2 Healing Habits I Started this Morning to Recover from my Seizure Last Night
I felt absolutely awful last night, but am doing a bit more decent this morning and here is perhaps why.
Hi Everyone! So as most of our readers and contributors are now aware, I had a really horrible night last night. Something caused me to have a seizure and we don’t know yet what or if it will happen again. We’ve contacted my psychiatrist for guidance but haven’t heard back yet.
Sally wrote about the experience last night here, as we were all up pretty late as I tried to recover:
I strongly suspect that the seizure was somehow medication-induced. I don’t have a history of seizures. The only previous time I’ve had one was about 15 years ago and that also involved a heavy dose of psychiatric meds in my system.
It took a few hours to become functional again after the seizure. I was initially lying on the floor in the kitchen as I’d fallen off the chair at the kitchen table where I was working and injured my leg pretty bad:
I also appear to have bitten my tongue and that is discouraging me from eating as much as I probably should by now. Certainly put me off from doing my usual coffee this morning. But I did eat some leftover pasta that has fueled me through the morning:
Maybe about a half hour or 45 minutes after the seizure, my dad helped me back to the bedroom and I lay on the bed breathing heavily and moving back and forth and getting deeply emotional about everything, crying over talking about global world issues and our nation’s cultural problems. Still upset over how I’d felt betrayed by friends, even though I understand now that we just don’t share the same moral values and were never really true friends to begin with, really just colleagues.
It took some time for me to be able to get up and move around in any coherent way and eventually it was decided that I should sleep on the floor that night in case another seizure happened we didn’t want me to fall out of bed.
So my folks brought in a fairly comfortable mattress topper mat and I tried to sleep there. It was comfortable enough but I was in an intensely hyperaroused state now, which I’ve written about before, only now it was much more intense than even my worst hyperarousal episodes:
So I don’t think I got almost any sleep last night at all. I don’t remember ever falling asleep and waking up. Yet around 6:30 or 7 or so I felt energetic and healthy enough to get up and try and start the day rather than continuing the seemingly futile efforts to sleep.
But I was still very much hyperaroused in my feelings and emotions. Much more sensitive to hot and cold, constantly alternating between feeling too much of either, putting on a hat and jacket, then taking them off, over and over.
So I decided to try two morning habits that I’ve been meaning to get going on but haven’t found the discipline to do yet, usually because my sleep patterns have been thrown off the past few weeks. I’ve generally been so energized that I’ve stayed up late into the night and gotten up later in the morning than I usually prefer.
Now, though, it was as though the seizure was like a reset of sorts. I could get up at 7 AM and get going with a morning routine alone in a quiet house. So I decided to try two new routines - habits I’d like to set - to see if they helped me and I’m happy to report I think they did and I will be continuing them and advocating for them here on this substack in various forms as I explore them:
1. The Morning Pages Habit
So my future in-laws got me the most wonderful Christmas present, this leather journal made in India:
It’s from a company called “Leather Village” and was apparently made by this guy:
It has this wonderful key attached to a strap to stick on the cover to secure it shut. The future in-laws also got me a bunch of nice pens to use with it and a case for them:
As shown in the lead image for this piece, the paper inside has a wonderful, old-fashioned feel to it. I just love the gift.
I’ve decided to use this journal to start what author Julie Cameron has long advocated: a routine called “morning pages” in which one writes at least 3 handwritten pages just clearing one’s mind. Write about anything and see what emerges. So I did that.
Only I ended up going for 5 pages and was so satisfied with what I came up with that I ended up showing both Sally and my Dad, insisting they read it to better understand my perspective about why I was so hesitant to go see a doctor or get my brain scanned in response to this singular seizure.
If I get much worse and a hospital visit is unavoidable then I accept that. But I’m not there yet right now, and I simply no longer trust doctors and institutional medicine to do their jobs properly or know what is best for me. Doctors and psychiatrists have failed me so bad over the last year and a half. If the medical establishment knew what the fuck it was doing regarding PTSD then I’d be better by now. But I’m not - because doctors, hospitals, and psychiatrists are still largely in the dark about understanding PTSD and how to treat it. This makes sense since the condition was only recognized as such in 1980. So 40 years really is not that much time to make progress on understanding and treating an illness.
I’m leaning toward just sharing my morning pages with you all here on the substack most days. I’ll probably photograph the pages I wrote this morning since I’m so proud of the thoughts that eventually came to me and how the practice made me feel better.
2. The Morning Yoga Habit
This is something I’ve been meaning to get into for months now as yoga has been suggested as helpful with PTSD and my good friend Andrew also urged me to try it, explaining how it had benefitted him so much.
But as with the morning pages habit, life has just been so unpredictable lately with my energy levels and moods that it’s been difficult to get into a regular routine.
This morning though, given how sore my body in general was overall, I decided to give it a try. I set up out in the living room and put the above YouTube video on the TV and made it about halfway through in various small chunks before I felt too tired to continue but definitely a bit better, enough for me to continue trying it tomorrow.
As I’ve written about previously, even though I am very loudly Judeo-Christian in my beliefs, I still seek to incorporate Eastern religious views and practices into myself too. And yoga and its corollary meditation are certainly part of that and I respect both, while never really being able to get into too steady of a habit on them like I know I should.
What do you think? Are there other daily routines I should try and get into to better cope with my PTSD symptoms?
What do you do in your daily morning routine to help you get grounded for the day?
Your thoughts always appreciated in the comments or via email.
Long slow jog. Not athletic. No electronics. Good for me when I cannot sleep. Maybe a brisk walk is better for some people but this is what works for me.