Perspective.

[mrissa]

When we lived in California, I had to go to the ocean every few months. It was just a piece of myself I knew: that I would need something flat and open and much much bigger than myself. Something that did not loom up suddenly, cutting off bits of sky. Something that was not full of people. What I needed was prairie, but I could make approximations with the ocean.

One of the good things about this was that I had identified the need clearly, and I had identified the closest thing that would fit it, and while I might not always be able to fit it in right away when it came up, that part was a matter of patience, which I can fake with the best of them.

Right now, head-down in PT, I don't know what the brain readjustment is. I don't know what I can do to recalibrate here; I don't know what my source of perspective ought to be. But I need some. I need some way to convince my brain of a sense of scale again.

I don't mind hearing suggestions, but I don't have any expectation that the answer on this one is going to come externally, so please don't suggest anything if you're emotionally attached to me doing it.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

No suggestions, just a fervent hope that you can FIND what you need, and find it before too long.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

When I moved from my home in Illinois to my college outside of Philadelphia, I felt continually shut in, but generally didn't realize it. It was only when I was going home, when I was in a car and first hit a highway where everything spread out and away on all sides (not prairie, because Illinois exterminated its prairie except in tiny islands of country grave yards, and narrow strips along the train lines, but soybeans and corn) with thin, short stands of sycamores at evenly spaced intervals for windbreaks, and the individual houses - one there, and then another one over there, and none between them, and tomorrow's weather visible on the horizon - it was only when I felt knots I hadn't even known 'd built up in my shoulders and back start to come loose that I realized how homesick I'd been for my rightful landscape.

I tried to like woods. In my imagination, they were things that one found beautiful, almost holy. Mostly, they made me nervous. I remember being in the car with other people driving through back-country PA, trying to get them to slow down when we hit the crest of a low rise in the middle of a meadow, so that I could breathe for a minute or two.

After 8 or 9 years on the east coast, I stopped feeling actively oppressed by the 80 degrees of sky available to me, and that I started to find woods as beautiful as plains. And I still need breathing space.

I discovered the ocean the same way you describe it - the only experience of openness available. For me, the ocean is a dozen other things as well, things that get tangled in my guts and yank, not caring what comes free. But one of the main things the ocean is is big and wide and flat and uninhabited. It has a horizon. That's important.

I don't know what you'll find that will give you the same sensation, but I hope you find it soon. The big thing - well, one of the big things - about--well! about big things, about the wide spaces - is that you can't (one can't, I can't) get what you need from them on a tight schedule. It takes time - not just a lot of time, but an open-ended sense of time - to change in the way the wide places change people, to come loose from the shape you held tightly in the narrower spaces and spread out until you find your own edges again. So I wish that for you.

Sometimes rolling, unforested hills can help, if you can't get plains or oceans. And a lot of silence, or something very close. And enough time, with no one checking their watch.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Hust a thought, and no attachment, but I got some of that sea sense when I drove along one of the big lakes up your way. Big sky, serene, and vast space, with blue, blue waters.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I don't know, Marissa. I don't know if this is something anyone else can tell you or suggest. I might not even be hearing the right question. All I can do is tell you what works for me.

I spent a huge portion of my younger years at the beach, so I understand perfectly what you mean about the openness and people not being around. I loved just sitting on the sand, watching gulls wheel across the sky and the waves hiss across the sand. There was a great deal of peace in that for me.

As I got older, and moved away from the ocean, I found that same sense of peace in forest and trees. There is something about sitting in the woods and listening to the quiet, the sound of wind in leaves and birds calling to one another that centers me. It's one of the things I love best about where I live now: trees and water and quiet.

You call it a sense of scale or perspective, I call it being centered, but I'm guessing it's approximately the same thing. We all have an instinctual need for something that grounds us and results in that sigh of recognition that says Yes, this is right. This is what I needed. Here I can be still.
And not knowing what that perspective is has got to be the most frustrating thing when your head is spinning constantly and the only way to make it better is to make it worse for a while.

All I can suggest is to listen for the quiet moments, to look for the moments of internal stillness and use them to recalibrate.

Not emotionally attached to that suggestion, just to you. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah, I have made myself unclear: I have plenty of wide open space here. It's not that brain adjustment that's wanting. It's the one for being up to my ears in PT and the lousy feelings that brings, and for not letting that color too much of the rest of my world.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's not the space that's lacking. I have plenty of space. It was just the analogy: that the ocean was a brain readjustment I knew how to do for when I was feeling cramped by my physical surroundings. I don't know how to do one for being cramped by the PT and the nasty feelings it brings.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, I get it now. doh. You have my complete and total sympathy. I sure wish there was a way to help.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I find that when I have one giant thing consuming my life (eg: attempting to adopt a baby) the best tonic is another giant, life-consuming thing (eg: attempting to write a novel). It adds to the stress but considerably reduces the angst, for me, because it gives me two separate goals, and I have a lot more control over the outcome of the second than of the first. It doesn't have to be a difficult thing as long as you can throw yourself into it with some intensity--learning to knit, something like that.

Also, if you're kind of stuck, physically, reading history can sometimes take you out of yourself and give you a sense of perspective. Again, the more of a big project you make it, the more it creates a counterbalance in your mind for whatever's weighing on you. And if you're struggling with physical ability, deliberately stretching your mind is a good way to feel less limited and remind yourself of the stuff that still works the way you're used to having it work.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Ah! Sorry. I resonated so strongly to the one, I misunderstood the other, even though I think I understand what you are getting at, or something close.

PT brings nasty feelings? Are they a concentration of the nasty feelings of the vertigo, or something about PT semi-separate from the thing its meant to treat?

(I would say something like, 'Don't answer if you'd rather not,' but I am content that you wouldn't, no matter what. It's very reassuring. I will say that if explaining it isn't useful or something you want to do, I'm not going to be surprised or offended by your preference not to answer my potentially intrusive questions.)

[elsue.livejournal.com]

I count. If something has a set duration (say, a month, or 965 pages, or whatever), I calculate the percentage elapsed and percentage remaining each time I've made it through an increment. If not, I just count what has elapsed. It's a reminder that "at least this much no longer has to be done"; somehow I'm better able to let it go for the rest of the day.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, two things: PT exacerbates the vertigo and brings on nausea. Whee. But the other thing is that I know I'm doing it to myself. I know that I will feel, in the short-term, worse after I've done my PT. And I have to deliberately do it anyway; it can't be done passively.

Also I am frustrated by not being able to do more of things I like to do, but that's a second-order effect.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Internal stillness is what I mostly don't have. I'm waking up dizzy and nauseated in the middle of the night, much less the daytime when I'm doing stuff.

But sometimes. Maybe.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, I am working on a new novel. Which is a good thing; it just doesn't seem to be the thing, in that sense.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

Back in the early 80's, I attended a role-playing game convention and sat in on a game run by sandy Peterson, one of the fellows who wrote Call of C'thulhu and Runequest. and he was talking about this player, Andy, out in California who was just amazing.

At one point, the party needed to sneak into a castle. Everybody had their ideas about how to do it, and then the table fell silent, and Andy piped up. "All that's too complicated. What we do is buy radishes. A whole cart-ful of radishes. And we throw them into the moat..."

And everybody waited for the rest of the plan. Because Andy was really a clever player.

And finally, one fellow at the table realized that nothing more was forthcoming. "That's -- That's a bad plan, Andy."

So, I'd suggest a cartful of radishes.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is why I have ticky marks on my to-do list for the PT: not because I will forget to do it without them, but because removing each one is a Thing Done.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Indeed, in my experience, radishes are rather rarely the answer.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Writing a novel is probably a bad example--for me, it works, because it's new and fresh and not part of who I already am. For you, authoring is already part of your psyche, so it won't work as a way of taking you out of yourself. But maybe there's some other creative or intellectual journey that you could take, that would feel utterly foreign and new (and doesn't require absence of vertigo to accomplish).

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm not sure what "head-down in PT" really signifies. If it means that you're feeling sorry for yourself and daunted by the physical readjustments you have to make, I'd suggest trying some volunteer work in the children's wards (it seems to work on your average holiday episode of 90210). If it means that you've lost perspective on why the therapy is worth doing, I'd find a physical activity that I'm really bad at but enjoy doing anyway, something fun and with a definite goal to measure myself against.

Not my brain, though, and I'm not sure how good I am at taking care of my own brain, let alone someone else's.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If I was physically capable of either of those things, life would be so much better than it currently is. I. Fall. Down. I can't do most of the activities I'm usually good at without hurting myself.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That last bit does seem to be the difficulty, but I will definitely keep an eye out.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Are you a music-person? Because it sounds as though what you want is something that engages your brain by primarily using senses that aren't the ones that are currently affected. With vertigo, that eliminates things based on sight, touch (to some extent-- YMMV), kinesthesia of course, and at least for me smell; and nausea tends to eliminate taste.

Which leaves hearing as possibly unaffected enough to escape into.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Oy. No suggestions, just the observation that my experience (growing up in New England and having grandparents in IL and living in MSP for 2.5 years after college) is exactly the opposite. I remember adoring Lake of the Isles for its varying (by MSP standards) topography, its woodedness, its irregular shoreline. It felt more homelike to me: secluded and enclosed.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

It's funny. I grew up in the Midwest, and I adore that flat openness, but I've kind of come to suspect that I was using the prairie as a substitute for the ocean, even before I'd ever really spend any time around the ocean.

I think I understand your PT-related problem, but I don't have any answers. I am somewhat comforted by knowing that this will not be news to you. What I think comes closest, for me, is unfortunately weather-dependent. Walking outside expecting biting cold and finding inside a cool stillness. Closing my eyes and turning my face into the sun. Laying back in the shade and the grass. Listening to a heavy rain. Those things all help me remember feeling good, when I'm physically not right. But they don't happen on command, and they might not work for you, anyway.

I hope you find it, whatever it is.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

there's one thing that recalibrates the tasha-brain.

and that thing is tea.

lately, it's bigelow plantation mint tea. with one or two cubes of sugar.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Oof.

I'm thinking about that, turning it around in my head. And I think what that is, is courage. I think you're doing one of the hardest things there is to do: deliberately walking - you can't even run, metaphorically let alone literally - into something you know you hate, over and over again. In some ways, it's easier if it just happens to you. That has its own problems. The best scenario is usually something like (another physical activity metaphor, great, but it's my standard one when I'm talking about things like this) jumping off a high dive, or placing yourself in the middle of a river - one thing you have to do, after which the rest of it just happens, and you don't have to keep choosing. Gravity takes over, or the current grabs you, and you did your part and now can be passive.

That's not easy, but it's a hell of a lot easier than what you're doing. What you're doing is brave.

I suspect it doesn't feel like it. My experience is that bravery never actually does. That's because I have a lot of preconceptions of what bravery would be like, and they're...well, if they're ever right, I haven't seen it yet. I think it will feel dashing and admirable. I think that if I'm being brave, then while I'm being brave, I'll feel exhilarated, and I'll be conscious that I am doing a noble thing. For one thing, I assume that it's only courage if it's on someone else's behalf, and for another thing, a thousand simplistic stories warped my brain early in life. Courage is something fine and bright and clear as a briskly windy day, with pennants snapping and eyes shining.

Oh, it's so not. I have never yet done something really brave that didn't make me feel miserable and ill, at least while I was doing it - and that's without the physical nausea you have on top of everything. Being brave feels horrible. And I think you're being very brave, and I suspect that even if you could think of it that way, it wouldn't help.

You are a story-teller, though. I wonder...I mean, if Robin (that's his name, isn't it?) had to do what you're doing, could you write him a story that reframed the nasty feelings and the horrible sensation of knowing that you're doing it on purpose and know in advance how yucky it will be, into some kind of fairy tale* of oddly inverted bravery?

I'm just wondering whether telling that story on paper might let you tell it to yourself in a way that would help, let you feel proud of every session you mark off in the excruciatingly slow-motion defeat of the Great Wyrm Vertigo.

Dunno. You and I are pretty different. The fact that it would help me to do something like that may very well be a positive indicator that it wouldn't help you at all. But you seemed serious about being open to hearing ideas, although it's so very unlikely that any of us will be able to perceive what will work for you. I guess I think of it a little like coin tossing to clarify your desires (as in, "Well, I don't know what I want. Heads, I'll go to the book store, tails, I'll stay hope and read the book I just got. Tails. But I want to go to the book store. Ahah! I DO know what I want!") - maybe if someone gives you just the right wrong answer, it will help you figure out the right answer. I think that's probably the most help other can be, but it's better than nothing.

Anyhow. Sympathy. I think about you rather often, actually. You might be surprised. Think about you, and wish you well.




* Possibly involving radishes.