Ecstatic Seizures

Re: Ecstatic Seizures

Submitted by zealot on Sat, 2009-10-03 - 03:53

Victoria, I often have delayed responses. I read your post and it kept banging around in my head. Fear conditioning. We would not survive as a species without it. Years of exposure therapy can come undone at an instant with a single negative outcome. Fear conditioning is a complex ballet featuring the Amygdala. How it gets expressed depends on many factors. You are right. It is not paranoia. It is based in fact. There is nothing irrational about it. You stick your hand in the fire and you get burnt, well you'd have a serious problem if you weren't afraid to do it again. There is considerable overlap in the symptoms of MDD and Anxiety Disorders, which include Phobias, OCD, PTSD, etc. And serotonin and norepinephrine are also involved in both. And guess what else! The amygdala and the hippocampus do a little pas de deux causing "reexperiencing," the newest politically correct word for flashbacks, déja vu, or (shudder) the dreaded "D" word dissociation. Is any of this starting to sound familiar? Let's throw in some voltage-gated ion channels and if the seizures aren't flipping the breakers, then the meds, which partially block the channels are wreaking havoc on your feedback loops. So please don't blame yourself. Don't let some shrink tell you that you need cognitive adjustment. What you need is to learn how to deal with a brain that is playing new tricks on you. If course, "It's all in your head.". That's where the seizure's are. Duh. Come to think of it, that's where all psych disorders are. It's all about fried circuits, what ever the cause. The best the docs can do is to find meds that help more than harm and teach us how to cope with the tricks our brains play on us. What a nice fantasy. A world where docs help instead of blaming PXs for their own treatment failures. The more I think about all of the mistreatment I've seen and experienced, the angrier I get. I'm talking about criminal behavior. I am also feeling intense fear. If I let it get the better of me, there are too willing to "send someone over to your apartment to help. Give us your address.". I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. I'm not the only person I knew who was hauled off to the bin with a police escort because some stranger made a phone call. One woman I know was hauled out in handcuffs while suffering from the post ictal effects of a not quite ecstatic CP with 2ry TC limbic system involvement. I am so petrified that I lose time on the days I have my clinic appointments. If I were spurting blood across the room, I would tear up a sheet and make my own compression bandage. I've already survived an incompetent paramedic missing the vein and punching into my brachial artery in a stationary vehicle, so what! I am so afraid that when people practically begged me to let them call for an ambulance, I was having a pretty bad seizure in public, I wasn't on the ground writhing or flailing, but it was bad; I don't remember much and I said no. Columbia Presbyterian shipped me up to the State bin once and I wasn't about to let that happen again. Paranoid? No. Scared half to death? Maybe so. What does all this have to do with ecstatic seizures? It's the price we pay. That no free lunch thermodynamics thing. The dark side of the moon thing (yeah, Pink Floyd). The reminder that I'd better not try to induce another no matter how tempting it might be. I could probably do it with the yoga fire breathing technique. I think this causes hyperoxia and is used to induce a state said to be as one with the universe. It's like a spiritual orgasm. Sound familiar anyone? And this from the girl who found G-d there. Like I said before, my life is in shambles. I am hurt, angry, traumatized, and scared out of my wits. U don't know how many of me came out and contributed to this post. I always get more symptomatic when traumatized and I also get really bad when I'm post-ictal, which I am right now. I don't know who cooked dinner, it sure as hell wasn't me. And yet--I still wouldn't change who I am for a second. I'll take the good, the bad, and the ugly. The agony and the ecstasy. The boring and expensive life as mm-bah-humbug (sorry, you are a lovely person, but the only way I can keep track of names is by association and right now all I have is the index; I can't get to the file) and now I forget what I was trying to say. Oh, yes. No regrets. It's a hard life, but it's mine. And I've experienced more in a single moment than most people have experienced in a lifetime. I can't change it and I don't want to. We're really a good bunch here. I feel as if I've found "soul mates" for lack of a better term. Our ideologies may be different, but in essence we are the same. And we can look past seemingly mutually exclusive views and still find the common ground. It's a whole lot more than "let's agree to disagree." I can't thank any of you enough for your concern and support. Zealot, et alia