had to be out of bed to turn it off. So I’m sure all that makes the alarm set off some stress even if my sleeping brain was doing okay a minute earlier.

I know my sleeping brain is not always doing okay. I definitely grind my teeth – or at least do it more – when I’m stressed. And my sleep is lower quality, as evidenced by my ability to reliably take out and out away my night guard without any memory of the event, whereas on less stressful days I can sleep with my glasses or headphones on (or if I take them off they don’t leave the bed).
The fear I’m usually having in wakeup anxiety is about sufficiency. Sometimes of resources – survival fear about having enough to live (food or care or whatever). But more commonly about control. My control of myself (can I make myself do or not do a thing) or my control of others (can I arrange for others to create or allow a specific situation). The details are usually related to my recent life or things I’ve been thinking about but the fear is all pretty similar. It’s about how I’m not going to get what I need because of some personal failing, or about how I’m going to make do without it and stop feeling like I should need it.

So basically the same anxiety I have all the time but with the absence of the logical regulation I usually apply to help quell some of those fears. I definitely will get enough food today, if I bother it eat it. And I’ve stored up enough calories to make it a bunch of days without for that matter. But sleepy me is less sure of this so it becomes and easier target for anxiety. I don’t think the details matter though – one of the things that makes anxiety complicated is that it attaches to whatever your brain dreams up, like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. It reverse engineers a reason for the this feeling, and doesn’t really care if that “reason” makes and sense or has any influence. So I probably don’t need to worry about the specifics of the fear so much as the shape of it. If I made the anxiety better the targets of it would likely cease to feel important.

I should note that I don’t associate my waking anxiety with dreams. I don’t have any memory of any dream, anxious or otherwise, in at least the last 15 years. Possibly longer; my narraritve memory is not great. I presumably do dream like everyone else but I have no waking recollection of it whatsoever. It’s quite possibly a copping skill I picked up when I was young, to make sleeping easier.

E suggested lucid dreaming, when I talked about my morning anxiety yesterday. And that’s not a bad plan, though I don’t know if it requires concious awareness of dreams or not. But there’s decent research on both lucid dreaming and on other conscious manipulation of sleep states. It’s worth reading about if either sleep itself or your nighttime state are ever troublesome for you; it definitely is possible to learn things that make sleep different. Between E and @ViHart I’m fairly interested to put those topics back on my research reading list.

Had an exchange with a staff member at Ofit gym that made me wretch a little. I’m asking about their age discrimination policy and get told about still developing brains and how young people are great and I like them but they’re just not safe to have around. Because you see, older people have physically detectable differences and that means that young people aren’t really humans. Fucking master race nonsense. But their discrimination ends at 16 so it’s sufficient for my goals, and doesn’t require an annual membership. They also have the (fairly standard but still insane) policy of claiming they need legal documentation to prove guardianship but not paternity. Claim that you have inherited parental rights and there’s no paperwork, but claim you have explicitly assigned rights and you need a court order. But it’s good enough for this week and I’d rather gym with E than argue with employees who don’t care about the rights of young people.

I read this today, and it feels pretty similar to they way I don’t feel entitled to want things. Or the way I’m a million percent sensitive to poor initial reactions to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/auz6e5/

And I read this, including the better story in the comments about a treatable hand injury: https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/auw8q7/ It’s right on topic for the combination of narcissism and anxiety and neglect that left me without medical care. Don’t notice the problem, don’t want to think about it when they do, wants sympathy for having to put up with me being in pain. Plus the bits where you can’t tell anyone because Mother is afraid of getting in trouble for being a bad parent even when it /was/ just a random injury. It’s one of the things that makes me very sensitive to avoidance, because I know it’s possible to live there for 20 years and hurt not just yourself but the people around you with that enforced ignorance.

E suggested http://www.hpmor.com/ Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is now on my list. I never got into Harry Potter because the boy under the stairs hits too close to home, and the series is more interested in adventure and whimsy than addressing any of oppression in the sort of terrible world it lays out. Plus I’m old; I was an undergrad when the first movie came out. But it sounds like this serial fanfic speaks to those points and I’m excited to try it.

I got the test I had planned for work today done, though not with positive results. I’m pretty sure it’s a test failure and I’m gonna see if I can get the test author to fix it for me tomorrow. I had hoped to blown off work entirely tomorrow because I did a ton today, but it would also be nice to get this bug closed. I got all meetings today too.
I got Eggsy’s box done and should be able to send it tomorrow if I don’t get bogged down with work. I hope to get through several errands in fact, as I’m pretty busy all week and traveling over the weekend. Took the dog out early and climbed the hill. Dealt with 3 different gyms and poked at someone I know who was spreading harmful propaganda. They were spreading disingenuous claims of care for young people that are actually just an effort value-signal a political belief they have no intention of actually addressing, all while propping up power structures that hurt people every day and distracting themselves and others with fake moral outrage.

Shanda is still at a medium-high stress level. It’s more controlled now but still a barrier to easy days. And she’s plenty busy all this week too, at work, with her own errands, and with household tasks. It’s possible to eek out good times with her but it’s also easy to be pushed away just for noticing she’s nervous.

And probably other things because my brain was very busy today. But it’s super late and I actually have to work tomorrow in addition to all my errands and therapy.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.