IN MY MIND: On Being a Person

Being a person is hard, right?

I've been seeing a therapist again – highly recommended – and the biggest things we talk about are executive dysfunction and how I struggle to relate to and communicate with other people. This past weekend the Edinburgh International Improv Festival took place and for four days my city was suddenly filled with a whole bunch of improvisers I either knew quite well, had half-met online, or were just straight up strangers to me. The actual shows, coaching and jams I was involved in or got to watch were great, despite the constant stress of doing anything on this scale – or, y'know, at all – while we're still living through a global pandemic. But the social side of it was hard. I'm struggling to put into words exactly how hard, which is probably why I'm writing this. Just trying to get it out of my head and into a form I can begin to unpack, I guess? Could be because I didn't have therapy this week yet? Maybe I'll just keep it to myself? If you're reading this, I didn't.

I struggle a lot with when to correctly use terms like neurotypical and neurodivergent, especially with applying them to myself. I have long term overlapping diagnoses of obsessive compulsive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder and social anxiety disorder mixed with a dawning realisation that I might – and my therapist would say probably do – also have undiagnosed ADHD. You'd think that'd be enough for me to give myself a break about my social skills and maybe admit that there's some wiring stuff in my brain that I'm not completely in control of, but I'm not a doctor, so... I mean, my doctor is a doctor. And my psychiatrist was a doctor. And my therapist isn't a doctor, but she's definitely significantly more informed than I am...

See what I mean about struggling with putting this into words? Anyway, for four days I was in a situation where I was seeing so many people, with so many different levels of connection, after two years of barely seeing anyone in person and it was A LOT. I spent so much of the weekend swinging from so excited to be in a space with so much creativity and excitement for an artform I love, to being absolutely terrified and overwhelmed by the whole experience. On more than one occasion I just went to a quiet spot in the venue, put my noise-cancelling headphones one and just shut down for a few minutes. Desperately making time to process the sheer amount of social stimuli I was encountering. It kinda sorta worked. A bit.

I'm aware I'm not alone in being tired out by the past two years. Not, like, sleepy tired. Physically exhausted, emotionally hollowed out tired. In my first session with my new therapist I called it “soul-tired”. Like so many things throughout this global traumatic event, though, I'd almost got used to it. My energy levels and the number of spoons available to me have always fluctuated, so I just adapted to the baseline being even lower. The word “just” doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. We've slowly been able to get back to some semblance of work with our touring shows and I've been lucky enough to have long gaps between where I can rest and recuperate from the energy those take out of me. From the beginning of the year I got ill with some unexpected extreme vertigo and some very expected sinusitis and again I've been privileged enough to be able to take time to recover from those, too. I don't think I'd really thought about how exhausting being in such a unique social situation as an improv festival would be.

We were able to do one week of the Edinburgh Fringe in 2021, but with significantly more restrictions than we have now. I was able to see a few friends in one-on-one situations and it was all very lovely and manageable. Being in one or two spaces with so many people, with so many different kinds and intensities of relationships... Less manageable. I often struggle to connect to even my best friends socially in a way that doesn't leave me feeling worried and anxious that I've done something wrong and/or hurt someone or ruined something. Generally speaking the less I know someone, the bigger that worry and anxiety gets. I don't really understand the rules yet, unless I already know you. That kind of thing. Trying to learn or relearn the rules for so many people in such an intense timeframe was impossible and draining.
I'd stay close to my closer friends as a buffer, trying to position myself in rooms so I could filter how many people I'd talk to, occasionally getting the energy and courage to approach someone briefly, reacting when I could to people doing the same, kicking myself for missing the chance to to meet new people, squinting at people's masked faces to check if I recognised them from Zoom, racking my brain to remember if I'd met someone in some random part of the improv world six years earlier, forgetting to introduce people to each other like we do in polite society, desperately rambling on and on with some obscure trivia about improv or anything else, embarrassedly accepting or more likely deflecting compliments, hurriedly spilling out my own before scampering back to my corner... Then home for restless sleep filled with anxiety dreams and back to do it again the next day, inevitably sleeping in so much I'd run late for what I had planned.

That last paragraph makes it sound like a nightmare. Like I hated every second. But while it was exhausting and terrifying, it was also pretty great. It was hard, but so rewarding. It was terrifying, but so exciting. It was exhausting, but also invigorating?

My therapist and I are working on resources and strategies to help me with relating to people. Because people – on the whole – are pretty amazing. I was so blessed this weekend to meet, remeet or just spend time with so many amazing people, talk to them and see them do their thing! I would love to do that more! We're working on ways to make that less hard, less terrifying and less exhausting! I'm looking forward to it.

Being a person is hard, right? But it's also super worth it?

IN MY MIND: Talking Is Hard

Because of how my brain works and my general personality, I can find communication really difficult. After a year of mainly interacting with people over Zoom or any number of other online platforms, I've been thinking about it a lot and wanted to... Uh... Communicate that.

I was a quiet kid and looking back, I can see why that was. There was a lot going on in my mind that I wouldn't understand until decades later, so I spent a lot of time confused in my own head. I had interests that differed from most of my peers - an unsurprising amount of these being traditionally gendered interests like sports, etc. - and a few toxic people and bullies in my school that led to me being a bit of a loner and left me with very little self-confidence. There's one year of school where I pretty much only talked to my teachers or the school librarian, so I often feel like I missed out on a lot of the period where everyone else in my class was developing social skills. I guess I've felt like I've been playing catch-up ever since.

My parents encouraged me to take part in a lot of extracurricular activities and groups, but nothing really clicked until I joined a local drama group and could to talk as someone not myself. I was luckily able to take Drama as subject in high school and made friends that way. I have been lucky that was able to carry that passion into University and have it evolve into what is my improv career today. Slowly and surely I built something resembling self-confidence, but there was always a strong boundary between the confidence of the 'me' onstage and the 'me' offstage. Of course, with University there also came alcohol and for a while that seemed like a great shortcut into socialising until I realised I was relying on it way too heavily and realised I had a serious problem. Around about this time I also found out I had some serious mental health problems with my anxiety and my OCD and things slowly started to improve. There was a lot going on.

I saw a therapist for 4 years and one of the main things we talked about was how I relate to other people. For all the reasons above and many more, it's always been a struggle for me to trust that the people I'm talking to actually want me to be there. It doesn't matter how close we are or how long we've been friends, that social anxiety is ever-present and unavoidable for me. I easily revert to that terrified and alienated child who has no idea how to communicate and no idea why people would want to try in the first place. That's a lot to bring into every single social interaction I have. My brain is also wired in ways that I don't fully understand, but definitely don't feel neurotypical.

Some of the ways this manifests are pretty obvious if you've spent much time with me. I leap onto topics that I know even a little about and talk excitedly about them to prove I can contribute, regardless of if that was the main topic or if someone else was talking. I fill silences immediately, because silence means boredom and boredom means people don't want to be there. I'll have extremely strong opinions about things I don't know or care that much about, because I spent so much of my life never trusting myself that I overcompensate and commit hard to things i really don't need to. My mind will race ahead somewhere or become become stuck on something from earlier, meaning I'll either respond to something from ages ago in the conversation or rapidly change the subject to something my mind has made a connection to two steps in the future. I often miss soical cues like jokes, flirting, annoyance or subtle hints to change the topic. I'm sure there are a million other things I do in conversations that drive people mad and I spend a considerable amount of energy DURING said conversations obsessively imagining what they might be. Basically, I'm amazed people aren't constantly exhausted just being in the same social space as me.

I think that since coming out a few years ago and becoming more comfortable with myself, I'd been getting better at a lot of these things, but the past year has made me really aware of how far I still have to go. Cross-talking and interrupting on Zoom basically silences the person you're talking over, so it's hard to miss when i do that. My anxious paranoia over silences is amplified a million times by technical limitations like lag and poor connections. Side conversations - so often an oasis for me in a crowded room - are basically impossible. I'm hyper aware of how often I do or do not initiate conversations or invite people to meetings, etc. and constantly panic whether it's too much or too little depending on the person...

There's not really an end or coherent central point to this. That's another aspect of communication I struggle with. I just wanted to say that it's been hard. For all the people I've talked over, ignored, upset, offended, annoyed or just plain confused, I'm sorry. Just know that I am trying. I love talking to people! I just need to finally catch up on how to do it.

IN MY MIND: Spoons Are Not Just For Eating

I can understand why people would think I'm lazy. I think I'm lazy most of the time.

It is 5.30pm and all I have done today is watch a 40 minute recorded Instagram live with a comedian talking about her ASD diagnosis. That is not a productive day. The rest of my time has been spent lying in a dark room with my own thoughts.

If you're not familiar with spoon theory, let me give you a broad overview. The term was coined in an essay by Christine Miserandino - looking up her name is the second thing I have done today - to describe living with lupus and the way it affected her energy levels. Essentially the metaphor is to imagine you have a number of spoons and each time you do something, you have to hand over a spoon to do it. The number of spoons you have at the start of a day can vary wildly and can only be replenished through rest. In her essay, Miserandino talks a friend through this, taking spoons from them as they describe their day. The friend gets down to one last spoon and mentions that they're hungry. Eating is a spoon. Cooking is a spoon. Cleaning up after cooking is a spoon. Everything is a spoon. Choose your spoons wisely.

Right now at 5.50pm - writing this has taken longer than you might think - there are lots of things I need spoons for. I need to go to the toilet, I would like to brush my teeth, I should shower, I should eat something, I should take something for my headache and sinusitis, I have a cool teaching opportunity I want to apply for, I have a lesson plan for a class I'm co-teaching that I need to write down for my co-teacher, I have podcasts I'd like to listen to, I should go to the shop to pick up things I missed yesterday, I am rewatching Veronica Mars with my flatmate, I should tidy my room, I should do laundry, I should check my e-mail, I have a D&D campaign I want to plan, I should change my sheets, I have an idea fro a script I want to write, I want to plan to run drop-in improv classes, I want to talk to friends, I want to video call my niece, I should get dressed, I should check my e-mail...

I am doing none of these things. What I'm mainly doing - besides writing this - is figuring out how many spoons I have and which of these things I'm going to assign them to. Ironically and inevitably, this process costs me a spoon. When I run out of spoons for today - and I will - I rest and reset and do the same thing tomorrow. Maybe I'll have more spoons. Maybe less. I'm not writing this for sympathy or as a cry for help, I'm just explaining that this is my day. Constantly and exhaustedly searching for spoons and trying to use them to be my best me.

You might still think I'm lazy. Maybe you can do all of that stuff no problem. Maybe you can do enough of that stuff to be content and 'productive'. I'm pleased for you. I just play the spoons that I'm dealt.

IN MY MIND: 'Pure' Representation of My OCD

So, last night I finally got around to watching Pure on Netflix, after it being on my radar since it was first on two years ago. It's a show about a young Scottish woman named Marnie who has just finished University with an English degree she has no idea how to use and a mental illness she is only just beginning to understand. Me ten years ago could not possibly relate...

Marnie discovers she has OCD, but denies it at first because 'she's not tidy' and 'doesn't wash her hands too much'. Like, these are conversations I literally had with friends, doctors and therapists! Happening on a TV show! Marnie's OCD doesn't manifest in the stereotypical ways because despite what the media shows, there is no stereotypical ways for OCD to manifest! Like me, Marnie struggles with what is sometimes called 'Pure O' - part of the double meaning of the show's title.

OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and most people focus exclusively on the 'C' - the compulsions. These are more visible than the 'O' - the obsessive thoughts. You can see a person switch lights on and off a number of times divisible by 5, you can't see the obsessive intrusive thought that is driving them to do that. Compulsions in people with OCD usually manifest as a way to 'deal with' or 'control' these unwanted thoughts. If you obsess over making a family member ill, you may compulsively wash your hands. If you obsess over forgetting something important and letting someone down, you might compulsively order or tidy your possessions. If you obsess over you or a loved one being killed in a car crash, you might compulsively check if the numbers on car registration plates add up to be prime numbers or divisible by 8 because that makes them 'lucky'.

That last one was one of mine by the way.

What Marnie - and I - discover is that these compulsions can be abstract, arbitrary, destructive, off-putting and intermittent, but they do not help. We also both turned to heavy drinking to 'help', with Marnie's words in one episode - 'The only way to know how I feel in my body is to feel nothing in my mind' - echoing almost exactly something I said to a psychiatrist years ago. Marnie's obsessive thoughts are almost entirely sexual in nature - the other ironic part of the title's double meaning. She can't help but imagine friends, strangers and even family members in extreme sexual situations and this naturally causes her great distress. My obsessive thoughts are usually incredibly violent, either involving myself, friends, family members or total strangers as victims or perpetrators of accidents or assaults and this obviously causes me great distress. These are thoughts that we would never act upon and don't represent our morals or desires, but we cannot help but think them.

While my compulsions have always been few and far between, the thoughts are always there. At its worst it was 24/7, seeping into my dreams and seriously affecting my ability to live anywhere near a normal life. Three main things have helped me with this: years of therapy to develop coping strategies beyond compulsive behaviours, anti-anxiety medication to level out my distress, and an evolving support network of friends and family who understand at least part of what's going on in my head and make accommodations for me.

So, yeah... I liked it. The actors are all great, the main characters are likeable and it's funny. Maybe most importantly to me, though, it's a really spot-on bit of representation for something that I very rarely - if ever - see portrayed well onscreen. A reminder that I am far from alone in this and even if - as Marnie is frustrated to discover - there is no getting 100% 'better', there is always hope, positivity and progress.