Troebia's Diary

[manuel_moe_g]

Good luck, Troebia

what your therapist suggests seems sensible

are you feeling positive feelings in your body?

[troebia]

are you feeling positive feelings in your body?

Not really. The medication has thrown a big wet blanket over everything. At least my stomach isn't in a knot anymore, which is good.

[Mental Fairy]

So nice to read of your progress. The comment you made about the therapist remembering things from your previous session was nice. Mine would remember stuff I had forgotten. Sounds like you have got the right person for you.

The medication balance is different for everyone. Time is key, taking notes on what you notice with yourself also as the medication can cause forgetfulness at times.

You going to attend art classes again?

[troebia]

You going to attend art classes again?

I bought a very nice online course on tempera/gouache sketching that was on sale for $10 on domestika.org, and have been doing some exercises. MF, you'd probably enjoy something like that to get you started with doing some drawing as a therapeutic outlet.
This YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@SketchBookSkool has lots of playlists, for example "Draw with me" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLINz5dTN9-0vBupHWFPjdzdcIT7G-7lLt with Danny Gregory who is a really interesting guy. He does the sessions live on YouTube and you can even chat with him. He proposes a theme like "caterpillars" and doodles away, I mean it's impossible to not get inspired.

[troebia]

Another therapy update (It feels good to get this off my chest here):

I was filling out the pile of tests from the therapist. A couple of the forms are really sneaky since there's a list of around 200 activities like for example "tending plants and gardening" or "washing dishes" and in the first round you fill out if you have done it 0 times, 1 to 5 times, or more in the last 30 days. In the second round you go over the same statements and put a check valuing how you experienced it: not at all positively, somewhat positively or very positively.

Later I mentioned this to my wife:
-- This test seems to say I should change my mind a lot.
-- But that's good, isn't it? You're evidently not happy now as you are.
-- It worries me because if the test is right, then I'm wrong about so many things. Is it even possible to change one's thinking at my age?

Also some stronger mood swings lately. Yesterday I was fixing something with the car and felt absurdly euphoric. An hour later, almost despair at the state of some plants in garden. My sensation of the tinnitus also goes up and down. I feel the desire to draw and paint, I show up at the desk with everything prepared and can't do it. This worries me the most since art is my lifeline. I doodle, make strokes with different color combinations and wait for a spark.

[manuel_moe_g]

I feel the desire to draw and paint, I show up at the desk with everything prepared and can't do it. This worries me the most since art is my lifeline. I doodle, make strokes with different color combinations and wait for a spark.

Oh i am so sorry, Troebia

you are a great artist, i hate to think your gift being extinguished

[Mental Fairy]

I’m wondering if visualisation is work giving a go? Just sit and mentally try envision a painting or sketch?
Maybe changing location of where you are to sketch or paint, maybe a change in surroundings might help?

[troebia]

Thank you MM, you're too kind.

MF, I know what you mean and I sometimes borrow my wife's laptop to set up shop in all sorts of places around the house. Later I'll get a thorough scolding for messing up a tablecloth or two! Getting out plein air is the best way, but lately the same "block" will happen: I'll sit on my portable stool in front of the scenery, draw a few tentative lines with the pencil and then think, oh fuck it. I soldier through with the watercolor, but it looks like a mess. I need new batteries, or a whole new brain.

Some part of me still has hope. Everything is in flux, so maybe I'll have a good moment at some point.

[Mental Fairy]

I absolutely know this isn’t a comparison but my running and my passions in life (which is reading and running) have become somehow a struggle when I’m feeling out of sorts and not tuned into myself. When I have not woken up and checked in with myself then the things I enjoy become to hard to face or do. My mind becomes offside or not tapped in to complete tasks or enjoy other things.

I got on my yoga mat late yesterday after and wondered why I left it all day to get on the mat. I avoided it. I didn’t want to feel some emotions the mat brings to me, I didn’t feel like I deserved the rest or stretch. A bit of self sabotage?

Maybe linking in with yourself in some way would help? Getting the head into a space of acceptance of feelings being a bit numb ? New adjustments?

Just throwing some ideas out there.

[troebia]

Maybe linking in with yourself in some way would help? Getting the head into a space of acceptance of feelings being a bit numb ? New adjustments?.

Thank you MF for this reflection, there is absolutely the need for something like that, it makes a lot of sense. Being creative right now, for me, is not like eating, breathing, sleeping since that's taken care of by the "lower" brain. But ideally it should be connected to that part, and be as natural as sweating while running. Maybe that's how "real" artists function. If you look at works by Basquiat or Twombly for example, there's simply no way they were thinking deliberately about every trace or word they put on the canvas, it just poured out once they "linked in".