mental-health – Bibiane's Blog

Oh this week of testing blood

Today is the third day after the wonderful experience of dancing in the pride parade, and as usual after a great experience, the day feels like “now what?” We’re in the middle of a holiday week, there won’t be any dance classes (or just a dance improvisation) to “ground myself”, and so it was a good time to schedule an overdue doctor’s appointment. I must admit I delayed because yes, I have a lot of fears around clinics and hospitals.

To make a story short and preserve the privacy of my medical history, I had an extended blood test and an EKG that day. I managed very well through the blood test… at first, printing 4 labels for 4 vials raised my anxiety level, but I went into hyper avoidance mode (I look away, close my eyes, count numbers in my head) and even managed to walk away with only a slight lightheadedness…

I kept replaying in my head that my brother mocks me every time I talk about my sensitivity around blood and needles. I knew I would never tell them, my family, about today’s feat. Yet it would be useful information to, maybe a niece or a nephew, give someone my recipe: it is similar to meditation or counting sheep when you try to fall asleep, but even more intensely blocking your senses. Yet it’s a lifetime of coping without ever telling anyone you have been masking all along.

The results come one at a time in the next 24 hours, and at first I was vindicated by the realization that I have bradycardia, which is just that due to a slow heartbeat I may feel faint after exercise. And I remember sharing with another skinny person that we are known as fainters in clinical settings! I thought I should tell my brother, to tell him he’s been laughing at a medical condition, but also that hey, I share that with athletes!

Except that the day after, the blood test results drip into my e-mail, and two aren’t so great, and the doctor calls to ask to go back for another blood test for the anemia that I have… So today I had been thinking about going to the clinic, but I now had extreme fear of it that I might not be able to manage using my method…

Combined with another obsession of the week, I became super-obsessed and decided to take a walk through the mostly quiet and beautiful streets leading to the produce market, wearing headphones… It was a surprisingly emotional walk, and I chose to keep the headphones on without music at the market, as this is a busy market with sometimes frantic customers. In fact I ended up taking a break for a minute staring at the soba noodles, and quietly ignoring the frantic customers who must choose the best check-out line and lecture others about it.

There’s a toy shop on my way, and I stop to buy a cat… I would get a live cat if only I had enough confidence that I could care for it, but my house plants have been telling me I sometimes neglect them. They’re looking at me right now. I have been neglecting my interior, in a way because my inner self had needed more attention. I’m going to say “no” to people I’ve been pestering about volunteering with them despite their apparent nonchalance about it. I am utterly confused that my glucose level is back up (seriously).

I wrote this with noise canceling headphones playing the classical music station… I think I’m ready to write about the awesome dancing experience last weekend!

Resurfacing

Two years of all-out anti-trans messaging by the fascist forces have finally had a toll on my mind. A month ago as I showed many stress symptoms, I got a diagnosis of PTSD, qualified as “complex” but “complex PTSD” isn’t yet an official diagnosis. I realized that I had assimilated a lifelong self-repression that had boiled over once more.

I write “once more” because half a lifetime ago I had episodes of self-harm that could have ended my life. However at the time the therapists I saw all focused on making me more manly, which only contributed to my pushing everything deeper inside me. My crises became more private, and I coped by reaching for inexpensive wine after social encounters. There were people who clearly had problems of their own as they would get drunk during the social encounters, whereas I just used it as a way to numb my feelings at night. But after the pandemic, with the help of a friend, I stopped drinking. Now it feels so good to be able to say “no” to alcohol, I think everybody should give it a try (but that isn’t the subject of this writing).

So it boiled over due to this messaging that not only got to my ears and eyes, but also the feeling that we became a subject of discussion, and people had opinions about all things trans. Having taken DEI trainings in the past, I knew that other people – let’s say most non-white people – have been putting up with similar repression, and in that sense I am privileged. It doesn’t mean I don’t get stressed out.

I took a break from all talk radio, chose a few pieces of music to play repeatedly in my ears, changed my routes to quieter streets (I walk or bike), avoided discussions, made sure I always went to the cashier who knows me at the grocery store, and of course continued to attend dance classes. Practicing modern dance, and especially when movement originates from my feelings, has been sustenance.

So it’s not surprising that I am resurfacing because of my art… My self-repression would have me apologize to pretend to be a dancer (in the competitive way that doesn’t really occur among dancers, but rather among the viewing public), and wanting to be a singer (who do I think I am?). I wrote a couple of poems earlier this year, after a few years hiatus. I managed to get together the idea of a queer open mic, and because I enrolled friends into it, it had a successful debut. I did a solo dance, and read the two poems I have recently written.

The solo dance, a “rehearsed improvisation” or basically a choreography that will always be in development because every time the dancer is responding to different feelings and understanding of the song. The song I chose I recorded at a concert by the Oakland GMC, knowing my friend’s voice is in it. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning and have a new idea of what a particular segment would look like. It’s similar to playing by ear instead of from sheet music (also because in dance, there’s no equivalent to sheet music other than what your teacher shows you to imitate).

I made myself even more vulnerable by choosing a pair of leggings and a leotard in tones of fuchsia and mauve.

What’s good about open mic is that you can perform in a friendly environment. I was still nervous, of course, and I even said to my friend one minute before starting that I had forgotten everything! But I made it through! I was the only one to know where I went “wrong” and I was motivated to be vulnerable again by signing up to read the poems.

I am now tempted to try to develop other dances, to write new poems. I thought I would submit the poems to a magazine, but then I figured I didn’t have the time, and putting them on my wordpress site would reach more people, more friends who don’t get the magazines anyway.

I will try to post the video recordings on this site here, as it is even more private and about my personal development.

As for the ptsd, I am learning new tricks. While mentioning that I had a mild form of claustrophobia, for example, I revealed that it was not as mild as I thought: I had just learned to live with it. As with other forms of anxiety, it is good to lead your mind away from the source of the anxiety. But “living with it” also means you have to be vigilant, and that’s just extra work that you pile on with other stressors.

Go read my poems on bibitiphane.org and let’s see if I can post videos of the dance and the reading here…

the Healing Hearts 5K

I’m walking, not running, tomorrow in the Healing Hearts 5K around Lake Merritt in Oakland, a benefit for the Crisis Support Center of Alameda Co… Anyone can join my team here: runsignup.com/bibi

I’m never sure how to talk about attending this yearly run, as it’s sort of raising the question “why?” that I don’t really know how to explain. Yet I want to explain it here while keeping a veil on events and personal feelings.

It has been an emotional roller coaster this past year, and like many people I must turn off the news when it’s just too much to bear. Lately I went from a longer high note, to then crash in feeling unsupported. I feel that most people around me see the problems as political, not personal, so for them it’s a matter of voting at the next election. For me, every day the news want to remind everyone that trans people should be scrutinized and judged on superficial argumentation. What happened to “live and let live?”

Very early in my life, my mother wanted to steer me towards being a boy, and other adults messed with my mind a bit more, so I had a hard time relying on others for support. I turned violent against myself a few times, or readily adopted self-sacrificing ideas like fasting, but I’m also hypersensitive and intolerant of pain (it gets even more complicated, as I will hide the pain because I expect scorn from others).

So this morning, as I recovered from about a week of a combination of negative feelings (I’m aging and my body needs more maintenance), I figured it was like this: I am walking a tight rope, getting some support that feels fragile at times, and it’s hailing with hateful policies and language. I fear asking for support, because in me is this feeling that my friends could withdraw in the way the adults in my childhood withdrew and wanted to quiet me.

And so I fear telling a friend they’re important to me! But they are, and I’m anxious not to do anything that could jeopardize my fragile support system.

So that’s how I feel when I join the Healing Hearts run/walk: there is a support system when yours falls apart. And we should support that.

Ignore the Trolls

It’s been a while, I know, but if you look at the date of this post, we’re two months into the regime, and most of my time has been spent trying to shield myself from it all.
As I may have mentioned before, my Modern Dance class and teacher have been my sanctuary, but also my avenue to process my emotions. Lately I have attended often enough that I learn the choreography of the month quicker (combined with learning how to learn), and I can let the movement take over and soothe my mind. At times I have gone to class feeling desperate, and the warm-up sequences felt arduous until I had sort of a crying moment, after which I was rebuilding myself with every movement. And then I laugh whenever I forget where I am and go in the wrong direction!
In my class two days ago, I found myself next to another dancer who had made an unasked for negative comment to me before, and I was distracted by their style and presence, as if I owned the space. It was not until I chose to ignore them that I could dance freely (and frankly better). They were still there, but I deliberately ignored their presence and I was no longer distracted. I enjoyed the dance so much, and I realized that I had put myself in a leading position for others.
So that is the essence of my message today: ignore the trolls, do not engage with them. Build your own scenes, as you would in an Improv class where you leave your ego at the door. Ignore the bullies (who form the current government), and chase the old ones away from your mind. I realized the whole lot of the people in power now were like the bullies of my youth: unable to grow up, stuck in a narrative of dominating by violent words and actions.
In a sense, these modern grown bullies have helped me improve my self-esteem. My own flavor of gender dysphoria nourishes my low self-esteem, but having bullies so senselessly destroying everything around them has had the reverse effect on me. They are despicable and hateful. Why would I let any of them influence me?

Sometimes I Feel Like a Child Needing a Hand…

Sometimes I feel like a child needing a hand to go through a difficult moment, but there’s no hand… Do I mean I’m helpless? There’s a positive bent to it: most of my life I have learned to solve my own problems. But unlike the heroes in movies, I have serious vulnerabilities and I get swayed into perfect storms like the one I just experienced.

I remember High School Physics only for the demonstration of how waves interact with each other. You can experiment in a bathtub if you wish: waves originating from different sources at different frequencies add (and subtract) when they meet, and create stormy conditions. The emotional storm I was experiencing originated from nearby waves (recent interactions) with waves that have been going on in my body for decades.

I hate myself (more about that later) for even exposing that I blame my mother for several things, but other adults when I was a child were either harmful, uncaring, or just plain scary. My peers from my age group were either bullies or indifferent, and all I could really do was to try as hard as I could to bring good grades from school in order to get recognition from my mother. That was hard work also because I seemed to have trouble learning in class especially when interrogated. Several of my waves originate from events in childhood that were outright traumatic, or were themselves trauma caused by the responses to my responses to trauma. After that the best protection against the daily bullying is to make yourself as quiet and invisible as possible.

Now that decades have passed with a few episodes of self-harm, I find myself coping with gender dysphoria in my own way. It does come back, like a ghost, or… what I learned about abusive people. I feel very vulnerable, but I return kindness with extra kindness, and sometimes I have to control it so the kind people will not feel invaded by my desire to hang on. I read signs of abandonment when others are just living their own lives, and again I try to solve those issues on my own. It is very tiring, and it comes to that storm I was describing, when I try to please everyone, sacrificing myself, doing unsolicited volunteer work and then fearing the wrath of those whose work I just did. And so on and so forth.

Sorry this was as cryptic as I could make it… I don’t want to describe real situations and actual people. But in recent years, my entourage has been very positive, I find I can love people and read how much they can take. The hardest part for me is to understand that I am not the cause of someone’s sadness, and to take a step back before I try with all my capacities to fix it. That comes from a form of emotional blackmail my mother practiced with me. The sad thing is I don’t remember her being happy with me while I do remember her anger at me when I returned from school in complete distress (she was angry at the fact I had peed in my pants as a result of the chain of events that had caused it). Or when I had tripped from roller skates and hurt my knees. Or when I had been stung by wasps. They were all accidents, but somehow instead of comforting me she focused on whatever I shouldn’t have done. I have a hunch this doesn’t lead to being curious or adventurous…

After reading this text above, I hesitate to show it to anyone, but I tell myself it might help someone. Maybe parents and caregivers can be more aware of how they react to unexpected behaviors in children. Maybe other adults can learn to address their childhood issues with less harmful ways than drugs, alcohol, or self-harm. It can be daunting, because I know how easier it was to drink a bottle of wine to put myself in a slumber to forget a confrontation. Come to think of it, that will be the subject of my next post!