It's not better.
My anxiety is hugely reduced which is actually increasing my tension. This should not work, nor make any sense, but the problem is that reduced anxiety means I lower my monitoring, both of myself and the world around me. Lowering my monitoring means I sometimes miss things, and then I get startled. Or I overlook how someone's feeling, and say something wrong. Or a bunch of little things. Or I say something I shouldn't. Put too much on people. Am too open.
That makes me stressed.
I tell myself I'll be more in control, and remember better. But then I forget to do it, because the alert system in me doesn't warn me I'm slipping.
Then I mess up again.
Then the stress comes back.
It's frustrating, because intellectually, I think my brain is happier with the chemicals structured as they are. But my emotions and fight/flight/freeze response hasn't caught up with it. I feel incredibly
unsafe when I'm not able to observe everything around me quickly enough to let me process and respond.
I know this isn't healthy, this need to be hyper aware and vigilant. I know why I have it, and all, and I know it'll likely just take time to deal with. Still, it makes it hard because the tools that me be less vigilant prompt a need to be more.
The other problem I'm having is that this higher dose seems to be causing a disconnect between body and brain. My brain feels like it's observing my body acting. This is doubly true when I'm speaking sometimes. It's like my body knows what to say, and what the meaning is, and how to react, but my brain is just a passenger in what's going on.
This is something that happens, but it mostly happens to me in stress situations, as a safety response. Lately it's been happening around perfectly normal, even happy, situations. I'm noticing an increase in the grounding/stimming behaviors I use, and I don't like that either.
(One of the reasons I don't like that is that those behaviors are a tell that I'm Not Ok, and I feel unsafe to have that information out there. This is also not healthy)
Bringing it all full circle, though, is one of the Pretend People I'm currently being.
I'm "running" a Changeling: the Lost play by post with a friend (who will really need to get some kind of title here, but I'll have to think on it).
It's set in Arcadia, after the re-capturing of one of his characters, and the initial capture of another. One of the not-really-NPCs-anymore in it is basically a therapist/organizer/admin for the Kingdom. I'm doing this thing where I write the RP thread that he interacts with, and write a paralel thread that talks about the NPC's experience.
My friend pointed out quite some time ago that the character (Pearl) tends to speak completely independent of his thoughts. Like, he'll be having a conversation with a character, but in his head, he's doing something completely different. Like his mouth knows the words to say, and how to fit his responses to what's happening, and doesn't need to bother involving his brain in it at all.
I've been thinking about that a lot, because that's what this feels like--like I am just slotting words in that are the correct response to the situation, but my brain is a million miles away, and doesn't really care to be involved in what's happening around me.
Aside from the obvious unhealth of all of this, it makes me feel really manipulative, and really fake. Like, I don't even have to think about how to respond? I can just spit out canned reactions, without even really thinking. The words fit, so I say them. They make people feel the way I want them to, react like I want them to, so I put those words out.Plus, doesn't talking without thinking mean I don't believe any of it? That it's not really me?
When I'm like that, am I just being another one of the fake people I put on?
It's almost like I'm role playing as myself. I don't like it, but I'm not sure what to do about it.
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